Hi everyone! I wanted to share an insight that has revolutionized my studio work. It might sound unusual, but my experience as a Scrum Master and Agile coach led me to apply Lean Startup and Agile principles to music production, with surprising results.
By adapting these methods, I’ve dramatically improved my workflow efficiency. I believe the principles used by startups and large corporations for product and software development hold valuable lessons for music production. Now I get that some of us just make music for fun and enjoy the process no matter how long it takes… But for me having a family, running a business etc. means getting things done quickly is a fact of life.
I’ve made a video explaining this approach… Very curious on your thoughts on this!
everything I do related to music is to escape this world, I most definitely do not want any of these concepts to be part of my creative/mind relaxing/zoning time, I want to relax and not lose the love for the thing I love to do, because making a thing you love similar to a job is a good way to hate doing it.
it might be appealing for people that set commercial goals I guess, but I would be really careful to apply this to your creative outlet.
you can also add bunch of statistics about burnout in the startups… because you know… it’s way higher then many other fields of work…
This is the way I work and when I am in writing mode I can create lots of ideas with a basic structure. Then listen back and decide on which tracks I think would be good to work on mode. I will swap between modes all the time.
Indeed I do catch myself sometimes wondering if I am too goal oriented, but when I am getting down multiple new ideas in a session in a state of flow, it doesn’t feel like that at all. Quite the opposite actually.
While the goal is to finish more tracks, the actual process of getting there with this “MVP sketch” approach + leveraging my template with pre-mixed samples is SO much more fun than how I used to make music… Basically noodling away at one track for weeks. Only to be totally sick of it by the time I finished it.
It may have a stronger mental / rational component, but the results are better and the process is way more fun (for me), as counter intuitive as that may sound…
Thanks for your thoughts though, can totally see how this might seem like “work”
Yup. I associate scrum, agile, etc with high-stress activities done for someone else’s significant profit off of labor that I do not want to be doing. The last thing I want to do is optimize my music-making to death using the framework someone else forces on me to squeeze more money out of my work. I typically enjoy this kind of topic/ discussion but this one is not for me.
I’m extremely glad that this methodology works for you though, ErikH.
It does seem to be working, although I’m not sure how positive the reactions will be - I think a lot of people have very negative feelings toward the tech world and its influence on creative practices.
So I’m 1 minute in & will finish the video, but I gotta be honest, got some mixed feelings early on.
Positive- keen to hear a different take on how to get more done. I work in ICT so I have plenty of experience using scrum & kanban. Never thought about how they could be used for personal creativity.
Negative- the video editing with random cuts to your face from a 30-ish degree rotation is odd & off putting. The sentences cut & pasted together gives a rushed feel, like you couldn’t get a proper take. I much prefer to listen to people talk naturally, even if that means the talker goes at a slower pace.
Telling us about tech startups & big business is loaded too. This kind of hype is going to lose a portion of your audience immediately.
If you’d approached this from a more personal angle of ‘self discipline tactics to maintain productivity in your home studio’ then explained the techniques then stated that this comes from the business word you can avoid preconceived bias in your audience.
Also- the talking head in front of all the blinking lights & impressive outboard gear distracts me. I end up wondering stuff like ‘which mic pre is that?’ and ‘why use 3 massive monitors?’, not listening to your presentation.
if I can add to this the clicks in the audio… ughh…
not trying to be super negative or something but a video about music production with clicks louder then the impulse machine on rytm with full resonance…
See, that’s the key difference. You’re not applying it here for someone else to squeeze more money out of you for themselves, you’re doing it to squeeze more music out of you for yourself.
Haven’t watched but I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t already do much of these things in my labour unwittingly, as I’ve never worked in tech, never really learnt about their ways, but I’m a sucker for efficiency in my own work. We’ll see.
Something I noticed in my tech career was that a lot of companies commit to Agile and then completely neglect the very first value in the Agile Manifesto: Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools. To put it more simply: people over process!
So with that in mind, my thinking is that if doing this process enhances your personal experience of music-making, that is all that truly matters.
