December 30, 2024 • 26 mins
It's time for Jamuary 2025! These 31 days of creativity will dramatically increase your creativity.
Here are some lessons, tips, and takeaways that will help you prepare to make the most of the Jamuary challenge.
Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
Links:
- Music Production Club - https://brianfunk.com/mpc
- 5-Minute Music Producer - https://brianfunk.com/book
- My Free Ableton Live Packs - https://brianfunk.com/free-ableton-live-packs
- Finish February Workshop at Ableton Pasadena Headquarters - https://brianfunk.com/workshop
- Cuckoo on the Music Production Podcast - https://brianfunk.com/blog/2018/12/15/94-cuckoo
- Matthew Dicks on the Music Production Podcast - https://brianfunk.com/blog/matthew-dicks
- A Journey Inward by Brian Funk - https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/brianfunk/a-journey-inward
- Rectangles by Brian Funk - https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/brianfunk/rectangles
- Don't Lose Twice Music Production Podcast - https://brianfunk.com/blog/dont-lose-twice
- 4 Ways to Be More Creative Music Production Podcast - https://brianfunk.com/blog/4-ways-to-be-more-creative
- Brian Funk Website - https://brianfunk.com
- Intro Music Made with 16-Bit Ableton Live Pack - https://brianfunk.com/blog/16-bit
- Music Production Podcast - https://brianfunk.com/podcast
- Save 25% on Ableton Live Packs at my store with the code: PODCAST - https://brianfunk.com/store
Thank you for listening.
Please review the Music Production Podcast on your favorite podcast provider!
And don’t forget to visit my site https://BrianFunk.com for music production tutorials, videos, and sound packs.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It's one of the most important things I do to set myself up for musical success everyyear.
And if you participate, it's gonna fill you with confidence and inspiration for your musicmaking for months to come.
I'm gonna tell you all about it, some of the lessons I've learned, tips on how to make itthrough the challenge, and a surprising and unexpected side effect of putting a little
pressure on yourself with a musical challenge like this one.
And even if you don't accept the challenge, I think some of what I have to share todaywill help you make more music and have more fun in the process.
(00:30):
Welcome to the Music Production Podcast.
I'm your host, Brian Funk, and I'm talking about Jamuary.
Jamuary is a creative challenge to make and share some music every day throughout January.
I'm not really sure about Jamuary's origins, but I first heard about it from Cuckoo, who Ihad on episode 94 of this podcast.
The whole goal of Jamuary is consistency and exploration and to have fun in the process.
(00:54):
It's to teach yourself that a routine and a ritual is possible even if just a few minutesa day.
and it can fill you with so much inspiration and momentum for your music making process.
I've personally been impacted by Jamuary in many huge ways.
A good percentage of my recent music releases were the result of Jamuary.
Some of the music happened over just the course of a couple days you get in a role andsome of the seeds I laid in Jamuary became styles I explored for entire albums.
(01:21):
Aside from that, I've been inspired by members of the music community who are alsoparticipating in Jamuary and the music they create motivates me to create more music.
So why is JAMUER important?
It's gonna help you build creative habits.
You're gonna develop discipline by making music every day, and you're gonna turn musicmaking into a routine part of your life.
The more momentum you build, the easier it is to keep going.
(01:44):
It gives you the time for the joy of exploration.
You get to discover new sounds, try out new tools, experiment with techniques you mightnot have tried too much.
You get consistent practice at the art of making music.
you get to use limitations to unlock creativity.
Every day you show up, it's a clean slate and an opportunity to try and make somethingnew.
It also teaches the value of community motivation.
(02:05):
You get support and inspiration from other participants.
It's kind of like if you've ever been in a workout class at a gym, when maybe you'regetting tired and you look at the person next to you and the person on the other side.
and you realize they're still going and it makes you want to keep going too.
You wind up pushing yourself harder and further past boundaries that you thought you hadand you realize that those boundaries are not real.
(02:27):
There's this feedback loop of inspiration where you get inspired from other people andthey get inspired by you and together you root each other on and you make more music.
Other people's work and approaches can inspire you to try new things.
There's so much learning that happens.
I have to admit though, every year I get a little nervous when Jamuary comes aroundbecause it is a big undertaking.
(02:47):
So I've got a couple things for your mindset that have helped me that I think might helpyou find some success.
So first of all, attendance is number one.
Showing up, attendance is 100%.
Once you show up, you make the commitment to do it, you're already there.
If you're just making music, you've already succeeded.
So it doesn't matter what you're making.
(03:08):
It doesn't have to be anything great.
It doesn't have to be anything spectacular.
It's just that you show up and you start working on your craft and the progress iscumulative.
It adds up every little day.
That small effort just builds and builds and builds.
No great thing is made all at once.
It's the matter of lots of little tiny things coming together.
(03:28):
And this is a chance to make those little tiny efforts every single day.
Showing up every day is hard and there might be occasional days that you miss, but mymotto is don't lose twice.
If you miss one day, just try to show up the next day.
Even if you just play an instrument for a few minutes, make a quick beat, make a loop, itdoesn't matter, something small so that you get back on the board.
(03:49):
You can use those setbacks as opportunities to recommit.
Jerry Seinfeld has a really interesting take on joke writing that I think applies to musicmaking.
He says, a calendar and every single day,
that you show up, put an X on the calendar.
You might make an X, then you might miss a day, then you might make two Xs and you miss aday, but pretty soon you're gonna create a chain of Xs.
(04:11):
And just the desire not to break that chain will be enough to have you show up day afterday.
I've got a Jammuari calendar I like to make for the Music Production Club, and this ismine from last year.
I managed to show up every single day.
And I didn't know if I was gonna be able to do that, but by the time I got through thefirst week and I saw all of those Xs,
I didn't want to quit.
I didn't want to see a blank space on here.
(04:33):
And I have this hanging up on my wall all year long because it reminds me that it's notimpossible.
