DIY Album : Dream, Plan and Make Your Independent Music

1. Introduction: So why haven't you made your album yet? There's loads of excuses, aren't there? Let's hand over to our friend Tony for the four most common excuses. [MUSIC] I don't have the skills or the gear. I call Baloney Tony. You don't need all the skills or all the gear. You need to work out what you can do, what you enjoy, and then outsource the rest whether it's asking friends for help or paying for services that you can get your album done. I don't know one musician personally or a famous musician who's done an album all by themselves. Making music is all about collaboration. I don't have the time. I call the Baloney Tony. You don't need loads of time. You need a plan and you need to work on that plan. Little and often slow and steady wins the race. I don't have the money. I call Baloney Tony. You don't need loads of money. With technology advancing in its super speed rate, things are so much more affordable. Whether it's buying your own gear like this to record at home, or paying a local studio, making an album is more affordable than you think. It's too overwhelming. I call Baloney Tony. Well, actually no, I don't really call Baloney on that one. I know it is overwhelming but when you start to get all this swirly mess of these ideas down on paper into a plan, it stops being overwhelming and it starts being exciting. Hi, my name is Laura, and I am a folk artist and singer, and I've recorded two albums, one EP, a mix tape, and loads and loads of singles. My most recent album made into the top 20 of the UK Folk Album Chart. Recording and releasing music has been incredibly fulfilling and also helped me to heal my mind and heal my life. Being creative, working on realistic goals, and collaborating with others is good for our well-being. In this class, you will dream in how you would like your album to feel and to sound. Then together, we will create an album map which will guide you through to creating your own album. You'll figure out what you can do yourself, what you'll need to outsource, and how you'll find those other people to work with. By the end of this class, you will feel inspired and encouraged to work on your independent album. It will arm you with everything you need to know and also save you from making the mistakes that I've made in the 10 years that I've been making music. This class is for any singer or musician who's had a quiet dream to make an album or maybe you're somebody who's already made some steps towards making an album, but just got no idea to finish and you get overwhelmed in the process. This year is your year where you finally stop procrastinating and make your album. No more waiting for permission. We are taking the charge. Allow me to be your tour guide. No more listening to Tony and his excuses. Let's do this. See you in class. Bye. [MUSIC] 2. Welcome: Welcome. Well-done for taking this step towards making your independent album. Making an album is rewarding and creatively fulfilling, but with it comes challenges and it's really great to be aware of these challenges before we start. It's an opportunity to learn and to grow. That's what challenge does. It forces us to grow bigger and to reach deeper so that we can expand as a person. It's really great to have this awareness before we start that we are going to come to our edge. Doing something that we've not done before can bring all our fears, all our insecurities to the surface. I noticed that this particularly happens towards the end as we plan to release our album. Kindness and patience will get you through. We need to be slow and steady as we go through this process. We need to be very kind to ourselves if we do get scared or stressed as we do it. What do you need? Well, what's amazing about this class is you don't need any special skills or special equipment. But there are four things that you do need and they are time, space, a good attitude, and a journal. With time, I want you to make sure that you set aside special time when you are working on your album. If you're really busy right now and you feel like I don't have any time, can you spare 20 minutes a week? It's amazing what you can do if you turn off your phone, turn off all your distractions. That's really important with your time as well, that it's distraction free time to make the next step on your album. Space. I've put in no interruptions again, because it's just so important. You need to find a space that you can work where other people won't interrupt you and where your phone is off, where your laptops off so that you are just focused on the task at hand. You need a good attitude. My motto for this class and you'll hear it again, is about using your imagination and your initiative. If we have two people, one here, I'd like to make an album, but it's really hard. I don't think I can ever do it. I don't think I can be bothered. Or I'd like to make an album. It's really hard. But maybe I could do it, maybe I can learn, maybe I can grow. Which person do you think is going to do well? We all know, it's this person, be more like this person. Then the final thing you'll need is a journal and don't miss this one. I really, really want you to get a physical journal. If you don't have one already, you might even like to have a special journal for the making of your album. There's something that happens when you put pen to paper, it engages your brain in a different way. That's it. Those are the four things you need. You get out what you put in. Skillshare is an amazing resource for you. We've got the discussion sections. If you've got any questions as you go throughout the class that you want to ask me or other students, do pop it in the discussion section. There's also the project section where there'll be opportunities throughout this class, little mini-projects to do in the journey to make your album. Do make sure that when there's an opportunity to create a project that you do it and then you upload it in the project section. This class is very rich and this process of making an album is very big and ambitious. I recommend just breaking this down small and at maximum doing one lesson per day. When you do the lesson, make sure you have your journal with you, write notes in your journal. Pause the video if you need to copy something out and write notes on it and answer the questions that I ask you throughout this class. There's lots of questions I'm going to ask you and to engage your imagination and to get you going, it's really good to journal on those questions. Each lesson is less than 15 minutes long, so you will have time to do a lesson every day. I recommend doing it first thing in the morning before you get your day started or last thing at night and then give it 24 hours to mull it over, to sleep on it, to have a little dream about how that next step of the album's going to work for you. I fit this picture of this [inaudible] because I want you to take it easy. The whole point of this is supposed to be fun. If you're not having fun, then we're all losing. Take it easy, slow, and steady wins the race. In the project and resources section, there's a few important things to mention. There are the slides, these lovely keynote that you see here is unavailable download there. There's also the DIY album map, which is a really beautiful spreadsheet that I've made that you can use to plan out your album. Then there's also some other useful links. Finally, there's your album record deal, which is your first thing that I want you to do. I want you to sign a record contract with yourself. Go to the project and resources section and you'll see there the album record deal as a download. You can download that and print it or you can hand write out your own record deal. We're not waiting for permission anymore. We're not waiting for a record label or a manager or somebody to give us permission to make our album, we are taking the claim and we are doing the thing that we wanted to do. I recommend to put your album record contract that you've signed to put it somewhere special. You might want to pin it on your notice board. You might want to put it in a special envelope to remind you of that commitment that you've made to yourself because something special happens when we make a commitment to ourselves. With that, I recommend that you set a deadline and then set it free. If you've never made an album before, which I'm guessing you haven't because you're watching this class, you don't really know how long it's going to take. I've made a number of albums and I still don't know how long it's going to take because every time the process is slightly different. We want to set a deadline and then also set it free because it might take six months longer, it might take six months quicker, who knows? But the idea is that we set something, we set a marker point for something to aim for. Then we set it free because there's lots of things are out of our control. About making this commitment. I've got this quote by Paulo Coelho here, "When you want something all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." I've added that something that's good for you and good for all. Making music is an honorable mission to get your music recorded. As musicians, we can sit at home and enjoy our music all day. That is so wonderful and it's actually a selfless act to record your music so that others can enjoy it. Imagine a world with no recorded music. It's a very, very sad world. Imagine if the Beatles had just sat in their room and enjoy the music and never recorded it for others to share, it's such a terrible shame. Music is a form of communication, it's the language beyond language. When you make it, you join the conversation. It's not a competition or a challenge, it's you expressing your story from your experience, from your corner of the world. If we do that, then we are all rich. I feel so lucky to be able to go on my phone and listen to music from India, from America, from Australia. That is the magic of the Internet of technology and of music, that we can connect with others all over the world through that magic. Closing off with a little quote to inspire you because I think some of us think who am I? Who a little old me to make an album? But what I say is," Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very quiet if only those birds sing there that sang best." Let's summarize what we did in this first lesson. We thought about what we will need, which is time-space, a good attitude, and a journal. We looked at how we can make the most out of this class by using the resources here on Skillshare, the Discussions tab on the Projects and Resources tab. We signed a record deal. We made a commitment to ourselves and our music. That is all for this lesson. I will see you in the next lesson. 3. Fear and Success Inventory : Welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to be making a fear and success inventory. You might be like "Laura, why are you so negative bringing up fear? " Isn't that a really bad start to this class? Well, no, it's not. Because many musicians have fear, but they are in denial of their fear and where it's hiding sneakily around in the background whispering cruel things in your ear, it's the thing that's stopping you making your album. What we're going to do is we're going to name our fears, get them out there, and with that realize how rubbish they are, so that we can go ahead and make our album. I'm going to start with the three main fears, which are the fear of failure, the fear of embarrassment, and the fear of success. I'll give you a few inner narratives of what it might be like for you. The fear of failure could be, "There's no point starting, because I won't be able to finish it." Another example of the fear of failure might be, "No one will listen, no one will like it." Then going on to embarrassment. The fear of embarrassment might look like, "I'm too old, I'm too this, I'm too that." There might be some excuse that you are holding that is to prevent you from being embarrassed, because all fears are really there as a form of protection, we're trying to protect ourselves. Because when we put ourselves out there, we are open, and our little tiny precious child within our precious heart within doesn't want that, just like, "Protect me." Another one for embarrassment might be, "People will laugh at me." Then moving on to success, which like I said, a lot of people might think, "I'm not afraid of success." But I have actually heard of that as a fear. "I can't do it, because if I put my music out there, I might get loads and loads of hits and I can't handle the fame." What we're going to do so that we can realize our own fears, we're going to write a list of our worst fears around making an album, and then we're going to ask ourselves some questions. I am going to, for this example, think about the fear of embarrassment and we're going to look at, I'm too old to make an album. We ask ourselves, is this really true? What evidence do I have to prove it true? What evidence do I have to prove it false? First of all, let's start with true. What evidence do I have to prove that it's true that I'm too old to make an album? Well, I can think of straightway one bit of evidence is that most of the songs in the chart are by singers who are 25 or under. That could be an example of what's true. I'd like you to think of a few, as many as you can for each question. Then for evidence to prove it false, there are also many musicians who are in the older generation. The first one who springs to mind is Willie Nelson, and I think he's 88 now and still going. There are many stories like this with musicians who carry on well into their ripe age. Then we ask ourself, what's the worst that could happen? You can be ridiculous with this, because then you realize how ridiculous your fears are. If I'm scared of being embarrassed with my album, the worst thing that could happen is that all my friends and family laugh at me, and they will get together and throw a special party called the I hate Laura's album party. When they're there there you'll mourn about me, and talk about how horrible my album is and what a horrible person I am, or maybe they make a website or make a Facebook post called I hate Laura's album. Let's think of a more serious one, though. Fear of embarrassment really is about fear of rejection, and we do care about our family, our friends, and our community, and we don't want to be rejected from them. But if you start to really look into this fear of embarrassment, you will find the root of what it is and it's normally just a load of b***sh**. Then we look at what's the best that could happen. The best that could happen is that my friends, my family and community love my music, and I try and put it online and then it gets picked up by local radio. Then somebody on local radio hears it and says, "I'd like to use it in the background of this huge film." I get $1 million and I never have to work again, and I just live off my royalties from my one amazing song on my amazing album. That's a bit over the top, but you get the idea. We're just trying to be a bit silly and playful with this to realize how ridiculous all of it is, and also how valid at the same time. Because even though we have these fears that might seem unfounded, they're still there and they're still real, so we want to listen to them once we acknowledge them and then say, "Thank you very much, I'm putting you to one side now." Now, we're going to move into the reasons. I listed the reasons why you can't make an album. Here are some common reasons, you could also use the word excuse. These are some common ones, "I don't know how." Well, how did you learn to do anything when you first of all started you didn't know? Of course, you don't know how. The whole point is that in the doing of it, you learn. I've recently started hand sewing. When I started, I didn't know how to sew and then now I can, because I started. Next one is, "I don't have time." This is really common. The truth is that you don't need as much as you think, what you need is small amounts of time with focus and no drifting. That is a term I've heard from Napoleon Hill, about drifting. That is, you've got half an hour and instead of sitting down and working on the album, you scroll on Instagram. This is what we want to let go of this drifty time and to use our very precious time in focused ways. Still, when you get rid of Instagram and get over everything else, you still don't have time, I invite you to ask yourself, "Why don't I have time?" Because busyness is another form of addiction. It's one of those sneaky insidious forms of addiction, and it's a form of avoidance, avoiding difficult feelings. Because when we decide to commit to something that we care about and something that's a little bit vulnerable, we start to feel feelings, "No, not my feelings, help me." When you feel feelings, they might be uncomfortable. If you're really busy, I invite you to say, "Why am I so busy? What am I trying to run or hide from?" The third one is, "I'm not good enough." It's really sad that there's some elite status around music and it's slightly got to be some super special person. But in my opinion, we are all special, we are all unique, and when you say you're not good enough, I also say, "Who says?" I've got this picture here of the Beatles, and I'm sure you've heard that story that the Beatles got rejected from loads of record labels before they got signed, so taste is in the eye of the beholder or beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Then we are going to write a list of our successes. Because we've done reasons why we can't, we've done our failures, and now we want to bolster ourself up with our successes, and I encourage you to write at least 10. These successes don't have to necessarily be in the narrow field of music, they might be in other areas of your life. For example, in your work, if you do another kind of work. If you have a good work ethic, that is going to ripple and create a positive effect when you work on your album. Also, relationships. Do you have a really strong group of friends? Do you have a really supportive partner? Strong relationships support you in making your album. Also if you have good communication and relationship skills, when you meet new people who you work with in your album, you can have a positive relationship with them and that is all good. Another example is self-care. Are you good at taking care of yourself? Because we need to take care of this precious vehicle, our body and our mind. Because if we don't take care of ourselves, we can't take care of anything else, and our album is something precious that we want to take care of. Let's summarize what we did in this lesson. We looked our fears and we wrote a list of them and then called b***sh** on them, because they are rubbish. Then we wrote a list of our reasons of why we can't make an album, we did the same, we called b***sh** on them. [LAUGHTER] Then finally, we did our successes. We wrote a list of our 10 successes, and we realized we are very accomplished people and we celebrated ourselves and we thought, "I can do this." That's all for this lesson. I'll see you in the next lesson. 4. Finding Your Why: Welcome back. In this lesson we are looking at finding your why. We're going to examine extrinsic or intrinsic motivation. Fantastic quote here that describes intrinsic motivation which is, "Intrinsic motivation occurs when we act without any obvious external rewards. We simply enjoy an activity or see it as an opportunity to explore, learn, and actualize our potential." That is the opposite to extrinsic motivation, which is about external rewards. What we're going to do now is we're going to look at some bad reasons for making an album and some good reasons so that we can find really authentic why for making our album. Because an album is a long slog. It's a lot of dedicated work, so we want to be really clear on why we are doing it. What we're going to do when we look at our bad reasons, we are going to purify them. I've heard it said that all negative qualities or negative feelings, all they need is a drop of gold in them to be purified and elevated into their truth. We're going to look at three bad reasons here and elevate them. You might find some other reasons when you start to explore yourself. The first one is fame, wanting to make an album because you want to be famous. This is way out of your control. Yes, maybe a radio DJ might pick up your song and have Spotify playlist when it gets one mijillion, bajillion, vilillian views. But also maybe not. If you're doing it just for that reason, it's not going to work because is out of your control. If we put a drop of gold on this, what this real true motivation is recognition. Recognize. I'm obsessed with etymology and sometimes when I love a word and I want to delve into it, I look up the etymology and the etymology of recognize is to re-cognize. To cognize is to know. We just to know again. When we make music to be recognized, first we want to know ourselves again, because sometimes in life we get really busy and swept away and we lose sense of our true self. When we make music that is meaningful to us, we get to know ourselves again. Then once we know our true selves and make that in music, then it gets reflected back to us in others. Then others can recognize us and recognize our true selves. That is the pure elevated motivation for that. The next one is validation. The desire for external validation doesn't work. I have tried it. I grew up with very low self-esteem and I had this horrible feeling that my insights were rotten and that there was something horribly wrong with me. I really, really went forth with my music, with the idea that if other people liked me, if other people admired me, then it would make me feel good. But actually what happened when I did reach some level of success with my music, I actually felt this horrible chasm between the fake me I've been projecting and who I really was. It was actually horrible. If we put a drop of gold on this one, the desire for validation is really the desire for connection. We want to be connected to a source that's beyond ourselves. We want to be connected to our true selves, and we want to be connected to others. When we make music, music is the language beyond languages and helps us to connect. This is what validation looks like, purified. Then the last one for this example is the desire for money. I spent a lot of years making music in London and I go to a lot of seminars. It was really sad the number of young musicians who put their hands up and say, oh, what kind of music do I need to make so I can make it, so I can make loads of money? So it can be commercial? What's the best commercial music I can make? With music, yes, you might be able to make money from it. There's lots of options to make money in this day and age, but if it's your sole motivation, it's not going to be enough. If we purify this, this motivation, it is honest exchange. If we work for something, if we put our time and effort into something and if it provides value to another, then there's some honest exchange. That is something as a musician we want to strive for, because I see it one of two ways. Either it's like hustle, hustle, I want to make lots of money, or completely in denial of money and that linking to it. This poverty mindset or just thinking, oh my music, I don't need to make money from my music. But when we make money from music, it means that we can feed it more and to help it grow. Now we've looked at a few bad reasons and purified them. Let's move on to some good and honest reasons to make music. The first one is challenge. We all in life love to learn and grow. That's probably why you're here on Skillshare because you love learning. I'm the same. When you make an album, you will learn so much and you will grow as a person. That is a fantastic, honest reason. Another good reason is your legacy. Your album can live beyond you. I found out that my great grandfather used to write poems about the railway. He used to work on the trains and write poems about the trains. I would love now to read these, but unfortunately they got lost. I think on some level that has motivated me to make music, put it on the internet so it won't get lost. Those who go after me can enjoy my work and can learn from my life. That is what is amazing about making art of any kind, making art, making music, writing things. You give others the opportunity to learn from your lifetime. Another very good reason is wanting to do shows or do gigs. Promoters take musicians who have an album a little more seriously, I would say. Because if you have some even if it's just an EP actually or some recorded music, then they know that you are serious. It can also give some level of expectation for the audience. If an audience are going to go and see you play, they know you've got your album. They might listen to it before and think, oh, do I like this artist. Have a listen. Yeah, cool. I want to go see them play. If you want to do more shows, I really recommend making an album. Then another final good reason, but this is not all the good reasons, I encourage you to think of your own, is that your story could inspire and help others. My first album, Love Always Wins, was about my journey to heal from depression. I know that my lyrics and my stories and being honest in my music has helped others, and that means so much to me. After you've looked at your good reasons and written them down and purified your bad reasons, I recommend to write down your why. Here's an example for you. I want to make an album to create a body of work that I'm proud of and they will live beyond me. I want to make an album to learn something new and grow my skills. I want to share my story of recovery to inspire others. I would love to read your why, please, if you feel inspired. You can share it in the project section of this class. If you don't feel like sharing it there, I recommend sharing it with a trustworthy friend. Let's summarize what we've done in today's lesson. We looked at our bad reasons for making album and we purified them. We looked at all good reasons and wrote them down and really connected with them as our why to make an album. From those two things we worked out our why, we wrote it down, might even stick up on a wall somewhere so that we can see it. We shared it maybe in the project section or maybe with a trustworthy friend or family member. That's all for this lesson. I will see you in the next lesson. 5. Your Resources: Welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to look at your resources. I put this picture here of a yellow [inaudible] At one point in my life, this was the car I was obsessed with. When I became obsessed with yellow [inaudible] I couldn't believe how much I started seeing them everywhere. It's a bit like that with your resources. Once you start to notice how many resources you have around you, they're just everywhere. With that, it bolsters you and makes you feel stronger as you embark on this journey to make an album. We're going to make an inventory, just like we did our fear and success inventory, we're now going to make an inventory of your resources. The question we're going to ask ourselves is who or what do I know that can help me? Here are some suggestions to get you going. You might think of other things that I've not mentioned here. The first one is music friends, and when I say friend, it could also be in your wider community. That's musicians, people who work in the music industry, and people who play instruments. They might not necessarily be the people who you want to collaborate within your album, but it's just being aware of how many people you know, and you never know, you might know someone who knows someone who will be the person that you would want to work with. Secondly, encouraging friends. Do you have any friends who are really supportive, who've got your back? Because whenever we embark on something challenging, we need those around us to support us. If we have anyone in life who's particularly negative or very critical, I recommend not telling them, just keeping it as a pressure secret and telling those that you trust. You might like to use our discussion board here on this class as an opportunity to connect with others. Because if you meet somebody else who's making an album, how fantastic that you can share that journey together. Also with this, with finding and encouraging friend, I think it's really brilliant to have an accountability friend. If you know somebody else who's making an album or who's embarking on another challenging project. It might be that they're trying to run the marathon or trying to write a book to connect with them and organized, catch up, say, once a month to just track your progress and to hold each other accountable so you could say, "Okay, when I talked to you in February, I want to have this, this, and this done." That