Your First Track Doesn’t Need to Be Perfect (Just Finished)

Hey 👋

Let me ask you something:
How many “almost finished” tracks are sitting on your hard drive right now?
If you’re like most early-stage producers — probably a bunch.

Perfectionism is the Enemy of Progress

There’s this trap a lot of artists fall into:

“I’ll release this once I tweak the kick a little more.”
“I’m not ready yet — it’s not quite there.”
“I just need to fix the second chorus…”

We tell ourselves we’re “polishing,” but what we’re often doing is avoiding.
Avoiding judgement. Avoiding sharing. Avoiding growth.

But here’s the truth:

You don’t get better by perfecting. You get better by finishing.

🎯 Finished > Perfect

In the early stages of your music-making journey, your goal isn’t to make a masterpiece.
Your goal is to build the muscle of finishing music.

Every time you go from idea → arrangement → mix → DONE, you:

  • Learn something new

  • Identify what you’d do differently next time

  • Build creative momentum

  • Gain confidence in your process

If you stay stuck in “tweak mode,” you never reach those lessons.

🗻 The Quantity Game (Spoiler: It’s the Fastest Way to Quality)

There’s a famous story from a photography class:
A professor split the class in two. One group was graded on a single perfect photo. The other was graded on how many photos they took.

Guess what?
The quantity group ended up producing the best photos because they iterated, failed, learned, and improved. Music is the same.

The more tracks you finish, the faster your quality improves.

🛠️ A Challenge for You

If this hit home, try this:

Finish one full track this week.

  • Set a hard deadline (ex: 5 days from now)

  • Don’t get stuck mixing for 10 hours

  • Don’t second-guess the genre, hook, or snare

  • Just finish it.

Then start the next one.

💬 Final Thought

The goal isn’t to make perfect music.
The goal is to keep making music and through that, your sound evolves.

You can't edit or grow what you never finish.
Start. Finish. Repeat.

You’ve got this!

Till next time,

Billy

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Season 4 of Making Music: Putting it all together