When it feels difficult, when it feels like I can't muster the energy or the creativity orthe motivation and I see this, I realize I can.
Because there were a lot of days on this calendar I didn't feel like doing it.
I wasn't inspired.
I wasn't motivated.
(04:54):
But the momentum got me through it.
And this could be a great reminder for you.
Just try not to break the chain.
We also want to lower the bar.
We're focusing on quantity, not quality.
Allow yourself to experiment without pressure.
Don't worry about how good it is.
Just worry that you're showing up and you're doing it.
(05:14):
There's a famous experiment about some professor, a pottery professor, who had his classdivided into two parts.
And he told one class, they can make one great piece of pottery and that
they'll get graded on.
The other half of the class was graded on quantity.
The more pieces of pottery they made, the higher their grade.
And guess who did better?
(05:35):
The people with quantity.
They made nicer pottery because they kept showing up and they kept working on their craftevery single day.
The people that only had to make one worried about how good it was.
They felt imposter syndrome.
They felt like they weren't talented enough.
All of this mental stuff crept in and prevented them from doing great work.
While the people that just
churned out pottery got better and better each time and even if the next one wasn't betterthan the last one the general trend of their progress was upward.
(06:05):
So lower the bar treat each day as a chance to learn and grow.
You don't need to shoot for the stars every day that'll exhaust you and you'll getoverwhelmed by the pressure.
You gotta aim low enough to make a difference and low enough is any progress any amount ofeffort at all.
The bare minimum amount of music making today
(06:25):
is better than nothing.
And if you can add that up over time, you're going to improve.
And what likely will happen is, like it did for me on a lot of these days on my calendar,I wasn't feeling it until I got started.
And then something interesting happened and I got excited.
And those first couple minutes might've been a little bit of a drag, but once I got pastthat, I'd go on for quite a while.
(06:47):
So lower the bar, don't worry about quality.
It's not about that.
It's about showing up and just going through the process.
And that's what we need to focus on is the process.
Ideas come from action.
Most of making music, most of writing, most of creating is reacting to what we justcreated.
So start making music and inspiration will follow.
(07:09):
Don't try to get inspired first.
That's very difficult.
It almost never happens.
Once in a while you get lucky, you get struck by lightning and you start feeling inspired.
But most of the inspiration happens after you do something, after you take action.
After you play that chord that catches your ear or that sound that you load up that isinteresting, then you start feeling inspired.
(07:31):
You can't wait for motivation.
Don't spend any time deciding if you're going to do it or not on this particular day.
Every second you spend deciding is wasted time.
If you are deciding, make the answer yes and just do anything.
Any amount of effort is going to move you forward.
There are definitely some things you can do to make the most of JammingWare and setyourself up for success.
(07:54):
And one of them is just a little bit of prep.
Have your gear and workspace organized.
Have things ready to go so that you're not spending all this time setting stuff up.
You don't have all this stuff to turn on or organize or take out of cases.
Just have your stuff ready to go so you can make music.
I think it's a great idea to even choose sounds and tools or even themes that you want toexplore the day before, or maybe like for the week.
(08:17):
have some ideas you wanna play around with so that you're not showing up and wonderingwhat you're gonna do.
Maybe create a set of prompts or techniques for when inspiration is low.
I'm doing that for the music production club.
Every single day of January, I'm sending them an activity and some kind of philosophicalprompt or motivational phrase that'll help them get going.
(08:38):
It takes the guesswork out of it.
I waste a lot of time in my music making just deciding what I wanna make.
And sometimes after 10 minutes of scrolling through sounds or kick drums or loops orpresets or tinkering with different instruments, I start to feel a little demotivated
because I haven't figured out what I want to do yet.
So having a little bit of a plan can help.
And that's why I like to create these prompts every day for the music production club.
(09:01):
You might even consider breaking things down into smaller steps.
So maybe you break up a song idea across a couple of days.
Maybe the first day is just creating a beat or some kind of loop.
Then you add some textures the next day, or you might introduce transitions on the nextday.
Those types of things give you a little bit of a plan again.
It's all about removing roadblocks.
You're not spending all of your time trying to decide what to do.
(09:23):
I think it's a good idea to have like a fail safe in case you don't have much time,because there are going to be days where you don't have a lot of time.
And for me, that's playing my guitar or using Ableton's move.
These are really fast, quickly accessible things.
I can pick up my guitar and come up with a chord progression in just a couple of minutes.
And that can be my jam for the day.
I could take out Ableton Move, create a beat on four tracks, and that's what I have forthe day.
(09:48):
That's fine.
It doesn't have to be much, but it's good to have those kind of rip cords on yourparachute in case you're running into a day where it's 10 o'clock at night, you don't know
what you're going to do and you only have 15 minutes.
That'll give you a chance to just fall back on an idea and move forward.
Part of the beauty of Jammuary is that you're not going to be alone.
(10:09):
Leverage the community.
Engage with others.
Follow the hashtag, hashtag jamuary 2025, or just hashtag jamuary.
It's particularly popular on Instagram.
My music production club has a discord where we post all of our work every single day andit really comes alive.
So many people posting things.
I can't tell you how many times I've felt down or unmotivated or tired and I go on themusic production club discord and see all the things people have posted and say, I want to
(10:38):
be part of that.
I want to make sure I get something on there.
I want to share something.
I want to create something.
Sometimes it's just a matter of listening to what people do.
And I say, I want to make something like that too.
And then you get going.
So having a community is really important.
It helps encourage you.
It helps inspire you.
And we're all celebrating each other's progress.
We all know nothing here is going to be perfect.
(11:00):
We only had one day to do it, but we know that showing up is difficult and there's acollective joy every time somebody posts something that they made that day.
For a lot of us, making music is a pretty lonely affair, sitting at a computer in front ofa couple instruments.
Having a community of people around you is a great way to stay motivated and keep theenergy levels up on those tough days.
(11:20):
I'm going to be sharing daily prompts, daily exercises, some tools and philosophies thatyou can use for your own jamuaries.