is absolutely a fantastic idea, and when I've had friends who support me and who hold me accountable, it's really helped me take steps forward because then it's really embarrassing when you next talk to them the next month and you're like, "I didn't do a thing, I said was going to do," you're only really letting yourself down, but the fact that you told them, it feels like you're letting them down as well. It's an extra little trick for encouraging yourself. The next one is equipment that you have. Do you have any recording equipment? Do you have any instruments? Do you have any technology? We are so lucky today that technology are bounds. If you're watching this, you might be watching on your smartphone, or your computer, or your iPad. Amazing, that is an amazing piece of technology that 10 years ago, 20 years ago, did not exist in that way and has made you one step ahead. Then do you have any skills worth mentioning? At the moment, don't necessarily think, okay, this exact skill specific for making an album. Just think about skills that you have in general. Here's a few examples of skills. Do you have recording skills? That's something that I've developed over the last few years. I've got my lovely mic here, which I'm recording on, and I've got my laptop, and that is an amazing skill that I can use to record my music. Are you organized? Do you have organization skills in your other work? Do you organize other people or do you organize projects? That is a fantastic skill that can translate into making an album. Do you have good communication skills? Are you good at communicating with others? Are you warmly received by others? That is another [NOISE] good skill for making an album. How about the Internet? I think many of us today, because we grew up with the Internet, just assume, everyone can use the Internet, but that's not true. I think of my lovely dad and he struggles to check his emails because he just didn't grow up around it, and we are so lucky to have grown up with this technology and that is an amazing skill for making album. Are you good at spreadsheets? I'm obsessed with spreadsheets. It is my not-so-secret love, and I find them very useful when you're making plans, when you make an album. The final skill that I've mentioned, but it's definitely not all the skills you might have, some others that I've not mentioned here, is social media. If you are good at Instagram, good at Facebook, good at YouTube. Those are all skills that are fantastic in promoting your album once you've made it. Now we're going to move on and look at what we can DIY, what we can do ourselves, and what we can outsource. In doing this process, we can ask ourselves, what can I do? What can I learn? What can I outsource? I've got here the six stages of making an album. Writing, I call that stage 1. Recording, composing, and production, I call that stage 2. Number 3, mixing. Number 4, mastering. Number 5, artwork, and number 6, releasing and marketing. I've put this picture here of a brain juggling because there's a lot of things going on here, and what I would ask you to do is look at where each of these skills exists currently. Are they in your comfort zone? Are they in your stretch zone? Or are they in your stress zone, which is the red zone? We want to avoid doing work that is in our stress zone because I've done that before. I've taken on too much and I've taken on something too ambitious. Then it's just put me in stress mode, and then I can't work in the way that I want to. Just take a couple of examples here for me. For me, writing lyrics is in my comfort zone. That is easy for me and something I've done for many years. Something that's in my stretch zone is writing harmonies. I absolutely loved vocal harmony and it's something I've been studying over the last few years. For me, it feels like, yeah, just as a bit of a stretch and a bit of a learn. So that is something I definitely want to include in my next album. An example of something that's in the red zone is mastering. This to me is a very high-tech skill that I actually have no interest in learning, and just when people talk about it and all the technical side of it, it just makes me go cross-eyed. I just, "Oh, it's too much." Those are where they are for me. I suggest going back over those six stages and just looking right now, where are they in which zone? If it's in the red zone, definitely look at outsourcing it. I'm going to go through three of my last recordings so that you can look at the progress, and it was something quite nice for me to do to look at the progress myself in what stages of the album I did and which ones I outsourced. This is my first mixed tape that I did in 2013, and I wrote the lyrics for the album. Then you'll see, steps 2-5 are all others. Somebody else recorded it, somebody else mixed it, somebody else mastered it, somebody else did the artwork. Then I did the release and marketing. That was my first recording back in 2013. Then we move on to my album, which came out in 2019. You will see that there's another stage in green, and that stage, I got more involved in the artwork. You'll see there the album cover, which I came up with the concept myself. I hand-painted my denim jacket. I've written me and other for that because I came with the idea, but my lovely friend Adylin is the one who took that picture. Finally, we're going to move on to my last album, which came out in 2021, which is called Come Home, and you'll see that I got involved in one extra step. I got involved in recording, my lovely microphone here over the last few years, I've had the confidence to slowly teach myself how to record myself, and that's a very empowering and amazing skill, and it meant that I could get more stuck in, get more involved in my album, and also cut some costs. Over the years of work lots of different people when I've made my music. I've got here my three top tips when it comes to working with others. The first one is character. Do they come with a good recommendation? Do you know somebody who's worked with this person before and did they say something good about them? Then also just trusting your gut when you meet them. Do you get a good vibe? Do you feel good in their company? Do you feel relaxed? It's really important to trust your intuition and to get along with those that you're working with. The second one is agreements. Now some people say to me, I can't write an agreement. My friend is going to come in and sing on the album, that's really formal, but it doesn't have to be formal. You can just write in an email or in a text to them about what you expect and what you are exchanging. Because if you don't have that agreement in writing later on it can come back and bite you. I can think of one example right now, which is when I went around a friend's house to record a song, and he had another friend there as well, and that other friend was the one who was operating the recording equipment. Technically, the person who does the recording owns the recording. If my friend, for example, let's make up a name, Jeremy, had his recording equipment and recorded all of my songs. Unless we'd put an agreement before, he would technically own them. That is why, and basically, when I did this with these friends, when I said I would like to release that song that we recorded, he said, "Well it's mine," and it really didn't feel very nice. So that's why it's really important to have these conversations before rather than after. Not just conversations, but in writing. Then the final thing to think about when you're finding your team is about have you heard examples of their work? Maybe you really like them as a person. That's great, but then actually you don't really like what they've done. I would really encourage you to ask them to send you examples of their previous work and for you to be really honest about whether you like it or not, some people can adjust their works slightly to make it fit what you want. But if it's not really in the realm of what you're doing. For example, I make folk music. Now, if I found somebody who made electronic music and I'm like, "Oh, but they're such a cool person, and I really liked them." It's just not going to work because they're not going to get the final sound of what I'm going for. Let's summarize what we did in this lesson. In this lesson, we looked at who or what do I know that I can help me, and we wrote a list. Then we started to think about what we can do, what we can learn, and what we can outsource. Now as we travel through the six stages of the album, you might like to keep that at the top of your mind as we go through. Am I going to do this? Am I going to get somebody else to do it? Then we start to look at finding our team and made sure that as we go on this journey to find our team, that we are careful to notice their character, to make solid agreements, and to listen to examples of their work to see that we like it. That's all for this lesson. I will see you in the next lesson. 6. Songs and Sound: Welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to look at songs and sound. Let's start with the sound. It's really great before we start our album to have a bit of a vision for our sound. Obviously, through the journey of making, it might change and evolve, but it's good to have a starting point. I recommend to get clear on this, you can put together a list of five albums that are inspiring you. It might be a new album that you just love right now that you think, wow, I'd love to make something like this. Or it might be an old album that you've loved for years. Then with each album, we're going to ask ourselves these questions, what is the theme of this album? Is there a particular topic or theme that they are exploring? What instruments are they playing? Is there a lot of guitar, a lot of heavy precursor? Can you pick them out? If you're not sure, maybe you want to ask another musician friends. Sometimes I hear an instrument, I'm like, what the heck is that? But I actually love it. You don't really tuned into what instrument is which. You might want to ask a friend, I love this song, what instrument is playing on this? Next one is what mood does this album feel if it's to be really extreme? If it's heavy metal, is it an angry album? Or if it's foci, is the mood chilled and relaxed? A similar one to the mood is how does it make you feel? We all respond to music a bit differently, but how does this particular album make you feel? Then final question is any other reasons you love it? Are there are any other things you notice about something like wow, I love this album because of this, and that can be a good clue to what you want to make. To give you an idea on how to answer these questions, I'm just going to pick Bessie Jones getting Union. This is a spiritual album in that a lot of the music is about getting closer to God, getting closer to Jesus. Although I'm not Christian, I love the spirit in which those songs are written. It's such a dedication, such a devotion. The songs are also very historical because the generation before her taught some of the songs. They give some reference to what she was going through, and to what those before her were going through. There's not really any other instruments apart from clapping and acquire other voices, which it sound amazing. Actually, there might be a guitar on one. You're going to have to double-check me on that. But mostly, it's other voices and clapping for precaution. What's the vibe of the album? To me, the vibe is inspirational. That when you get together a choir, it just evokes. It evokes the spirit as well. I talked about the album being spiritual and the theme of devotion in that way when I listened to it, it makes me feel uplifted and connected. Final thing to note about reasons why I love it, the harmonies are amazing, and the voices are amazing. There's a man's voice in there just so rich and he's lived life. It's very raw and unproduced, it's a field recording. Alan Lomax who recorded Bessie Jones, he took his portable set up all over the world and recorded different folk musicians, and I love the sound of the musician in their place, and that's really inspiring to me. Now I invite you into little challenge. Because I just love music, and I love hearing new music, I invite you to put in the project section an album that is inspiring you right now and answer those five questions. What theme, what instruments, what vibe, how does it make you feel? Any other reasons why you love it? Put a picture of the album cover and answer those questions in the project section and we can inspire each other. Now onto songs. In the DIY album map spreadsheet, the most beautiful spreadsheet you've ever seen, I have put together a section there on songs. I recommend asking yourself, do I have any finished songs that definitely need to go on there. Maybe you've written a song and you're like, oh my gosh, this is my best song. I just absolutely love this song. When I make an album, this song has got to be on there. Number two, do you have a working title? I would really advise you to not get caught up on this. It doesn't really matter right now. The name that you call it now doesn't have to be the name that it finally is. My last album, come home, throughout the whole time I worked on it, I called it sink or swim, which was another song which I thought was going to be the title track, and then when it came to the end, I was like, actually, it's got to be cool come home, and I realized that. I find that with naming albums, they more name themselves in the way that babies when they arrive as well, you have an idea for their name. It's inspired and I think with the name, you'll get there with it. It's good to brainstorm a bit. It's good to think about your favorite song titles, but don't get worried or too caught up on that right now. If you don't have the name, just have a working title. It could just be, my first album is the working title. Do you have any half-baked songs that need developing? Have you started a song that you really like, you really like the chorus, but the verses aren't really finished. Pop that down in the list. Do I have any song ideas? Maybe you have an idea of something you'd really like to write about for a song, but you just haven't got to it yet. Add that on the list. Do you have a theme you want to explore? When we went back over those other albums, often they had an overall encompassing theme for the album. Not necessarily true, not true for all albums, it doesn't have to be like