Storytelling is the art of building a narrative around your music and your artist persona.

In the streaming age, your music will be exposed to a lot of people. This is a great opportunity by itself, but it’s also a big challenge. In fact, these days, the biggest challenge for independent artists is to convert their listeners into fans. This is easier said than done. Storytelling is a great way to show people who you are not just as an artist, but also as a person. It is what makes people care about your music and it’s what makes an artist likable, perhaps more than anything.

If you feel aimless, stuck, and not sure how to take your next creative step as a songwriter, you’re not alone. Countless music-makers have been in your shoes. When creativity and exciting musical ideas seem easy to access, we forget just how hard and frustrating it can be when we’re lost and uninspired. The good news is that if you manage to work through the inevitable challenging and unproductive periods that come your way from time to time, there are better times ahead.

When you set out to write a new song, there are countless creative paths you can take. Most will lead to places you’ve been before, but some paths will take you to new musical territories. Obviously, new and exciting directions are the places we want to take our music as songwriters, but getting there is rarely easy. It takes work to write great music, but you already know that.

But what you might not realize is that embracing strategies and routines can up your chances of making excellent music in a huge way. Here are four of them:

When it comes to creating music seriously, there’s what the world thinks and then what music-makers know to be true. Music is arguably the most impactful art form on the planet, but for how popular it is much of the non-musical world doesn’t know much about what goes into creating it. These are just five of the many popular misconceptions out there about making music. 

Recording can be a grueling process even when a professional audio engineer is at the helm. But when an artist acts as a performer, producer, and recording engineer, it gets even trickier. Between the affordable cost of DIY recording equipment and a modern listening audience that’s come to expect a constant stream of new music, more artists are recording their own sessions than ever before. Self-recording is by no means an easy process, but you’ll be far better off if you remember these basic tips:

Music makes us and our listeners feel big, sexy, and profound things, so it can be tempting to think embracing extremes all the time will help us make our best work. But, as it turns out, this really isn’t the case. So often, unsexy things like planning, consistency, and discipline are the things that will help you be your best and most productive musical self as a songwriter. Here are five boring things to import into your musical life to help you create your best music: