 In our last video on finding your voice we talked about figuring out who you are and what your influences can bring to you. But oftentimes knowing what you hate and particularly the trends you hate in music and want to rebel against can be just as inspiring. In this video I'm going to talk about how you find your voice as a musician by considering what you don't like in music. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon and this is Museformation. This week I want to talk about how your not to do list is just as important as your to do list. Richard David Fidger who's made some of my favorite movies like Fight Club, Gone Girl and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has said it's much more important to know what he doesn't want to do as opposed to what he does want to do. Knowing what you never want to do can be less restricting, allowing you to be open to finding new inspirations and what you want to do, especially when you're starting off finding your musical voice. This allows the heart to do what it wants emotionally. I've done this list for my productions and keep it in a google doc to revisit from time to time. Here's some of my don't do rules for record production so you can get an idea what this list looks like. Don't make decisions out of expediency, trace the root of the problem and give it consideration. Too much bass or treble is unacceptable, a balance needs to occur. Words should be pronounced so a listener without a lyric sheet can understand every word even in the fastest punk song sung with the worst Boston accent. No vocals should stick out as being more tuned than others. There should be consistency to the pitch intonation throughout a song. Bass should not be an afterthought, it should always be what expands or retracts the emotion of the song while working off the vocal as much as possible. Bass that's not optimized or gets buried in a mix is a lost opportunity. Every song should have one tone that's distinct to that song so when a listener hears it they feel like that's the only time they've heard that tone. Having both a to do list and a not to do list is a common practice for many musicians even if they keep them private. All play exposed their list on an episode of 60 minutes where they showed off a list they had on their practice room wall. David Byrne said the talking heads made restrictions on what they would do. Like not imitating black singers, not out of racism though, he found it inauthentic since he was a white art school kid. No light shows and no saying oh baby or other rock cliches. One of Ramon's rules was no guitar solos which was ironically broken on their biggest hit I Want to Be Sedated. This also teaches a great lesson which is that you can always reconsider these rules later if you evolve but they're important to have in the moment as you feel passionate about what you never want to do. One of the traits of a great artist is to notice when you don't like a trend and develop a rebellion against it. If I had my way I'd never put a ballad on a punk record and if there were ballads I wanted to release I'd do a record of only ballads. I love records that have a single mood across the whole record, not what Robert Smith of the Curewax called roller coaster records. The inclusion of ballads amongst more happy sounding songs takes me out of the mood of a record which bothers me. On my own records I rebel against this by keeping a consistent emotion throughout the record. Because it's authentic and not done out of opportunism it often leads to some of the best art in the world. Figure out what you don't want to do artistically and let that guide you. That's it. Am I missing anything? Is there any 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. I hope you liked this video and if you did please like and subscribe and get notified for my future videos since I'm going to be breaking down the concepts in this video along with tons of others on promoting your music and how to make music you're more happy with. As well I have a Facebook group that's linked below that has only helpful information. No one tried to sell you anything, playlist or con artist, only helpful information for musicians looking to be better themselves. If you want to learn more about me, make a record with me or check out any of my books, podcasts or anything else I do, head to jesseycanon.com or at jesseycanon.com on any of the socials. Thanks for watching. One last thing, if you liked this video, there's two playlists here with tons more videos that you'll probably enjoy. One's about how you promote your music and the other's about how you make songs you're happy with. Otherwise, you can hit the subscribe button here to see the rest of my videos. Thanks so much for watching.