that, but it can be quite a nice way to work. Is there a theme that you particularly want to explore in this album? Is there a story? Is there something that you've been through? This can help you in picking out the songs and to make the album coherent. Saying that the thing that makes the album coherent is you. If you write about heartbreak and your devotion, it doesn't really matter. Actually, my album, love always wins, went all over the place in that way, and the thing that held it together was me, and that's how it works with albums, your voice, and your music, and your energy, you put in it is what's going to hold it together. Now we've got a bit of a picture of the sounds we like. We've got our five albums, and we've started to investigate what we like about them. We've got an inventory of all songs in the DIY album beautiful spreadsheet. We have put together a list of all songs we have. From those two things, from the sound and the songs, we start to create a vision for our album. We can do that by, first of all, taking all those five albums that we put together and just looking over it and seeing, are there particular things that stand out, particular themes? Maybe a theme keeps reoccurring, or maybe that it's a theme really stands out to you. I've heard it said before about something claiming you. When you read something, you're like, oh yeah, that's it. That word, that sentiment is claiming me. If there's something in there that claims you, write that down. But let's go through some things that I noticed as I went through this exercise of picking out five albums that I love and inspired by right now. I noticed that the albums that I liked had a sense of spirit, or was spiritual, or devoted in some way. Many of the songs in Bessie Jones' album and also in beautiful courses album are talking about devotion in a way that really inspires me. Another theme I noticed was sadness. Bessie said that the deeper the roots of the tree, the higher the tree can reach. The deeper the sadness, the higher the joy reaches. I believe that and I think sadness and joy go together. I often write sad songs and I find them a very good way to process difficult emotions. I used to think, oh they're sad songs, I'm not going to record them, because I want to forget about that. But actually, through me processing and exposing my sadness, it helps other people access their sadness. Damien Rice's album O, really helps me to cry. If I feel sad, there's a song on there called water, it just gets me every time. Along the same lines of spiritual is faith, talking about devotion, and also friendship. That's particularly in the Mountain Man album. It's the three of them and their friends, and they made it. The theme of friendship runs throughout the album. Was there anything I particularly liked instrument-wise? I knew this but I didn't really realize how important is me. I just love it when there's different voices and harmonies. In Mountain Man, there's three different voices, and all their voices have got slightly different tones, and they just sound so beautiful together. Love a bit of a guitar. I love piano. I love synths. Also, I think this is because I can play the guitar. I have a keyboard and I can play a basic piano, and I can play the synth. I love a drone. I just love a, oh, on a synth. I just think it creates so much ambiance in a song. What's the vibe? Hopeful, seeking in that way of seeking spirit and this feeling of home of coziness. Feelings. I love it when an album lifts me up and comforts me. That's what I strive to do with my music. Also, all of these albums are raw and honest. I'm interested in depth, in the richness of life, and I'm interested in getting to the heart of things. I love raw and honest music and that's something I want to make. There's a little bit about how I put mine together. It might help you as you put together your five-album document. Another thing you can do on top of this is to draw, write, and imagine, depending on how your mind works. With this, I really encourage you to imagine with no limits. I know that in our lives, there are normally some limits. But for this exercise, I'd like you to imagine if you had infinite money, infinite time, and amazing contacts. By amazing contacts, I mean that you could just call up anyone and they could do the thing on your album. Oh, I really love Carlos Santana. Hey, Carlos, I just would love you to feature on this track. Just for fun, we're just going to get an idea of what the absolute, ultimate dream of what our album would be like, and then when we get realistic, we can strive to reach our dream. That's always how I've worked. I've always worked dream big and then work it out. Same with music videos. I'm like, wow, what was the most crazy thing that I could do, and then when I'm like, yeah, but I've only got this much money, this much time, and I know this many people. Just pull it back a bit and you dream it really big and then pull it back. It's like bursting at the scenes. It's like this there's so much richness and so many things you want to do and you just hold it in. What's possible for you. For example, if you like, I want 30 people in a choir to sing in the back. Write that down. If I want a 12-piece orchestra, write that down. We want to just think about the absolute ultimate of how we want it to sound. Then like I said, we can pull it back. With that, I really want you to think about being yourself. Throughout the many years of my life, I've listened to lots of different kinds of music and I started really as a pop girl, and also a hip hop girl. When I first started making music, I really wanted to re-create those pop sounds which can require a lot more work, a lot more production, a lot more instruments. Over the years, it's slowly peeled back, strip back to becoming more honest, more authentic. If you want a huge choir in your album, write it down. If you want a 12-piece orchestra, write it down. Then once we've got our vision, we can work out how we can get as close as that till we can. Another thing you might like to do is draw a mind-map or a picture of your album. This drawing here is actually documenting a journey that I had, an inner journey. I found doing these drawings, and doodles, and writing notes really help me process and understand things. I intend as I start to plan my next album, that I will do a bit of a mind-map when I think about the songs that want to go on there, I think about any images, visuals in my mind, any doodles, and just let my mind wander and explore. Let's summarize this lesson. In this lesson, we explored our favorite sounds and got clear on what we like right now, and that can change. It evolves over time. We wrote a song inventory, so we got an idea of where we're at, how many songs we've got finished, how many half-baked, how many ideas and then we started to dream, and we started to create a vision for our album, a big bold and bright vision for our album. That's all for this lesson. I will see you in the next lesson. 7. Recording and Production: Welcome back. In this lesson we are going to get a bit more into the nitty-gritty and dive into recording and production. First to start with a quote by Orson Welles, which is, ''The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.'' Although you might be frustrated by your limitations of time and of money, they are what make your art what it is. Also limitations increase creativity. When we have limitations, it encourages us to use our imagination and our initiative, which are two words that keep coming back in this class because they are so important, imagination and initiative. First thing we are going to think about when we are looking at recording and production is home studio versus going to the studio. There's two main things that I think are important to think about. The first one is money. When we record at home, it's much cheaper but does require an initial investment. Maybe you've already got some gear for recording like this mic, maybe not, maybe you need to invest in it. It might require a little bit of an outlay. But I would still say even the outlay of investing in your own gear will still always be cheaper than studio. When it comes to studio, it's usually more expensive. Then the next one is the vibe. Is your home studio cozy and comfortable? Is it somewhere that you find it easy to work? Or is it noisy and distracting? Is there other sound, other people around that mean that you can't really concentrate? In that case, it might be worth making the investment to go to the studio just so that you can focus properly. If you're thinking about going to a studio, how does it make you feel? Does it add pressure? For me because I can now record at home, when I go to the studio, I can really feel this sense of the clock ticking because I know I'm paying this much per hour, let's try and get this done. I feel like I'm rushing through it, and I can spend as long as I want because I've got the gear and I can just do like a million takes and I can delete stuff and change it and do it again. When I go to the studio it adds that pressure. You also might like to think about how the space makes you feel, the actual studio space. I think about my first album Love Always Wins. It was in a professional studio. It had that dingy grimy basement feel that made me feel like not under pressure, whereas when I've been really fancy glossy studios I think, this is too perfect, I don't want to touch anything, whereas this is a bit grimy and real, and that made me feel comfortable. Not the mess though, it's a bit too messy for my liking. Talking about home studio, if you are thinking about it, this is the main thing that you need. It's an audio interface. This is what I'm recording on here. This is the older version of it, the Focusrite Scarlett. If you're thinking about having your own home studio, that is the best place to start, and it's pretty reasonably priced. If you've already got a laptop, you can plug it into that. As we go through this process of making decisions on our album, just reminding you again about this overfilling your brain. If you're looking at these six stages of the album, all the things we need to do, and you would like to record at home, but right now, learning to use all the gear, getting to grips with it, doing your research, buying it, it's just an extra friction. Maybe it's worth on this album to invest in the studio. It's every step, we're just making the decision that makes it possible for us. Because maybe for you you think my limitation is money. I can't afford to go to the studio so I'm just going to spend more time. Maybe your time is very limited but you've got a bit more money and you think, actually I'm going to make this investment in myself, and then maybe in the future on your next album, you will record it yourself. Another thing to think about is, do you need session musicians? On your album maybe you've got an idea, for example, that you want violins but you don't play the violin. If you're trying to cut costs, could you think about, do you know a friend who plays violin and you might want to swap skills? Maybe you can do backing vocals for them and they can do violin for you. Can they record remotely? That can save you on studio. In my last album, we recorded it all remotely during the lock-down. That meant that we had different musicians playing. We had somebody playing in Germany, somebody in New York, and they just home recorded their part and sent it back. That is the miracle of technology now that you can just move these files, they can fly the journey so you don't have to. If there's somebody you know, a friend in another country and they've got their own setup, why not ask them? I'm sure they'd be flattered to get involved in your album. Maybe you don't have any friends who play instruments. If not, there's lots of places you can find them. I've got a few suggestions here. At your local music venue. Most towns and cities have music venues and it's where all the local musicians gather. If you're looking to find musicians, I recommend getting to know your local music venue and going there regularly, watching other shows, and you will grow your network of local musicians. Similar to that is local jam nights. We have lots of pubs here in England where people do show, folks sing arounds. I've been to some of them here in Kent, they're absolutely amazing. Just loads of musicians, all different ages. I think I was the youngest person there, with the oldest in their 70s. They can play the accordion and all these amazing instruments that you don't really hear so much today. You could go along there and meet some musicians. Go on the Internet, do some research. I've put this little blushing face here because I think most musicians would be really flattered if you said to them, I'm working on an album, would you come and record accordion on it? They would love that. Another place to look is your local radio. Here in the UK, we have BBC Introducing and each region has a BBC Introducing. Wherever you are there might be something similar. If you listen to music on your local radio, you could do a bit of research and find out who's playing instruments on those local music. Next one is about Googling. It's pretty obvious. As much as you've just got to state the obvious, why not just Google session musician in your area? You can even write like "Guitarist Kent" and try and find them. You've got to just, again, same words coming back, imagination and initiative. Then we've got the amazing wonder world of the Internet. You can go on local Facebook groups. There are often in different regions local Facebook groups, so Musicians London, Musicians Kent. If you go in there and you could pop a post in there saying what you're looking for. Then the final one for me is about social media. If you've got a social media account, Facebook, Instagram, you might want to pop a post on there and say, "Hi, I'm looking for a guitarist to play on my album. Do you know anyone?" Though you might think, I don't know anyone. What's the point of this exercise? You don't know, you might know someone who knows someone, so it's always worth doing. Those are six suggestions. There are many more things you can do. The whole point is to just get out there and find the people you need. Let's summarize this lesson. In this lesson, we looked at starting to make a plan from the dream and looked at how we can make our dream sound and dream songs come together with our resources. Then we started to think about home or studio and where we're going to record and make some decisions on that. Then we looked at session musicians and asked ourselves, do I need any session musicians? Started to think about where we can find them. That's all for this lesson. I will see you in the next lesson. 