The big plan

Planning is an essential skill for anybody who wants to get something done. This can be anything from writing a song, or recording a whole album, or even putting up a live show. Every musician can benefit his or her carreer greatly by following this kind of process. It is simple and takes little extra time, but saves a lot of time later on.

If you have been following the previous posts on this blog, you will remember how I embarked on this exercise of planning. First I identified the problem. Then I deided on a mission, and then I broke the problem down into detail tasks. Today, I will show you how I visualized my plan on a simple spreadsheet.

Spreadsheets are handy for this kind of task, as most people have Excel already on their computers, or can download many alternatives for free.

To visualize the plan, I start by listing all the songs that I need to do more work on for each project. Then I added a column named YTD, meaning Year To Date. Here I make a note for everything that is already done on each song. For reference, my legend is shown at the bottom of the spreadsheet, i.e. W for words, M for melody, B for backtracks and V for vocals.

In the first column under YTD, I added a WM down for each song that the words and melody is written. A WMB means that the words, melody and backtrack is done. And an added V would mean the vocals are recorded as well. I changed the color of all the cells with work finished to green. Green means good.

Now, I add more columns; one extra column for each week. Next I start to plan time slots for every task. Let's look at an example.

First song listed under The exile is Singing comes cheap. Under the YTD column I have WM, meaning the words and melody is written, and I marked it green. Every song needs to have words, melody, backtracks and vocals, i.e. I still need to plan backtracks and vocals for this song. I added a B under the next column with a heading of 13/3/10. This means I have to finish the backtracks (B) before 2013, March, the 10th. Next I added the V under the next column, meaning then that I want to finish the vocals by March the 17th.

Then I moved on to the next song and plan a time slot for all the Bs and Vs, and so on. When I get to the songs where nothing is done yet, I added slots for the words and music in one week (WM). Preferably we should not put the B and V in the same week, to give the vocalists more time to record the tracks.

I estmate that each task will take about 5 hours to complete. In a normal week, where I work a normal 40 hour week for my day job, I can fit in another 20 hours at nights to work on this project. That means I must plan such that I do not have more than 4 tasks in the same week's column. When planning time slots, always start with projects where the time slots are dependant on other commitments. I started with this plan around the Rock fable project, as that also involve some collaborations with other people.

After finishing the whole grid, I ended up with the possibility of 20 songs that will be finished and recorded by June 16th. That will be pretty good going, and most likely a bit optimistic. That is more songs than most artists or bands record in two years, and they do it full-time. Ambitious, but let's give it a shot.

So, we can summarize by saying our objective is to record 20 songs by the middle of this year.

As we go along, we may sometimes fall behind in our plan, or at other times, we may get ahead. We will keep on updating our schedule every week by marking things in red when we fall behind, or in green as we finish things off.

Keep on watching this blog to see how I progress.

 

Planning to get more done

Today we will start to do some serious planning. If you remember, we started this all when I realized that I have a problem. My problem is that I have too much to do and not getting anything done. Having too much to do and not finishng anything is just another form of procrastination. This is a very typical problem that millions of people all over the world suffer from. Lucky for me, there is a solution. It is called planning.

Before I draw up my plan of action, I have to establish the extend of what I have to plan for. Let's call this my scope. I start to define the scope first by giving it a mission statement. This is simply putting into words what I want to accomplish; into a single generic sentence.

So, what is my mission? I want to write songs and I want to record them. To be more specific, I want to write and record songs for the musical shows I am working on. Now, that sounds like a mission to me. Let me refine that into some generic words that I can put up on a signboard.

My mission is to write songs and make recordings of the songs from the musical shows I write.

Let's read that again. Not bad. Now we can start to get creative.

Now that I know what I am doing, I can start to break that down further into more detail. I am talking about musical shows I write. I have a long list of those, in various states of completion. Let's look at that list again:

1) The exile

One concept album with 16 songs dne. Nine more songs written (words and melody) to be recorded.

2) Wake not the dead

One song recorded. Three sng, words and melodies written and needs to be recorded. Nineteen more needs words, melodies, and recordings.

3) The nightingale

One song recorded. Five more, words and melodies are written and needs recordings. Twenty six more needs words, melodies, and recordings.

4) Ghost town

One song recorded. One more with words and melody. Total extend unknown.

5) Christification (bet you did not know about that one?)

Book and story in progress, but no songs yet.

6) Denise (this is just single songs)

Two songs submitted.

7) Rock fable

One song with words and melodies written. Backtracks recorded. Needs vocals. Many more to go.

 

I will leave the other activities like Protea Stage Productions off this list for now. Rock fable includes full production responsibilities (album and stage show). Butbfor the purposemof this excercize, I will listbonly the initial songs required for the promo.