I'll be sending that out through the Music Production Club.
It's really helpful to have some direction and some idea before we start.
And I hope that these prompts will help you.
If you're a member of the Music Production Club,
You're gonna get these every day in your inbox.
And I think if even one of them helps you, that's not bad.
(11:42):
That's music you would have never made before.
You can check out this podcast.
There's plenty of episodes about making music.
I think there's a lot of good ones.
I'm gonna put some links in the show notes that will help you in the jamuary aspect.
I've also got my book, The Five Minute Music Producer, that has daily prompts for anentire year.
So any one of these could be useful for your jammuaries.
I turn to this a lot actually and...
(12:04):
It's kind of funny that I'm able to find new ideas through things that I've alreadydocumented, I've already tried.
You can just keep reusing these.
I've got a free sample of the first 30 days of the book, which will take you throughJamuary if you want to download that through my site, brianfunk.com slash book.
And don't forget to see what other people are doing inside of the hashtags on Instagram orwherever you go to follow Jamuary.
(12:25):
You might also have some tools or plugins or sample packs you want to get to know better.
Use Jamuary as an opportunity to explore those.
I've got over 200 free Ableton Live packs that you can download from my site.
Check those out.
Download one and see what you can make with it and send it to me.
I'd love to hear what you do.
Having just something to start with is so important in this process.
(12:47):
I might also recommend some other books to you, something like Atomic Habits by JamesClear really gets into this idea of habit making and I think it's a great thing to read
while you're going through Jamuary.
And another one of my favorites on
Creative motivation and inspiration is called Someday is Today by Matthew Dix.
Matthew Dix is the author of the fantastic book on storytelling called Storyworthy.
(13:10):
And his book Someday is Today is all about building habits and finding the time and energyto be creative.
Matthew is on episode number 314 of this podcast.
If you want to hear him talk about it, he's very inspiring, a person that gets a lot doneand there's a lot you can learn from him.
Unfortunately, there are going to be challenges along the way.
(13:30):
Not every day is easy.
These X's, some of these came easy, some of them I was happy to do, and some of those X'stook a lot of work to earn.
So we gotta be prepared for this and know that this is part of the process.
We can't get down about it when they come.
We gotta just know that this is what happens when we try to make art, when we try to makemusic.
We've run into walls occasionally.
(13:51):
So one thing you're gonna find is time is gonna be an enemy here.
you're gonna find that maybe you don't have time certain days or maybe there's a moreproductive time of day.
If you can, try to find the same time every single day and let people know you're doingthis and inform people and your family and your friends that this is a part of what you're
trying to accomplish so that they respect it.
(14:13):
It's really important to look for small windows of time, even if it's only a coupleminutes.
This is where your fail safe approaches will help.
there are gonna be days where I'm not gonna have much time at all.
I already know it, I've already seen my calendar, I'm packed on a few days already.
And for those days, I'm probably gonna play some guitar and do something on guitar for afew minutes and make that my jam.
(14:35):
I might make move, I might find some app on my phone that I wanna use that'll make musicwith.
But it's good to have those plans in mind because if I've only got 15 minutes that I'veable to scrounge together, I need to know what I'm doing.
So have those plans ready.
And really try to eliminate the thought of, I do it today?
Will I make music today?
(14:56):
Just like you're going to brush your teeth, you're going to have some food, you're goingto drink something, you're going to go to the bathroom.
You're also going to make music.
Just make it a given.
Remove that decision.
And when that thought comes in your head, if you're deciding, just say yes.
The answer is yes and go.
Because a lot of times we waste much of our time just deciding if we're going to do it.
(15:17):
Believe me, I know.
I often.
just waste time deciding if I'm gonna make music.
I gotta catch myself in those moments and just say, if I'm thinking about it, I should bedoing it.
Because thinking about it doesn't get anything done.
It just wastes time and makes me feel guilty if I decide not to.
So make it just a given fact that you're gonna make music today.
(15:38):
There's gonna be creative blocks.
So I find one of the best ways to get out of those is to use limitations and create littlechallenges.
Maybe restrict yourself to one instrument or one plugin or one tool.
one technique, maybe try some unconventional approaches, things you haven't done before,use field recordings or use some kind of randomization feature.
(15:58):
Maybe even just make a plan the day before.
I like to do that a lot.
And again, I'm sending those out to the music production club every single day.
I'm giving you some idea.
You can use it.
You don't have to, if you don't want to, but there's always something you can try.
So I think that's going to be really helpful.
But believe me, having some sort of plan on what you're going to do is going to reallyalleviate those creative blocks.
(16:20):
And also just try to remember that most of the time creative blocks aren't some magicalforce.
It's really just our fear of making something bad.
So try to just let that go.
Making something bad is better than making nothing.
The only people that don't make bad things are the people that don't make anything.
So make bad things, be okay with it.
(16:42):
If you make 31 bad things, that's a lot better than zero things.
But we got to reframe these bad days.
So
Even if our jams aren't successful, even if the music we make isn't successful, it'spractice.
We've practiced using our instrument, working with our DAW.
We've learned a bit about plugins or gain staging or mixing or whatever it is.
(17:02):
There is still something positive to be there and it's about long-term growth.
So if you make terrible music for a week straight, you probably at least got a little bitbetter at loading up the DAW, making new tracks, loading instruments, creating MIDI clips,
whatever it is you're doing.
you probably made some improvement there even if the outcome wasn't great.
So just keep that in mind that we're just, building a kind of body of work, like a castle.
(17:27):
This is our, if your music making output of your lifetime is a castle, every time you showup is just a brick.
Just think of it as a brick.
We're just putting a brick in and we got to do that to make something big like thishappen.
I want to tell you about a very surprising side effect of the pressure of jamming.
There's a lot of pressure in this trying to create every day.
(17:47):
You're gonna think about it.
You're gonna wonder if it's gonna come out good and there's gonna be pressure to makesomething great.