8. Mixing and Mastering: Welcome back, in this short lesson, we're going to talk about mixing and mastering. I've put this little picture here of an alien because when people first started talking about mixing, that's how it made me feel, I felt very alienated because I didn't really understand what they're talking about. In this lesson, we're just going to cover the real basics of what mixing is. Mixing is how loud or quiet each track is, so if you've got just the basics of say, a vocalist and a guitar, if the guitar is too loud and you can't hear the singer, that's a bad mix, so you want the volume of the different tracks to be right so that you can hear where you need to hear. It's more of an art than a science, so different people will mix music very differently, another element that's included in the mixing is the panning and the placement, so if you ever listened to music and it sounds like one singer is over here and then they're over here and then they're here, you can move where the music is coming out off, if it's coming right, are coming left, that's part of mixing. It makes a really big difference to the final sounds, so it is worth either really upping your mixing skills so you can create a mix that you love or investing in somebody who is good at mixing so that your music sounds the best it can. Then the next one is mastering. This to me, made me feel like an alien as well and to be honest, is still something I don't fully understand. This is just the complete basics is that, mastering is about the volume, that's one of the main things. Have you noticed when you listen on Spotify, you might listen to one really heavy metal album and then folk album and somehow the volume isn't the same it didn't hurt your ears when you moved from one to the other, that is because of mastering, there's some standard industry level that the volume is so that it's all the same. Also, when songs are mastered, they attach data to the songs, the title, the artist of the song, and then maybe any codes or other data that needs to be attached to the song for tracking it, for example, if you want to get into the chart. I still don't really understand if mastering as a science or an art, I think it's a bit of both, you have to be very technical, but there is also some creativity involved. Like with the mixing, it is worth finding somebody who's mastered other songs that you think sound good. Saying that, if your budget is limited, just be really careful here because I've known people pay thousands of pounds for masters because it's all about just having that person's name or it got mastered by Mr. Big Bananas, then it makes you sound better because Mr. Big Bananas mastered your album but it really put your out of pocket and made you very stressed, not worth it. Also in this mixing and mastering lesson, I just want to go over some of the different roles that you might hear when we talk about music, the thing that's confusing now is back in the day when all these names and terms were invented, people used to go into a studio and all the equipment was really expensive and you had to basically know someone who knew someone to get in there or be born into it or have loads of money. Now because technology is cheaper and anyone really, if they really want to, can get all the technology, a lot of these roles get crisscrossed now on and one person doesn't necessarily do one thing, but in my mind, this is how it works. A producer is somebody who makes beats. I started in hip hop, a producer is somebody who might make the backing beat for your song. If it's not hip hop necessarily, they might just be the one who has the creative ideas, so my album, Love always wins, I had written it, just me and my guitar, and I wanted a fuller sound and the producer is the one who said to me, hey, this could be a bit reggae sounding and we can have a saxophone on here and I was like, this sounds fantastic. Producer might also be someone who either can play lots of instruments, but maybe also produces musicians who can help them play. Again, referencing my album, Love always wins, the producer I knew had a huge community of other musicians he knew, so he could ring them up, hey, would you come and play double base in this song? That is an amazing person to get to know, a producer who's well connected. Next onto the mixing engineer very basically back in the day, the mixing engineer was the one who mixes the track, now, sometimes the producer is also able to do the mixing. Next onto the recording engineer, again, looking back, recording engineer was that person in the studio who press the record button, who made sure all the technical stuff was right, often now, the recording engineer and the mixing engineer and the producer are all one person too. I've even known people who can do the mastering, which is the final one, the mastering engineer who masters the final song, who does that final technical science art to make the song right for radio and right for Spotify. Like I said, it's a bit confusing now because some people can do more than one skill and that is actually a really good thing because it can help cut costs if you know someone who is going to produce the track and mix it, or you're going to produce it at home and then they're going to mix and master, it can help cut costs and also just simplify the whole process because you're not getting loads of people involved and speed it up too. A bit like finding session musicians, we need to think about where are we going to find people who can do mixing and mastering and it's basically exactly the same, I've just put that same list again, local music venues, local jam nights, local radio. We can search online, we can Google, we can go on local Facebook groups, we can put a social media post, hey, I'm looking for someone to mix and master my album. Seek and you shall find, if you just have the intention that's what you're looking for and you start looking, I know that you will find the right person. It might take time. Recommend, if you're thinking about making album, that might be something you might want to start researching straightaway, it's also good to look at local, if you're looking at local music, to look at local albums that be made that you like and looking at who mixed and mastered those local albums, because then you can find somebody local to you. Let's summarize this lesson, in this lesson we looked at mixing and just the basics of mixing and then mastering and the basics of mastering and then we started to think about where can I find somebody to mix and master my album and use our imagination and initiative to find somebody who is going to work with us. Before we close this lesson, I'm popping back here to add a few more things to have a bit of a heart to heart with you about mixing and mastering and be totally honest that even though I've been making music, recording music for over 10 years, I still have a limited knowledge of mixing and mastering. Got my little notes here of some other things I wanted to say. What I'm trying to say with that is, even though I've been doing it for 10 years and I don't know very much, it shows that you can still have a great career without knowing the finer details, it's worth noting that if a producer or engineer ever makes you feel stupid because you don't understand the technical sound lingo, that's a sign that you shouldn't be working with that person, that's not a sign that you're stupid. Over the years I've been made to feel stupid and ignorant because I don't understand all the lingo and what it all means and it's a totally different language of it's own, the science of sound, decibels, frequencies, hertz, all of this, it's completely another world that sits alongside, that sits around music and if you don't know or understand the language, that's okay to still be a recording artist. Two terms I hear thrown around a lot is about sound being dry or wet and that is one thing I wish I had understood earlier. Dry sound is sound that hasn't been processed, so when it just comes out with the mic end here we record it, that's dry sound, wet is when we add effects, when we add reverb and when we add reverb, particularly, quite a good way of remembering it is that reverb adds a wishy washy, wet feeling like you're under the sea or something. I just wanted to add that because that's one of the things when I first started, I wish I just understood what the basics of what dry or wet meant. What else? In this class you've seen that over the years I've slowly tried to get more and more involved in the musical process, first of all to start with the writing, and then gradually wanting to get more involved with composition, with playing instruments, et cetera, but I have to admit that the finer technical listening, the skill of listening and really hearing all these finer details is not a skill I possess right now, still now 10 years later and I have been known, it's been known more than once, that I've fallen asleep with a producer, that they're just there working on it and we're listening to it over and over and I'm just sat on the sofa and I just because I can't listen to things that much. It's really good to admit your weaknesses and then work with them, so that is one of my weaknesses. I still haven't decided going forward how much more I'm going to learn about mixing I find now, even if I watch a video about mixing or mastering, I feel myself to like it's not exciting or inspiring to me, so that to me is a signal sign that I should outsource that. What else did I want to say? I've also noticed that some musicians get so caught up in getting the perfect mix that they never finished the music. I remember joking with a producer once, that you could have a never ending song and that everyday you just tweak the mix and every day you just improved it, but it never got finished. The joke or the butt of the joke is him because he is one of the most amazing composers I know, but he's so much of a perfectionist that the mix is never finished and it's really sad. My little motto there is done is better than perfect, so it's never going to be perfect, but you can reach a point where you're happy with it. Also, mixing and mastering is down to taste, just like anything and another little story for you, I've got a friend who's well into sound and has some big bananas sound system, on total to some 10 grand sound systems so he can hear everything and he listened to my first album on it. He felt the need to text me afterwards saying, hey Laura, just listened to your album on my speakers and I think the mixing and mastering could do with some work and I wrote back, thank you for your feedback. That album was mixed by accomplished producer and mixing engineer, and it was mastered by a highly respected mastering engineer, could you give me some specific feedback, so I could improve my mixing and mastering next time? You know what, he didn't write back, what was the point in all of that? I'm saying sometimes people have got their own little two cents about everything, it's too dry as too wet, it's the decibels or the frequencies. Honestly, I don't care, just get it recorded, get it down, get it sounding so you are happy with it and 99.9 percent of people aren't sound engineers, so they're not going to be able to tell the difference. I've been watching some YouTube videos recently about mixing and they play something and they say, now we're going to adjust this thing and then listen to it again and I listen again, it sounds the same. I'm a musician, been doing this for 10 years and I still that technical hearing is not a skill for me. Anything else I wanted to say? No, that's it for the end of this mixing and mastering, just extra little bonus conversation here. I will see you in the next lesson. 9. Artwork and Video: Welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to talk about artwork and video. This is something I really love. I did a degree in fine arts and for me the artwork and video is really important. It is to me the final touch of your album, it's what finishes it off and is the package that other people see. If you look at some of these iconic album covers, would they be where they are today without the iconic cover? I think it's something that sparks somebody's interest and intrigue in listening to an album, it's well worth thinking about. When you're deciding on the artwork and video that you want to make, I recommend that you definitely want to have an album cover. But on top of that, you might also think about having single covers and also making some music videos. As you may tell from watching these lessons so far, I'm obsessed with making documents and making boards because I think if you don't know, making a document it will helps you to get your ideas clear. I recommend with album covers to make a mood board of album covers you love. I picked out here some interesting album covers that I found recently, for you to have a look at and things you might want to think about when you are looking album covers, and investigating it, what colors? What's the mood? What's the subject of the album cover? Will it be a portrait of you, or it'll be something else. For example, in these pictures here we've got Carole King, that's a lovely portrait of her. Or on the Fairport Convention album, it's an abstract painting of bottles. What is the subject you're thinking of album, and then is it art or is it photography? Some album covers are purely a photograph like for example, this Jethro Tull album cover. A lovely photograph of him in the woods or looking at this Herbie Hancock album, which is a bit of a blend of art and photography. It looks like some collage. You've got photographs of musicians in the back and at the front there and then this painted face collage on the front. Another thing that's interesting to think about when you make a mood board for albums is the genre. I make folk music and when I look at other folk albums, they seem to just generally have this flavor running through them. It's good to look at all the albums you like and look at the covers they are doing so that you can be in that flavor so that when somebody is thinking about listening to your album and they look at it they're like, oh, that's a