I want this blog to be for the artists who just don’t know what to do during quarantine, artists that have already put in work and want to elevate their game during this time. Trust me, if you are already thinking like this, you’re lucky to be reading this blog because I am going to show you exactly what you can do during this time as an artist.
The 3 Problems:
Chances are, you are most likely facing one of these 3 problems.
- “I want to be productive but I just don’t want to work on it right this second”
- “I’ve already made so many great songs but I’m tired and have creators block”
- “I am productive buy I don’t know where to go next”
These are very critical questions that you are asking your self and I am very proud that you are this far in figuring out how to elevate your game during quarantine.
Question 1: “I want to be productive but I just don’t want to work on it right this second”
My Answer: I wanted to address this question first because it’s a tough question that you’ll need to be transparent to yourself about. Are you ignoring/procrastinating on the work because you don’t enjoy it as much as you used to? OR are you ignoring it because you have other “higher” priorities in place that MUST get done. Chances are it’s mostly the first answer. This is completely understandable and okay because if you truly have a passion for it, you won’t even think twice about it. Every thing you want to ever achieve will have that “Grunt Work” that no one wants to do, wether this be mixing for a producer, vocal range training for an artist etc. The idea to this concept is that those who genuinely enjoy their selected “passion”, will be 100% completely fine and at MINIMUM neutral with the grunt work that comes with the passion. If you enjoy the grunt work of an other passion more than you enjoy the grunt work of being an artist, then I think that is a topic you may need to discuss transparently with yourself.
Question 2: “I’ve already made so many great songs but I’m tired and have creators block”
My Answer: Amazing! What that means is that you genuinely want to succeed but you just haven’t built that creative corner in your mind yet. I call it a creative corner because I feel there’s always that little spot in my head that has so much creativity, it just needs to be unleashed. The problem that most people face is, how to unlock that potential creativity. And then when they do somehow unlock it, they come to the next question, “How did I even do that?”. No one developed a step by step game plan to unlock creativity when In all reality, it’s not as hard as we come to think it is. To unlock your creative corner, you need to think about trigger points for your emotion. Let’s say you are looking to write a sad song, what you will need to do is find those emotional trigger points that make you sad. Think atmosphere, current location, sound etc. and ask yourself “WHEN I am sad, I’m usually…(On my bed, listening to sad music, etc.) “. Use those exact trigger points you just learned about yourself, and create an atmosphere that will naturally get you into that emotional state. Allowing yourself to get caught with an emotion and travel very deep in your mind with it will allow you to unlock that corner.
Question 3: “I am productive buy I don’t know where to go next”
My Answer: This is the best part of your situation because now you have complete control of how you want to live your passion because now you control your time and energy. All that’s missing is your goals. You may think, this is definitely not at all what you’re missing, however, if you have a plane and you have fuel, but you have no destination, what’s the chances you will reach it? About 0% chance you will reach your destination. Now let’s say your destination/goal was to go on a booked out tour across the world. How will you get there? Where are the venues held? Whats the exact strategy to fill out that one specific venue? And the next venue? After plotting your goals and getting more focused and clearer with them, you’ll start see how many “Strategies” or “Gameplans” that need to go into just one goal. One of my favorite things I ever heard was from the Artist Pouya Pourjalil , he said “Your goal is the map, your strategy is the car, your discipline is the fuel.”
What Next?
RESEARCH! Yes, learn more about the culture and how music is changing with it. Learn how your newly acquired goals help align you perfectly to the roadmap of success. But just understand that if you need help, ask for it. With that being said, I really hope you took at least one nugget of information for you to use! Best of luck with your future, and I can’t wait to see some of you headlining stages soon!