"Overthinking" is the biggest limitation that a band can place upon themselves. Here's why bands should focus on progress, not perfection.

Jimmy Mulvihill Bally Studios Founder January 2025.

Summary : No band was ever held back because they only had one microphone recording each guitar, but thousands of bands have been held back because nobody heard their music. That should be your band's number #1 focus - to get your music heard, even if it's in an imperfect recording.

At Bally Studios we know first hand how hard it can be at the grassroots of the music industry. We've not only played in bands ourselves, we've also seen 2000+ bands pass through our doors over the years. We've seen the bands that had a fair amount of potential who were able to squeeze every last drop out of it, and we've seen the bands that overthought every single decision they faced, who squandered their potential. There is no other part of a band's career that is as vitally important as the early stages, it's this period that the entire success of the band is built on. Very few bands have reached the stage of mainstream success without having to claw their way through those first steps in the grassroots of the music industry first. Without that initial burst of progress, all of the subsequent success will never happen.

By far and away the two biggest factors that ever stops a band from reaching it's potential are: a) Failing to actually record their music. b) Stagnation, a lack of momentum. So long as you are able to avoid these two pitfalls, most of the other problems that bands run into can be avoided.

Momentum.

​The most important milestone that any band will ever reach is to get to the stage where they have 100 dedicated fans who are able to come to one gig every month, and who will buy their records. Once that goal is achieved, everything else can build from there. That will be enough for them to build a solid reputation within the local live scene industry, and once that happens, the band no longer needs to do the heavy lifting in promoting their band, their fans can help them.

It's the difference between the band being a drain on it's member's finances, and becoming financially self-sufficient from selling 100 tickets for one self promoted gig per month. After all, if you have 100 fans, you no longer need to use promoters, you can cut out the middleman and hire the venue directly. It's the difference between a band releasing new music and having a flurry of positive feedback on the morning of release, filing the band members with enthusiasm, energy and hope; or releasing it to no response at all, which can be enough to cause the band members to question whether there is any point at all in continuing? It's the difference between playing a gig to a small room full of people who love your music and will sing your songs back to you, or playing those songs to an empty room. If those same fans also are happy to pay £5 for a 5-song mini-album, then the band can afford to put £250-£500 into a recording project and expect to cover most, if not all of their costs. From this point onwards, the band is self-sustaining.

Make no mistake, there is nothing that will transform a band's career more than gaining those first 100 fans, but that won't happen without you recording your music. However, most bands are caught in a bind where they aren't making any income from their music, yet they lack the disposable income needed to invest the £3,000 to £5,000 into the band that they feel they need to record their album to it's full potential. They try to save up the money, and months or even years pass by, but somehow the pot of money needed to make that record never fills as quickly as it needs to. Guitar strings need to be bought, drum heads need to be replaced, rehearsals paid for, the costs keep on coming in.

The band finds it hard to get outside investment, as record labels don't know what they're meant to be investing in. How can they decide whether the band's music is good enough to invest in them, if they can't hear it? They could come to your live show, sure; but again, how do they know what live shows to go to without hearing the band's music first? What are they meant to be doing, randomly walking around music venues in the hope of finding a band that they like? If there were any record labels with such a haphazard approach to signing bands, you wouldn't want to be signing to them.

The band can't get the better support slots that established bands are offering, the very gigs where they could be discovered by a wider audience, again due to their lack of recorded music. If they were able to record their album themselves, they could gain the attention and help from the people who can help promote the band to the level of success where they could earn the rewards, that would then enable them to re-record that album again with the fruits of their initial success. It's not a choice between a compromised recording or a perfect recording: instead a compromised recording can be the springboard that the band needs to work towards that perfect recording.

If you were to make a list of people who bands should be focused on impressing at this level, it would include music journalists, established bands, a fanbase that is happy to follow an unsigned band around the grassroots circuit, independent record labels, promoters and music festival promoters. These are EXACTLY the demographics that don't need an overproduced album. The average joe in the street who listens to Kiss FM and who chats around the water fountain at work about how they've "discovered" an up and coming act from last Friday's "Later.... with Jools Holland", yes, they need the song to be recorded and mixed to a level that will require thousands of pounds of investment. They need the song to be gift wrapped and handed to them on a silver platter before they can recognise it's qualities. However, impressing that market is not the immediate aim of most bands. It may be the long term aim, but not the immediate aim.

