As modern music producers, musicians, and artists with high-tech tools, we have a powerful ability to find, record, and adjust sounds into perfection (or into almost anything we can think of) for whatever purpose we choose. We capture sound like photographers do with light, editing each piece and stacking it with others like a designer might stack layers in Photoshop. Each layer can be changed in (essentially) unlimited ways, from adjusting the pitch of a kick drum to multiplying a single human voice into a full choir.

How do we properly wield this power, given the ocean of tools, material, and options available?

1) Organization

Collecting a library of sounds from almost any style of music can be as easy as searching Google (or YouTube combined with KeepVid.com to save videos and MP3’s of videos) and finding the pieces you want, but this can also lead to overload — a very real creativity killer. Adding money to the equation will quickly multiply your useful options, possibly into utter chaos. This world of unlimited options is common in the information age that we’re all part of. We have access to unbelievable amounts of creative and technical resources. That leaves us with a whole new challenge: Too much material to work with, and not enough time to absorb, analyze, or understand all of it. Mark my words: It helps to stay organized every step of the way.

Keep your projects, samples, demos, releases, graphics, etc. all as logically and chronologically organized as you can. You’ll thank me later.

2) Quality Time

I think that if you’re doing it right, music production feels a lot like filmmaking. Recording/scavenging for pieces and putting them together to tell a story, from a specific perspective. We remain conscious of the familiar beginning and inevitable ending, while staying in the moment with a watchful eye & ear the whole way through. This process takes an incredible amount of time and focus that isn’t often handed to us.

Finding a good creative space is more important than I ever realized in my 20’s. Not to mention the fact that spending more money on better space can backfire by committing us to “more billable time” when our real goal is “more quality time.” That’s one distinction we can all benefit from thinking about more. Find your true purpose, and dedicate yourself to it by removing anything that’s not helpful, supportive, or related.

3) Open-Minded Creativity

For us working in the modern age of music, we often have a challenge of keeping things “alive” and interesting within our high-tech software and our time-saving urges to Copy and Paste. The danger of sounding robotic or simply blending into the crowd are both very real. On the opposite end, which also applies to me as a guitarist, it means staying aware of new/unfamiliar sounds and styles while expressing myself on my chosen musical instrument. If I don’t learn to appreciate and participate in new and unusual music, I miss out on a lot of opportunities and a lot of profound experiences. It’s different for each person, but I can tell you that I was kind of an idiot before I understood the importance of a simple “hip-hop beat” that doesn’t suck. It’s equally important to me that I know how to shred some blues, metal, or flamenco; and that I know how to expand or reduce the width and “space” of any sound.

Conflicting music styles, genres, or scenes, are incredibly stubborn and homogenous by nature, but they also push music forward in homogenous bursts. We artists should feel encouraged by our musical forefathers to press on past what’s trendy, blending sounds in new ways, learning to perform new instruments, and always searching for which rule to break next.