The complex relationships found in bands are tough to navigate for everyone, but especially for those who are young and new to making music. Complete universes of hope, despair, and creative brilliance can exist within the confines of a single band, making them almost impossible to fully understand unless you’re inside one yourself. A major challenge facing many collaborative bands happens when the voices and opinions of some musicians consistently drown out everyone else’s. 

Many artists approach their work with a militant, failure-is-not-an-option attitude, and musicians are no exception. Through stories backed up by the press releases of successful musicians, we’re told over and over again that an uncompromisable willingness to sacrifice everything to see things through to the end are essential for becoming successful in music. If you aren’t making it in music, popular convention dictates, you must be throwing the towel in on your dreams prematurely. 

But what makes for an interesting story rarely reflects the reality of what actually goes into a successful music career. Changing course, taking a break, or even flat out quitting something in music are courses of action that can actually help or save your music career, believe it or not. 

Whether it’s a marriage or business partnership, relationships run the risk of becoming stale or even suffocating over time. Musical relationships like bands or songwriting partnerships are no exception. The excitement of making music with someone new is sure to fade over time, but that doesn’t mean every creative partnership is doomed to expire after a certain length of time––some of the world’s most influential bands and songwriting collaborators consist of relationships that span decades, after all. 

All relationships require work and sacrifice to function, and the sort of attention needed to keep musical relationships civil is different from the work needed to keep things creatively fulfilling and challenging. 

There’s no getting around the fact that being confined to an apartment or dorm room is a major challenge for a serious musician. Maintaining positive relationships with other musicians is tough enough, but throwing non-musicians into the mix like roommates and neighbors is something that makes writing music and practicing even more complicated. But look around for musicians who’ve thrived in similar challenging conditions, and you’ll find that lots of people manage to make great music while living in less-than-ideal spaces like apartments, basements, and dorm rooms. Here are three tips to help if you’re a musician working in a challenging living situation:

One of the biggest challenges of DIY music production is the cost of recording instruments. While instruments like guitar, vocals or bass can be easily recorded at home with simple setups, when it comes to drums this is not necessarily the case. Getting a good drum sound at home can be tricky, not to mention the acoustics if you’re living in an apartment building. Moreover, it can be expensive to rent a studio and record your drums there. However, it’s still possible to record drums on a budget and make them sound good. So here are five tips to record real drums on a budget:

Even the most prolific songwriters have trouble creating new work from time to time. Whether it’s the frustrating situation of questioning each and every note and lyric, or not feeling focused enough to follow through with an idea, making new music can feel challenging or downright impossible for some musicians. If you’re currently wedged in a creative rut and are looking for ways to get your writing output moving again, here are three challenges to help:

The drums in your track are the foundation for your song. 

They play an important role in conveying the emotions that you are trying to capture through your song. This makes it a top priority for you to mix your drums in a way that is powerful and impactful. 

But how do you add this weight, punch, and power to your drums?

In this article, I am going to go over how you can apply the New York compression technique to any of your drum tracks to create a more impactful and emotional song. 

The success of your track will primarily depend on the main elements you have in your track, how they are arranged, and how they are mixed in. What often gets forgotten in a professional song are the ear candy effects. 

These ear candy effects give your track that professional polish that is needed to create detail and interest throughout your track. 

In this article, I am going to show you how to create a very popular but effective reverb tail effect.