Ever Since I Can Remember

‘We’ve been doing it ever since I can remember’ goes hand in hand with ‘this is the way it is’. Those two ideas are locked together. Why do we do it like this? Because I can’t remember doing it any other way.

But the problem is that we’re all too old to institute a new ‘ever since I can remember’. We can’t turn back the clock to when we were kids and change the life long ‘way it is’.

So our only choice is to make institute new ways for things to be…so that years from now we can say, ‘we’ve been doing this ever since we decided to.’

It’s not as romantic as ever since I can remember, but it will go a long way in changing the way it is.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Release Dates

If you wanted, you could tweak one song until the day you died. And still never finish it.

It’s almost done. It’s getting there. Just a few more tweaks. I’m not quite happy with it. It still needs a little extra something. I’m gonna keep tinkering.

It would be really easy to never bring anything to completion.

But somewhere along the way the idea of Release Dates was invented and became a normal practice. If you were an artist it became about making music and RELEASING music.

Releasing music is not only a gift to your audience but a gift to yourself as the artist. It’s a natural (much needed) jumping off point, break off point, setting yourself free to let this one go and go work on another with your full attention and effort.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Posters On The Wall

If you can get your poster on a kids wall it’s likely they’ll think about your music more and play your music more and tell more of their friends about you more.

And maybe that’s why the artists from our middle school and high school years are still our favorite. They occupied the space on our walls and occupied the space in our minds and ears.

So if you’re wanting to gain a young audience, it’d be a good idea to sell posters for them to put on the walls of their bedroom.

If poster-hangers aren’t your type of audience, it’s a good idea to find the equivalent.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Child Star

The good thing about being a child star is that you get an amazing amount of encouragement up front…that you’re doing a good job and should keep going.

The truth is, the talent might be there and it might not. But you’re a kid and you’re a star…so there’s a lot of positivity and you have plenty of TIME to actually get good.

It’s easy to get down on ourselves when we start getting confused about what role encouragement and time have on the thing we’re building.

You’re never going to get enough encouragement…but encouragement from respected sources is priceless and is wind in the sails.

You weren’t a child star so you’re already late to the game…It’s not too late. And the you five years from now will think the present day you was plenty young to start the thing or keep the thing going that you wanted to build.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

The Real Gap

There’s a gap between the song you intend to write and the song you actually write.

Any dissatisfaction you feel at the end of a session comes from this gap.

You did the best you could at the time and it wasn’t enough to connect the desired vision to the actual outcome. It’s a learning and development process over time (mixed in with some luck) that brings them closer together.

While it’s almost impossible to streamline or hurry the process along, the simple next step on the journey is yours for the taking.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Over The River

And through the woods to grandmother’s house we go.

Most of us load up the podcasts, the music, the movies for the kids, the noise cancelling headphones, extra headphones just in case and anything else we can think of so no one gets bored and the trip goes quickly.

But boredom gets a bad wrap. We rush to fill every lull with more consumption and stimulation to avoid the boredom that is sure to confirm that we don’t have enough going on in our lives.

I think boredom has a lot more to offer than what it might appear.

You know what happens when you’re bored? You think of something. Something you wouldn’t have unless you were bored first. It takes boredom to get to some of those deeper recesses of the mind.

So enjoy the movies and the music and the noise canceling headphones but don’t be afraid of giving yourself a little gift of boredom.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple