My Jamuary Attempt: What I Learned Making Beat Videos
For 2025, one of my new year’s resolutions was to commit more to my music. One way I planned to do so was by attempting #Jamuary (making a post every day for the month showcasing you making music). This commitment wasn’t simply to make more music but also commit to myself as a musician, albeit a hobbyist. What does that mean? To me, it meant sharing my music, defining my image, becoming more involved in like-minded communities, in addition to making more music. The problem with these conceptual type goals is that they don’t lend themselves very well to measurement. How do you quantify your image? Does passively scrolling Boom-Bap Subreddits constitute community? If I published just one more beat to SoundCloud this year is that really more? What exactly is my brand? Hopefully you can start to understand how these abstract questions can quickly became overwhelming. Simply put, I didn’t know where, or how, to start working on my 2025 music aspirations. At the behest of a few close friends, I just did. Thankfully I did, because through the process, I learned the answers to questions I asked myself in preparation to starting #Jamuary. These answers are what I’d like to share with you. Again, these are just my personal findings and I hope somebody can find a bit of take away from it.
The Philosophical Lessons
Probably the most valuable lesson I learned from my attempt was that - The rules can only be imposed by you, so make them what you want. Typical Jamuary videos are of musicians/producers, tinkering away in their studios and they can vary drastically in quality. They are mostly live in nature and serve to capture the ephemeral and spontaneous feel of the music making post. My issues with this were; I don’t have a “good looking” home studio, I didn’t like shaky phone camera videos and poor sound quality, and I didn’t want to make a social post as a box-checking exercise. I wanted to put out a quality video with quality music. This is when I started making my own rules. My posts were going to be a balance of good video, audio, and musical content - of course this is all subjective. That’s where the idea of writing a simple beat and putting together a short video showing me building out the elements of the beat. I decided I wasn’t making “live” videos. This is where the second rule came in; you see what you hear. There are some benefits to this, as I’ll outline later. Now, I didn’t sit down and have a definitive epiphany when coming up with my rules. These were ideas I subconsciously had that slowly crystallized as the days went on.
Now that I had my rules and a loose vision for what I was going to make, and ultimately post, I had to actually put hammer to nails and do it! The sense of being overwhelmed starting to creep back in but through luck, or otherwise, I was able to make my first video on January 1st. Being a holiday, I had quite a bit of time on my hands. With the advantage of time, I focused at first on just making music. This was epiphany number two so-to-speak. Do one thing at a time. In this case it was writing the music that I’d later make a video for. But the philosophy is applicable throughout the whole process. Write your chord progression first, then melody/counter melody, then drums, then bass, and so on. The revelation here was the fading feeling of being overwhelmed. Terms like “in the zone” or “flow state” come to mind - ultimately, I wasn’t concerned about making a video or failing on day one of this challenge…that would come a bit later. By compartmentalizing the different stages of this production you can maximize your productivity while also being in that state of play. A tool I borrowed from corporate life to help with this was my Bullet Journal. With the date and project name at the top of the page, I’d jot down any ideas that come to me for the beat. It gets the idea out of, and declutters, your mind while also giving you a roadmap of what to work on next. Short and specific tends to work better for me. “Filtered break beat-bar 4”, “round Juno bass accents”, or “shimmer descending piano line-turnaround” are examples of the directions I’ll make for myself. This tool also helps with the planning and recording of the video. The Bullet Journal is something I’ve been using at work for about 5 years now and has really helped me increase my productivity - simply put - it helps me get A LOT done in an organized manner.
That being said, I found early on that I was doing too much. Which leads me to my next lesson learned…keep it simple. “Jamuary” if anything, is an exercise in discipline and consistency - with a built in shot-clock. 24 hours to write, arrange, record, and edit may not be an insurmountable task, but when you factor the rest of your daily obligations (work, fitness, introspection, family) it can quickly become daunting - cue aforementioned anxiety and overwhelmingness. Like packing a suitcase for vacation, you have to decide what is going with you and what you can live without while away. Keeping my beats simple meant I could focus on getting the few elements crafted to a certain standard. A 45 to 60 second Reel/Short doesn’t need a full song structure with bridges, pre-choruses, key modulations, or breakdowns. Drums, bass, chord progression, and a melody is all you really need. Even at a micro level the “keep it simple” mantra helps to push the creative process forward. It doesn’t matter if it’s just a 2 bar drum pattern that keeps looping.The drums serve to add a rhythmic foundation to your music. It’s fine that you don’t have a full orchestral arrangement. A simple pad or piano can convey your chord progression just as effectively. Doubling your main melody with a different instrument in a higher register with moving thirds doesn’t make the core melody better! I’m not advocating for deliberately limiting your creative potential rather, keeping your goals, the context of your goals, and the intended audience in mind. In the context of “Jamuary” I was making 45-60 second videos for Instagram which would most likely be viewed on a phone. This philosophy also helped in the video compartment. Yes more sophisticated editing, a variety of camera angles, and animated graphics can help with viewer retention and engagement - but we can’t get there if the creative process is never-ending (both musically and visually). Which leads me to what may have been the hardest lesson learned.
