I just recorded and released an album in one day. In fact it took me five hours from start to finish. That time included the learning curve of setting things up for the first time, so in the future I may be able to cut that down to 3.5 hours.
What’s the point! A colleague of mine has got me really hooked on Tim Ferriss and the “4 hour work week”. One of the concepts is to do 90% of your best work, not 100%. Why? Because that last 10% of quality is what takes up 90% of the time and most people won’t notice the difference any way. (Now you say, “But I will notice the difference, and this is MY art.” True that. And different things for different times. I’m trying it though to see how it works.
Was my album great? Probably not. Will it make money? Well, I will post a few months down the road and let you know how it did. It’s not going to make a million dollars, but it does contain material that can be part of the bread and butter of a larger music library.
This was down and dirty. I recorded the parts myself. I mastered the audio myself with my UAD plugin system (and I just got that system so this is the first time I did mastering with that setup). I also designed the cover album artwork (I am NOT a good graphic designer), did my keyword research and assigned the titles. Some of the music was public domain but I actually composed three songs on the fly for this album.
What’s the point of all of this? The point is that there are times when you need to elevate your art one hundred percent. There are also times when time management and accepting 90% of your best can be a major boost to your creativity. Visualize – Attack – and choose strategically how to approach each artistic project in the ways that serves your overall goal the best.
*Update: Day 2 album recorded and released in 2.5 hours. Day 3 recorded and released four albums in 9.5 hours. Incidentally, these are not released under my name, but under an artist name. I will let you know how it works out when I have sales stats down the road.*
*Update: Final count was 9 (nine) albums created, mastered and released in one week complete with artwork. Part of me feels greasy for working so quick, and part of me is satisfied that if my goal was to release commercial material quickly, then nine albums in a week is pretty strong workflow. This next leg, is to release 5 more albums in the next two days for a total of 14. Then to produce 5 higher quality albums over the next week (a project that takes more time to produce), then I will hit some of my “high end” projects which take more of a normal studio time schedule.