folk album. Here's a mood board I made for my last album, come home. I've put some pictures of some other female folk musicians. Some pictures that I really liked and that were inspiring to me and then I had a look at what I notice keep coming back. It's all about nature. A lot of these pictures include water. We've got Billie Marten in the bath and then Rachel Sermanni in front of that stunning lake in Scotland or lock, it's the golden in Scotland. They're very peaceful. I think that's something about being around nature indeed it makes it Cyrene and peaceful. Also having some magical quality looking at the sky and Courtney's lovely album there, is just very magical, and mythical, and something about the facial expressions as well. There's a feminine quality with this nature, mother earth nature feminine quality that I like. From putting all those together this is why I came up with them. I think you can see from the mood board what inspired me, I'm aware I went with it. Along with the album cover, I also have the single covers which included a local lake to me, which I love swimming in and makes me feel very peaceful and connected to nature and relaxed. Something worth thinking about. Can you create them all at the same time? Like many musicians, I'm working on limited time, limited budgets. What I did is I had a bit of an idea of different shops I wanted to take. I brought along a few different outfits. I was very lucky that the gentlemen who produced my album had a friend whose absolute incredible photographer and he offered to take these pictures for us. I was like I'm going to make the most of this day and I bought loads of different outfits, had a bit of an idea of different places that we could go so that I could get lots of shots that I could use. Not only for my single cover, and my album cover but also just for general pleasure shots to use on social media. As we make our album cover, we might start thinking now about whether we are going to do it ourselves, DIY, or outsource. Different roles involved in making album covers would include the styling. Thinking about the clothing and costume that somebody's wearing, if we look at some of these old covers that I've done, we've got my mixtape there, which my sister helped source the clothes and the same with the next act EP. My sister helped me find that amazing fairy jacket. My sister used to work in fashion, she had those contacts for getting really cool clothes so she got me the clothes for both of those covers. Look at those heels. I don't know if you can see them close enough in that picture, but the heels are made of this really amazing clear perspex. Fast-forward to now and I styled the album cover because I just got that rugged denim jacket from my dad and painted my album title on the jacket. Next one to think about is photography, who's going to take your photos. My love always wins, album cover, my mate took the photo and then these other ones here, one of them get what you need was my neighbor, she took the photo and the next act, that was my sister. From her many years in fashion she acquired some photography skills as well, and she took that lovely picture of me. Then we're going into the next stage, which is graphic design. It could be just the person who's laying the text on the top or they could do something a bit more advanced. In that cover, the next act covers my friend Katie, who is an amazing graphic artist, collaged me in this picture over the water with the curtains. I absolutely love that where she's done that and you might like to think is a bit like the Herbie Hancock cover where they collage photography and artwork. Maybe you want to think about doing something like that with yours. You might also want to think a bit like that. Fairport, Convention album cover. You going to do a lovely painting or a drawing that it's going to be your album cover. Now moving on to music video, maybe you don't want to do a music video, maybe you do. I personally love music videos I'm just a fan of music videos. I've picked here a few stills from Taylor Swift because to me she is the absolute G when it comes to the music video. She's so clever at putting together scenes and a theme and a story. That's something you can think about if you want to make. I've called music videos two different kinds, I've called them, professional and performance. When I say professional, I mean one of these more elaborate music videos, we have different scenes and often it's cutting, cut, really fast-paced, vibrant music video. Or you going to do a more simple performance video. This is something that's so easy to achieve. What a professional videographer would use is something called a gimbal, which is something that keeps the camera moving smooth, so that the camera is just dancing moving through the space. You can get a budget version of this, which is called the DJI-Osmo, which you can attach to your iPhone and it creates a lovely smooth effect. I really like performance videos because it feels like you're there. A couple of recommended research you can do is Mahogany, which is a YouTube channel, makes amazing live acoustic videos using a gimbal and you get that feeling when you watch the video that you're there with the musician and walking around the space, very inspiring. Another example you might want to check out is Lady Leshurr, who is a British rap artist and she made a series of music videos called the; Queen's Speech music videos that were all just one single shot and then she added some animation and some writing over them. I think it really cover a couple of things that you can look at for inspiration. With our ideas for the album, with an album cover, we started to do research and it's just the same with the music video. Start to watch other videos and figure out what you like and ask yourself these questions. What's the theme? What's the mood? What are the colors? Is there a story? If so, what's the story? Are there any costumes or locations? They're things that you can think about. The best way to get inspired to make a music video is to watch other videos and then slowly start to piece together what you want to create. Once you've decided on your video a bit like with the other stages or album, we might need to think about other people we need to collaborate with. We can't do everything ourselves. This lovely picture here is from my boyfriend's music video, which is one of my proudest achievements because it was a pretty big project with lots of different people involved. Here are some of the people involved in my music video and who are very commonly involved in music videos. First of all, we've got the videographer or the cameraman. A bit like in the world of music, how there's a lot of crossover now is the same in the world of film, and Markus Hess Annenberg here, who did the camera work for my video, also has skills as a director so he got evolved a bit in the directing. You might have a separate director and a separate cameraman if you've got a lot of cash money to spend. But if you're on a budget, you might find that the videographer has some skills with direction as well, which means more about what shots, what angles you're going to get. Then you have the producer, that's the person who pulls together the whole project, who finds everybody. Traditionally, if you had a producer and you would ring them up and say hey, I have this audio, for this music video, I want this in it I want it to be here, I want that, I want this, then the producer would help source all of it for you. In this music video, I produced all myself. It actually was a really big overwhelming project, maybe a bit more than I could chew, maybe slightly in the stress zone. But we're all learning and I think on our journey we will all tip over into the stress zone occasionally and then learn and then not do it. Again I've never done a project [LAUGHTER] that big since then it was just too much. I produced it, I helped source or the dancers, the extras, I sourced all of the costumes and I put the whole team together. Somebody else you might think about needing for your team. If you want to have interesting makeup, you might want to get a makeup artist involved here. Helen did lovely makeup on me and on the backing dancers. You will also might like to think about having a stylist if you're having other members in your music video. Traditionally a stylist will source all of the costumes for you and bring them onto the set and then dress everybody, dress you and address the others because on this video, I was trying to do it as much as a budget. I went out and source with the clothes in charity shops and also asked people if they could bring stuff themselves and then I had Amy there on the day to help everyone put it together so that she could create a cohesive look. In this video, last but not least is the dancers, actors, and extras. I'm very lucky that in my life I've also been a professional dancer, so I have lots of friends who were dancers, for me, that was quite easy to find backing dancers. A bit like finding the mixing and the mastering, and finding musicians you can seek out actors, dancers, and extras in that way. You'd be amazed if you make a music video, how many people would just love to come and help out for the day. I paid a few of the key team who had really unique special skills and who did it for their work. But a number of the people who were helping out, who extras, they were happy to do it because I paid for their train fare and I bought them a delicious lunch and they had my never-ending gratitude for being in the video and then also they get to have that as a little special moment for them. I've actually been an extra in lots of other music videos for artists I love and it's a lovely thing to do. A bit like mixing and mastering and finding session musicians you might not personally know these people, but like those other ways, there are ways to find them. Perhaps again, you could look at your local music venue. Could you look through your extended network, your community, your friends, your friends of friends, local Facebook groups. The classic one which I've mentioned before, it's just putting on social media. Hey yo, I'm going to do a music video, do you want to be an extra, email me. Let summarize this lesson. In this lesson, we looked at album covers, we did some research and started to make a mood board for our own album cover. We looked at single covers and thought about. All we going to make a single cover and start to plan that out? Finally, we looked at music videos and for all, we going to do a music video and if we do on we are going to do a high-tech professional music video, we're going to do a more low-key performance music video and started to think through some of the details of that. That's all for this lesson, I will see you in the next lesson. 10. Release and Marketing: Welcome back and in this lesson today we are talking about release and marketing. Marketing is a huge, topic, one so huge that it is a degree topic. There's so much you could cover that it could get very overwhelming. That is the opposite of what I want to do. I want this to be simple, easy, and succinct. My motto is simplify, simplify, simplify. I mentioned right at the beginning of this class that this process will make your fears surface if they haven't surfaced already, now is the time when we think about sharing our music with the world or when we go through that process of sharing it with the world, that is when the fears will surface, when the imposter syndrome will surface, all of it and it's really good just to be prepared. Be aware that that could happen. Also to mention, that this is something you want to be thinking about in more specifics once you've actually completed your album, what's the goal? What is your goal when you release and market your album? I think the basic most simple one is that the goal is to get your music out to everyone you know, with the possibility and opportunity of reaching a wider audience. Maybe you think, I don't really care, I don't want anyone to hear it, but it's really nice when, by surprise, somebody else finds your music and if you've got it out there available and you've done the best you can, who knows who will listen to your music. We're going to go over where you can release your music. The one that comes straight to mine that I'm sure is straight in your mind as well as all the top streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, etc. If you want to put your music on there, you need to go with the distributor. Like I've put a list here of some I've heard of and some of used which are TuneCore, Ditto Music or CD Baby. With all of these different distributors, they've all got slightly different deals. Some of them take a small commission from your streaming royalties and some of them charge you a yearly fee. They're all same but different. You could spend hours and hours researching which one's right for you, which one's wrong, and I've done that. I think they're basically all the same. If it's for interest for you, my first album I released on Ditto Music, and my second album, most recently, I released on CD Baby and found them both to be fine, easy, and all good. Another way you might release it is you might think about getting physical CDs printed, which is an extra thing that you can sell once your album is created, is quite nice if you're going to do gigs and shows that it's something you can bring along. You might like to upload it to Bandcamp, the way Bandcamp works is you upload it directly, and then people can buy directly from you. But Bandcamp does take a higher commission fee. The other one is on your website, you might like to sell your music direct on your website. With my last album, I used Shopify. I've got a Shopify website and then I linked in with an app called the single music app, which is a app that's very good for selling digital downloads and it's particularly good if you want to get your sales counted for the charts. The first thing we need to do when we plan our release is to pick a release date. When we do that, once again, those old gremlins will surface. What's the point no one cares. You need to pick the release date. To clarify why I think it's really important you create a release date and create some momentum and build towards that. I've got the idea of a freshly baked sourdough bread. If you say to your family, I'm going to bake some sourdough bread tomorrow, and they know that it's coming, and they hear you cluster