But the pressure to make something every day and the pressure to make something great in away kind of cancel each other out because since you're doing it every day, you kind of
know that you're gonna forgive yourself for not making something great because you can'tmake something great every single day.
(18:10):
That's just not practical.
So you always have this
built-in excuse that I'm making something every single day, so not everything I make isgoing to be great.
The same sort of thing happens during the Music Production Club live meetings.
We do these two-hour Zoom meetings.
First 15 minutes, we kind of say hello and set up the parameters for our music making.
Then we spend the next 45 minutes or so with our cameras and mics off making music byourselves.
(18:35):
The last hour, we come back and share what we made.
45 minutes is a ridiculously short amount of time to make music.
and we're forced to work fast and frantically and there's a lot of pressure to that.
But it kind of takes away the pressure of having to make something great because we onlyhad 45 minutes, we got this built-in excuse.
(18:58):
So the pressure on one end actually alleviates the other bit of pressure.
And if you want to use my prompts that I'm giving to the music production club, you canblame it on me.
My prompts weren't good.
So you've got this other layer of
Kind of like an excuse, I guess, is how I like to think of it, that if I'm not makingsomething great today, it's kind of not my fault, because I only had a little bit of time.
(19:22):
So any scrap of an idea that I like is a victory.
So what is this all for?
What comes after Jammuary?
I like to think about this because it gives us a little bit of direction and we don't haveto think like we're just spinning our wheels for no reason.
After Jammuary is finished February, and that's where we'll take...
some of our Jammuari ideas and try to develop them into finished tracks.
(19:43):
A lot of the most recent music I've released has been the result of Jammuari into FinishFebruary.
My ambient record Journey Inward was the result of four Jammuaries in a row.
There was just like a stretch right in the middle of January 2020 where I just madeambient music on the OP-1.
I had a lot of fun doing it the first day so I did it again the next day.
(20:06):
I did it for four days.
And then in February I made one more and that was an EP and it all came together.
My album Rectangles, which I released last year, used jammuaries from two different years.
I'd set up kind of like a rock, electronic, psychedelic project one day in jammuari and Ireused that for multiple days that jammuari and multiple days a year later.
(20:31):
And after two years of jammuaries, I used the finished February and a couple of monthsafterwards to finish that album.
So this is a great way to explore different styles of music, different approaches.
Sometimes I find myself spending a few days in a row on the same type of music or sametype of process or even the same project, like a template.
I'll just delete all the clips I did the day before and then just make new clips using allthe effects and sounds and instruments that I used the day before.
(21:00):
And it allows me to work a little bit faster.
But the point is we're gathering ideas in January and trying out things and experimenting.
so that we have material to work with during the next month in February that we canfinish.
And I want to tell you about my Finish February Workshop Retreat.
It's going to be an in-person three-day meeting at Ableton's Pasadena headquarters.
(21:22):
They've got setups with Push with Ableton, and I'm going to take you through my process.
I'm going to show you some tips, techniques, and exercises, and then give you the time towork on your songs.
And then I'll be circulating around the room, helping you, giving you personalizedinstruction.
You'll get group time with other people to share ideas and perhaps even collaborate.
(21:42):
It's a great way for you to take these ideas and get some assistance in finishing it.
Get some new perspective.
So whether you're a beginner, whether you've made tons of music before, I'm sure there'llbe something valuable for you because you're get new ways of doing this stuff.
And that's where so much creativity in art really happens is...
trying new things, exploring new ideas.
(22:05):
And that's what I'm gonna bring to you in this finished February workshop retreat.
Check it out at my site, brianfunk.com.
It's very limited.
There's only gonna be up to 15 people that can be there.
So it's gonna be really personalized, one-on-one group stuff, lots of feedback, lots ofhelp, and lots of support that you can employ in your own music making.
I'm gonna be there to help you when you get stuck so you don't get frustrated.
(22:28):
You know, lots of support so that you can finish your music and leave with something thatyou're proud of.
So Jam your is all about celebrating the process.
It's about personal growth and unexpected discoveries that you're going to come across.
You really have no idea where you're going to wind up.
You know that every contribution, every day you show up, every little bit of action youtake is a success.
(22:50):
It's a victory.
You can commit to one jam a day and I'd love to see where it takes you.
You never know what you might come up with when you take the time to make music.
One of my favorite stories ever about art is Dolly Parton wrote, Jolene and I will alwayslove you in the same day.
(23:10):
Two of her biggest hits, Jolene and I will always love you, she wrote in the same day.
Jolene has been streamed over 750 million times.
I will always love you was streamed over 130 million times.
Whitney Houston's cover of I Will Always Love You spent 14 weeks at number one and DollyParton has earned over $10 million in royalties just from that one version.
(23:37):
Imagine if she didn't show up that day.
Imagine if she said, I don't feel like writing music today.
Totally changes the trajectory of her career and so many people's lives that those songshave affected.
You just don't know what you're gonna get.
It's so important to show up, not just for you, but for what you might be contributing tothe world.
(23:57):
And the fact that you show up on one of these days in Jammuari might be enough to inspiresomebody else to show up.
And this ripple effect happens, this positive feedback loop happens.
That's why it's so exciting.
So we celebrate the process.
We celebrate the minor victories here of showing up each day.
So I encourage you, participate in Jammuari, share your work, make something new everyday.
(24:20):
and join the music production club.
I've got plenty of support and resources.
I've got tools, techniques, tips, tricks, prompts, all kinds of stuff that will help youthrough the process.
And probably most importantly is the community of other people that are also going throughit.
The energy that starts brewing in our discord is so fun.
Over the years, thousands of pieces of music have been made because of our workingtogether, collaborating and supporting each other.
(24:47):
So.
Check that out.
brianfunk.com slash MPC.
You can also connect.
I'll be all over Instagram and SoundCloud doing this as well.
And I encourage you to share your work.
Tag me.
Let me know what you're making.
I want to feel like it's possible because every time you do something, it convinces methat it's not impossible.
