Don’t read a book on karate and then go get in a fight, you’ll get beat up. To learn to fight you need to fight.
Most artists think too much and don’t do enough. Where do we find new sounds? Where to get distribution? How to sound like someone specific? How do I make money from this? Who should we work with? Where should we perform?
Here’s the unfortunate part: the more you think, the less time you spend creating music. The less you create music, the likelihood of creating great music goes down with time.
In advertising, there is a practice called A/B testing. Advertisers test 2 ideas at once by creating 2 versions of the same ad and releasing them both at the same time. For example, they test different elements such as words, images, videos, targeting, sounds. One single advertisement can be 10 or more different versions. When you release the ads at the same time, you can see which one performs better side by side.
The same goes for music. You don’t need to write 10 different versions of the same song but if you’re stuck on a sound or part settle on it, save it, try something else, and compare the two side by side later. You thus, create more. You have a lot of good ideas, get them out of your system. If you keep trying one thing after another you leave no time to compare. It’s better to compare something side-by-side than before and after. Let your organic flow output more and compare later.
Here are a few examples from other industries:
Kendrick Lamar collaborator 9th WONDER has a rule called Thirty by Thursday. He makes 30 beats per week. He got it from legendary producer Pete Rock who makes 25 per week. When the time comes to make a record are all these songs on it? No. But he used his organic flow to create hundreds of options to chose from.
Costco only carries one kind of each item, imagine how many Ketchup companies they looked at? Buzzfeed writes releases over 6000 pieces of content per month. You get the point. Leverage your output and creativity by doing more, and more greatness will come.