down in the morning and they can smell the fresh bread and then they get to come down and eat it, all that anticipation leading towards the bread. All the excitement makes it tastes even better and makes this special moment you enjoy it together. You could also just make the bread and then give it to them two days later, stale, it's got a completely different feeling. I don't think music really goes stale, but there's something about when you're really passionate, excited about it. When you're working towards something and you get everyone to come along with you, it really builds momentum and joy around your album release. Then what you want to do once you've picked your release date, you want to work back six weeks and build that momentum towards your release. It takes a while for people to get into their head about what you're doing. That's why it's great to have those six weeks to really get into people's minds. To inspire you, you might like to look at some other musicians and how they amped up towards their release. I've got some pictures here of The Staves. On this other page here we've got loads more about The Staves and their release. I think they did a really fantastic countdown and it's something worth checking out. I've put here my favorite thing, make a document. It's worth looking. We looked at five albums to inspire our songs and sound. You might like to look at five musicians release countdown to see how they did it and it might give you some ideas. Here's some suggestions. You might want to mark the date, the livestream show, a live Q&A or a live concert. The Staves did a live stream show and then after the livestream show, there was a live Q&A and it was really exciting. It was only to look forward to, you might like to release a music video, you might want to upload different photos and videos as you count down. That's why it's great to know this now because you can think, as I'm recording this album, I'm going to get as many photos and videos as I can because when I started to do this countdown, I'll use them then. You also might like to make some merchandise. You'll see here in this that they made a t-shirt with the good woman album title on it and they posted lots of pictures of them wearing it and merchandise as well is another great thing to sell, to cover the costs of your album and maybe even make a bit of profit. Now, onto PR. My motto is don't do it. When I say PR, I mean there's people that you can pay who will get your music onto Spotify playlists, onto blogs. In the past, I've done it. I've spent hundreds of pounds. Other people have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds. As far as I see it as a waste of money. If you've got extra money to splash, I will be spending it on creating really amazing content, create an amazing video, create amazing photographs because they will last forever. Whereas if you pay a PR, firstly, they might not even get anything. Nothing might happen. Secondly, it's all just over. My music got put on a blog. What does that really mean 10 years later, five years later, if I've made an amazing video that will stand the test of time. Saying that PR-wise here are two things you can do yourself. Have you heard of SubmitHub? It's a website where you pay around, I think it's around 1$-$2 per submission to submit your song to a blog or Spotify playlist. It's very cheap and can lead to some amazing results. How it works is you upload your song, you send it straight to the playlist, straight to the blog, and then they review it and accept it or deny it. Well, accept it or aren't interested in listing it, that I've used some help in the past and it has got me some good opportunities on Spotify playlist. But at the same time, I've used it for another song and nobody cared and nobody was interested. It was a bit disheartening. Just another idea and another suggestion is BBC music introducing. If you're here in the UK where I am, the BBC music introducing platform is fantastic. You can upload your music there and it can get played on local radio. Then the local radio can submit it to national radio. Now, I've had my music played on BBC Radio 1 and BBC 6 music using that technique. Really, important if you don't have it now you need to start an email list. Social media's, algorithms are constantly changing. I'm sure you've noticed it in the past we used to post something and people would see it and now very few people see, I think it's less than 10 percent of your followers. To protect yourself from that, you need to start an email list if you don't have one already, go on Mailchimp and it's very easy to use Mailchimp. It's also free up to a certain number of subscribers. If you don't have any of your friends, family, or fans email addresses, you might like to send a message like this. I've written a sample one. Hi Mel, hope you're having a great day. I'm starting an email list to keep friends and family updated with my music because I'm making an album. If you'd like to be added to the list, please reply with your email address. Thanks. Then that also let you know who's interested in it when your album comes out. You can send updates throughout the process and do the six-week countdown via email as well. Like I said at the beginning, we are going to get into more specifics once the album is finished but the reason we're talking about that now, we've got it in mind and so that we create content as we go. Take photos, take videos, film rehearsals, film recording, this is me recording my second album in the wardrobe because we recorded it during lock-down. If you have that in mind, you can slowly create content as you go. When you plan your album release, it's really important to manage your expectations. The young and naive Laura fell prey to magical thinking. I remember I used to be like this next release, this next one's going to get majillion, majillion views and always lead to disappointment when I didn't get as many views or listens as I would like. If we manage our expectations and focus on what's in our control, it can lead to a lot more rewarding process as we release our album. You'll see here a list I've made with two sides. On one side is in my control and one side is out of my control. When you release your album, you might like to make your own list like this. Think about what is in my control. What can I do and what out of my control? That is down to the winds of fate. I've put a few examples here to give us some idea. In my controls, in my control to make something I'm proud of. I can work and I can spend the time, be dedicated, be diligent, and make something I am absolutely proud of and really proud to sign my name on. What's out of my control is other people liking it. Some people may love it, some people may hate it. Who knows? In my control, is in my control to submit my music to SubmitHub, to upload all my tracks rivaling nice description of my song, rivaling nice message to the blog, to the playlist, but then it's out of my control, but my song is picked to play for various reasons. The last one for this example, but I do recommend you having a little think. When you start to plan your release in your marketing, what's in your control and out of your control. Last one is making an interesting social media. I can take really cool pictures, make nice videos, make my stream look really vibrant and fun. It's out of my control, whether people like my posts or not. Let's summarize this lesson. In this lesson, we started to think about our release, a marketing plan. We did that by looking at other musicians, doing some research, and seeing what we liked and didn't like about how other musicians were doing it. We made our own plan. We picked a release date and created our own schedule countdown towards our release date. We also, if we didn't already started an email list with all our friends, family, and fans, and finally we let go of expectation. We focused on what's in our control and set free what is out of our control. Thanks so much for watching. I will see you in the next lesson. 11. DIY Album Map: Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to look at our DIY album map, which is something that you can download in the projects and resources section. Let me get it opened up here. The album map spreadsheet is made out of a number of sheets and each one is very useful. With this DIY album map in my motto, as is with this whole class really, is take what you like and leave the rest. I've made lots of different pages which are useful in planning and creating your album, but if you don't like it and you want to do it a different way, go ahead and do it your way. First of all, we've got here a prep checklist. This is just making sure that we've done all the prep in the lead up to when we start recording an album, and this follows the lessons that we went through at the beginning of this class. There's questions to check whether you did your failure and success inventory, there's questions about whether you found your why and have you put together your list of your resources and how's your vision coming along for your songs and for your sound? The next sheet is about steps and breaking down the steps. Within each step of the album recording and production, mixing and mastering, artwork and video release, and marketing, there's lots of different almost mini steps to think on and some questions to ask yourself. I've popped in some questions there that you can ask yourself as you go through this. There's also a page here for a song inventory. Earlier in this lesson we talked about finished songs, half-baked songs, song ideas and song themes. This is a space for you to get them all down on paper. Something to mention about this Excel spreadsheet, if you don't like working on the computer, you might like to write this by hand, all these different things and keep a note of all these things in your journal. The next one is the song plan. Once you've got an idea of your song inventory and where you're at, you might start to plan what songs you want to get recorded and what songs you want to get finished. Here I've got the name of the song, any ideas around it, the level of completion, and the smart goal. For example, I've picked a imaginary song here called, I Promise, and the ideas are that I want to have it with acapella, with a shaker and a drone. The level of completion is I've written it, but I need to record it. I'm sure if you're watching this, you've heard of smart goals. If you haven't, google smart goals. It's really important when you make an album that your goals are smart. My smart goal with this one is, for example, to self recorded by 5th of June 2022, so that's a little bit about the song plan. Skipping to the budget. This is really important that you get your budget written down if you are having to spend money on anything just so you know where you're at. For this one, I've put in some examples with mastering, for example, paying 25 pounds per song, so the cost of that is going to be 250, paying a friend to film and edit it, 300, and then on the right there I've totaled up to 750. If you start to add up all the costs for your album, you should always add 20 percent on because life always surprises you and things can end up costing more than you think and you don't want to be stressed out about money. For example, if when I added everything up, it was 750, I would add another a 150 pounds. I'd add another 20 percent and make it 900, just so that I knew everything was covered. The next sheet is about funding your album and money, so working out if your album, for example, cost 1200 pounds where are you going to get that from? How you going to get that 1200 pounds together so that you can record and release your album? In this example, I've put that I would sell 50 albums at 10 pounds, that's 500 pounds. I'd use 500 pounds of my own money and I would sell 20 tickets to a show, and that is how I would get my first album done, eg. Then onto the goal calendar. So, another way of putting in your smart goals in order in the categories. What do I need to do at stage 1 of songs and sound? What are my smart goals for each stage? This can be a working document so you can aim to complete it on a day and then if you don't, you can work out why. For example, in this one here, I've said, I'm going to record this song X at home. I wanted to click completed by 25th of June. Actually, I didn't get it done until the 30th of July and that is because it took me longer than expected and I didn't have time and I also had a technical glitch. If you aren't meeting your deadlines work out why, and then make adjustments either to give yourself longer deadlines or to adjust the reason why you aren't meeting those deadlines. That's a breeze through the album map. You can use it as you wish. In this lesson, I would also like to talk a little bit more about money because this is an important part of our album and how we are going to get it completed. You might be really clever and managed to do everything for free. I think it's highly unlikely there's going to be some costs involved. I put this quote here again, the enemy of art is the absence of limitations or having limited resources is what makes you be more creative. Money can be one of them. How does your budget look when you've added it all up? Is it too high? Look at how you can cut costs. Could you do a skill swap with a friend or someone in your network? Can you work out how to get more money together? Could you do a Crowdfunder? I've put in the projects and resources section a link to some different crowdfunding platforms and some suggestions there. You also want to pre-sell your music or merchandise. That's what I've done before. Direct to my website, pre-sold copies of the albums so that I have the money to get it done. Do make sure you check out in the DIY album, projects and resources, the crowdfunding success stories and the crowdfunding guides. They will inspire you as you work on your DIY album map. This lovely bulls-eye is back again, because it's very important when we think about money and when we work on our map that we don't go into the red zone, into the stress zone. Something just worth thinking about that you want this project to be ambitious, but you don't want it to be stressful because then what's the point. The point of music is to have fun and to be ambitious and do something wonderful. It's not to stress yourself out. If you've started going that way, just look at what's causing you stress and look at outsourcing it, or look at cutting it back in some way. Lessons summary. Today we did a breeze through the album map. I recommend after this lesson's finished to download that spreadsheet and have a look at it in your own time and you might like to hand-write some parts of it out. We started to think more about money and we got clear on our costs and looked at cutting them if necessary. Then we also looked at our goals around our album map and around money, and we made sure that we made our goals stretch goals rather than stress goals. