ONE STEP AT A TIME
Jun 1, 2007 12:00 PM, Kylee Swenson Remix Editor
I read Editor's Notes in other magazines. Sometimes editors discuss things like their magazine's current issue, cultural trends, parties they went to, stories about meeting famous people, etc. And maybe they have more range in their topics than I do. But personally, I can't stop thinking about one thing: what matters to me as a musician. Forgive me if I seem redundant, but something tells me you don't want to hear about how hungover I was last weekend or which celebrities I've met.
I could certainly talk about how, as of this writing, album sales have dropped 32 percent compared with last year during the same week (according to Nielsen Soundscan). That really sucks for artists. But then again, I just spent a whopping $2.49 on a 20-second ring tone of Snoop Dogg rapping about having a crush on a stripper. I could have spent 99 cents on the whole song, but paying two-and-a-half times that to have Snoop rap to me while my mom is calling seemed like an okay price to pay. So as the industry changes, we musicians will need to get on the ringtone bandwagon — as well as get clued in to other money-grabbing initiatives — to compensate for the loss of our CD sales.
We always have to have one eye on tomorrow. I was reminded of this recently when a female firefighter/medic e-mailed me while stationed in at Balad Air Base north of Baghdad, Iraq. She spends her days saving lives, but in the in-between time, all she can think about is how she wants to learn how to produce music. “I do have a lot of spare time between emergencies,” she said. “Music is about the only thing that keeps me levelheaded.” She lives in a very volatile place, putting out fires and giving medical attention to American soldiers. I'm just an editor/musician hanging out in a temperate climate in California. So I feel humbled and unworthy of giving her advice about achieving success at something new; she can probably do anything she sets her mind to without my help.
But if there's one thing that I've learned about setting goals, it's that the average person can't jump from skyscraper to skyscraper like superheroes in movies. You can only jump as far as your legs will allow you to at one time. Ten years ago, I said to myself, “By this age, I want to release my first album.” That was after I'd already been plugging away in bands and learning how to write/record songs. It was doable, and I did it. And I keep thinking ahead. I remember babysitting for this family who had a whole five-year plan mapped out on the inside of one of their cupboards. I thought it was a little geeky, but I wonder where they are now? They're probably doing pretty well.
If you visualize several small steps into your future, you'll probably get a lot further than you would if you only envision the final end goal. There are too many people who start new hobbies and then get frustrated when they're not genius musicians after six months. Then that guitar ends up listed on Craigslist or eBay. It's good to work at something every day. But if you don't have some kind of goal driving you to keep going, something where there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, you're spinning your wheels. All the artists/producers/DJs in this issue come from very different backgrounds, but each one has something that drives them. So if you're looking for something to get you going, read what they have to say in the following pages. Hopefully it'll help you come up with that five-year plan for your studio wall.
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