Play me your new song or new album.
What parts do you cough over as a distraction?
Make those parts better.
Then release it.
»» Or the reverse…If you play someone your song or album and you don’t have an urge to cough over any of it, you’ve probably got something pretty good.
Writing a song you need you hear isn’t always the same as writing a writing a song they need to hear.
Just because a song is fun for you to play doesn’t necessarily mean it’s fun for them to listen to.
You being proud of your song doesn’t mean they’re going to feel cool about telling their friends about it.
But when everything does in fact overlap it’s pretty special.
And when you are consciously bringing out the best of yourself on behalf of your audience, then over time it will creep into your subconscious…so that even when you don’t think you’re working on their behalf you still are.
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 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.
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.