Find a chance to break from the trends when you see a creative opportunity.

The recording stage of the process is critical because that's when we actually get to make music. Sometimes small changes make a big difference in getting the results you want.

Unplug to rediscover your song’s core vibe. It's not uncommon to spend a lot of time and effort building out a full production of a song only to scrap it all and go back to its roots. We can become unable to hear that the song was already there, and it was working quite well before we buried it underneath too many well-intended ideas.

Songwriters love their music for different reasons than the casual listener does, so how can we make music worth loving?

Here are 5 musical routines you can implement throughout this new year to help generate and finish more of your song ideas while staying better prepared to record and release them to your audience.

While we have plenty of musical heroes we look up to, there isn't any superhero who fights crime with their guitar or drum kit, is there? Maybe there should be, but until we think of one I'll present these lessons learned from some of our favorite superheroes and apply them to the music-making process.

When you listen back to your recorded performances, you'll quickly find that recording what you play can push you to develop new skills and sharpen the ones you already have to improve how you play to grow as a musician. If you want to get better-sounding recordings you have to practice recording your music.

You can be much more proactive about how your fans will hear, remember, and share your music simply by providing them with a decent recording to view, download or stream. This recording can come in several flavors and you can certainly scale your recording efforts to match your budget and immediate goals.

If you hear the call to make new music it's a gift, and you should answer that call in the best way you can. Once bitten, you'll find that your decision-making is often influenced by the depth of your passion for music-making.

When you take your music seriously, you are showing your audience that you take them seriously too. You're saying that the music is worth sharing because it meant something special to you and that you want it to mean something special to them as well.