Blog

Photo by Soundtrap on Unsplash

 

In music production, sitting down and creating a draft of an entire track can take a surprisingly short amount of time. In one quick session, you might write an arrangement with a basic beat, work on a drop or chorus, and spin it all out into a reasonable arrangement that makes things flow together interestingly. But then, putting the “final touches” on that track may take multiple entire sessions to get through.

 

As it turns out, the same thing tends to happen in every creative field – not just music production. 20% of the time goes into 80% of the result, but then the remaining 80% of your effort is spent on creating the final 20% of the finished piece.

 

And it’s not just creative fields that are subject to the 80/20 rule. As a producer, 80% of your listens may come from just 20% of your audience. 20% of all authors are responsible for 80% of all book sales, and according to the UNDP, 83% of the world’s income is earned by the richest 20%.

 

In this article, we’ll discuss The 80/20 Rule – also known as the Pareto Principle – as it applies to music production. Our aim here is to explore how you might use these hidden mechanics behind everything to help you make better decisions and manage your time and effort more effectively.

 

 

The Pareto Principle in music production

Have you encountered the 80/20 rule in your studio life before? It’s not uncommon for a producer to get bogged down in the details, spending a lot of their time on minor tasks like EQing a hi-hat, choosing a kick drum, or “perfectly” compressing a drum buss.

 

These activities in themselves do matter, but it can feel frustrating if they take the same amount of time as putting together an entire track. Why should the most consequential work take so little time, and the little details occupy four times that amount?

 

Credit: Jesman Fabio on Unsplash

It’s not an immutable law

While the 80/20 Rule seems to crop up everywhere, it would be wrong to expect to see it everywhere, and a mistake to rely on it in every situation. Knowing that the Pareto Principle is probably in operation is useful to help plan ways to work more efficiently, though.

 

Super-productivity vs “The Trap”

Assuming that the 80/20 Rule applies to all your future studio sessions, let’s look at it from a slightly different perspective. Consider this:

 

Some jobs are worthwhile and should have most effort put into them. Others are less efficient and should be avoided or maximized as quickly as possible before they turn into traps.

 

In other words, if your track will find its form as a short draft within a single session, make sure that’s the session in which you have the most focus and drive on-tap. Once this work is done, all that's left is “The Trap”.

 

With the meat of the song worked out, you need to remember that you’re entering the danger zone – this is where you’ll get tempted to spend too long on the minor details of the work, and you should be aware of your habits and be prepared to stop them from taking over.

 

 

How does the 80/20 Rule show up in music production?

One well-trodden meme in music production is the idea of endlessly scrolling through kicks or other samples until you find the right one. This can be made simpler with tools like Loopcloud and Loopcloud Drum, where the ability to ‘Find Similar Sounds’ is a right-click menu away. It can also be avoided altogether. Sometimes, settling for less and using a placeholder, and giving yourself a defined, time-limited time in which to select a sound can be the best strategy.

 

In arranging a piece of music, you’ll tend to find that it’s the hook of the song that will grab the most attention and establish the music’s sonic identity more than other elements. While there’s a lot of interest to win from your listeners by dropping elements in and out of a track, getting the central hook right may be the most crucial job in arrangement.

 

Credit: Panagiotis Falcos on Unsplash

 

How about the 80/20 Rule in mixing? Here, your gain staging, panning and EQ may take you most of the way to making your song sound its best – but your multiband sidechain compression tricks may not land as well with the target listener.

 

Using the Pareto Principle to your advantage

Now that you’re aware of the 80/20 Rule and some examples of it at work, half the battle is won – being aware of these facts will help you to work with them, and not get carried away with the 80 over the 20. 

 

Those little details should still be attended to, and will often make the standout difference between a good track and a bad one – but you may choose to put less effort into them in the future.

 

Here are some more specific ways you can work with the Pareto Principle to help make yourself a better producer.

 

Use presets when it’s appropriate

We wouldn’t usually advocate for you using only unedited synth presets in every single song, but as a placeholder, a synth preset will help establish a track and give you something to build around. For a more unique flavour, you can Make Synth Presets Your Own in a few simple ways.

 

There are also presets in effects plugins. While using these may not be the right approach in mixing, when in sound design mode, using a creative preset on an EQ or finding an interesting reverb sound can be done quickly with presets.

A mixing engineer or a production partner?

What if you could do your 20% and then hand off a song to another person in order to do theirs? Working in collaboration with a production partner might mean that your unproductive 80% is their 20%, making you both more productive in total.

 

Choose your sounds faster with Loopcloud

Get access to millions of samples, all connected to your DAW to audition in time and in key with your track. With Loopcloud, you can concentrate on the most effective parts of sample selection and arrangement. Thanks to our tagged catalogue of sounds from every genre, and Similar Sounds search, it’s all just a couple of clicks away.