II: letting go of external pressures

how to protect your process from comparison, expectation, and noise.

written by still fades

Your voice is yours. That’s enough.

In the world we live in, it’s easy to lose the thread.

Social media scrolls by. Numbers fly at you from every angle. Everyone else seems to be building faster, better, cleaner – releasing music, getting featured, growing audiences. And somewhere in that noise, it’s all too easy to forget what kind of music you wanted to make in the first place.

External pressures don’t always come with volume – they arrive quietly, in the form of doubt.

“Should it sound more like theirs?”

“Should I be chasing that label / playlist / audience?”

“How do I improve my social media following?”

“Am I falling behind?”

“Why doesn’t anyone like my music?”

This post is an exploration of how to gently let go of those questions – or at least, how to keep them from steering the wheel.

I should also mention that these are things that have worked for me in the past – they might not work for you, and that’s fine. We’re all different. But hopefully this helps someone in some way.

1. Don’t measure your worth in numbers.

Streams, followers, likes, income – we’re conditioned to track everything. And sure, metrics have their place. They can give us direction, feedback, even reward. But they should never become the compass for your creativity.

If your energy goes into chasing validation, you’re building a hollow version of yourself. A version that can only feel successful when the numbers are rising.

But here’s the shift:

If you focus on your voice – your sound, your intent, your process – the rest will either follow… or it won’t. And either way, you won’t lose.

You won’t feel like you’ve failed, because your definition of success wasn’t built on someone else’s scoreboard.

2. Genre doesn’t define you.

You don’t need to follow the rules of ambient music. Or lo-fi. Or cinematic scoring. Or insert your favourite genre.

You don’t need granular FX, a tape hiss at -18dB, or a field recording of a leaf falling in Norway just because you saw someone else do it.

Let genre guide you if it helps. But remember: genre is a shelf, not a cage. There are so many shelves – don’t just take from one.

Use what you love. Break what doesn’t serve you.

Some of the most powerful tracks come from moments when the artist didn’t sound like anyone else – when they let go of the “should” and leaned into the strange, imperfect feeling they actually wanted.

3. “I need it to sound like X.”

This might be the most common trap of all. I’ve fallen for this one multiple times in the past and become stuck in an endless loop.

We want to be good. We want our work to hold up against the artists we admire.

So we reach for their tone, their mix, their structure. We mimic without meaning to.

And suddenly, your track – the one you started with intention – becomes someone else’s echo.

Try catching that moment. Pause and ask yourself:

“What am I really trying to say here? How can I be myself?”

You might still pull inspiration from others. But if you protect your core idea, your voice will come through in the end. The rougher, weirder, and more real version is usually the one that stays with people longest.

4. Balance time pressure and laziness.

There’s a strange tension between doing the work and being kind to yourself.

We’re told that great music takes time – but also that we should be releasing more, showing up more, posting constantly.

And on the flip side, we sometimes fall into creative avoidance and call it “giving ourselves space.”

So how do you know the difference?

Laziness feels passive. You scroll, wait, fidget.

Time pressure feels sharp. You rush, push, grind.

But healthy creative momentum feels like flow – where the act of making is its own reward.

Give yourself a boundary if it helps, but make sure you’re not mistaking burnout for apathy. Some of your best work might happen when you softly push yourself forward without force.

5. External pressure vs. external inspiration

Take a moment to think about how these 2 different feelings – pressure and inspiration – make you feel.

Pressure makes you shrink.

Inspiration makes you open.

Not everything external is bad – in fact, influences are often what help us grow. But you have to listen to your body’s response to what you’re absorbing.

If it makes you anxious, ashamed, or frozen: it’s negative pressure.

If it makes you want to do something: it’s influence.

Learn to tell the difference. It’s one of the most powerful creative tools you’ll ever develop.

When you’re inspired, you might create with ease – you feel pulled toward the track instead of pushing yourself into it. The buzz is there. You lose time in the best way.

But not all pressure is negative. Some forms of it can actually help to fuel inspiration.

A deadline you set for yourself.

A creative constraint, like using only one instrument.

The kind of pressure that narrows your choices, so you can go deeper instead of wider.

This is focused pressure – it sharpens your intent. It gives you just enough urgency to break past indecision.

Negative pressure, on the other hand, feels heavy. It doesn’t move you – it drains you. It sounds like:

“I need to keep up.”

“This isn’t good enough.”

“What will people think?”

Where focused pressure builds momentum, negative pressure breeds self-doubt and creative paralysis.

Learning to recognize the difference – and step away from the voices that don’t serve your process – is one of the most valuable skills an artist can develop.

One pushes you into a particular motion.

The other pulls you away from yourself.

Positive pressure on the other hand, can be allowing yourself to do what you love, but enclosed within a focused pressure. Strip away everything – and ask yourself, in this moment, what would you LOVE to do? Do that thing for an hour. Give yourself a deadline. You may feel the pull of other pressures, both negative and focused, but give your inner passion some space and lean onto the positive. This is positive pressure.