If bands can get to that 100 fan benchmark, then everything else can build from there. Yet at the same time bands are saving up £5,000+ to record their album, writing to major record labels to get signed, making huge music videos to put to YouTube, all of the things that they see their favourite bands do. For those that take this route, in essence the band is focusing on stage 5 of the band, and ignoring stages 1-4. They are focusing on tomorrow's targets, whilst neglecting todays.

Why?

Cherry picking success stories.

The above scenario is only a reality for a certain demographic of band, and whether or not a band follows this path will depends on who they take their inspiration from. We don't need to sell the benefits of 8-track recording to punk bands - they instinctually get it. Hardcore, metal and blues bands also don't see this recording set-up as a stepping stone in their career. They see it for what it is: a way to get their music on record that allows for enough flexibility that their members' individual attributes can shine through. These bands take the view that if the recording is good enough to get people to come to their gigs, then it's achieved it's potential. It's a means to an end. So long as they get more out of it than they put in, it will have been worth it.

By contrast, there are many bands that take their inspiration from bands that have had huge levels of success. Bands like Oasis, Coldplay, U2, Muse, etc. As a general rule, the bands that take their inspiration from these bands are inspired not only by the band's music, but by the band's ability to connect that music to such a massive audience. They see these bands' level of success, decide that they want their band to be successful too, and then work backwards, researching how these bands became successful and aiming to replicate their approach.

In doing so, many bands fall into the trap of "Survivorship bias", and this is by far and away one of the biggest reasons that bands squander their potential. The wikipedia explanation of this way of thinking is as follows:

"Survivorship bias, or survival bias, is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process, while overlooking those that did not. This can lead to incorrect conclusions because of incomplete data."

Such an approach can be a death knell to their band, since it implies that they have complete control over their destiny, and that they need to bridge that gap between their current level of success, and that of the band's that inspire them, alone. It suggests that they will be responsible for all of that success themselves, without getting any help at all from any outside sources.

They could instead focus on recording their music themselves in order to get their first 100 fans, and in doing so capture the attention of a reputable music festival and an established music publication, who in turn will help them to gain their next 500 fans, and in doing so capture the attention of a touring band who will be happy to take the band on their tour in the hope that adding your band as support slot can boost their ticket sales from 3,000 to 3,500. Once the band can make short bursts of progress, success can feed into more success. The people who are attracted by small levels of success can help your band reach bigger levels of success. The financial rewards of approaching a music venue and asking to hire it on a Tuesday, on the basis of bringing 100 fans to your gig who are happy to pay £6-£8 a ticket, with the venue keeping the bar and paying for the doorman, and with the band keeping the door take and paying for the sound engineer, can easily bring in £400+ profit per gig, enough to pay for 8 rehearsals a month. T-shirts made for £5 each can sell for £12-£15. Albums pressed for £1.50 can be sold for £5, and if you sold them to your 100 fans, it would generate the £350 profit needed to record it. At this stage you are playing gigs to 100 people, and generating the income needed to pay for all of your rehearsals, to record all of your music, with extra additional revenue streams that the band can use to reinvest back into the band. All from 100 fans.

Yet this isn't the band's focus. Instead they are trying to skips the parts that don't get written about - the months or even years or rehearsing in sweaty rehearsal studios, writing 50+ songs before they write their first good one, recording demos, getting written about in underground fanzines. You know - the things that successful bands reminisce about in later years. They see that successful bands "recorded great songs in a great recording studio, and become successful" , and as they want to become success too, they follow the same approach, yet forget about the steps that the other bands took.

