Composer, Educate Thyself: How to Build a Custom Music Theory Study Program

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the vastness of music theory? You have a dozen tabs open on film scoring, a book on classical counterpoint you’ve been meaning to read, and a DAW full of half-finished ideas that could use some structural help. The desire to learn is there, but the path is scattered.

Build a custom music theory study program for yourself

The Six-Month Rule: Why Everything Takes Time and How to Plan Accordingly

In our instant-gratification world, we've forgotten a fundamental truth: meaningful results take time. Whether you're launching a business, building a creative career, or making major life changes, there's one timeline that consistently proves itself...the six-month rule.

Always be 6 months ahead

Everything worth doing takes a minimum of six months to show real results. And if you want to succeed, you need to be planning six months ahead. This isn't pessimism; it's strategic realism that can transform how you approach your goals.

From Artist to Entrepreneur: A Musician's Guide to Building a Business

For musicians, the transition from pure artistry to entrepreneurship can feel like learning an entirely different instrument. The creative mind that flows naturally with melodies and rhythms often struggles with spreadsheets and marketing funnels. But here's the truth: becoming a successful music entrepreneur isn't optional anymore, it's essential for survival in today's industry.

Creating great tracks is only half the work. Marketing and business are daily activities.

The Daily Practice Blueprint: What Every Musician Should Focus On

Whether you're channeling Miles Davis, channeling Mozart, or crafting the next chart-topper, your daily practice routine is the foundation of your musical growth. Each musical discipline requires its own unique approach to skill development. Here's a comprehensive guide to structuring your daily practice, complete with specific templates for jazz musicians, composers, rock artists, producers, and classical performers.

Each discipline requires it's own separate approach and practice program

The Complete Guide to Practicing Effectively

Every musician knows the feeling: you sit down to practice, waste 15 minutes looking for your music, spend another 10 minutes trying to remember what you worked on last time, and then wonder why your progress feels so slow. The truth is, effective practice isn't just about putting in hours, it's about practicing smart. Here's how to transform your practice sessions from chaotic jam sessions into focused, productive skill-building experiences.

Have a dedicated uncluttered space with everything ready to go

Social Media Management for Musicians: Simplified

Print this out, put it on your desk or in a place you will see it to make sure you are getting the right things done during the day, every day.

Review, take notes, and measure results constantly

Why You're Getting Nothing Done: A Musician's Guide to Overcoming Common Pitfalls

As a musician, you pour your heart and soul into your craft. You love creating, performing, and connecting with an audience. Yet, despite your passion and talent, you might find yourself constantly feeling like you’re treading water, struggling to make real progress. It's a frustrating cycle, but you're not alone. The good news? Often, the roadblocks aren't a lack of talent, but rather a lack of structure and clarity.

Let's dive into some common reasons why you might be getting nothing done and, more importantly, how you can overcome them to finally hit your stride.

Crucial Mindsets for Musicians: Building a Sustainable Career

Making a living as a musician is a dream for many, but it's often portrayed as an elusive fantasy. The truth is, it's absolutely achievable, but it demands more than just talent. It requires a specific blend of mindset, characteristics, and practical skills. If you're serious about turning your passion into your profession, cultivate these crucial elements.

The life of a working musician isn't always glamorous. There will be long hours, setbacks, and moments of doubt. To navigate this journey successfully, you need to cultivate certain mental frameworks. Here's a short list of the skills and mind sets you'll need to make your way. 

Feeling the Fear and Doing It Anyway

We all know the drill: productivity, daily plans, taking action. It's the mantra for getting anything of value done in life. Yet, for many of us, the very thought of taking that crucial first step can be paralyzing. We're gripped by a fear that if we take certain actions, a cascade of unforeseen, and potentially harmful, events might follow.

And here's the uncomfortable truth: you're not wrong to feel that way. When you take action, especially significant action, things will happen. Even when you're moving in the right direction, unexpected twists and turns are inevitable. Many of these can be disruptive, some even painful. A whole host of changes can pop up that wouldn't have if you'd just stayed put.

Finding Your Creative Rhythm: Making Music Work with a Busy Life

Your life is a whirlwind. You're crushing it at your full-time job, nurturing relationships, chasing personal goals, and trying to squeeze in some semblance of a social life. So, how in the world are you supposed to be a productive musician? How do you carve out real creative time and actually make music when your brain is constantly buzzing with a million other to-dos? You dream of those early morning sessions or weekend marathons, but let's be real, those often don't work with your schedule. What's left? Often, it's just a short window at the end of the day.

But here's the good news: that short window can be your golden hour. You just need a program. You need to intentionally create the space, time, and mindset to be creative, productive, and most importantly, get your music done.

The Important 6-Month Cycle: Stop Rushing, Start Thriving

We've all seen those "overnight success" stories. The bedroom producer who blows up on TikTok, the indie band that seemingly comes out of nowhere to headline festivals. And while those stories are inspiring, they often hide the silent, relentless engine powering every truly sustainable music career: the 6-month cycle.

As musicians, we live in a world that thrives on instant gratification. Drop a new single! Go viral! Get signed tomorrow! But here's the hard truth I've learned (and re-learned): almost everything meaningful in your music journey, from crafting a killer track to actually seeing some income, operates on a minimum 6-month cycle.

