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

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

Stop Waiting for a Spark: The Real Genius Is in the Rewrites

We've all heard the myth: the lone genius struck by a flash of inspiration, creating a masterpiece in a single, effortless burst. We're told that every great song, every incredible painting, every groundbreaking story begins with a spark. And when those moments happen, they are truly glorious. It’s a rush, a moment of pure creative flow where an idea feels fully formed and perfect from the get-go.

Beethoven had notes of initial ideas and sparks but also workbooks of edits working through many ideas and variations

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.

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.

How Musicians Can Deal With Stress

It's not a secret that the life of a musician isn't easy. There are tons of things to deal with, lots of ups and downs and always unexpected things cropping up. The hardest part of all of this is the fact that you're pretty much alone most of the time. You're trying to get things going in your career as well as trying to be creative the rest of the time. It's important that you learn how to deal with the daily grind of trying to get your music career going (as well as keeping it going!). There are a few things that you can do to keep your focus thereby saving yourself some stress.

How To Find Your Musical Goals

There was a comment recently about tips for trying to figure out your goals. This seems to be a tough thing for most people, especially musicians. There are tons of articles out there about how to get things done and succeed. They start off with you making a list of your goals and then move on from there. Unfortunately, figuring out your goals is usually difficult and timing consuming. Some people go through their entire life not knowing what they're goals are. Yet you're supposed to figure this out in a short time and then move on from there. Figuring out what your goals are like asking you what your favorite color is. It's all personal and one person's answers are going to be different than another. The key to figuring out what your goals are is all about asking questions; tons of them. Once you start asking yourself the right questions it will become easier figuring out what direction you should take.

How To Learn Music

As we went through school, we realized that there were good ways to learn and bad ways to learn. We discovered some shortcuts and methods that helped us through the rough spots. As we get older and leave school we forget some of these and the effectiveness in learning. We're going to look at the different ways we learn and how we use certain techniques to improve our progress.

Practicing On Purpose

We seem to set out with the best of intentions. We try and practice everyday. We make sure we're covering the basics. We're trying to improve. Like we've talked about here before, it's important that you set apart some time to try and assess what your goals are. You try to figure out what you want to accomplish on your instrument and what you want to accomplish with music overall. But there's so much to learn. So much to practice. Every new skill seems to take forever to master. How do you know what you're supposed to practice and what not to? Of course having a great teacher is invaluable for this because that should be a prime consideration of theirs every time they see you. But how to do you figure this out on your own? How do you practice with purpose?

Working Solo: Problems & Solutions

In a past post we talked about some of the problems with goals setting and planning. As a musician most of the time you're going to be on your own when it comes to trying to get things done. It's tough trying to get things done at the best of times but being on your own makes it that much harder.

What To Do

The toughest part of planning is trying to figure out what's important and what needs to be done. There isn't just one way to the top in the music industry; there are many ways of getting there. So what do you need to do? What's your first step? What's your next step? What needs to be done first? Of course the answer to any of these questions has a lot to do with where you are now and what you want to accomplish. You're going to have to do some research and development. Most companies allot a certain amount of time in research and development and as a business, you're going to have to do the same. That means spending time everyday doing some research in figuring out what people in your industry are doing to make it.