How to not burn yourself out from producing or mixing and mastering.

Producers!

We’ve all had those times or a couple of days where we’re just not feeling like creating music, working on projects or even mixing and mastering.

From Rock to Jazz, or Dubstep to Hip-Hop, every musician’s biggest fear is to be burnt out from music and music production, and lose all interest because it feels more like a “chore” than actual fun. Maybe you’re here because you fear this happening to you or maybe you’re reading this article because you are almost, if not, already feeling burnt out? Unfortunately, this can happen to some of us musicians, and unfortunately, some of us fall off the bandwagon completely and don’t really see music as a career anymore but more so a hobby or a pastime (if that). Here at Whipped Cream Sounds, we don’t want to see you fall off! We want to see you thrive and encourage you to keep producing, and do what you love to do and become successful in it!

Doing something over and over again, hour after hour, day after day can get repetitive and tedious. Even if it’s something you enjoy, too much of anything can be a curse. And for us producers, the curse is not wanting to produce music anymore because we just don’t feel the motivation to do it. Sometimes one can feel unmotivated because of the lack of inspiration. It can be quite hard to find inspiration sometimes, especially when feeling burnt out because creativity comes in waves and typically when you feel burnt out you feel uninspired as an artist.

At Whipped Cream Sounds we understand the struggle and want to help you become the best producer or mixing and mastering engineer you can be!

Here is our advice!

1. Don’t spend as much time as you used to working on the same thing.
2. Make yourself a work plan, and work on different things every day.
3. Listen to a bunch of different tracks that fall within your genre.
4. Go through old projects and see if there’s one that catches your attention and work on that.
5. Learn a new instrument or synth.
6. Enhance your knowledge in music theory.
7. Grab a random sample and use unorthodox plug-ins on it.
8. Call up a fellow producer and talk about different production techniques.
9. Watch videos on YouTube.
10. Start working on another genre to what you usually make.
11. Take a week off and isolate yourself from music & mixing and mastering (Only do this one as a last resort!!)

Talking about a “work plan” or “schedule”

Here’s what we recommend to you as a work plan. Feel free to alter it to your liking:

• Monday: Work on your ‘main’ track for 1-2 hours.
• Tuesday: Create 3 new synth presets to use on other potential projects.
• Wednesday: Watch four 15 minutes YouTube videos on anything production or music-related. (Even a tips & tricks video on mixing and mastering).
• Thursday: Learn or brush up on an instrument.
• Friday: Work on your ‘main’ track (from Monday) for 1-2 hours.
• Saturday: Download a new sample pack.
• Sunday: Listen to a bunch of music or study up on your music theory.

You may feel like making music is more of a chore nowadays, or you might be feeling a little bored with production. Following the advice above will mix up your work giving you variety and will help you keep a healthy mindset, and hopefully recover and relieve you from the nasty feeling of being burnt out. You may even feel a lot better only after a couple of days after a short break from music and/or mixing and mastering and you can now tackle that project you’ve been working on.

However!

If you’ve tried these tips and you haven’t recovered, try the “isolation method” (number 11 on the list). Isolate yourself from anything to do with production and mixing and mastering & find something else to do for about a week, all the meanwhile listening to new music (to keep you grounded so you don’t wander off for too long).

Just be wary of tip #11. Just like going to the gym, if you miss more than a week, it’s easy to get a little lazy and push production off even further.

It’s not all bad news!

If you’re still not feeling it, fear not! You might just be in the dip of the creative wave.
This can be a massive pain, but it’s a lot less serious than being burnt out and bored of production.
The bad news is that no one knows when you’ll be back on top, BUT the good news is that you 100% will be riding that production or mixing and mastering wave again. So good luck and we hope we helped you get out of that rut! And if you’re stuck for ideas you can always check out our shop page which offers some amazing inspiration!