Without rehearsing every week they will undo all of the progress made so far, so they have to commit to weekly rehearsals. They also need to play gigs, because that's what bands do, but playing in front of a handfull of people each month is starting to wear thin. By now they've been playing the same songs for 1-2 years, and are getting frustrated at their lack of progress. Their stubborness in wanting to stick to the "start a band > write great songs > get discovered > record legendary debut album" path to success is starting to cause tensions within the band. They can't make progress because they haven't recorded their music, yet they haven't recorded their music because due to their lack of progress. Their insistence that they strike gold on those first recording sessions, which they hope will be the very recordings that creates the band's success, have become the weight around their neck that is folding them back.

A band is meant to be a source of joy for its members, but the lack of progress is causing the band to stagnate a little. When each of them have to put in £1,000 plus into the recording fund, suddenly it seems less of a break from the harsh reality of life that it was when they formed the band. Even if they do save up the money for those sessions, considering how much they've invested into them, failure is not an option. This only ratchets up the pressure even more. Fewer people are coming to their shows than they deserve because their pool of friends and work colleagues has been exhausted, and it's hard to sell tickets to people you don't know when they don't know what your band sounds like. Suddenly the band is caught in a vicious cycle where they are not generating enough income to raise the funds to make a proper recording, and they lack the proper recording needed to attract enough attention to raise more funds.

Here's how it works in the music industry. Let's say there are 1000 bands that play gigs. One of them, Oasis, forms the band, writes loads of great songs, plays gigs on the underground scene, blags a slot on a line-up at King Tuts Wah-Wah Club in Scotland, get spotted by Creation boss Alan McGhee who signs them to his label, and the band goes on to becoming one of the biggest bands that the UK has ever produced.

Many bands now make the mistake of thinking that as Oasis's fortunes were transformed after writing great songs and being discovered by a record label boss, therefore all they need to do is to write great songs, and play as many gigs as possible, in the hope of being seen by a record label boss too, with them hopefully replicating the same success that the Gallagher brothers enjoyed. They see what Oasis did, copy it, and hope to replicate their success. Out of all 1000 bands, Oasis have been picked out as the example that should be followed, and the other 999 bands are ignored. The only reason that Oasis are picked out is specifically because they were successful. No-one takes their inspiration from a band that failed, so the bands that failed are ignored.

If you are going to base your decisions as to how your band can become successful by singling out one band that became successful, and then ignoring the other 999 bands that never became successful, but who may have been following the exact same approach as Oasis, then it would be as logical a fallacy as deciding that you had a 100% chance of winning the lottery, based on the fact that when you Googled "get rich lottery", and you only get results of people getting rich from winning the lottery. Of course you do, because that's what you've searched for. If you search for success stories, you'll find them. No-one is writing newspaper articles about people not winning the lottery, because it's not an exciting story. Likewise, if you only base your approach on reading success stories of famous bands, then you're forgetting about all of the other bands that followed the exact same approach, yet have never become successful. In doing so, you are following the textbook definition of 'Survivorship Bias.'

Yet this is what many bands do. They set themselves unrealistic expectations and follow examples set by other bands, without realising that they are cherry picking examples of routes that bands took to success that are so rare, that they can realistically be dismissed as an anomaly. In many cases the band in question were so good that they became a success despite the decisions that they made in their formative years, as opposed to because of them. Some bands are just so good that even if they make bad decision after bad decision, they will still become successful, their songs were that good. Such an occurrence is rare, but they happen. However, that doesn't mean that these examples should be followed by other bands hoping to replicate that band's success.

Sadly such examples are so unrepresentative of what is possible in the music industry that they place unfair burdens on the bands that follow them. If the band had been realistic and followed the examples of other successful bands who took many years to become successful, such as Pulp, who released their first successful album in 1994, 16 years after they first formed, or Radiohead, whose debut album 'Pablo Honey' was released 8 years after their formation, or The Flaming Lips, who reached a career high of #108 in the album charts with "Transmissions from the Satellite Heart" 10 years after first forming, with their first mainstream success also coming 16 years into their career, then they would have more patience. If they were to compare their band's progress to these other bands, then they could rest assured that the slow and steady progress that they were making is well within the expected range of other bands, but instead they ignore the stories of hardship, they failed to heed the warnings of the bands that came before them, and they focus on the rare success stories that are very much the exception. They see their band playing small gigs, they see the band that inspired them enjoy huge success, and they focus on the gap between these bands, and how they can bridge it. They focus on a strategy that worked for other bands, as opposed to working out what strategy will work for them. Focus on what works for your band, not what worked for others.