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next lesson. 12. Important Tips: Welcome back. In this lesson we are onto some important tips. I've been making music for over 10 years and here are my top tips which include ways to save you from making mistakes that I've made. There's nine tips: make agreements, break it down, give yourself time, use your eyes, be yourself, have fun, when in doubt make a document, stay connected, and celebrate yourself. Let's go through each one. Make agreements and write them down, this is so important. Earlier in the class we talked about agreements, and you might have been like, "Stop being so serious Laura," but it's so important and it will save you from being bitter later. Write down your expectations. What are they going to do? What are you going to do? Write down your price and write down your deadline, because then if it doesn't get met if something is unclear you can go back to that email later and say, "Hey, hang on. I thought this is what we agreed." Break it down one bite at a time. This is a huge project and it can be easy to get overwhelmed and stressed if you are looking at it imagining this huge messy soup of your album. If you break down each step and just do it a tiny bit at a time, can you break down each step even smaller into the mini steps within the step that will make you feel so much better and also make you feel more accomplished as you start to tick off those mini steps as you go? I also recommend working in short bursts and building it up. Right now you might not have time to spend a whole day working on your album, a whole weekend o, a whole week, but you might just have 20 minutes. Start with that. Do something, make a step in the right direction, and build it up from there. Talking about time, that's number 3. Give yourself plenty of time. Things take much longer than you think. Make sure you set aside time every week to get the ball rolling on your album. As the same as money when we added the 20 percent contingency I'd add that on my deadlines as well because things often take longer than you think and you don't want to be stressing yourself out over deadlines that you've created, so give yourself plenty of time. Use your eyes. This was the motto from the beginning and it carries on all the way through use your imagination and initiative, and we do this by asking for help. Ask your friends and family for help. Be careful about who because remember I did say that's why I've put that shield there. We do need to protect ourselves from some people, but if you've got supportive and encouraging friends and family ask them for help. We've got this discussion board here on Skillshare. Make friends on the discussion board. Comment about what you're going through, what you're working on, and you might be able to connect with someone here on Skillshare. Get an accountability friend, so find a friend who is working on something ambitious as well and check in once a month to see how you are progressing on your smart goals. Then the final tip on this one is about asking your round table which is an exercise from Napoleon Hill, and you will find the round table meditation as a bonus right at the end of this class and it's a way of getting inspired and getting solutions to problems. Once you've watched this whole class through you might like to go to that Bonus section and have a go at the round table meditation. Be yourself. When I was making music in London so many people as I said would put their hand up, "How can I make commercial music?" Who knows, it is always changing. You just want to be yourself. You don't need to do anything to be unique, you just are unique because of all of the life you've lived and all the stories you have. They are what make you unique, so you don't need to do anything to be unique. You just need to be yourself. I recommend following your curiosity and interests. This is something that expands wide and then in just working on your album, but we all have a very niche and unique interests and curiosities and they are what make us interesting people. Don't try to please everyone. Some people are going to like the album, some people aren't [NOISE]. Water off a duck's back. Have fun. The whole point of doing this is because you wanted to have fun so just make sure that you minimize stress and you can do that by small bites at a time making sure you enjoy the process, and if you're not enjoying the process of something work out how you can adjust it so that you do enjoy the process or outsource it. If you're not enjoying something, another thing you can do also is ask for help. Is there some way that you could ask a friend or family member to help with it even just helping you come up with new ideas so you can do it differently? What's the difference between living your life and watching a game and a movie? If a movie is really stressful and the lead character is going through a lot of stress, you're just sad watching it on your screen and you're able to have some space from it and we want to have that in our own life. Just have a bit of space to step back. Will this matter in a year's time? Will this matter in five years time? Will this matter in 10 years time? Probably not, and so many of the things I've got so worked up and so stress about don't matter. Just take that breathing space, step away, and with that I'm able actually practically create breathing time by doing things like meditating, spending time in nature. I love listening to drumming music, shamanic drumming really helps reset my brain. Find your way that you can create breathing space in your life so that you have the mental capacity and the energy to keep working on this long and ambitious project. When in doubt, make a document. You can probably tell from watching this class how much I love documents. I find that if I don't know how to do something, if I make a document about it, it moves me in the right direction. What you can do is do some research on the thing you don't know about, put the research together, sleep on it, meditate on it, and ask for help, and normally that moves you in the right direction. Stay connected, this is so important. It's so easy to get lost and led astray on this process, so we need to stay connected to our why that we've got written down, pinned up on a wall or in a special envelope somewhere, or memorized in our mind. We need to know why we're doing this because it will keep us strong. You need to stay connected to your encouraging friends, you need to stay connected to your musical community. Do you make sure you use the Skillshare community for that? It's a great place to connect with others who are working on creative projects. Celebrate yourself. Well done you. Well done for making it this far in the class and what I recommend doing is as you work through your album when you set your milestones to celebrate yourself at different stages and when you celebrate yourself, you can decide on what that means for you. This is me just taking a picture on a walk in nature. That's a great way for me to say well done me. I'm going to give myself the tree and a lovely walk in fresh air. It could be giving yourself a little massage, it could be lighting a little candle and having a moment to yourself. I think it's also really important that we separate treating yourself from buying things. Yes, it might be nice. You might not like to go out for a nice dinner or treat yourself to a piece of clothing or something, but that is not the only way we treat ourselves and that money that we spent on the treats we could be spending on our album. It's quite nice to think about ways that we can treat ourselves for the amazing work we've done. Oh no, we're nearly at the end. Last lesson is up next. I'll see you in the next lesson. 13. Well done: Well done for investing the time in yourself and doing all this work to complete the DIY album class. This is just the beginning. Now, it's time for the dedicated and devoted work of creating your album. Make sure you make the most use of everything here. You get out what you put in. In the projects and resources section there's all the downloads. There's a download of this keynote which will be very useful to remind yourself of all the notes and the cost. There's the DIY album map and there's your record deal, which I hope you've signed with yourself already. As we went through this course, there were opportunities to create projects and upload them in the project section. If you haven't done that already when you re-watch this class to go through it, do make sure that you complete the projects and upload them, so that we can inspire each other on our journey to create our album. Also, don't forget that there's the discussions tab to ask any questions. You can ask me questions or ask your fellow students questions, so we can support each other on this process. Taking this little moment at the end of this class to offer some gratitude, a big thank you to everything I've learned over my 10 years in the music industry. All the people who've taught me and inspired me, thank you so much that I've been able to create this class for all of you, and may you use this information, this knowledge, this wisdom to create an amazing album that gives you purpose, that gives you reward, and gives you joy. Wishing you all the best on your journey to create your album. If you'd like to find out more about me, do go to my teacher page and follow me as a teacher, and I'm also on Instagram, on Facebook, and on YouTube. Hope you have a wonderful day, and again, wishing you all the best on your journey to create your album. Lots of love, bye. 14. Bonus : Napoleon Hill Meditation : Hello and welcome back to this bonus lesson, which is the Napoleon Hill guided meditation, the roundtable meditation. We use this if we have a problem or a question that we are struggling to find the solution, find the answer for, and we bring that problem, we bring that question to a roundtable to receive the guidance that we need. Before we start, I recommend getting out your journal. If you don't have a question already, take your moment to think about what you need help with right now. I'm writing that down. It's a great idea just to have a really short succinct statement, succinct question. Write that down now. Pause the video if you need to and get a clear question or a clear problem that you want to ask. Once we've done that, we want to start preparing for our meditation. Going to do that by arriving here with a few lovely breaths. I invite you now to close your eyes, and we're going to breathe in through the nose for three and out through the mouth for six. Breathing out now to start. In, 2, 3. Out, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. In through the nose, 2, 3. Out through the mouth, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. In, 2,3. Out 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. If your eyes are closed already, I invite you to close them now. In your mind's eye, see yourself in a vast open field. Warm summer's day, the sun is setting. We're approaching evening time. Walking through this field, there's a hedge row on your right. You see up ahead a gap in the hedge row leading to a very inviting woodland. You can hear the rustle of the leaves below. Feel the air slightly cooler in the woods. Walking through the woodlands and you see a majestic oak tree with an opening. You clammed up the tree, and into the opening by some magic, by some mystery, inside that tree is lit with candles. On the other side, you can see a door. Opening the door you see a long corridor also lit with candles with another door at the end, a very, very inviting door. What does that door look like? Is it painted? Is it wood? Is it metal? Approaching the door, opening it with your hand and you step into a vast whole big bright room. In the middle, a roundtable. From the other side, you start to see people approaching the table. These are people, who are going to give you their guidance and support today. It might be famous musicians, musicians who have crossed over to the other side, musicians who are still with us today. It might be thought leaders, might be friends or family, maybe even some spirits coming in to offer their guidance today. Taking your seat at the table and noticing as the seats slowly fill, surveying around the room all the different people who are here today. What are they wearing? What's the expression on their face? You feel very warm and happy to be here with your roundtable. They're all here for you. In a moment you're going to ask your question, and then I'll leave some silence for you to receive any guidance, any answers. Then when it's time to leave, we'll thank everybody and leave the space. But for now, it's time to ask your question. Say your question three times. [MUSIC] The chat in the room starts to quiet and down. The meeting has come to an end. Thank everybody in this space for their support, for their guidance today, and watch as they slowly file out of the room. It's time for you to leave too, so getting up from your seat, heading back into that lovely door that you entered through, back through the corridor lit with candles. Back to the center of the tree, and then creeping out of the whole of the tree. The sun has been setting while we've been told meeting, so there's only a glimmer of light left peeking through the trees. We dreamily walk through the woodlands back to the opening in the hedge row, back to the open field. We start to wiggle our fingers, wiggle our toes, give our shoulders a few rolls back in the space. Might even want to give a little shake now. Welcome back. This can be a very powerful exercise. I recommend to have some time now to write in your journal and the insights you received. To revisit this meditation regularly, you might like to use this guided video again. Or now you've run through it on your own, you might like to sit around through it in your own time. Thank you so much for watching. Bye.