Been thinking a lot about ways to get myself to finish more music. Luckily I have Flip Field, where every month I have a deadline to release a track. But for my personal tracks, it’s been a while since I’ve called something ‘done’. It’s frustrating because you have this massive hard drive of ideas, some of which really have some potential. Others… not so much. But even when you open the good ones and start working on them, the inspiration or whatever spark that ignited the idea is usually gone. You don’t connect to it, become overly self-critical, and either waste time spinning your wheels or just give up and start something new.

When I started out, everything I made sounded incredible to me. I was just happy that I could make a simple beat that sounded decent and made your head bob. That was before I started comparing myself to the greats. I have this kind of stubbornness about me, where instead of comparing apples to apples [me vs. my peers with similar experience] I compare myself to my icons [me vs. the best in the game]. It’s both helpful and destructive. It has both spotlighted my weaknesses and caused feelings of worthlessness.

When I start a new track, I get a similar feeling as when I was just starting out. Pure excitement. It’s an addictive rush, and I sort of rationalize it as ‘good practice’, even though it usually adds to the incomplete pile. And as with all self-destructive rationalization, there is a hint of truth in that. But as I once heard an artist say, ‘The only skill you learn by not finishing music is how to not finish music’.

Yesterday I spoke to my mom, a painter, and laid out these frustrations. She said, ‘You should finish the piece you’re working on before moving on to the next piece.’ What an elegant piece of advice, I thought. Seems so obvious, but in the undercurrents of that simple bit of knowledge is the real lesson: there is no substitute for hard work. It’s easy for a bedroom producer to give up on a track and start a new one. It isn’t like analog land, where you worry about the cost of canvas, paint, tape, clay, or whatever medium you’re ultimately working with. Digital overhead doesn’t reveal itself as easily. But the true cost of leaving work half finished is paying rent for its storage space in your mind.

I’m at the point where I’m thinking about moving all my project files onto an old hard drive and starting completely fresh. Leaving only the songs that I really want to finish. In doing so, I’ll establish a new way of working: all-day focused writing sessions only [no half-assed or half-time sessions], one song at a time, and when it’s ‘done’ it goes into its appropriate pile: trash, for-release, for pitching to other artists, or for sync licensing.