Commit to failing. Not to be pessimistic, but this a lesson best learned early. You are not going to write a hit song everyday. Your videos will initially look like low budget college student film, you won’t get a ton of views let alone engagement, your productivity will probably slow down, and you WILL miss. That’s perfectly fine! One week into my “Jamuary” experiment I caught a nasty cold…the same day I was having technical issues. Try as I might, I did not get a video done that day. This was supposed to be the glorious start of me bringing my art into a public forum - a consistent and reliable contributor to the boom-bap realm of social media - and I failed in the first week! Not to worry, remember, we make and impose our own rules. I was back to it the next day. Then at the end of week two; my dad fell ill, I was inundated with work, and my bad habits caught up to me. Ultimately I made it 17 days into “Jamaury” before I failed again. It wasn’t until February 5th before I posted another video. This is just failing one way. Some others include; poorly framed shots where I’m not centred, inconsistent lighting and camera angles, poor lighting and awful shadows, leaving the metronome on for half the video, transition edits that make a 6th grader’s “What I did on summer break” presentations look like Scorsese. Factor in low views, next to no viewer engagement and it can start feeling like it’s not worth continuing. The reason why I said “commit to failing” is because you can not get better or improve without committing. Like any skill, art, or discipline, practice makes perfect. And committing to your discipline is the only way to improve. Commit to learning more about your art (in this case it was the video side of beat videos). Commit to fixing the mistakes from yesterday. Commit to pushing yourself past your points of failure (i.e. me missing dates). Commit to learning your gear/software. I suppose a more optimistic approach would be keep at it. The key is to be critical about your art as a type of work or offering. Noting areas of opportunity gives you something to work on for the next attempt.
Speaking of “art as work” this was the first time where music has felt like a job for me - and I absolutely hated it! For background, I’ve been involved with music in some fashion for over 30 years. Starting with piano lessons at age 5, school bands from 6th grade, marching and concert bands all throughout high school, beat making as a teenager and playing acoustic guitar at college open mics, making and playing music is an inseparable part of my identity. Art and work need to be separate was the most peculiar lesson I’ve learned on this journey. Deadlines and forced creativity seem incongruent to me. I couldn’t imagine music in whatever fashion being my job. I can’t imagine being a session musician being paid to play someone else’s vision. I’d hate if I was the mix engineer for a band/artist whose music I didn’t like. I’d hate to be pressured to submit a “hit single/record” to a label by a certain date. Again, I may sound like a pessimist here, but I actually believe there is a strong positive take away from this lesson. Music to me is a cathartic form of introspection. It’s an activity to help me lead a more rounded and balanced life. I deal with clients and numbers all day at work. I exercise and box 5 days a week, I enjoy a few beers on the weekends with friends, and I enjoy being alone with my headphones on making music - and I really enjoy how these activities balance themselves, and myself, out. The analogy, for me, would be; playing around in excel spreadsheets during my downtime would be akin to going to a studio to work on music form 9am to 5pm.
Lastly, I truly learned the lesson of community while attempting “Jamuary” and building my social media presence. Historically, I’ve mined forums and Facebook groups pulling tips & tricks from others, enjoying their music from a far, or just observed anonymously to get a pulse on the world of music in general. In the past few months I’ve started to engage more frequently, provide my own tips & tricks, lend feedback, and also post my own music. Committing to my music, in terms and sharing and building my brand, meant I also had to commit to my communities. You cannot get anything for nothing, and if your goal is to build a social media presence and have your music heard, you have to do the same for others. Admittedly, I could be more consistent with engaging online and it’s something I want to be more mindful of moving forward. I’m not a Maschine or Logic Pro expert, but if there’s an opportunity to help someone getting started, it’s an opportunity worth taking. Aside from the quid pro quo, it helps to develop buy-in and maybe a listen or a view down the road. Another positive result of becoming more involved online is the amount of great music I’ve found that I would not have otherwise. This music in turns inspires me to make more music. The positive feedback loop of being actively and genuinely engaged with your communities is priceless. Thank you!
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