Why did you want to be my Facebook friend? Why did you want to connect with me on LinkedIn? When people seek me out and add me on social networking sites, I do something that is apparently quite strange: I try to engage them.

As long as we appear to have a handful of real friends in common, I’ll usually give the benefit of the doubt and say hello. I’ll send a brief, friendly note asking what’s been happening and what’s coming up, giving them the opportunity to tell me why they were interested in connecting.

But the amount of replies I get vs. the amount of “friend” requests I receive is a lot lower than you might expect from a group of people who just hit a button that reads “connect”.

The ones who make a real effort to do so, who take a brief moment to be people, stand out. In a sea of noise, I remember them.

The people who do respond will often tell me that they like my work, that they were influenced by a certain article, or that they loved the sounds I got on a certain track. They might then tell me what they’ve been working on, what they’re looking forward to, what they’re hoping for, maybe even what they’re nervous about.

If they ever want to reach out again in the future, a little bell rings somewhere in the back of my brain. Call it a troublesome little quirk of evolution, call it a tiny degree of well-earned trust, but I’m more likely to take them seriously if they want something from me in the future.

Then, there are the people who will respond by writing: “Oh you know. Nothing much. Just networking.” This isn’t quite as bad as not saying anything, but it’s not that much better, either.

If you were really networking, you wouldn’t be telling me that you were networking. You would be trying to connect with me. You would be trying to find out what my interests are, what my hopes and dreams and fears and favorite things might be. And then, maybe you’d leave me knowing a little something about you.

That’s what networking is. It’s not clicking a button. It’s not saying the word “networking.” It means getting to know new people.

Who have you gotten to know recently? And what have you done to make them want to know you? As the saying goes, “the best way to be interesting is to be interested.”

So ask yourself: Are you really connecting with people, whether it’s with your music or with your messages? Or are you just making a show of it? I’ll be asking myself the same thing.

…Only to realize that there are exceptionally few of them to be found, please rest assured that this is normal.

In general, every locale will already be at filled to its saturation point with recording studios that specialize in music. This will be more or less true whether your town has 0 studios or 500 of them. If you want to work in music, it is your job not only to find work, but to create it. That is where the true value lies.

If you’re having trouble doing so, you might consider devoting many of your working hours to other fields where you can make more money, which you can then invest in the time and resources you need to get started. You can even finance a project that inspires you and helps build the kind of portfolio you’ve always dreamed of.

It’s a dirty little secret of the music industry (and of the arts in general) that the initial funds for many brand new creative projects are paid not by the return on investment of other profitable projects, but by money made doing something other than music. This is actually something of norm in almost any sort of new business, so we shouldn’t be surprised that it stands true for our own.

Sometimes this kind of initial financing is provided through a day job or a related career, sometimes it is through an inheritance. You do not get any extra “purity points” for being resentful of either of these realities. You’ll only get an ulcer.

In this way, and in so many others, running a studio really is just like running any other business. Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking it’s something altogether different.

If you want to find work, go where the demand is.

You might have an easier time breaking into the studio world these days by finding work in post-production or in audiobooks, both of which have been swiftly growing markets. If you’re committed to music and won’t settle for anything other than getting started in music studios then figure out what studio owners or musicians don’t have enough of, want more of, and don’t think that they can do more cheaply, effectively or efficiently themselves.

I can’t tell you exactly what you should be doing. No one can. But if you think along these lines, you’ll find a lot more meaningful and fulfilling work than you otherwise might.

Earlier today, a good friend of mine casually derided a neighborhood for being “filled with yuppies,” who were assumed to be “douchebags.”

I’ve done the same kind of thing in the past. But more recently, I’ve begun to question it.

This started happening when I decided to stop what I was doing for a moment and look at what the word I was using actually means — rather than merely relying on the the connotations we’ve assigned to it.

It’s forgotten to many of us now, but the term “Yuppie” is based on an acronym which simply stands for: Young. Urban. Professional. That’s it.

After having spent so much of my life using this term as a dirty epithet (which was the norm in the culture I came from) I began to think about the term more literally instead. And I slowly came to realize:

“Wait just a goddamn a second, I am and/or want to be all three of those things!”

It also dawned on me that in fact, almost all of my friends who use the word “yuppie” as a derogatory term are and/or want to be all three of those things as well.

My circles are filled with innumerable young people who live in cities and either have, or aspire to have, a profession. (In my world, it’s usually in music, sound, or some other creative field — simply because that’s where I work.)