6. Write down what you want to say.

This is simple, but it works: before you start your next project, write a single sentence that describes what you want the music to do.

It can be abstract or precise:

“I want this to feel like falling asleep on a train at dusk.”

“I want this to be a single chord stretched until it breathes.”

Then build around that vision. Tunnel-vision it. Let everything else fall away.

Only bring in hints of influence and focused pressure – not negative pressure.

The more clearly you define your intention, the less likely you are to chase someone else’s.

But don’t allow yourself to get wrapped up in any failures – if you write it down and it doesn’t work, you go again…

7. Learn to embrace failure.

It’s not possible to create something great every time you sit down to make music. You’re eventually going to finish something you hate. You’ll export a track that felt magical in the moment, and a week later it won’t move you anymore. We’ve all been there.

But that’s fine. This is how it’s supposed to work.

Think about NASA. They failed dozens of launches before anything even left the atmosphere. But every failure taught them something new – how to improve systems, what they were missing etc.

Music is the same. What feels like a creative misstep now might be exactly what shapes your sound six months from today.

Your creative failures are not flaws – they’re fuel. Every track or idea teaches you something. Keep making. Keep learning.

8. Don’t let others’ opinions reshape your curiosity into insecurity.

Whether it’s subtle comments from family, silence from friends, or pressure from peers – don’t let someone else’s perception of your music shape how you value it. Don’t let them also mould your curiosity into a ‘normal’ and ‘accepted’ shape.

They’re not inside your process.

They don’t feel what you felt when you made it.

It’s okay to share what you love even if others don’t get it. Make room for advice, but learn to adjust if it makes you feel that negative pressure.

Make space for that kind of bravery – it’s part of being an artist.

Growing up into my late teens, I grew up in a semi-musical environment where a particular kind of music was made culturally ‘acceptable’ – and when I started to ask questions, the people in my circle didn’t understand why I would question ‘what works’. It essentially felt like they would say ‘We do it this way, just because it feels appropriate and we don’t know any better’.

Perhaps I was just a rebellious teenager to them who ‘just doesn’t get it’, but I truly believe if I hadn’t of believed in my curiosity, I wouldn’t be where I am – I’d be stuck in a loop or regurgitating musical formulas that have been copied for years. I stuck out like a sore thumb, but I enjoyed bucking the trend.

Be curious. Be weird. Be brave. Curiosity is empowering. Trust it and protect it. If you let others mould it, it may become insecurity.

9. Success is personal. Fame isn’t the only path.

Just because society tells us that fame and money is a measure of success doesn’t mean it has to be your version of success.

I have no doubt that someone like popular artist* is immensely talented – but in my world, they are not my definition of success, as I haven’t contributed to their story, and their music doesn’t shape mine. They are the part of someone else’s story.

And that’s the point.

Think about that for a second: we all like something different. We all connect to different voices. So who’s to say someone out there isn’t waiting to connect with yours – not the polished, pleasing, social-media-ready version, but the real one?

You might be their success.

The sound they needed.

The artist they love because they see themselves in your work.

That connection – even with just one person – can matter more than a million empty plays.

*naming no names here to avoid influencing how this affects you – but any popular artist will work. Write down an artist name there you think of as incredibly successful, but that you don’t listen to and re-read it. It might help you.

10. You don’t need ‘X’ to make meaningful music.

As modern musicians and producers, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you need that instrument or one piece of equipment to unlock your sound – a new guitar pedal, that shiny new synth, a better reverb, a cleaner interface.

We tell ourselves it’ll make things easier. Or more inspiring. Or more professional.

But the truth is: most of the time, it’s just avoidance in disguise.

You don’t need a wall of boutique pedals or a modular rig to make honest work. Some of the best music has been made on an old unloved guitar, a basic DAW, a $30 field recorder, and a dusty laptop with the fan humming in the background.

You could make something beautiful right now – with what you already have.

A phone mic and a reverb plugin can hold more feeling than $5,000 of gear that keeps you waiting.

Yes, hardware can be fun. Yes, it can spark ideas. But don’t let it become a reason not to start.

Make now. Not after you get the next piece of equipment. Not after the next paycheck. Now – with what’s in front of you. Record this moment and don’t wait around – because who knows what the future holds and how it might change how you feel.

Capture now.

11. “It doesn’t sound good enough.”

That’s okay. It’s not supposed to – not at first.

You’re in motion. You’re learning.

Every producer you admire once thought the same thing about their early work.

Mixing, mastering, balance – these are all skills, not a fixed standard you need to hit before you’re allowed to release something.

Focus on what the track says, not just how shiny it sounds.

💬 Final Thought:

Your success isn’t measured by how great your tracks sound, the people around you or the current social norms.

It’s measured by how you feel about your music.

When your voice is true to you, it resonates. People follow that. Even if they don’t – it’s true.

Let the world talk.

Make your sound.