For me, the processes of Agile would just feel like unnecessary formality bolted onto a music-making flow that is already pretty Agile in spirit: cross-functional team (me doing all the things!), iterative improvement in small increments, frequent adjustment of priorities, letting good enough be good enough, etc.
I think that in many ways Agile was an attempt to import into software development the kind of flowing and adaptive process that was already the norm for many artists.
And (hot take) I think that what it instead became in practice at many, many companies is a way to turn software development into a manufacturing-style assembly line of repeatable modular widgets with slight variations. And in the process, I saw much of the creativity in the field, creativity that powered my prior enjoyment of the career, get sucked out if it. It became a boring rote ritual of slavish adherence to processes. Agile as practiced by my last company (a Fortune 100 member) broke my heart, and it’s the reason I broke up with tech.
So, consider that a gentle warning. Agile has its strengths, but it also has its shadows.
These days, I’m infinity times more likely to pull a card off the Oblique Strategies deck than prioritize a backlog and plan a sprint.
In the words of one of my favorite poems, “I learn by going where I have to go.”
I like the video personally. I mean, there are all sorts of questions about stuff like Agile, and it’s implementation… and whether the biggest beneficiaries are the people selling the training…
BUT
I think getting organised and getting the weeds out of the way is super necessary for anyone trying to make music with limited time that actually wants to finish stuff.
I mean, I’ve only got as far as buying a whiteboard and buying a load of hardware to try and narrow options down a bit, so I sort of thought… I’m not going to do exactly what you’ve done… but it does make me consider ways of organising better to work smarter.
So. I guess. I dunno, I like the sentiment, but putting the Agile stuff in feels a bit like an “appeal to authority” and this thread suggests a lot of musicians question Agile’s authority IYKWIM.
I liked the vid though tbh. Didn’t feel like snake oil, or an attempt to hard sell something which in itself was refreshing.
I switched browsers to make sure I’m not hallucinating, it’s the pop of audio being cut without zero crossing, or maybe from the interface, dunno… either way, drive me nuts
indeed, usually i just ignore these threads but i just had to comment this time
i despise these “audio guru” channels… “here’s how you should do this or that” blablabla, and they can’t even do a simple microphone recording without clicks and pops.
as for the topic: nah i’m good, not everything in the world has to be optimized for efficiency or profit.
also i just checked OP’s post history, pretty much every post he’s made is about advertising for his youtube channel, doesn’t post about anything else, is that really allowed here?
So I just finished watching the video twice. It was better than I expected.
Thanks for not trying to sell us anything.
The issues with the editing were most apparent in the intro & conclusion. The body of the presentation was better edited (still not a fan of the rotation angle cuts).
The purpose for 1 of the screens was clarified (a nice reference chart, even if it’s a bit superfluous as whole screen thingo). Thanks for giving the chart away too.
The initial reference to kanban & scrum was misleading. But that’s OK. Now I’m thinking about how I could track my incomplete projects using kanban.
Main thing is the 2 main points are all easy to enact:
stop doing the same things over & over, use a template project in your DAW. The bit about maximising work not done was good, it just needed the next bit to be a little more explicit- use the new time to do the fun, inspiring & rewarding bits (this is in the conclusion).
make iterations to learn what your audience & peers like, not whole tracks. When you understand what they respond to, then make whole songs.
Overall -
The points made are good but require a bunch of tedious preparation. I know, I’ve done this and I hated the first 2 or 3 methods I set for myself about how to run a hybrid studio much smaller than yours. It’s a lot of trial and error to make a preset template you like that encourages creativity, not stifles it.
You tell us about the importance of templates but not how to avoid the endless scrolling through lists of samples & presets, which may become an important part of setting up the template.
The video doesn’t help us understand what a minimum viable product (aka demo track) should & shouldn’t include.
You may be unintentionally leading people down that rabbit hole you want them to avoid by emphasising the agile technique without being clear about how you got to this point.
These issues I’ve raised are not intended to be negative. Apologies if it comes across like that. It’s just that I’ve watched far too many videos about creativity by clearly good creators that miss important context in their videos.