Many of these friends use the term “yuppie” not only derisively, but without irony. Is this genuine self-loathing, I’ve wondered, or a mere lack of reflection on what the term actually means, just as it was for me?

Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with not identifying with any of these three attributes either:

Being young is perhaps overrated. I’ve come to think so anyway. Of course, youth doesn’t necessarily mean a person is naive, immature or overly self-entitled, either. I know plenty of older people who are all three of those things. (Very few of them are successful professionals.)

Some people prefer living in the suburbs or out in the country. That’s fine too. Trees and grass are nice. And no one is holding a gun to anyone’s head, forcing them to live in cities.

And then, some people just aren’t interested in having a “profession”, if given the choice. Some folks have either sufficient luxury or lack of ambition to makes pursuing a “career” unattractive to them. (Even if they are able and intelligent enough to do so, as most people are.)

Are these three attributes, when all put together, sufficient reason to judge or dislike a person? I don’t think so.

When people use the term “yuppie” with anger and venom, I think that what they really mean to say is: “Self-entitled jerkface who can apparently afford nicer shoes than me.”

Which is fine. I would merely ask that we JUST SAY THAT INSTEAD, DAMMIT.

If you want to call a person a “jerk” for something they did, or rebuke them for acting in an overly self-entitled way, that’s fine. Go do that. Godspeed.

But if you think you can make that kind of judgement about a person on sight, without knowing anything about them beyond from their probable age, assumed income level, and the neighborhood in which they happen to be standing at the moment, well then… maybe they’re not the one being an asshole.

Worth thinking about, anyway .

This kind of jump to judgement of course, is natural and it is human. A bias against the “other”, as well as a propensity for fostering low levels of resentment toward those who appear to be doing better than we are, is baked right into our DNA. It is only through effort and culture and education that we can overcome these ultimately self-destructive drives more often than not.

These days, I have become content to dislike people for the content of their character rather than their general demographic group, whatever it may be. And I invite you to join me.

If a person is going to dislike me, I’d prefer that they do so for something I’ve said or done. Not for my age, gender, ethnicity, skin color, income level, religion or lack thereof, taste in music or clothing, or my place of residence. That’s just silly.

I’ll happily extend that same courtesy to others. And if I forget and mess up? You’re more than welcome to tell me I’m being a jerk. You’d only be accurate.

There comes a time in every young musician’s life when, after a great day spent practicing, performing, or just jamming with friends, he or she thinks:

“This is so incredible. I wish I could become a professional musician so that I could do this every day.”

This is easily understandable, endlessly relatable, and almost completely backwards.

In real life, a person does not become a professional musician so that they can play music every day. Sure, this might be the goal for many people, but in reality it just doesn’t work in that direction.

Instead, there are some people who, for whatever reasons, are driven to make a decision to play and engage deeply with music every single day.

They know that by doing this every day, they stand some remote chance of perhaps becoming a professional musician at some point in the future.

Many won’t. But thankfully, even for those who never do become professionals, there is plenty of reward in simply committing to turn music into a daily practice.

Habits matter. There are endless ways to engage with music daily. Make it a ritual. Because if you don’t choose your habits, they will choose themselves for you, and you will end up with daily rituals that you don’t quite remember having ever selected for yourself. They are rarely the good kind.

Recently, I’ve made a point to reevaluate my own relationship with music. For someone who identifies as being music obsessed, was I behaving that way? Or had I slipped, and was I letting mere self-identification stand in for real work and real engagement with the stuff?

It is the normal condition of man to run off the rails in this way without ever even realizing it. Stopping to ask yourself hard and uncomfortable questions, and then dealing with them honestly, wading through the accompanying guilt and fear and cognitive dissonance, is the only way forward. It is the only way back onto the tracks.

Today, when I wake up in the morning, after a quiet cup of coffee, I listen to music.

At this early hour, it’s usually gritty funk or latin music from before 1975, jazz from before 1959, Afro-Cuban music, or something similarly satisfying, cognitively un-challenging and mildly up-tempo. Or at least that’s what’s been working for me these days.

(This set of criteria seems to pair well with my other new habit of doing some basic exercise in the morning. I’m talking about simple, normal-people stuff like squats, pushups and pullups in order to establish a baseline of strength and energy to take into each day. I’ve recently chosen this as an alternative to my prior, un-chosen habit of scrolling through my email and Facebook newsfeed in bed each morning, and it seems to have been one of the best decisions that I’ve ever made.)