(25:07):
Cause sometimes when we're making music, it really does feel impossible.
There are days I feel like a wizard that can do anything.
And there are other days when I feel like I don't know what the heck I'm doing.
How could I have been at it for so long and I still can't even put together an idea?
But when I hear other people do it, it just reminds me that it's all possible.
And if we just keep at it, we're going to get there.
(25:30):
So let me know what you're making because it's going to inspire me.
And consider joining me for the Finish February Workshop Retreat at Ableton's Pasadenaheadquarters, February 21st through 23rd.
I've got information on my site, brianfunk.com.
It'd be great to have you and watch your musical ideas bloom into Finnish salt.
Thanks so much for listening.
(25:50):
I really do hope you give Jamuary a shot.
It could very well be a life-changing experience for you as it has been for me for manyyears now.
Take care.
It's one of the most important things I do to set myself up for musical success everyyear.
And if you participate, it's gonna fill you with confidence and inspiration for your musicmaking for months to come.
I'm gonna tell you all about it, some of the lessons I've learned, tips on how to make itthrough the challenge, and a surprising and unexpected side effect of putting a little
pressure on yourself with a musical challenge like this one.
And even if you don't accept the challenge, I think some of what I have to share todaywill help you make more music and have more fun in the process.
(00:30):
Welcome to the Music Production Podcast.
I'm your host, Brian Funk, and I'm talking about Jamuary.
Jamuary is a creative challenge to make and share some music every day throughout January.
I'm not really sure about Jamuary's origins, but I first heard about it from Cuckoo, who Ihad on episode 94 of this podcast.
The whole goal of Jamuary is consistency and exploration and to have fun in the process.
(00:54):
It's to teach yourself that a routine and a ritual is possible even if just a few minutesa day.
and it can fill you with so much inspiration and momentum for your music making process.
I've personally been impacted by Jamuary in many huge ways.
A good percentage of my recent music releases were the result of Jamuary.
Some of the music happened over just the course of a couple days you get in a role andsome of the seeds I laid in Jamuary became styles I explored for entire albums.
(01:21):
Aside from that, I've been inspired by members of the music community who are alsoparticipating in Jamuary and the music they create motivates me to create more music.
So why is JAMUER important?
It's gonna help you build creative habits.
You're gonna develop discipline by making music every day, and you're gonna turn musicmaking into a routine part of your life.
The more momentum you build, the easier it is to keep going.
(01:44):
It gives you the time for the joy of exploration.
You get to discover new sounds, try out new tools, experiment with techniques you mightnot have tried too much.
You get consistent practice at the art of making music.
you get to use limitations to unlock creativity.
Every day you show up, it's a clean slate and an opportunity to try and make somethingnew.
It also teaches the value of community motivation.
(02:05):
You get support and inspiration from other participants.
It's kind of like if you've ever been in a workout class at a gym, when maybe you'regetting tired and you look at the person next to you and the person on the other side.
and you realize they're still going and it makes you want to keep going too.
You wind up pushing yourself harder and further past boundaries that you thought you hadand you realize that those boundaries are not real.
(02:27):
There's this feedback loop of inspiration where you get inspired from other people andthey get inspired by you and together you root each other on and you make more music.
Other people's work and approaches can inspire you to try new things.
There's so much learning that happens.
I have to admit though, every year I get a little nervous when Jamuary comes aroundbecause it is a big undertaking.
(02:47):
So I've got a couple things for your mindset that have helped me that I think might helpyou find some success.
So first of all, attendance is number one.
Showing up, attendance is 100%.
Once you show up, you make the commitment to do it, you're already there.
If you're just making music, you've already succeeded.
So it doesn't matter what you're making.
(03:08):
It doesn't have to be anything great.
It doesn't have to be anything spectacular.
It's just that you show up and you start working on your craft and the progress iscumulative.
It adds up every little day.
That small effort just builds and builds and builds.
No great thing is made all at once.
It's the matter of lots of little tiny things coming together.
(03:28):
And this is a chance to make those little tiny efforts every single day.
Showing up every day is hard and there might be occasional days that you miss, but mymotto is don't lose twice.
If you miss one day, just try to show up the next day.
Even if you just play an instrument for a few minutes, make a quick beat, make a loop, itdoesn't matter, something small so that you get back on the board.
(03:49):
You can use those setbacks as opportunities to recommit.
Jerry Seinfeld has a really interesting take on joke writing that I think applies to musicmaking.
He says, a calendar and every single day,
that you show up, put an X on the calendar.
You might make an X, then you might miss a day, then you might make two Xs and you miss aday, but pretty soon you're gonna create a chain of Xs.
(04:11):
And just the desire not to break that chain will be enough to have you show up day afterday.
I've got a Jammuari calendar I like to make for the Music Production Club, and this ismine from last year.
I managed to show up every single day.
And I didn't know if I was gonna be able to do that, but by the time I got through thefirst week and I saw all of those Xs,
I didn't want to quit.
I didn't want to see a blank space on here.
(04:33):
And I have this hanging up on my wall all year long because it reminds me that it's notimpossible.
When it feels difficult, when it feels like I can't muster the energy or the creativity orthe motivation and I see this, I realize I can.
Because there were a lot of days on this calendar I didn't feel like doing it.
I wasn't inspired.
I wasn't motivated.
(04:54):
But the momentum got me through it.
And this could be a great reminder for you.
Just try not to break the chain.
We also want to lower the bar.
We're focusing on quantity, not quality.
Allow yourself to experiment without pressure.
Don't worry about how good it is.
Just worry that you're showing up and you're doing it.
(05:14):
There's a famous experiment about some professor, a pottery professor, who had his classdivided into two parts.
And he told one class, they can make one great piece of pottery and that
they'll get graded on.
The other half of the class was graded on quantity.
The more pieces of pottery they made, the higher their grade.
And guess who did better?
(05:35):
The people with quantity.
They made nicer pottery because they kept showing up and they kept working on their craftevery single day.
