Gnarly is a British Sri Lankan producer, finger drummer, and performer based in London. In this clip from episode 025, she makes the case for building a small, engaged audience over chasing viral numbers — and explains why she's never once tried to go viral.

This is a short one. But it might reframe how you think about the whole game.

Listen to the full conversation: Episode 025 — Gnarly Part 1: Working Quickly, Not Frantically.

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Alsogood is an Italian producer, multi-instrumentalist, and bandleader. In this conversation we get into Dilla, instinct over technique, why he intentionally puts himself in rooms where he's the worst musician, and what it actually means to be confident as an artist.

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Risk is the point – that’s the whole reason you make music in the first place.

Yes, it is scary to make something and share it with people. Yes, it is extra work to tell people about it. But wanting people to hear your music isn’t selfish. It represents why you make music in the first place: to connect with others.

If you don’t risk vulnerability, you will avoid the pain of rejection, but you also completely seal yourself off from the possibility of connection. We are fixated on how many people or views something gets and we forget there are people on the other side. This fixation distracts from the who, the unquantifiable nature of a new fan willing to buy your next record, your next collaborator, or someone who wants to remix your song.

There’s a lot of space between being a content creator and telling people about your music. Becoming someone you’re not is not required nor recommended. But, if you were vulnerable enough to distill your life in song, go one step further and tell someone.

The real tragedy would not be failing to achieve mastery, but that in the process you lost sight of what’s most important: realizing your own voice. A relentless pursuit of mastery can distract from the purpose of art: a unique and personal perspective, expressed freely. Art is the artifact, the expression of the voice, not the voice itself.

We commonly parrot: “learn the rules, so you can break them.” In this conversation, Matt Wyatt says “Honestly, I think that’s overrated. I was certainly taught that, but some of the artists I most revere seemingly didn’t do that.”

That isn’t to say competency doesn’t matter. It is not in your best interest to ignore rules, patterns, or convention altogether. Ignorance will likely lead to conventional results. The problem is that mastery is often talked about as a destination. A level to be reached before the art begins, when it is actually an ongoing commitment to develop your voice.

You know enough words to write a book. Expanding your vocabulary will not write it. The technical blocks you encounter exist on the path to making it. As you write your book, you check the thesaurus for alternative words. In music, you may learn that what you need is not a new chord, but an inversion.

Do not set out to master music. It is a clever way to avoid the real work: to understand you and your craft well enough to present it as a vulnerable artifact for the rest of us.

ProducerHead is a publication for independent music producers. Subscribe free and get access to Sonic Stimulus Vol. 1 — a free sample pack, The Invisible Instruments — a series of creative frameworks for producers, and The Practice — behind the scenes production sessions from guests on the show.

Buried in the process, your habits take over. Your automatic selection of instruments and sounds leads to predictable patterns.

If you begin with your fingers you are immediately filtering your imagination through your chops. Instead, ask yourself: What do I hear? As you hum a melody or beatbox a groove you hear in your head, you are not thinking about whether or not you can play it. This is an honest map of your idea. Record it, not because it will necessarily become part of the song, but because it provides you with direction. The way that you sang this melody will imply more than the notes themselves. You will hear tone, timbre, and texture. That can guide which instrument you use, instead of forcing a part through the instrument you already loaded.

When you begin from your imagination and what you hear, you provide a path for fingers to follow, instead of the other way around.

Full Episode: 049. Ideas Over Everything | feat. Moo Latte

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The thing about art is that it’s never finished. It’s a fact that presents a fundamental challenge: you have to decide to let go. To accept imperfection. To move on or to live inside the maze of one project your entire life.

Fog Chaser’s song a month project addresses this challenge directly. His commitment to deadlines and accountability to himself resulted in four, 12-song volumes completed in succession over the past four years.

Now, with thousands of subscribers waiting for Volume 5 he faces another form of the same question. Does he repeat the cycle expected by his audience or change directions?

We make music wanting it to be heard, but what do we do once we’re heard? Fog Chaser acknowledges the privilege and gratitude for the audience and the pressure that accompanies attention. He reminds us that the attention arrived because he began by creating something deeply personal and meaningful to him.

The point is to create and to gift and then repeat. Because the work is never done.

ProducerHead is a publication for independent music producers. Subscribe free and get access to Sonic Stimulus Vol. 1 — a free sample pack, The Invisible Instruments — a series of creative frameworks for producers, and The Practice — behind the scenes production sessions from guests on the show.

ELPHNT is an Ableton authority. His extensive experience as a producer, performer, and educator has allowed him to see a common trope play out over and over again.

It’s accepted as the norm, but as he explains here, it doesn’t have to be.

On the one hand, scrolling endlessly for the perfect kick drum is funny.

On the other, it is creative self-sabotage by disorganization.

Here, ELPHNT provides a clear and direct path forward.

Hear the full conversation in Episode 035 — Soul-Crushing Success feat. ELPHNT.

What are ProducerHead Loops?

Gems from past conversations worth running back. Perfect for when you need a quick hit of inspiration.

ProducerHead is free to subscribe. Subscribers get access to The Practice — an ongoing video archive of in-studio sessions from guests on the show.

Show up to the studio 100 times and make 10 dope songs.

The pressure to create content distracts from the basic truth: making good music is the goal. In order to make good music, you must find yourself in the studio. If you’re not showing up to the studio, you’re not going to make anything, let alone anything good.

Late London says: “Show up to the studio 100 times and make 10 dope songs.”

This perspective also speaks to respect for the challenge inherent in making good music. It represents a conscious setting of expectations to prioritize showing up, removing pressure, and enjoyment in the experience of making music. Output is an artifact of process.

Late’s respect for the challenge of making music is also seen in the way that he participates and interacts with his community. Not having seen each other since college, he immediately asked me to send him a track and did not hesitate to say “this vocal should be loud and proud.”

He limits himself to three working sessions on tracks to avoid over-thinking and exchanges works in process with other producers. They help each other across the finish line to get the best — not the perfect — version of a song and then they move on. This is because he also values forward motion. More can be learned and experienced through continuing than from staying in place.

All of this is filtered through his expansive and dynamic lens of what it is to be a professional. Late London regularly shape-shifts between DJ, Music Producer, Event Producer, Engineer, and Educator — he is mentally flexible in how he arrives. There are many ways to make it as an artist, he reminds us that how we define it is our choice.

ProducerHead is free to subscribe. Subscribers get access to The Practice — an ongoing video archive of in-studio sessions from guests on the show. Late London built a track from scratch in 30 minutes and it is available now.

Freddie Joachim has placements with Joey Badass and J. Cole. Those are proud achievements — but not what he set out to do. They’re a consequence of defining success on his own terms, within what he can actually control. Define success or be doomed to fail.

Hear the full conversation in Episode 042 — Craft Over Clout feat. Freddie Joachim.

What are ProducerHead Loops?

Gems from past conversations worth running back. Perfect for when you need a quick hit of inspiration.

Brainorchestra is a producer, rapper, and vinyl archivist from New Jersey. He puts out records independently, runs a devoted Patreon community, writes a newsletter, and holds down a job outside of all of it. In this conversation we get into how he digs, how he structures his time, what sustains his belief in himself as an artist, and what it actually looks like to build something independently with intention.

Find Brainorchestra:

brainorchestra.net

patreon.com/brainorchestra

brainorchestra.bandcamp.com

ProducerHead is a podcast about the creative, psychological, and business dimensions of independent music-making.

Subscribe free at producerhead.substack.com — subscribers get access to The Practice, an ongoing video archive of in-studio sessions from guests on the show. Brainorchestra's session is already up.