After this, I return to silence and get some written work done. I’ve never been able to write well with music playing, and I doubt I ever will. I’m nearly as interested in the rhythm and sound of words as with their meaning, and with music playing, I just can’t hear them right.  (You may be different. That’s fine too.)

After this, I set aside 30 minutes to play piano each day. I don’t have to play the piano for all 30 minutes, but I’m not allowed to do anything else. (You’d be amazed how well this rule works.) Since I have no aspirations of being a professional musician, this is enough for me. Some days, if I can get away with it, I play more.

After this, I either got to the studio and work on music all day, or I do other sorts of work, going through at least two more stages of intentional music listening:

In the afternoon, I might listen to old school soul, hip hop, electronic music or any manner of rock music from grungy proto-punk to pop to cerebral math rock to everything in between. At this time, I’ll also set aside some energy to listen to all those things that friends and fans and potential clients have been asking me to hear.

In the evening or the nighttime hours, my final listening for the day will often turn to 19th or 20th century classical music, jazz (usually from 1959 and beyond at this point), bossa nova, tango or maybe music from India or Eastern Europe. I’ve been meaning to hear more of both.

These daily, intentional listening sessions might last 5 minutes or they might last 5 hours. It depends on the day and how much I’ve been working in the studio. While doing so, I might read or write emails, take a walk, clean the office, or I might just sit and listen. I also spend plenty of time in silence, or talking with people either in person or on the phone. But I can tell you that with this intentional daily ritual of music, I am far happier than I am without it.

Maybe you’re the same way. With that in mind, I invite you to ask yourself: Have you been deeply engaging with music, or have you merely been playing it lip service? Have you set up helpful rules and habits for yourself, or have you let your life become dominated by habits and rituals that you never really chose?

Within your rules, it’s helpful of course to have some flexibility. When I’m working in the studio more or playing more myself, my music needs are often satisfied that way, and so I might listen far less. But I still keep the habit going. Without the little rituals, without the daily choices, slowly but surely, it all starts to fall apart in the long run.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Recording studios do not operate on an “if you build it they will come” basis.

With that in mind, here is one dumb and all-too-common approach to starting up your own recording studio:

1) Go around coveting other people’s studios for a while.
2) Start off by building the type of studio that you’ve always dreamed of — The kind you just know that you’d always be satisfied with.
3) Then, go looking for clients to fill it up with.

NEWSFLASH: This does not work.

I’ve seen this kind of thing attempted scores of times, and I’ve seen it end in failure, scores of times.

There are dozens of reasons why this procedure is so rarely fruitful, especially in the music studio world. Practical reasons: Did you test your market to see if there was demand for yet another full-fledged studio? It doesn’t matter if there are none of them to begin with. Do you have proof of concept, proof of demand, proof of your own abilities to obtain and satisfy clients?

There are motivational reasons this approach fails as well: When your primary professional life’s goal is to build the studio of your dreams, just what is supposed to keep you going once you’ve already built it?

A good friend, who after more than a decade of hard work has come to own his own truly great studio, once told me that: “There is nothing more depressing than an empty and unused recording studio that looks like it was built in the hopes that Mariah Carey would finally come walking through the door any minute now.”

The only way that one of these studios is likely to be a good career choice is if you’re buying it off the former owner for pocket change — after he’s blown through his resources, or his interest in it, or both.

But even then, I’d be hesitant to recommend this route it unless you already have sufficient work beating down your door in order to justify the expense. Even if you get it cheap, starting with the a full-fledged recording studio can often be more of an uphill battle than planning on ending with one.

Here’s a better strategy:

1) Start doing studio work.
I don’t care whether it’s at a “real” recording studio, or in a corner of your basement, or at any location you can get to with a remote recording rig.

Sure, you might want to do a select few portfolio-building freebies with truly exceptional talents, but in general: Charge for your work. People will only value you as much as you value yourself.

Better yet, why not take some of the money you were planning on using on prestige gear and use it to finance some of your own prestige projects instead? Great gear is a dime a dozen. Great work is rare.

Whichever way you approach it, make sure you start out by developing a real clientele and a real portfolio. That is the true key to having a great studio. Clients come first. The work comes first. Everything else is secondary.

2) Build relationships with already-existing studios in your area, and make use of their unbooked hours.
Even if your ultimate goal is to build your own studio, it’s wise to get started by booking time at already-existing studios. There are many of them. And chances are that there is an untold number of unbooked hours in great rooms not far from you.

