This is how reading books will significantly impact your success as a producer
Reading is an exercise & skill that is often overlooked by the majority of the music industry. With so many producers solely focused on the creation of their new tracks, they don’t tend to spend much time reading about music theory, or marketing strategies that will accelerate their career at a rapid pace. Reading has a significant number of benefits that will help you grow as a music producer. During this article, we’re going to discuss what they are, and dive into the details of exactly how they will benefit you as both a music producer & an overall human being.
Firstly, reading keeps you mentally stimulated in preparation for when you are working on new tasks such as a new song or planing a set for a new show. Just like muscles in your body require regular activity to stay healthy, the brain needs to be constantly engaged in a meaningful way so that you can focus a lot more deeply when working on important things. Whether it’s reading a marketing article, understanding music theory, or simply checking out trending news stories on the internet, reading both before & after an event will allow you to maintain your focus throughout the upcoming tasks you shall face.
As well as keeping you mentally stimulated, reading provides an enormous amount of stress reduction when you are feeling nervous or anxious. As people can escape from their everyday lives into a fantasy of what they’d like their careers to eventually look like, or to simply read a fiction book, it removes all the tensions that a producer may be facing in the modern environment. It’s a very common scenario for producers to get stressed out when they have a creative block and can’t focus. But by escaping into a fictional reality, the everyday struggles and worries of everyday life are instantly removed.
Knowledge is an extremely powerful tool that can seriously impact the course of your music career if you apply it to your music production. For example, you could read a Marketing article about how to grow your fanbase, apply the knowledge, and thus significantly change people’s perceptions of your artistic brand within the electronic music industry. Whether it’s learning new marketing skills, music theory, or anything else that could potentially help you, reading on a regular basis will allow you to improve the quality of your music, network, and ultimately create a much more prosperous career for yourself.
Have you ever wanted to do a public speaking gig as a music producer? Maybe a TED talk? Or at a conference during ADE? If so, reading will help expand your spoken vocabulary to incredible levels. Especially if you are not a native English speaker, being constantly immersed in the depths of another language will help you to understand it better, and thus speak it at a much higher level than you otherwise would. For example, instead of talking in basic English, you could talk in a more meaningful and detailed way that resonates deeply with the audience.
As well as increasing the limits of your vocabulary, reading will also help to improve your memory as a music producer within EDM. Every single memory created forges new synapses within the brain and improves the strength of existing ones. So instead of constantly forgetting how to do something, or how to say something, the natural pathways are much stronger which allows for almost instant recall of facts that you gradually learn. For example, the range of human hearing is 20 HZ – 20 KHZ. Although this is commonly known throughout the entire industry, constantly repeating facts like this gives you the ability to recall the information when needed.
Focus and the ability to concentrate on a production session is absolutely essential to success as a music producer within EDM. With distractions, emails, and personal matters being constantly thrown at us, it’s extremely easy to lose focus and stop creating music whilst in the studio. Essentially, productivity levels drop dramatically due to people constantly checking their smartphone (amongst a variety of other things). When you read a book, magazine, or article, the vast majority of your attention span is solely focused on that piece of reading. By doing this on a regular basis, it will help boost your concentration levels and mental stamina whilst in the studio producing a new track.
In addition to improving concentration, reading on a regular basis will also allow you to improve your skills within written communication. No matter whether you are messaging record label A&R’s, friends within the music industry, or writing a blog post on production tips, being immersed in another authors work will allow you to have a higher standard of quality when working on your own projects. In a similar way to how hanging around positive people will improve your mindset, constantly reading high-quality articles will enable you to have better-written communication throughout the music industry & your daily life.
Finally, reading can also be a great source of entertainment. With the majority of us constantly glued to our screens for multiple hours every single day, it can be easy to get tired and find alternative sources of entertainment. With books on Amazon as low as just a couple of cents, it can be a great accompaniment to whatever activities you are doing throughout the day. For example, if you have a 21-hour flight from Amsterdam to Sydney, it could be worth reading for a portion of the journey so you don’t get eye-strain from staring at entertainment screens for hours on end.
Reading is a great way to boost your memory, knowledge, and ultimately help you to become an even better version of yourself. Instead of watching Netflix for 3 hours tonight, why not read some music production articles, or learn more about cultural news?