What’s the Most Important Aspect of Producing Music? (mindset)
If you spend any amount of time on my blog, you’ll know that I’m a bit obsessed with mindset. It’s sort of my current thesis for optimizing creativity (among other things). So, what is the most important aspect of producing music?
Yep, mindset. I see this as the core soft skill to learning everything else and actually making great music you love.
But it’s much deeper than this – and I promise I have some actionable tips.
So let’s skip the small talk and dive right in.
Let’s start with a quick discussion on mindset and why it’s so crucial.
What Is Mindset? (And Why Is It So Important?)
Mindset is fairly straightforward – but let’s dig into what a music mindset is specifically.
Mindset is the set of beliefs and frameworks from which you interpret and experience the world.
Put another way, our mindset dictates our experiences and perceptions to life.
As musicians, controlling how we perceive ourselves, our music and our industry (or genre) is (in my opinion) the most important skill.
Let’s explore why.
So why the focus on mindset for music production skill building?
As I mentioned in the intro, it’s my view that mindset is crucial for success in anything.
But why? Simply put:
Hard skills and tangible music production aspects can be learned anywhere and from (nearly) anyone – but their hierarchy of importance is up for debate, and personal.
I may say that sound design and understanding frequencies is the most important aspect. But the next person will tell you that arrangement, melody and just making a good song is the most important aspect.
But mindset, particularly a growth mindset, is far reaching and can be applied to literally every aspect of music, songwriting, building a brand and life in general.
It’s a first step to effective goal setting and truly enjoying (and sticking with) the process of learning the hard skills (because trust me, they can be hard).
Mindset has to do with self belief, happiness, confidence and being able to not compare, be inspired by your own stuff and just have fun with what you’re doing and making.
It’s the ability to reframe your weaknesses or failures as exciting growth opportunities. It’s trusting and believing in yourself.
With the right mindset, you’ll be way more likely to put in the work and focus – especially in the beginning, when things aren’t as fun.
Get your mindset right, and the rest of the pieces will fall in place – I promise you.
So let’s learn how to do that.
How to Acquire A Music Producer (Growth) Mindset for Success: 10 Tips
On to the good stuff.
These tips are the things that have helped me tremendously. Actually, these ideas continue to help me in my journey of learning music production.
And I’m confident they’ll strengthen your mindset and music production skills and abilities in a similar way.
So let’s get it.
1. Stack the Deck In Your Favor
Keeping the right mindset can be difficult. So let’s stack the cards in our favor.
When I hear this advice, I’m suddenly reminded of its power (and simplicity). I mean, it’s kind of obvious right? But so often neglected.
So let’s set ourselves and our mindset up for music production success.
Here are three key areas to pay attention to when building a growth mindset:
Your environment
Your inner circle
The content you consume and people you listen to
2. Set Low Daily Goals and Expectations
Aim low. I know, it’s counterintuitive – but it’s a seriously effective strategy to get motivated and keep a focused mindset.
Here’s the situation.
We all have big goals – and that’s awesome. But they can also feel intimidating and overwhelming.
This can lead to inaction, as we’re stuck staring at Everest, wondering how we’re going to summit it.
So break those big goals down into smaller micro goals and nano tasks.
Focus on just getting 1% better everyday. Focus on small, micro steps.
This will add up (thanks to the math behind compounding), and you’ll eventually reach your summit. The most important aspect of music may simply be small, daily improvement and momentum forward.
So keep your goal small in the day-to-day. This will help foster and strengthen your mindset and your skills will stack sustainably over time.
3. Define Your Why and Motivations
There are infinite ways to be a modern musician. We have countless opportunities and avenues we can pursue.
We can start a business, a blog (like this one), sell ebooks and digital courses, play live streams (vs. live shows), create digital products, start a YouTube channel…and so on.
So defining your goals, intentions and purpose for creating music will keep you motivated and inspired.
Often, it’s this excitement for our mission that boosts our self confidence and ability to make music we’re proud of.
4. Stop Caring So Much
Something interesting happens when we stop caring – we start having more fun, and we start creating awesome music in a more genuine state of flow.
This mindset reset helps me a ton when I’m in my bedroom studio.
Often, I’ll get caught up in some specific sound design nuance, VST choice or arrangement decision. I feel like my work sucks. And then I’m stressed about it.
So I simply acknowledge this and then I just stop caring.
It resets my mindset to a default mode of just having fun and creating sounds that feel intuitive and in the moment.
It’s so easy to care too much in the wrong ways – so if you find yourself stressing out, then press pause and reset your mindset to a place of letting go and just having fun.
5. Stop Comparing So Much
This one goes along with not caring so much – but it’s even more critical.
Comparison is poison to creativity. I think we all know this, but still, we can't help but compare our music to other producers, artists and songwriters.
This often leaves us feeling inadequate or like an imposter.
So once again, mindset can help us here.
It’s easier said than done, I know. But shifting jealousy or comparison to inspiration and curiosity is one of the best things we can do for our creative mental health.
Instead of being envious that someone is reaching heights you’d like to achieve, ask the question: how did they do it? What was their method? And what can I learn from them?
Be inspired and always be learning and taking insights from people ahead of you. That’s the mindset for success in music production (and life).
6. Practice Visualization
Athletes do it. Business leaders do it. Successful performers and other artists do it. Needless to say, it works and it’s something I definitely recommend starting.
There’s actually research into the power of visualization. But first, let’s define things.
Visualization is a thought as an image, about some future state or imagined scenario.
It’s sort of like daydreaming, but with more intention, specificity and emotion. That’s the trick.
Visualize yourself (for example, as a top tier music producer) and feel the emotions of that reality as if it’s happening right now (or has already happened).
Repeat this and start living your life as you visualize your future on an emotional level.
There’s research that shows visualization improves muscle memory and performance. We’re creating the same neural linking and connections as if you were actually doing the thing in real life.
So visualizing doing something can create new neural networks similar to actually doing and practicing the thing in real life.
Pretty sweet, right?
I used to do this with snowboarding (imagining myself doing tricks and stomping my landings). So now, I do this with my music production.
I imagine where I want to be – and feel that reality emotionally – and I’m telling you, my mindset and music production skills are better for it.
7. To Get Better, Focus On Quantity (Not Quality)
I love this idea: quantity, not quality, creates the best results.
There’s a story that’s often used to describe this concept. I’ll go ahead and retell it.
A university professor splits his class into two groups: group A and group B.
He assigns a semester project for each group. Group A is tasked with trying to create the single best, highest quality photo. Group B is tasked with trying to create as many photos as possible.
The result?
The group who focused on quantity (trying to create as many photos as possible) ended up also creating the highest quality photos.
So we can borrow this phenomenon in our music production – and it works.
Getting hung up on a single project or instrument choice, thinking we’re working towards musical perfection, leads to no progress.
So instead, just focus on output. You can always go back and tweak things while mixing. But quality comes out of high-volume practice, repetition and doing.
Plus it’s way less stressful and more fun (which probably opens up more creativity and quality as a result).
8. Redefine Success (and Your Time Horizons)
How you define success can have a big impact on your happiness and motivation as a musician.
Similarly, your time horizons can impact things just as well.
For example, if your expectation are reaching 1,000,000 monthly listeners or 30K/month in music production clients in the next 6 months (and you’re starting from scratch), then you may want to reassess things.
Sure, rapid growth and virality are real things. But we should never expect them.
Actually, we should avoid it.
Learning the process of growing a brand from the ground up, sustainably, will teach you invaluable skills that you can use, repeat and apply in exciting ways.
Viral, “overnight” success can be temporary, leaving you with no skills gained and a lack of appreciation for the process.
So tweak (or dial in on) your definition of success. Keep your goal big – for sure – but adjust your time horizons and break things down into micro goals and daily, nano steps.
Stay humble and patient. This is a winning mindset.
9. Track Your Strengths, Weaknesses and In-Progress Skills
Tracking what you’re good at – and bad at – is incredibly insightful. I have a running list of all my music production strengths and weaknesses.
It’s been super helpful (and inspiring to watch myself slowly moving my weaknesses into my ‘In Progress’ column, and then eventually into my strengths).
If you’re interested in doing this, you can start by performing a SWOT analysis, which will force you to analyze yourself as a musician and identify your:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
As mentioned, I like to add an In Progress category to keep things moving and motivational.
I also change the wording from “Weaknesses” to something like “Exciting Weaknesses and Skills to Look Forward To”.
It’s all mindset and super helpful.
10. Daily Practice
It’s not a secret formula, but it’s the thing that works – consistent focus and practice.
This will make you better, more confident and stronger as a music producer. Even just practicing for an hour a day will pay off in dividends down the road.
Just like compound interest.
There’s a quote I like to remind myself of when I’m feeling unmotivated (courtesy of Alex Hormozi). It goes something like:
Doing ordinary things for an unordinary amount of time leads to extraordinary results.
Consistent, daily practice focused on improving your strengths and becoming a better producer will always work. It’s creative discipline.
So keep this mindset, and I guarantee you won’t be worrying about what the most important aspect of music production is – because you’ll know what it is…what they are.
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