Next, let's see what work needs to be done for each song. Every song needs lyrcs (or words) and a melody. Then we need to record backing tracks (guitars, drums, piano, etc.) and then we will submit it for a vocalist to do his or her job. Often it needs second lead vocals and backing vocals as well. After vocals are recorded, we spend some time on mixing it together and then upload it for general public consumption.

So many works in progress, and so much work that needs to be done on each song. We will have to prioritize. After reviewng the list, I decided to prioritized Rock fable, The exile and Wake not the dead at the top of the list. We can get quickest results with them. If we see how much we can get done on these few, and then tackle the others.

The next step is to list all the work that needs to be done. For this I will use a simple spreadsheet like the one shown here. A spreadsheet is easy to use and a very effective tool. In the next blog post I will explain my spreadsheet in detail.

 

 

 

So much to do - better planning will get more done

In a post earlier I gave a list of all the projects I am working on, which are all work-in-progress. One question that I received was: why is nothing finished yet?

This week I will break my normal Friday-Sunday-Wednesday blog schedule and fit an extra Monday blog in as well. With so many things just going along, nothing ever gets finished. There are some things that have clear deadlines and time schedules. For the rest, if I continue on the way I am going now, I might end up retiring in 10 years with all those projects still in progress.

<rant warning> Another incident on Sunday made me think a little bit. I was really excited to get invilved in a certain project. At our last meeting, a certain person went off for about half an hour about how she needs help and we must get involved. Exited about getting the opportunity to be involved, I pledged my support. She gave me the time and address where I should meet her on Sunday. Well, I waited for almost an hour at the designated place and time without anybody rocking up. Not only did I waste that hour waiting for her, but I had to let my family down who wanted me to spend the Sunday with them. (It just so happen to be my birthday comming up next week and it is family tradition to take everybody to a restaurant for such occation). Later on I found out she gave me the wrong time and I was an hour too early. This is her project and I can not do it without her and her team, so I can not exactly say stuff her and go on on my own. Well, I am still a bit miffed about wasting my time and be disrespected like that. </rant over>

Ok, so this got me thinking. I have so much to do, but I do not get anything finished becauce I am doing too much at a time. I do not have clear goals. If I set myself specific goals and specific timelines for each project, I would be able to get to a point where I can move on to the next project. I have to take control by myself and not be dependant on others who disrespect my time.Unfortunately nobody works in a vacuum, and I will have to rely on other people from time to time, but then at least I must make sure I am in control and if people let me down, I can just move on and get somebody else.

So, let's set priorities. Anybody have any suggestions on what I should finish first?

There is the Exile. What can we do to finish this up? First I must keep up the blog posts about all the songs. That is easy. That part is going fine. I just keep on posting in my spare time. I do not want to change the schedule there. Next there is the question about the songs that were not included in the concept album recording. Some people did ask questions about that and it was suggested that I record them as well. Great idea. I will put a plan together for that.

Next we have Wake not the dead. There are a few songs written, but not yet recorded. Great songs, great story, and besides, I love horrors. Let's add this one to the list as well. Then the Rock fabel. One song in development waiting for feedback. This project is in collaboration with Anne, and I think we must give it some priority as well. Not only do I hate letting other people down, but I can greatly benefit from this both in networking and in exposure. Then we have The nightingale. Some songs written, one recorded. Then there is ghost town. One song recorded. Great song by the way and definitely a candidate for my greatest hits album one day.

Mmm. See what is happening here. Too many things. I must not fall in the same trap. Let's prioritize. Who's got any ideas what should come first? Leave your comments below in the cmments section, or email me, or phone me, or use telepathy to get your ideas accross to me.

By the middle of this week I will come up with some priorities and a rough plan.

 

So much to do in so little time

For somebody who is doing this while holding a pretty busy daytime job, I have far too many projects in progress.

First there is The exile. This is my main project which we are now in the process of pitching to producers.

Next there is Ghost town, a rock concert musical in development.

Then I have Wake not the dead, the horror musical. This is a musical propper, and if all goes well, I will record the songs by sometimes middel of this year.

Last on the list of musicals is A story of a nightingale. Many of the songs are written.

For all of these musicals, at least one, and sometimes many, demo songs are recorded.

Next in progress, on the production side is the farce, Bottoms up, by the Protea Stage Productions. My involvement here is more on the hand-of-all-trades and whatever-I-can-find-to-do-to-look-like-I-am-helping nature. The show will go on stage in May 2013. Later this year, around October, we will put a musical up, so watch this space. I will be much more involved in that production.

On the songwriting side, I am pitching songs for 2 projects. One I am especially keen for. This will probably turn into a 50's /Jim Steinman style rock show. The other project is pure adapting of some of my songs for a singer who plan to record an album this year.

So, if all these projects just keep moving forward and if my work gets accepted, then this year will be a very busy year. Keep watching this space.