However, I did something a little over a year ago that was a really tough discipline challenge-- the OP might find it of interest.
To be honest I was getting burned out on Taxi stuff; But Taxi has been the most amazing CATALYST in getting me from being a slacker with some unfocused musical abilities and almost no production skills into a decent and always improving musician/producer who is now able to finish projects on a deadline-- forwards or not. It took me a while to get forwards and finally a deal-- and I was glad for that, but I got into this mindset of "my music is no good unless these people say it is"-- you find the whole process can leave a fetid taint of supplication upon your soul, if you allow it.
And after a couple of years I had to take a step back. I was taking stuff that was my own personal material and sometimes cannibalizing the essence of it for cue submissions-- trying really hard-- and the material just wasn't the right fit. Sometimes they just need some "dumb" music to fill 30 seconds for an idiot TV show scene transition and I had to remind myself to zoom out and see that part of the big picture.
Apart from music, I'd gotten a little out of shape during the lockdown and my brother told me about this thing called the "75 Hard Challenge". For 75 days straight you have to do all of these things and if you miss just ONE of them on one day, you have to start over at day 1 again.
-No alcohol
-Strict diet (of your choice)
-Two 45 minute workouts a day (one must be outdoors--it's easier to do this in any season but winter depending where you live)
-drink a gallon of water per day-
-take a progess pic each day
-read 10 pages of non-fiction each day
So in 2021 my brother and I each started this challenge and we helped each other to be accountable and we both made it through on the first try. It was hard but I was surprised at my discipline. Some of that discipline came about from hitting Taxi deadlines.
By early 2022 I kind of overdid it with the drinking and such and got out of shape again. haha. So my brother and I decided to do the challenge a second time-- but this time customized. Everything was the same-- no drinking, etc--but this time we only had to do ONE daily workout-- but we each had to do an hour of guitar study a day from a book which I'd bought each of us a copy. And if we completed the challenge we would buy ourselves a really nice new electric guitar as a reward, at the end. So we completed the challenge and got some really nice new axes. I made us some little golden statue trophies that I superglued little mini guitars onto.
So here's where it gets interesting... In late 2022 I was becoming "fat Brian Wilson" AGAIN and I had a crazy new idea for another 75 day challenge... No drinking, strict diet etc--I didn't even have to work out-- BUT I had to go into my DAW and write and record one new instrumental demo track each day (guitars, bass, keys, drums, whatever the song needed--minus vocals.) And this time if I failed on one day to record a good demo, I could still do it the next day-- but then that next day I'd have to complete TWO demo tracks, etc. I think at one point I did find myself having to finish 4 in one day but then I hit a patch of inspiration and managed to get it done. Hell or high water at the end of 75 days I had to have 75 new demo tracks in the can. My brother did not decide to join me on this challenge. Haha.
My rule for myself was that each demo had to be a NEW song that I hadn't demo'd before. So I was free to comb through the hundreds of voice memos I made during the previous few years where I'd get an idea and set the phone down by my piano or guitar-- or sing a melody into my phone when I'd get an idea sitting at a stoplight. So I revisited those bare snippets of ideas and went to my studio to give them a full fleshing out. Sometimes I'd take something written on keys and turn it into a guitar based song or vice versa. And about half the days I would just sit down at the DAW and start playing around from scratch and building until I found a song.
The nice thing was it was a good excuse to see how many new songs I could wring out of the new guitar I'd bought myself from the previous challenge. (I don't listen to Maroon 5 much but James Valentine is a saint as far as his signature Music Man guitar is concerned) I really bonded with this guitar. I had to save up for a long time to buy it, but wow.
And I was completely free to do music that I wanted to do-- my music, for myself-- not for some f'ing Taxi listing.
Stuff that reflected my influences and music that meant something to me-- not the amalgam of whatever three music videos I never heard of but had to go find on Youtube. It felt so good to get back into that mindset that I'd pushed aside when I got into Taxi. I had not done that since I got into the rat-race of write-submit-forget-repeat or whatever. I felt CLEAN again. I think everybody should do this from time to time. Now, it doesn't mean that anybody is going to listen to the music I did during that time-- I made it for myself anyway. And getting people to listen to your music is hard. Even your favorite band-- you have to force yourself to listen to "the new stuff". There's so much music out there and with the technology available even somebody who is completely obliviously certifiably tone-deaf can now get his or her hands on some kind of magical AI machinery and infict something that sort of "passes" into the world.
