I’m a curious person. I’m not curious enough to pry, but I am curious enough to ask a person a ton of questions about what they think. Yet, there comes a point where I really don’t get invested into those thoughts.

That investment stops at my art. It’s not because I’m high and mighty. It’s because bringing in too many thoughts into my art makes it less of my art.

Commercial music, the music that most of us enjoy, is usually made by committee. You rarely hear the songs that aren’t workshopped to death. You rarely hear the worst songs from your favorite artists. Why is that? Even if they like the song, they know you won’t. They won’t release them because their careers are like stocks. The more duds you throw out the worse your brand looks. Most commercial artists make hundreds of songs, and you only hear a fraction of those.

This has never been my process. I have been a practice out loud kind of artist for ALL of my career. There are two reasons for this. First, I didn’t have the money to hire professionals to help me make my work. When I did, the results were Breakfast & Biggie. Secondly, practicing out loud is exactly what it sounds like. Practice. I’ve put out so much work while learning: song writing, producing, mixing, & mastering. All of this practice leads to mastery, but I knew it would take me a decade to get good enough to be commercially viable. Every day for the past 15 years, I’ve been practicing. Along the way I needed a way to deal with the opinions, because I knew they would come. I knew people would hear me practicing, and believe I expect everything to be gold.

How do I deal with opinions? Here’s my matrix.

It’s not missed on me that public things can be talked about publicly. That’s not my concern. I needed to design a system for me not to give up on my practice. If I listen to subjective opinions then I won’t be able to keep going. Subjective comments can come from anywhere. Listening to every subjective opinion drowns out my own inner creativity.

I want to trust the person giving me the information. Is this person an expert on mixing? You can tell me a mix is bad, but if you can’t tell me what to fix…how is that helpful? Maybe you can describe it, but without the technical knowledge I won’t truly understand your feedback.

I rather ask for opinions. I am a learner. I don’t know everything. Sometimes I ask for feedback, and other times I don’t really want it. I think about this from perspective as a visual artist. There are times where I want the lines to be perfect. There are other times where I could care less about the lines. So if someone walks in, looks at my art and says, ”That line doesn’t look right”, then I don’t really care. Especially when I make creative choices on purpose. Not everyone is going to like it, and that’s okay.

Ultimately, I spend a lot of time in my head. I think about every comment, every reaction, & every non reaction. It’s not healthy to do that. I know as my career grows, the frequency will increase. I need a way to manage that before…not after.