The Over-Thinker's Guide to Actually Getting Things Done

You might have big goals—starting a YouTube channel, writing a book, creating content—but you never actually start because you're too busy thinking about every possible detail.

Here’s the truth: You don’t need a perfect plan. You just need to start.

Unlocking Your Musical Potential: It's Ditching Those Bad Habits

We've all been there. Staring at a blank DAW, fumbling through scales with no real progress, or endlessly tweaking a track without ever hitting "export." It's frustrating, and often, we blame a lack of talent or inspiration. But what if I told you that your biggest roadblocks to becoming a more productive musician, to nailing those practices and actually finishing tracks, aren't about your innate ability, but rather a tangled web of bad habits and mindsets?

Let's break it down.

Bad habits and limiting mindsets just makes everything more confusing and difficult!

Stop Wasting Time: Practice Smarter, Not Harder

Practicing your instrument is essential for improvement, but not all practice is good practice. If you’re spending hours playing without real progress, chances are you’re practicing the wrong things, in the wrong way, or with no real direction.

Music is a massive subject. There are countless directions you could take—technique, theory, improvisation, songwriting, production, performance, ear training, and more. Without a plan, it's easy to waste time on things that don’t help you reach your actual goals.

If your practice sessions feel scattered, unproductive, or frustrating, it’s time to fix your approach. Let’s break down common practice mistakes and how to make your time count.

Unlock Your Creative Power: Simple Organization Habits for the Unruly Mind

Overview

1. Organization is a must for creativity
2. Create a very simple file system
3. Create schedule with short time frames
4. Make everything as simple as possible
5. Limit the amount of items daily
6. Write down everything
7. Make a time to organize notes only
8. Make a separate time to analyze notes
9. Make a separate time to plan and review

Let's face it, the word "organization" can feel like a creativity killer. Images of rigid systems and soul-crushing labels might flash before your eyes. But hear me out: organization isn't about stifling your spontaneous spirit; it's about creating a framework that supports it. When you're not spending precious energy searching for that one vital tool or trying to remember that brilliant idea you had last week, your mind is free to wander, to connect unexpected dots, to truly create.

Here's a super simple approach to bringing a little order to your wonderfully chaotic world:

Maximize Your Time and Progress: The Power of the 15-Minute Practice Session

We all want to practice our instrument and we always want to get better. You know how important it is to to practice and would love to have time to send a couple of hours going through some effective practice time.

But it's tough finding time, even 30 minutes open each day to get in a real practice session. Days go by and you find that there doesn't seem to be any extra time in your day to get a real good practice in, so you just skip thinking that you'll have time tomorrow to get it done. Before you know it, days turn into weeks and you haven't made any progress let alone get in some effective practice time.

The good news is that you really don't need those hour (or even longer) practice times. You can still get tons done and see real results by effectively scheduling and limiting your practice sessions. Enter "The Power of the 15-Minute Practice Session".

Limiting your practice sessions might seem limiting but you'll be surprised by the results when you're focused and consistent

Sharpen Your Focus: What to Practice (and What to Ignore) on Your Musical Journey

The world of music is a vast and seemingly infinite ocean. You could dedicate every waking moment to its study and still only scratch the surface. This beautiful reality, however, presents a challenge for aspiring musicians: with so much to learn, how do you choose what to focus on?

The truth is, effective practice isn't about cramming in as much information as possible. It's about strategic focus. I've seen this time and time again in my years of giving guitar lessons. Often, half the battle was guiding students away from distractions and towards the core elements that would truly accelerate their growth. The more laser-sharp your focus, the quicker you'll learn, and the faster you'll see real progress.

Of course, your specific goals and current skill level will influence your priorities. But there's a general framework of what to embrace and what to gently set aside, at least in the early and intermediate stages of your musical development.

Decide on specifically what you want to learn and define your long term goals

The Practice Paradigm: How Exercise Principles Elevate Your Musical Journey

In the pursuit of musical mastery, we often focus intently on the instrument itself – the notes, the rhythm, the technique. But what if the most effective roadmap to accelerated development, enduring skill, and profound artistry lay not just in musical concepts, but in the very principles that govern physical exercise? 

By viewing our musical practice through the lens of an exercise paradigm, we can unlock a holistic approach that builds not just skill, but resilience, consistency, and a deeply mindful connection to our craft.

Idea Overload? How to Conquer the "Curse of Creativity" and Actually Finish Tracks

If you’re anything like me, your head is probably a constant noise. You hear melodies, chords and rhythms into your ears at all hours. Your brain is a glorious, chaotic mess of riffs, chord progressions, and half-formed lyrics.

But here's the kicker – for too many of us, that's pretty much where it all stays. In our heads. Welcome to the "curse of creativity"—the agonizing reality of having a mind overflowing with musical ideas, and never quite bringing them into the light.

Successful musicians drop tracks, release albums, and play gigs on a regular basis. You? You've got hard drives full of snippets, voice memos humming with potential, and enough unfinished demos to soundtrack the apocalypse. That allure of a new sound, a different genre, a more intriguing harmonic twist… it’s a siren song that always pulls you away from whatever you were almost working on.

4 Reasons Why Musicians Fail

Let's face it, being a musician isn't the easiest route to go. There's no security, usually very little money and a high risk of failure. Yet the market is more crowded now than it has ever been. With all those people out there reaching for the same goals, the chances of failure are even greater. Here are the 4 biggest reasons why most musicians fail at making music their career.