Maybe you can even create your own job at one of these places. Or, maybe you can do the majority of your work at a home or project studio, and only use these preexisting commercial studios for big sessions. In any event, these kinds of arrangements are a win for everyone.

Only once you’re getting so many of bookings that you’re having trouble finding enough empty slots to fit them in, should you then consider building your own real-deal recording studio. (Alternately, you might consider building if you’ve done an honest run of the numbers and have come to find that it would be more cost-effective to have your own larger-scale place.)

3) Start small and grow.
I can’t stress this one enough: Do NOT start out by building the studio of your dreams. Start out by building the studio that makes sense for right now. It could be a home studio or a small personal studio or a modest commercial studio. Whatever the work you know you’ll be doing calls for.

Then, develop and upgrade  your space over the course of many years (say, 5 to 30 of them) until you either: A ) Finally have the studio you always dreamed about or B ) Realize you’d rather be a studio customer than a studio owner. (And there are many perks to being a customer, believe me.)

That’s it.

Too often, we look at amazing and bustling “world-class” recording studios and only see what they look like today, after decades of being successful businesses.

Or, in the cases of studios that took the dumb approach, we fail to notice that for all their amenities and all their bluster, they just don’t seem to be doing so much actual business at all.

When you see a truly busy and successful recording studio, remember that all their gear and decor and extra rooms aren’t what’s getting them all the work.

Those things are the result of having gotten the work for so long that the studio’s owners had suffiecient money to reinvest in their business, so that they could do even more work.

This may sound like a subtle distinction at first, but it’s not. It is the difference between a thriving business and an hollowed-out Fabergé shell, filled with nothing but the echoes of broken dreams.

Super-high sampling rates, bit depths past a certain point, and super-sonic frequencies that human beings just can’t hear are not among them.

(One friend calls these kinds of obsessions “Faith Based Audio.”)

Music on the other hand? That is worth obsessing over.

There are other things there worth obsessing over too: Like aesthetic choices. Like practicing music or developing new tools that fill real needs. Business decisions are worth spending time and mental energy on. So are interpersonal skills and devoting real time to real understanding of real science. (Not just predetermined conclusions and wishful thinking.) All of that is worth spending ample brain power on.

Sometimes you will even find answers. If you’re being realistic, you might recognize that some of those answers are unpleasant or not quite what we expect:

“Wow, most people over the age of 35 or so can’t hear much above 15kHz. Over 60 years old and they’re losing a ton of hearing above 10kHz, and often well into the midrange. And people in those age groups are going on about sampling rates and super-sonic frequencies? What gives?”

(Fortunately, music and sound are listening arts much more than hearing arts. Just ask Beethoven. And there are plenty of great older audio engineers who can perhaps “hear” less than the kids—especially at the extreme frequencies—but make up for it by listening far, far better.)

If you really want to obsess over something sciencey and audio related, try physics. Try electrical engineering. Try making great songs.

But please. Stop with sampling rates and the bit depths. Past a certain point, it begins to sound ignorant. Time and time again, it has been shown that it just doesn’t matter that much in the scheme of things.

Music is what matters. Big choices are what matter. Habits matter. (Even quirky ones.) So does developing a plan, rethinking your approach if needed, and making it sustainable.

Your heart is already in the right place. Make sure your head is, too. You have a finite amount of brain power each day. And you have a finite number of days on this earth. What are you spending your time obsessing over? And does it matter much in the end?

These are questions worth asking. Maybe even worth obsessing over.

Almost all of it, anyway.

“Cut down on carbs” can be great advice if you want to lose weight. But what if you want to gain some?

“Smile more.” This is great advice if you’re not smiling enough, making people feel uncomfortable, and losing out because of it.

“Smile less.” This is great advice if you’re overdoing it, coming off as insecure, and finding that your colleagues don’t seem to take you very seriously.

“You should focus on releasing singles.” “You should create more high-quality free content — and put it out it more often — instead of starting out by releasing it all at once.”

This is great advice if you want to grow an audience.

But what if you already have one?

“You should charge more for your music.” “If you were really serious, you’d make an album instead.”

Great advice if people already like your music so much that they would be sad if you stopped making it.

But what if they’ve never heard it before? What if they don’t know whether they might like it? What if they don’t even know who you are?

“Your music is worth something.”

Now that one is an absolute. That’s because it’s not advice. It’s a principle. And a damn good one too.

The question is, do you really believe it, and do you act accordingly?