The people that only had to make one worried about how good it was.
They felt imposter syndrome.
They felt like they weren't talented enough.
All of this mental stuff crept in and prevented them from doing great work.
While the people that just
churned out pottery got better and better each time and even if the next one wasn't betterthan the last one the general trend of their progress was upward.
(06:05):
So lower the bar treat each day as a chance to learn and grow.
You don't need to shoot for the stars every day that'll exhaust you and you'll getoverwhelmed by the pressure.
You gotta aim low enough to make a difference and low enough is any progress any amount ofeffort at all.
The bare minimum amount of music making today
(06:25):
is better than nothing.
And if you can add that up over time, you're going to improve.
And what likely will happen is, like it did for me on a lot of these days on my calendar,I wasn't feeling it until I got started.
And then something interesting happened and I got excited.
And those first couple minutes might've been a little bit of a drag, but once I got pastthat, I'd go on for quite a while.
(06:47):
So lower the bar, don't worry about quality.
It's not about that.
It's about showing up and just going through the process.
And that's what we need to focus on is the process.
Ideas come from action.
Most of making music, most of writing, most of creating is reacting to what we justcreated.
So start making music and inspiration will follow.
(07:09):
Don't try to get inspired first.
That's very difficult.
It almost never happens.
Once in a while you get lucky, you get struck by lightning and you start feeling inspired.
But most of the inspiration happens after you do something, after you take action.
After you play that chord that catches your ear or that sound that you load up that isinteresting, then you start feeling inspired.
(07:31):
You can't wait for motivation.
Don't spend any time deciding if you're going to do it or not on this particular day.
Every second you spend deciding is wasted time.
If you are deciding, make the answer yes and just do anything.
Any amount of effort is going to move you forward.
There are definitely some things you can do to make the most of JammingWare and setyourself up for success.
(07:54):
And one of them is just a little bit of prep.
Have your gear and workspace organized.
Have things ready to go so that you're not spending all this time setting stuff up.
You don't have all this stuff to turn on or organize or take out of cases.
Just have your stuff ready to go so you can make music.
I think it's a great idea to even choose sounds and tools or even themes that you want toexplore the day before, or maybe like for the week.
(08:17):
have some ideas you wanna play around with so that you're not showing up and wonderingwhat you're gonna do.
Maybe create a set of prompts or techniques for when inspiration is low.
I'm doing that for the music production club.
Every single day of January, I'm sending them an activity and some kind of philosophicalprompt or motivational phrase that'll help them get going.
(08:38):
It takes the guesswork out of it.
I waste a lot of time in my music making just deciding what I wanna make.
And sometimes after 10 minutes of scrolling through sounds or kick drums or loops orpresets or tinkering with different instruments, I start to feel a little demotivated
because I haven't figured out what I want to do yet.
So having a little bit of a plan can help.
And that's why I like to create these prompts every day for the music production club.
(09:01):
You might even consider breaking things down into smaller steps.
So maybe you break up a song idea across a couple of days.
Maybe the first day is just creating a beat or some kind of loop.
Then you add some textures the next day, or you might introduce transitions on the nextday.
Those types of things give you a little bit of a plan again.
It's all about removing roadblocks.
You're not spending all of your time trying to decide what to do.
(09:23):
I think it's a good idea to have like a fail safe in case you don't have much time,because there are going to be days where you don't have a lot of time.
And for me, that's playing my guitar or using Ableton's move.
These are really fast, quickly accessible things.
I can pick up my guitar and come up with a chord progression in just a couple of minutes.
And that can be my jam for the day.
I could take out Ableton Move, create a beat on four tracks, and that's what I have forthe day.
(09:48):
That's fine.
It doesn't have to be much, but it's good to have those kind of rip cords on yourparachute in case you're running into a day where it's 10 o'clock at night, you don't know
what you're going to do and you only have 15 minutes.
That'll give you a chance to just fall back on an idea and move forward.
Part of the beauty of Jammuary is that you're not going to be alone.
(10:09):
Leverage the community.
Engage with others.
Follow the hashtag, hashtag jamuary 2025, or just hashtag jamuary.
It's particularly popular on Instagram.
My music production club has a discord where we post all of our work every single day andit really comes alive.
So many people posting things.
I can't tell you how many times I've felt down or unmotivated or tired and I go on themusic production club discord and see all the things people have posted and say, I want to
(10:38):
be part of that.
I want to make sure I get something on there.
I want to share something.
I want to create something.
Sometimes it's just a matter of listening to what people do.
And I say, I want to make something like that too.
And then you get going.
So having a community is really important.
It helps encourage you.
It helps inspire you.
And we're all celebrating each other's progress.
We all know nothing here is going to be perfect.
(11:00):
We only had one day to do it, but we know that showing up is difficult and there's acollective joy every time somebody posts something that they made that day.
For a lot of us, making music is a pretty lonely affair, sitting at a computer in front ofa couple instruments.
Having a community of people around you is a great way to stay motivated and keep theenergy levels up on those tough days.
(11:20):
I'm going to be sharing daily prompts, daily exercises, some tools and philosophies thatyou can use for your own jamuaries.
I'll be sending that out through the Music Production Club.
It's really helpful to have some direction and some idea before we start.
And I hope that these prompts will help you.
If you're a member of the Music Production Club,
You're gonna get these every day in your inbox.
And I think if even one of them helps you, that's not bad.
(11:42):
That's music you would have never made before.
You can check out this podcast.
There's plenty of episodes about making music.
I think there's a lot of good ones.
I'm gonna put some links in the show notes that will help you in the jamuary aspect.
I've also got my book, The Five Minute Music Producer, that has daily prompts for anentire year.
So any one of these could be useful for your jammuaries.
I turn to this a lot actually and...
(12:04):
It's kind of funny that I'm able to find new ideas through things that I've alreadydocumented, I've already tried.
You can just keep reusing these.
I've got a free sample of the first 30 days of the book, which will take you throughJamuary if you want to download that through my site, brianfunk.com slash book.
And don't forget to see what other people are doing inside of the hashtags on Instagram orwherever you go to follow Jamuary.
(12:25):
You might also have some tools or plugins or sample packs you want to get to know better.
Use Jamuary as an opportunity to explore those.
I've got over 200 free Ableton Live packs that you can download from my site.
Check those out.
Download one and see what you can make with it and send it to me.
I'd love to hear what you do.
Having just something to start with is so important in this process.
(12:47):
I might also recommend some other books to you, something like Atomic Habits by JamesClear really gets into this idea of habit making and I think it's a great thing to read
while you're going through Jamuary.
And another one of my favorites on
Creative motivation and inspiration is called Someday is Today by Matthew Dix.
Matthew Dix is the author of the fantastic book on storytelling called Storyworthy.
(13:10):
And his book Someday is Today is all about building habits and finding the time and energyto be creative.
Matthew is on episode number 314 of this podcast.
If you want to hear him talk about it, he's very inspiring, a person that gets a lot doneand there's a lot you can learn from him.
Unfortunately, there are going to be challenges along the way.
(13:30):
Not every day is easy.
These X's, some of these came easy, some of them I was happy to do, and some of those X'stook a lot of work to earn.
So we gotta be prepared for this and know that this is part of the process.
We can't get down about it when they come.
We gotta just know that this is what happens when we try to make art, when we try to makemusic.
We've run into walls occasionally.
(13:51):
So one thing you're gonna find is time is gonna be an enemy here.
you're gonna find that maybe you don't have time certain days or maybe there's a moreproductive time of day.
If you can, try to find the same time every single day and let people know you're doingthis and inform people and your family and your friends that this is a part of what you're
trying to accomplish so that they respect it.
(14:13):
It's really important to look for small windows of time, even if it's only a coupleminutes.
This is where your fail safe approaches will help.
there are gonna be days where I'm not gonna have much time at all.
I already know it, I've already seen my calendar, I'm packed on a few days already.
And for those days, I'm probably gonna play some guitar and do something on guitar for afew minutes and make that my jam.
(14:35):
I might make move, I might find some app on my phone that I wanna use that'll make musicwith.
But it's good to have those plans in mind because if I've only got 15 minutes that I'veable to scrounge together, I need to know what I'm doing.
So have those plans ready.
And really try to eliminate the thought of, I do it today?
Will I make music today?
(14:56):
Just like you're going to brush your teeth, you're going to have some food, you're goingto drink something, you're going to go to the bathroom.
You're also going to make music.
Just make it a given.
Remove that decision.
And when that thought comes in your head, if you're deciding, just say yes.
The answer is yes and go.
Because a lot of times we waste much of our time just deciding if we're going to do it.
(15:17):
Believe me, I know.
I often.
just waste time deciding if I'm gonna make music.
I gotta catch myself in those moments and just say, if I'm thinking about it, I should bedoing it.
Because thinking about it doesn't get anything done.
It just wastes time and makes me feel guilty if I decide not to.
So make it just a given fact that you're gonna make music today.
(15:38):
There's gonna be creative blocks.
So I find one of the best ways to get out of those is to use limitations and create littlechallenges.
Maybe restrict yourself to one instrument or one plugin or one tool.
one technique, maybe try some unconventional approaches, things you haven't done before,use field recordings or use some kind of randomization feature.
(15:58):
Maybe even just make a plan the day before.
I like to do that a lot.
And again, I'm sending those out to the music production club every single day.
I'm giving you some idea.
You can use it.
You don't have to, if you don't want to, but there's always something you can try.
So I think that's going to be really helpful.
But believe me, having some sort of plan on what you're going to do is going to reallyalleviate those creative blocks.
(16:20):
And also just try to remember that most of the time creative blocks aren't some magicalforce.
It's really just our fear of making something bad.
So try to just let that go.
Making something bad is better than making nothing.
The only people that don't make bad things are the people that don't make anything.
So make bad things, be okay with it.
(16:42):
If you make 31 bad things, that's a lot better than zero things.
But we got to reframe these bad days.
So
Even if our jams aren't successful, even if the music we make isn't successful, it'spractice.
We've practiced using our instrument, working with our DAW.
We've learned a bit about plugins or gain staging or mixing or whatever it is.
(17:02):
There is still something positive to be there and it's about long-term growth.
So if you make terrible music for a week straight, you probably at least got a little bitbetter at loading up the DAW, making new tracks, loading instruments, creating MIDI clips,
whatever it is you're doing.
you probably made some improvement there even if the outcome wasn't great.
So just keep that in mind that we're just, building a kind of body of work, like a castle.
(17:27):
This is our, if your music making output of your lifetime is a castle, every time you showup is just a brick.
Just think of it as a brick.
We're just putting a brick in and we got to do that to make something big like thishappen.
I want to tell you about a very surprising side effect of the pressure of jamming.
There's a lot of pressure in this trying to create every day.
(17:47):
You're gonna think about it.
You're gonna wonder if it's gonna come out good and there's gonna be pressure to makesomething great.
But the pressure to make something every day and the pressure to make something great in away kind of cancel each other out because since you're doing it every day, you kind of
know that you're gonna forgive yourself for not making something great because you can'tmake something great every single day.
(18:10):
That's just not practical.
So you always have this
built-in excuse that I'm making something every single day, so not everything I make isgoing to be great.
The same sort of thing happens during the Music Production Club live meetings.
We do these two-hour Zoom meetings.
First 15 minutes, we kind of say hello and set up the parameters for our music making.
Then we spend the next 45 minutes or so with our cameras and mics off making music byourselves.
(18:35):
The last hour, we come back and share what we made.
45 minutes is a ridiculously short amount of time to make music.
and we're forced to work fast and frantically and there's a lot of pressure to that.
But it kind of takes away the pressure of having to make something great because we onlyhad 45 minutes, we got this built-in excuse.
(18:58):
So the pressure on one end actually alleviates the other bit of pressure.
And if you want to use my prompts that I'm giving to the music production club, you canblame it on me.
My prompts weren't good.
So you've got this other layer of
Kind of like an excuse, I guess, is how I like to think of it, that if I'm not makingsomething great today, it's kind of not my fault, because I only had a little bit of time.
(19:22):
So any scrap of an idea that I like is a victory.
So what is this all for?
What comes after Jammuary?
I like to think about this because it gives us a little bit of direction and we don't haveto think like we're just spinning our wheels for no reason.
After Jammuary is finished February, and that's where we'll take...
some of our Jammuari ideas and try to develop them into finished tracks.
(19:43):
A lot of the most recent music I've released has been the result of Jammuari into FinishFebruary.
My ambient record Journey Inward was the result of four Jammuaries in a row.
There was just like a stretch right in the middle of January 2020 where I just madeambient music on the OP-1.
I had a lot of fun doing it the first day so I did it again the next day.
(20:06):
I did it for four days.
And then in February I made one more and that was an EP and it all came together.
My album Rectangles, which I released last year, used jammuaries from two different years.
I'd set up kind of like a rock, electronic, psychedelic project one day in jammuari and Ireused that for multiple days that jammuari and multiple days a year later.
(20:31):
And after two years of jammuaries, I used the finished February and a couple of monthsafterwards to finish that album.
So this is a great way to explore different styles of music, different approaches.
Sometimes I find myself spending a few days in a row on the same type of music or sametype of process or even the same project, like a template.
I'll just delete all the clips I did the day before and then just make new clips using allthe effects and sounds and instruments that I used the day before.
(21:00):
And it allows me to work a little bit faster.
But the point is we're gathering ideas in January and trying out things and experimenting.
so that we have material to work with during the next month in February that we canfinish.
And I want to tell you about my Finish February Workshop Retreat.
It's going to be an in-person three-day meeting at Ableton's Pasadena headquarters.
(21:22):
They've got setups with Push with Ableton, and I'm going to take you through my process.
I'm going to show you some tips, techniques, and exercises, and then give you the time towork on your songs.
And then I'll be circulating around the room, helping you, giving you personalizedinstruction.
You'll get group time with other people to share ideas and perhaps even collaborate.
(21:42):
It's a great way for you to take these ideas and get some assistance in finishing it.
Get some new perspective.
So whether you're a beginner, whether you've made tons of music before, I'm sure there'llbe something valuable for you because you're get new ways of doing this stuff.
And that's where so much creativity in art really happens is...
trying new things, exploring new ideas.
(22:05):
And that's what I'm gonna bring to you in this finished February workshop retreat.
Check it out at my site, brianfunk.com.
It's very limited.
There's only gonna be up to 15 people that can be there.
So it's gonna be really personalized, one-on-one group stuff, lots of feedback, lots ofhelp, and lots of support that you can employ in your own music making.
I'm gonna be there to help you when you get stuck so you don't get frustrated.
(22:28):
You know, lots of support so that you can finish your music and leave with something thatyou're proud of.
So Jam your is all about celebrating the process.
It's about personal growth and unexpected discoveries that you're going to come across.
You really have no idea where you're going to wind up.
You know that every contribution, every day you show up, every little bit of action youtake is a success.
(22:50):
It's a victory.
You can commit to one jam a day and I'd love to see where it takes you.
You never know what you might come up with when you take the time to make music.
One of my favorite stories ever about art is Dolly Parton wrote, Jolene and I will alwayslove you in the same day.
(23:10):
Two of her biggest hits, Jolene and I will always love you, she wrote in the same day.
Jolene has been streamed over 750 million times.
I will always love you was streamed over 130 million times.
Whitney Houston's cover of I Will Always Love You spent 14 weeks at number one and DollyParton has earned over $10 million in royalties just from that one version.
(23:37):
Imagine if she didn't show up that day.
Imagine if she said, I don't feel like writing music today.
Totally changes the trajectory of her career and so many people's lives that those songshave affected.
You just don't know what you're gonna get.
It's so important to show up, not just for you, but for what you might be contributing tothe world.
(23:57):
And the fact that you show up on one of these days in Jammuari might be enough to inspiresomebody else to show up.
And this ripple effect happens, this positive feedback loop happens.
That's why it's so exciting.
So we celebrate the process.
We celebrate the minor victories here of showing up each day.
So I encourage you, participate in Jammuari, share your work, make something new everyday.
(24:20):
and join the music production club.
I've got plenty of support and resources.
I've got tools, techniques, tips, tricks, prompts, all kinds of stuff that will help youthrough the process.
And probably most importantly is the community of other people that are also going throughit.
The energy that starts brewing in our discord is so fun.
Over the years, thousands of pieces of music have been made because of our workingtogether, collaborating and supporting each other.
(24:47):
So.
Check that out.
brianfunk.com slash MPC.
You can also connect.
I'll be all over Instagram and SoundCloud doing this as well.
And I encourage you to share your work.
Tag me.
Let me know what you're making.
I want to feel like it's possible because every time you do something, it convinces methat it's not impossible.
(25:07):
Cause sometimes when we're making music, it really does feel impossible.
There are days I feel like a wizard that can do anything.
And there are other days when I feel like I don't know what the heck I'm doing.
How could I have been at it for so long and I still can't even put together an idea?
But when I hear other people do it, it just reminds me that it's all possible.
And if we just keep at it, we're going to get there.
(25:30):
So let me know what you're making because it's going to inspire me.
And consider joining me for the Finish February Workshop Retreat at Ableton's Pasadenaheadquarters, February 21st through 23rd.
I've got information on my site, brianfunk.com.
It'd be great to have you and watch your musical ideas bloom into Finnish salt.
Thanks so much for listening.
(25:50):
I really do hope you give Jamuary a shot.
It could very well be a life-changing experience for you as it has been for me for manyyears now.
Take care.
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