Limiting what you do when creating can leave you feeling liberated… weird right? I’ll tell you why…

We often feel overwhelmed by all the choices we have, and if you’re in the music making game, you know there’s a lot of them. To increase productivity and make yourself a prolific writer, we can harness the power of restriction. It forces you to make a decision, it allows you to get stuff done at a faster pace, you are no longer considering what sounds to use in your production, you’ve already chosen them! It also encourages you to think outside the box with how to use instruments in a different way. A couple of rules which I encourage you should start out with:

Now the rules are set, start creating… and to help you with differentiation between each section, here are 3 things I personally like to do:

Theres also a million other things you could do, but these are a great starting point.

Now go create!

Why You Should Write A Song A Week

Make Guitars that POP out of your speakers

We’ll break this down into 3 main sections: Performance, Amp & Tone and Processing.

Performance:

Guitar Voicing: You don’t need to play every string on the guitar. Be selective about what space you’re taking up sonically and let that inform what voicing you should play on the guitar. It allows you to layer guitars more easily giving you a bigger sound and more guitars that can POP out of the speakers,

Don’t play as hard as you think: Soften your grip. Don’t strangle the guitar… seriously. Loosening your grip reduces fret buzz, problematic intonation and allows your hand to move freely around the neck. It also takes a lot of strain off your hand meaning you can play for longer…

Amp & Tone

Use a cleaner tone than you think: Just trust me on this. In my opinion, a cleaner guitar tone with some nice saturation sits way better in a mix than an overdriven guitar amp from your DAW because let’s face it, sometimes the sounds are questionable.

Change the amp tone for different guitar parts: different amps mean more separation which is an absolute must if you want a wide mix full of clarity - try it.

Processing

Get as close to the sound you want in the amp: Don’t rely on the array of plugins I’m sure you may or may be thinking about accumulating. Most amp simulations have pedals that replicate these effect, use them and dive into a nice world of pedals galore!

Use a gate: Don’t underestimate the power of this small tool. An aggressive gate with a quick release can tidy up loose playing, and makes your guitar sound a whole lot more punchy. This works so well. it also eliminates fret noise and fumbling. The equivalent of mouth noise from a vocalist.

Inverse EQ your guitars: If you boost 400hz but 2db on guitar one, cut away 2db at 400hz on guitar 2… this will create a 4db difference between the frequency bands and do this across the frequency spectrum 2-3 times. This is not a corrective EQ but more a creative EQ - The sole intention of doing this is create more separation. Give it a try next time. Works wonders.

Thanks again for dropping, as always, have a good one and I’ll see you next time.

The essence of lyric writing can sometime be passed off as unimportant or “easy to do”, but actually it’s one of the most important things to create a connection with your listener.

And no, it doesn’t have to be super ambiguous with tonnes of floaty metaphors and complex words. Unless it’s what you audience WANTS! Which leads me to my first point:

1: Think about the person you’re writing for

Contrary to popular belief you are writing your music for the listener, not you. If they don’t like, no-one will listen. Simple. So with that in mind you need to make a decision based on what your fans like to listen to. A poet will use far more complexities in their writing than someone who is composing a kids song. Thats because the poets audience care more for the intricacies and finer details. Kids just want to sing their heart out!

2: Real Life Experiences

We’ve all had them. Write a song about that. Probably one of the easiest ones to do. BUT, if you’re struggling to find a story then look to our faithful companion, Pop Culture. Books, TV Shows, Films, News, and just about anything is a story of some kind. Take a character from one of your favourite TV shows and write a song about them. Think about the emotions they’ll be feeling, and think about the times in your life you have felt similar emotions (not stories, just emotions). By doing this you can draw your own experiences and place into the story of another.

3: Show, Don’t Tell

It’s easy to say “i’m heartbroken”, and it doesn’t really move anyone who’s listening. instead, SHOW you’re heartbroken. If you genuinely felt this what would you do? Here are some examples”:

Instead of saying “I miss you”, say:

Instead of saying “I Love You”, say

When you wan to evoke an emotion, ask yourself “what would I do if I felt this way?”.

BONUS POINT: Read It Back

Seems obvious, but you’ll be surprised how many people I ask about their lyrics ad they don’t even know what the song is about…. WHAT?!

Read it back loud and clear, do the lyrics make sense? Are the sentences tangible? Can you describe the song in one sentence? (Also known as a one sentence summary). If you answered no to ANY of these questions, then you need to go back and clarify the message of the story. If you don’t get it, how will your audience get it.

As always, thanks for spending some time with me today. I’ll see you next time.

The perfect pop vocal chain doesn’t exi…… think again.

Ok, so it obviously must exist otherwise there wouldn’t be the infatuation with attaining that amazing crisp vocal full of clarity whilst being buttery smooth.

But what you must remember is there are a number of ways to achieve the same effect. In this video I discuss ONE of my personal vocal chains to achieve that crisp and clear vocal like Post Malone, Blackbear, Justing Bieber, Juice WRLD etc…

The plugins I used for this track were:

You could probably achieve a similar sound in fewer plugins, but I really liked the depth and character each of these added. And the one most IMPORTANT thing I would say about using plugins on vocals, stack the subtleties. Each plugin I’m using is doing a VERY small amount of processing, hence why I can add so many without it being overkill. I explain more in the episode, hope you enjoy!

Also, If you’re looking to beat the beast and jumpstart your creativity, ensuring you never fall at the hurdle of procrastination, download my free guide: 'Jumpstart Your Creativity'. In this free PDF we go over 3 focus points to ensure you never hit 'the wall' in your creative pursuit, click this link to download: www.madman-music.com/jumpstart

Time management is a great and powerful tool to utilise- but so easy to get wrong. In the last couple of week I have suffered due to lack of managing my own time, primarily with my health resulting in me having to attend A&E (Which is not how I want to spend a Sunday.  In short I had lost structure and discipline with my management of time when it came to work, I allowed it to get the better of me and trust me, it did.  In the video I talk about my 3 main time management rules which serve me well providing I stick to them! They are:  

1. Look at your year in quarters

2. Make a to do list. Work backwards from looking at your year

3. Parkinson's law. Work expands to fill time - so give yourself set times to complete tasks  

Hopefully this helps and you enjoy the video - and always, if you're after a way to jumpstart your own creativity and unlock your creative potential, download my free guide here: www.madman-music.com/jumpstart.  See you soon,  Luke

3 ways to lift your drums in the chorus and make them more exciting.

Download my free guide: 'Jumpstart Your Creativity'. In the guide we go over 3 focus points to ensure you never hit 'the wall' in your creative pursuit - www.madman-music.com/jumpstart

My thoughts on how we should think about and use Spotify in 2021.

Download my free guide: 'Jumpstart Your Creativity'. In the guide we go over 3 focus points to ensure you never hit 'the wall' in your creative pursuit - www.madman-music.com/jumpstart

My personal tips on writing songs quickly. I have found these have worked well for during my creative pursuit of fast writing.

Download my free guide: 'Jumpstart Your Creativity'. In the guide we go over 3 focus points to ensure you never hit 'the wall' in your creative pursuit - www.madman-music.com/jumpstart

Download my free 'Jumpstart Your Creativity' guide here: www.madman-music.com/jumpstart