Here we are in 2012; the world is still standing, and most of us have nearly recovered some semblance of sanity after our New Year's Eve excesses. Plenty of people make resolutions at this time; giving up smoking, getting into the gym, working harder on their music. But if you're going to be spending more time on music, how can you be sure you're making the best use of it? Here are a few suggested musical resolutions for ensuring that your hours in the studio don't go to waste.Practise Finishing Your Tunes
It's one of the most common issues aspiring producers face - you get to a certain point with a track, and then either run out of ideas, or just get bored, and start up a new beat instead. Soon, you end up with a hard-disk full of sketches and nothing to show for your efforts. Well, remember the old adage about how art is 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration? It's true - and finishing off tracks is just a matter of practise and hard work. Study what others have done, don't get distracted, and knuckle down to finish those beats. It's worth it in the end.
Use More Interesting Sounds
One of the things that often marks novice producers out is that they often use stock sounds; everyone has a DAW and a copy of Massive these days, so if you want to stand out, you need to look beyond the basics and find your own signature sounds. Get a microphone and record found sounds, recontextualise some samples (take some noises from that Arabic or Blues sample pack you bought, process them and put them in a house or dubstep track), go down to a junk sale and buy some old Casio keyboard or kid's toy that you can mess around with to create some crazy and unusual sounds. The weirder the better!Focus On The Music, Not The Production
On a similar note, since we all have access to production tools that would have been for millionaires only back in 2002, it's a lot easier to come up with a clean, tidy mixdown. But sometimes that can come at the expense of character; certain scenes (tech-house comes instantly to mind) are full of immaculately produced but forgettable tracks. So concentrate on making your tunes catchy, memorable, musical. Some of the classic dance music tracks sounded technically awful, but were still amazing - 99% of listeners will take a good tune with average production over an average track with good production any day of the week.
Keep It Simple
Having said all that, there's one great way of giving yourself an easy mixdown to deal with, and that's to not cram it full with FX, melodies, basses and the kitchen sink. If you restrict yourself to just the essentials, you'll find you're not struggling to make room for everything when you get to the final stages. It's a good compositional trick also; the temptation to throw a load more ideas into a track may seem like a good idea, but it might just signify that the main ideas aren't strong enough to carry a track. By limiting the number of elements in the track, you'll force yourself to go back and rework these elements until they can sustain the tune on their own.
Do Your Own Thing
Music scenes now develop and multiply so fast across the internet, that it's impossible to keep track of every artist in every subgenre. A pattern emerges, and it goes like this: Someone comes up with a new take on a sound, it gains popularity, people start to copy it, it spreads further, the only producers that really get the hype are the original artist and a handful of the next biggest guys. How to get around this? Start your own thing. Don't worry about what the next person is doing, just go with your own instincts. It's hard at first and you'll clear some dancefloors, but if it's genuinely good music people will get it eventually. When they do, others will start copying and you'll find yourself in a new movement as an originator, not a follower.We hope these tips will give you some ideas on what to do while you're trying to distract yourself from that nicotine craving. Music production is never easy, and it can take a surprising amount of hard work and discipline to start finding success. But that's what new year's resolutions are all about, so start working on developing those good habits today!
