Continuous Growth - Daily Routines
It's super important to keep a daily schedule of tasks to be completed to ensure that you are growing as a producer. In this blog, I'm going to talk a little bit of what I do everyday to make sure I stay in tip top shape in the music biz.
9:00 am - Musicianship Skills.
After doing my daily hygiene routine, I hop on my MIDI keyboard and I practice going through all my scales and chords. I start with C Major and run through the C major scale 1-3 times. After completing that successfully and fluidly, I will then hit the C Natural Minor scale. Once I feel comfortable with that scale, I then hit the C Harmonic Minor scale, then the C Melodic Minor scale. Once I feel comfortable doing that, I will do the same thing in every other key. After running through all the keys, I then go back to C Major, and I will run through my diatonic chord progressions. I do this with every key signature in both Major & Minor. This daily morning routine helps tremendously with my Piano skills, which ultimately helps with my productions.
10:00 am - Ear Training / Music Theory Training.
Once I am finished practicing my scale/chords I then will do ear training exercises for about 30 minutes. I use software called 'Auralia' and another software called 'Musition' to help me in this area. Auralia is a great ear training software with many different excerises and drills for your to sharpen your aural skills. Aural training is VERY important, after all as a producer your ear is one of the, if not THE, most important asset you have. TRAIN IT.
10:30 am - Sound Design.
Now that my ears feel sharpened, I move on to my next daily activity which is sound design. I try to dedicate at least 30 minutes a day to designing some new sounds, even if I only have enough time to design 1 sound. Sound design is a very important skill to have as a music producer, as it will help you to create your own 'sonic branding' in your music as you start to carefully create sounds custom tailored to your style. My sound design process may vary from me doing field recordings and editing/proccessing those sounds to implement into my library. Or perhaps I'll make some synth patches from my favorite VST synths such as Serum, Massive, Iris 2 etc. Sometimes I will just create loops which I will then export into .Wav files which I can then import into my sound library and use for later dates. Somedays I'll create one-shot sounds for video games or movies, the next day I'll blend source sounds from the internet and morph them into my own new sound. Regardless of what your process is or how you do it, dedicating at least 30 minutes of your day to sound design will be very helpful and can eventually turn into a profit if you decide to sell custom made sound libraries.
11:00 am - Schooling.
I don't necessarily mean 'schooling' in the traditional sense of going to class, but what I mean is dedicating 60 minutes of your day to training yourself in a new skills or refining skills you already have. Everyday I go to either Lynda.Com or YouTube.Com to watch tutorial videos. I do this to either learn new skills such as photo editing, video editing, learning how to use a new software program, learning new production or mix tricks, sound design secrets, business management or whatever you want to learn! This has become one of my favorite parts of the day because it gives me a chance to learn something I've never learned or thought of before. This seriously helps you as a person in the long term as you constantly learn a new skill set everyday, which can be transferred to your productions or potential jobs opportunities.
12:00 pm - Social Media Networking.
This is super important and often overlooked by creative people. It's very important to stay active on social media and to constantly post engaging content. I try to dedicate at least 1 hour, usually a few hours, everyday to social media. I will come up with content to post, whether it is making video content, showing off new music, posting pictures or 'memes' or making engaging Facebook posts. The key is to make it ENGAGING to your audience and potential new fans. It's also super important to reach out and engage with other people. You can't expect to get support if you don't show support. One popular trick I do everyday is 'Hashtag Spotting'. I will go on a platform such as Twitter and Instagram and serach popular hashtags (usually music related) and I will look through and engage with people in these hashtags. I love searching for #GameAudio in twitter, as there are TONS of people who show mutual engagement through this hashtag, and because of me constantly engaging with people through this hashtag, I have earned 2 sound design opportunities for people making games. The possibilities are endless, but the best tip I can give to you on social media marketing and networking is to be creative!
1:00 pm - Work on freelance orders.
At this point during the day I will start banging out work orders. Hopefully once you start getting more engagement through social media, you will begin to get work orders from people you meet online.
8:00 pm - Work on my own business & brand.
This is a broad statement, but at this point of the day I will do anything that is beneficial to my business and brand. This can be an array of tasks like making new beats, more networking, more sound design, working on my website, working on YouTube videos etc etc. Dedicate this time to yourself untill you can't keep your eyes open any longer! The more you work on you, the more you raise your skill sets which will eventually turn into money.
This is a roughly what my daily schedule looks like. Obviously not everyday I can follow this routine as some days I have to dedicate the whole day to work orders or life callings. However this is what the majority of my day looks like.
Try to make a daily schedule for yourself and stick to it. You'll be amazed at how much you grow if you stick to your schedule and stay true to it.
Stay busy!
