New Hum Love playlist on Spotify and Apple
We’ve all see the behind the musics from decades past of bands and artists and musicians and singers all in the studio making music all together at the same time. We love the humanity and blood sweat and tears and the long hours of creativity that went into making those classic albums.
But these days a lot of music is made with computers and software. And it’s easy to think that it’s easy. That the difficulty, humanity, blood sweat and tears, and therefore the romanticism, is gone.
It isn’t.
If it was easy it would be easier to make and find great songs and easier to make this playlist each month.
Songs made on computers are still long hours of real, hard, risky work. It’s still creative people doing their best to deliver a song that connects. Sometimes hitting the mark…but often not hitting the mark and going back to the canvas.
The methods and tools are different but the desired result is equally elusive.
»» So each month there’s ten new songs on the playlist. But maybe you’re wondering, where do all the old playlists go??? Well, all of them can be found in the archive on Spotify and Apple.
Since there’s so many songs on those archive lists now, I’ll hit shuffle and let it play. Mmm, so good.
Cleaning
Cleaning is taking the tools and things that you already have and removing the grime, sharpening them, making them better, upping performance.
Cleaning up is like tidying up. Not really making anything cleaner, but simply putting things where they’re suppose to be, ready for next time, making it easier to move around.
Cleaning out, maybe the most powerful cleaning of all. Removing what was once needed and is no longer needed. Making space. Maybe making space for something better. Getting rid of the distractions that have been hanging around way too long.
If You're Going To Work Out Tomorrow
It’d be nice if you could start working out tomorrow and just keep working out until you were in shape. All at once. Work really hard and then you’re good to go.
But that’s not how getting fit works.
So if you’re going to commit to tomorrow, you might as well go ahead and commit to two months from now also so the decision is already made when you get there.
The good thing about real change is that it rarely requires you to knock it out of the park or have a monumental breakthrough…but always requires diligence. The slow, persistent, often thankless work that causes real change.
To Sell Out The Arena
You don’t need to (learn to) be a great performer in order to sell out the arena…but it can’t hurt.
Fame, hits, production and pyrotechnics can sell a lot of tickets…and help mask the lack of skill and emotional connection from the artist.
When you step on stage as the artist, everyone is looking to you to lead them. To know what to do with the spotlight. The audience is giving you their attention and you’re suppose to know what to do with it.
And when you know what to do with it then fame, hits, production and pyrotechnics are simply the sweet icing on the cake.
Difficulty
Tinker
This week is still up for grabs. The week between Christmas and New Years.
While I would love if we all adopted a week long celebration…it doesn’t seem like our culture is very good at (or interested in) multi day celebrations.
I think this could at least become a week of tinkering, dabbling, playing around.
Enjoying the downtime but just restless enough to be curious about something new or forgotten.
»» Every Sunday night I send out an email for songwriters and publishers (and anyone interested in that world). It shows who is writing and producing the popular songs along with tempo and main chord progression. You can look at an example and sign up here.