Here’s another way of thinking about it:

Whether you’re charging for it or giving it away, how might you act differently if you believed that your music was valuable?

And how might you act differently if you didn’t?

…You will find it.

If you go around looking for reasons to believe that we are living in the darkest ages for art, then the world will never disappoint you.

If you you go around seeking offense, you will find reason to be offended.

If you go out looking for disagreement, polarization, misunderstanding, stupidity, cupidity, avarice and bad taste, the world will simply never let you down.

But if you go out looking for something better, you might just find that too.

I know what you’re going to say, because I’ve said it as well:

“I’ve tried that. I didn’t find it. The world really is worse now. Don’t you get that? Things really can be worse compared to how they were, when judged by a specific parameter. Like the suckiness of music for instance. It’s clearly all so sucky now. Or, I mean, look at wealth and greed! C’mon. It’s never been worse!”

Sure, that is “true”.

It is as “true” now as it has been for millions of people, thousands of times throughout history. And just as questionable.

What are you leaving out? What, in your narrow and predetermined search, are you missing?

What if instead, you searched for great music? I guarantee you that you will find it.

• “I tried that once. I’m telling you it all sucks.” You’re not looking hard enough. What did you do, give up because it wasn’t easy?

• “Well, the good stuff just doesn’t get heard.” Oh yeah? What are you doing about that?

• “People only care about what’s convenient for them.” Okay, nice observation Einstein. What are you doing to make great music more convenient for them?

• “They’re not willing to pay.” What are you doing to make them more willing to pay?

• “I’m telling you, there just isn’t any good stuff out there anymore.” Okay. Go make some.

There’s a new issue of Scientist out today. It’s a good one. It’s about how we use the internet.

This year will mark a major milestone in social media: Facebook has been around for a decade now. How are you using it?

Has it made your life better? Has it improved your career? How are these tools helping? Can they be used to help? Or can they only be used to distract, to promote negative reinforcements, to keep us from focusing on what’s important, and from making great art? Are we using them in the best and healthiest ways we can?

It’s 2014. Time to figure this part of your life out. Time for us all to figure it out.

“The economy” is on an upswing again. We don’t get to use that as our excuse anymore.

If you decide to seek your fortune, I can’t guarantee that you will find it, but you stand a much better chance than if you sit around hoping it will someday find you. And you might just have some fun along the way.

 

Break the cycle. If you seek poverty and suffering and pain and violence and lack of opportunity, you can find that too.

(Although, if we’re being realistic: Perhaps far less so today than in the past. And hopefully even less so in the future.)

However, if you seek ways you can help with that, personally, in your own life — not just by deferring this duty to some distant power — then you might just find some ways of doing that as well.

If the way you can do this is by making great music, then do it. If it’s by doing something else, then go focus on doing that instead.

I don’t care what it is. If you can make the world a better place than it was a moment ago by selling plumbing supplies or troubleshooting computers or making coffee, then godspeed. But do something.

It’s a start. And it’s the right basic approach.

(…And 8 of them were mine.)

It’s been a pleasure writing for Janice Brown and David Weiss of SonicScoop again this year.

2013 was a huge one. We saw record levels of traffic and the launch of a new content network that has begun to join together some of the best music production blogs on the web, including SonicScoop, The Recording Revolution, The Pro Audio Files, and my own digital magazine, Trust Me, I’m a Scientist.

Out today is a complete list of the top 10 stories of the year from Scoop. I wrote eight of them. Editor David Weiss wrote another two himself. (And who knows, maybe in 2014, you could start working toward writing one of them yourself.)

Here they are:

#10 – The Uninsured Musician’s Guide to the Affordable Care Act

#9 – Spotify Payouts Revisited – What does it pay, & what should artists demand?

#8 – Acoustic Treatment for the Small Studio

#7 – The Best Snare Drums for the Recording Studio

#6 – Industry Intel: Recording Engineer Salaries, by Industry & Region.

#5 – Why (Almost) Everything You Knew About Bit Depth is Probably Wrong

#4 – The Best Small Tube Amps for the Recording Studio

#3 – Mick Guzauski & Mixing Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories.” (by David Weiss)

#2 – Vince Clarke’s Synth Kingdom in Brooklyn. (by David Weiss)

And, #1 – The Big List of Free Pro Tools Plugins.

Thanks as always, for reading, and enjoy.

Stay tuned for the first 2014 issue of Scientist, which begins launching tomorrow afternoon.