And it's a lonely world. On the morning after I completed that third difficult 75 day challenge, I walked into work exhausted and there were trays of little mini key lime pies with the number "75" written on them in red frosting. For a second I thought my coworkers did this to commemorate my challenge (I'd auditioned a lot of tracks for them as I went)- but then I realized the event we were hosting was just celebrating its 75th anniversary.... oof. But I had just done 75 days of no sugar and key lime pies ARE my favorite dessert so I grabbed one and happily ate it. I'll take my cosmic rewards where I find them.
--
So that brings me back to Taxi. I sit every day in front of my keys or with a guitar and just play for hours if I have the time-- and everytime something decent strikes my ears I grab the phone and record a new voice memo. I get the most inspiration from auditioning presets from synth plugins like Arturia's Analog Lab or guitar tones from Neural DSP or Tonex. The novelty of new sounds and tones always gives me the spark of a composition-- and sometimes the end result is a totally different patch or played on a different instrument.
I'm usually cataloguing ideas for my own music. But sometimes I'll write something that sounds cinematic or like a generic rock riff-- and I'll write "generic southern rock riff Taxi #36 or whatever in the title in voice memos. Then I guess the idea is, next time I see a Taxi listing for that genre I'll have a bunch of ideas ready to go. Because you do get a sense over time of certain types of cues and library tracks which are the perennial meat-and-potatoes of listings. So it's not exactly "write to listing"-- but rather catch the ideas as they come out and corral the ones you know will be right for the standard listings that always come and go.
And at the end of every voice memo I record myself identifying whatever patch or preset chain I'm playing through, which guitar, which pickup I'm on so it's documented and I can get that sound again.
Right now I spend very little time at my DAW but I probably record at least 3-10 new riffs/ideas/melodies/snippets of vocals over the course of the average day on my phone. I don't concern myself with how "good" it is to others. It sharpens me.
I dream music sometimes but never can wake up and remember much of it. Two nights ago was the rare time I had a song pop into my dream and I woke up and grabbed my phone and was able to sing two verses of it into my voice memos. I later sat down at the keys and put the chords and rhythm beneath it and worked on it more. Then when I was getting cleaned up before work I had to stop and run naked out of the shower dripping wet TWICE (trying not so slip and fall )so I could write down the third and fourth verses. I feel bad for regular people who are not artists-- they don't have these types of fun moments in their lives.
I haven't submitted anything to Taxi for a while since I've been taking this breather. I feel like I've gotten a better sense of how to separate out my own artistic material from the stuff that is not my style but maybe great for a certain type of cue. I may start getting back into this whole thing but I haven't decided for sure. I think some of us have stare at the landscape a little longer than others until we understand the right balance between "forest" and "trees". If I get back into Taxi and it works, cool. If I want to move into other directions with my musical endeavors, also cool. But truthfully, the effort that I put into Taxi has made me an infinitely better musician and I no longer need any outside validation.
So I would say to the OP--
-- You might try the original 75 Hard Challenge. You will enter a new level of self-discipline and motivation if you can pull it off. It will carry over into everything you want to do afterward . Do it by the book before doing a modified version.
--get a friend or family member and use them to help you build accountability-- both with discipline challenges and with music or whatever.
--record as many ideas as you can into something like Voice Memos and catalogue them. So much faster than going into the DAW each time-- granted it's not going to be broadcast quality but I find I develop my ideas much better this way.
You have to catch those raindrops, snowflakes whatever. Last week I spent several days working on a really cool track that was way outside of my stylistic zone-- and one of my favorite things I've worked on-- but I almost decided from the beginning that the original riff wasn't even worth recording and I was like "why tf am I recording this riff?"
--remember that this Taxi thing is a very specific type of business opportunity portal/springboard. Don't take it personally when you get a return or the screener seems to get your vibe all wrong. You have to have your own musical vision/personality that you do for yourself and you put that in a different place in your soul than when you are submitting some track for a listing. Like I said, I don't know if Taxi is a perfect fit for me in terms of getting forwards/deals/placements-- but it's been that unbeatable catalyst for me-- because that's what I decided to make it. Maybe now that I've taken time away and thought about things differently I might start working on listings again.
I can't tell you how many songs/compositions I have now-- things which had their origins in a Taxi listing. This music is an important part of me-- regardless if anybody else hears it or likes it or it ever makes a cent. Whatever is happening with me and music, I like it. It may not end up as the soundtrack of some dumbass TV show, but it's the soundtrack to a life.
Cheers,
Ted
