 If you talk to any experienced musician who's been around the block, one of the things they will always tell you is the thing they wished they knew earlier was they needed to do what the song wants and not what is fun to play. I am sure you've heard this in countless interviews, but what it really means in practice can be hard to figure out. After all, if you're supposed to play what your emotions tell you to and follow your heart in music, how are you not following your heart when you're rocking out and playing something really fun? In this video I'm going to discuss how to balance what's fun to play with making a great song. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon and this is Museformation. One of the biggest struggles for a musician who's skilled at their instrument is to gain a perspective on what's fun to play isn't always what's enjoyable to listen to. Anyone who's made a rock record has probably struggled with a guitarist wanting to show how fast they can play a scale, a singer who wants to show off their range, or a drummer trying to play a fill that stops the song on its tracks. Just as the ridiculous scales you hear in American Idol auditions, or rappers who do 20 voice imitations per song, rarely make their way to the masses, recognizing that showing off the coolest part you can play is often the opposite of what's emotionally enjoyable to listen to. To me, this is an easily definable choice, since the ego is what enjoys the challenge of playing a difficult scale by craving that ego gratification when others see a difficult part played in a song, but what stops the part from being worthy of inclusion in the song is when others give you the reaction that it detracts from the emotion of the song. While I don't believe every time someone says that a part is being played for the musician's own enjoyment is always true, if numerous collaborators agree then it's important to take that statement as a huge warning. Some of the best music made is what's both fun and challenging as a musician yet still emotionally powerful. Figure out the alignment between the two is the key to satisfying your desires as a musician and what's enjoyable to listen to. Editing out parts that don't enhance a song's emotion or that favor egotistical showing off is crucial to making resonant music people want to listen to. I'm not saying that every song that's musically complex or fun to play is unlistable, it fed anything I feel the opposite, which is reflected in my record collection of nerdy progressive music. The chord voicings or odd time signature mathematics could still have an emotional impact, but emotional content needs to come first. Prioritizing emotion before complex composition is what separates the Dillinger escape plan, Apex Twin, Animal Collective, Kanye West, Yes, Battles, Cashmere Cat, Dialect, Radio Ed, and countless other successful musicians who push the envelope from every other progressive musician stuck in their hometown with no fans that no one wants to hear. They've learned how to take their massive understanding of composition to reinforce an emotional sentiment they're trying to convey. With every weird chord or strange treatment they come up with for their music they make sure it's reinforcing the emotion they're trying to convey within a song. The single most important skill in actualizing your music is to trust how you react so you can alter the songs to be aligned with your emotion that your heart's trying to convey. This is also the most primitive skill you have as a musician that everyone is born with, but at some point we mess it up as our heads get in the way and try to tell us more complex things are better instead of following our heart and listening to what our emotions want to hear. When listeners hear a song that really resonates with them they don't know how a musician was guided to get there. They're unaware that a musician has an emotional target in mind, a feeling they're trying to convey that's easy for them to make decisions based on when an element feels either more or less similar to that emotion. This practice is what allows musicians to make decisions that make songs more resonant. The common confusion for this is seeing this as a metaphor of the head being what thinks about complex musical theory type things and the heart being what thinks about the emotion of music. The head has a place in music so it shouldn't be seen as evil though. It can figure out the concepts and the traits we find interesting in music. It gives us some of our best ideas along with organizing our musical ideas but we need to use our heart to check the head's contributions. This is a constant balance of creating music that's listenable so the path you take is a large part of who you are. The head comes up with fantastic ideas but without the heart there to check that these ideas have an emotional resonance your songs will suffer from working well on paper but falling flat emotionally when people hear them. This is most evident in those who know music theory and every rule not to break who then make music that it's as boring as can be to every listener who encounters it. Odds are you've encountered the musician who can tell you how amazing their music is because they use all organic instruments or they compose on sheet paper. Despite their breadth of knowledge their music is uninspiring of any emotion that yields a song you never want to hear again. It has no feeling and sounds exactly like what it is someone showing off their musical ideas and not their emotions. They're too obsessed with the methods used instead of the way it feels when hearing it back. We're reviewing the sheet music of their work the chords all work in a genius concept but even to their ear it doesn't work as well as it should when played back. They ignore their heart so their music falls flat on ears that wish they were deaf when they hear it. When a musician learns too much theory they often turn off their heart's instincts they assume that what they're doing is correct since it's abiding by the rules just like a coloring book. This unchecked imitation turns off the emotional reaction within a musician. If a person they admire sings like this instead of experimenting to find an emotional texture they use preconceived ideas or rules instead of the checking to make sure it reinforces an emotion they wish to convey. Ideas, concepts, treatments, and theories are all necessary to figure out how to further an emotion but need an emotional check to see that they are further the resonance of a song. It's important to understand that music focused on the head isn't even resonant to the creators themselves. They're proud they made a work that makes sense on paper or is impressive to other musicians or is fun to play or is challenged to their physical abilities instead of what's right for the song giving it maximum resonance. They don't even consider that a song should have an emotion since they think of music in terms of acrobatic ability or an achievement in impressing other musicians. Every inexperienced producer has the story of the core that shouldn't work in theory but sounds amazing in context or a song that breaks all the rules and music theory but is the best one in an artist's catalog. There's also the common scenario of a song that no matter how hard you try to produce it never has the emotional impact of the demo. Musicians self sabotage their songs by allowing the head to run wild with the ideas they believe add depth but when unchecked by emotion destroy their songs resonance. These decisions must be made by letting the heart choose what's emotionally resonant not just interesting in theory. Letting your emotions tell you if concepts, ideas, theory and rules are working in your song is the practice of putting the heart first. Early on in my life I didn't understand this emotional concept at all. I was constantly confused why some songs sounded so powerful while others didn't. I heard my favorite artists talk about their heart or music that speaks to their soul. I rolled my eyes and thought they should stop talking about a bunch of Archie gibberish garbage. It took me years of rebelling against any saying that sounded new age or hippy to get that this was real tangible concept here that has nothing to do with souls or crystals. But instead the practice of finding what's your passion about and trying to turn it into a song is what works in every single genre of music. Once I understood this concept it became obvious which songs are made from emotional inspiration versus those that are made to impress others. I hope you take some time to think about this subject so you can further understand what you should be doing musically. Am I missing anything? Is there any other way you would have done this? I need to know your questions and what no one else is telling you since I want to answer them so leave them in the comments since I answer every comment in every post. I hope you liked this video and if you did please like, subscribe and get notified and I'm going to be breaking down the concepts in this video along with how to promote your music and how to make songs you're happy with in the future. I have a Facebook group linked below that is only helpful information. No playlist or con artists only artists having helpful discussions allowed. If you want to learn more about me work on a record with me or check out any of my books podcasts or anything else I do go to jessecanon.com or at jessecanon.com on all the socials. One last thing there's two playlists here one is on how to grow your fan base from zero to ten thousand fans and the other is on how you make songs you're more happy with or you can hit the subscribe button below and stay tuned as I have tons of tips for musicians.