The thing we tend to avoid most in the studio is usually the thing we need to practice most.
And I believe it’s a pattern worth paying attention to, because for a lot of us avoidance feels rational in the moment.
If melodies aren’t your strength, you lean on your drums.
If arrangement feels overwhelming, you stay in the loop phase.
You begin to build a workflow around your gaps instead of through them.
Over time, this gap doesn’t close, it becomes part of your identity. Maybe even a part of your signature sound and we begin to rationalize it with thoughts such as:
“I’m not really a melody person.”
“Arrangement is just not my thing.”
“I’ll just draw in MIDI notes instead of learning the keys.”
But that’s not always a personality trait, that’s just a skill you haven’t repeated enough yet. And this can be extremely limiting especially if there are skills within music creation you aspire to develop but you tend to put off.
Here’s the cycle we fall into when we become avoidant to our innate creative curiosities:
We never accumulate enough reps to get comfortable which keeps us in a phase where it feels hard and uncertain and frustrating.
We interpret that feeling as evidence that we’re not good at it, rather than evidence that we’re simply early in the process.
But the reality is that this discomfort isn’t a signal to stop, it’s a signal that learning is happening.
The Principle of Creative Yield applies directly here.
At least from my own personal experience, the number of bad melodies you write is directly proportional to the number of good ones you eventually produce. There’s simply no shortcut around the volume.
You don’t get better at melodies by writing one every few months when you feel brave enough, you get better by writing twenty in a week and letting most of them be genuinely bad.
This is what “face your weaknesses head on” actually means in practice.
It’s not about forcing yourself through pain, it’s about trusting that the path to mastery runs directly through the awkward, uncomfortable reps.
Every session where you sit down to write lyrics and hate everything you come up with is still a session where your brain is building the neural patterns that make the next session slightly easier.
So here’s a simple reframe worth keeping:
Whatever you’ve been quietly avoiding, that’s your next focus.
Not your whole session or a complete overhaul of your workflow. Just dedicate a small window, 10 minutes, one constraint, no judgment on the output, where you deliberately work the weak muscle.
Write the melody.
Sketch the arrangement.
Draft the lyrics.
Let them be rough, that’s the point…
The artists who seem “naturally gifted” usually aren’t, they just spent more time in the uncomfortable zone than everyone else.
But many times, from the outside, what we perceive as talent is just a skill that’s been developed for showing up even if it didn’t feel good yet.
— Hermes
P.S. I built Song Ritual for exactly this kind of work.
The Ritual System lets you set a constraint, start a session timer, and just do the reps without overthinking or stalling on the “how do I get started” part of the creative process. So if you've been avoiding a skill, or your music in general it's a great proven tool to keep you accountable and more intentional. If it clicks for you, subscribing to a paid account is also the most direct way to support my writing and what I'm building here. Also it’s currently 47% off since it’s still in beta…
Learn more about Song Ritual by clicking the button below.
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