Breaking the cycle.

At some point the band needs to make a recording that may not be perfect, but that is good enough to demonstrate the quality that the band has, a recording which will be enough to convince people to come to their live shows, or a producer to take the band under their wing and record their album with no money down, with the producer agreeing to take a percentage of the band's income from the album sales. Enough for an established band to take them on tour with them, or a respected music publication to review the band. Enough for a record label to sign them, or a festival to give them a good slot. In all of these examples, an 8-track recording that showcases 80% of the band's potential will do the job.

Perspective.

If you record your music, but the snare drum lacks that extra bit of the power that you want it to have on your debut record, your work colleagues are not going to say, "I really love their songs, but I'm not going to go to their gig next week. I listened to their new EP, and the snare drum lacks that little bit of 6kHz snap and hard knee compression that would make it both cut through the mix properly, and remain consistent in the mix."

A record label is not going to say, "wow, this band's songwriting is brilliant, and the band is so tight! Alas, they have only recorded the song with four microphones on the drum kit, so for that reason we'll have to pass....."

A journalist has never listened to a band's demo and said, "the energy and the quality of the song are incredible, and the lyrics are great too, but at the same time the bass guitar does not have enough compression on it, and the frequencies are slightly clashing with the floor tom, so for that reason I'm going to downgrade it from a positive review to a negative review...."

Of course not. In all of these instances, the overriding factor that will determine how successful a band is, is in the quality of the songwriting and the performance that the band gives from recording it. The instruments need to be balanced, as otherwise how can the listener hear those qualities? But at the same time, the listening environment that the songs are heard in will limit the music more than the limitations of the studio will. In truth, there's no point in recording your music with £2,000 Neumann microphones if the music is going to be listened to on the Piccadilly line of the London Underground on a £10 pair of JVC headphones. Sadly, this is how a lot of music gets listened to today. An 8-track recording will reach that 8/10 level, and that's all it needs to do. That will be enough to get the attention of the people that you need to help you. In doing so, it will achieve it's aim.

By making that recording, you have solved today's problem today - your audience can hear how great your band is - and you can leave tomorrow problems until tomorrow: It's a marathon, not a sprint. Don't try to solve all of your problems at once. Just tackle the biggest two that will limit your band - people not hearing your music, and a lack of momentum. There is no bigger step to success than to let people know how great your band's music is, and to start to get small scale success for your band. Your first recording doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be good enough to show the qualities that the band has. For example, here are some examples of demos from bands that later went on to huge levels of success. Believe it or not, the first two examples below, from Coldplay and Keane, were recorded at Bally Studios, no less! (Back when it was named Sync City)

Here are some other recordings that were made by bands on shoestring budgets, that pale in comparison to their future recordings, yet they all helped the band attract the attention of someone who was able to help them, to get them radio play, or reviews in independent music magazines. They allowed the people who attended their gigs to go away with some music of the band to listen to. The band's music was heard, and it gave them the drive and confidence to move forward. Most of these recordings were done on 8 track recorders.

Are these recordings as good as the subsequent recordings were? Some people will claim that they are, but most people would recognise their limitations. But that's also beside the point, as they were all good enough to help the bands that recorded them to connect their music with a wider audience, and to become successful, which is surely the whole point, isn't it? Those songs were good enough to impress 100+ people who liked them enough to attend their early shows, and to capture the attention of people within the industry that could help the band. As soon as those recordings did their job they were pushed to one side and forgotten, with new versions of those songs being recorded and promoted. Less than 1% of the people who listen to these songs listen to those versions, but that doesn't mean that the recordings are any less important. They helped the bands to build their audience, and that is all that matters. I'm not saying that commercial success is the barometer that a band should put above all else, but at the same time, what's the point in making great music if no-one is able to listen to it? That cannot happen without those songs being recorded first, so that must be your first objective.

Progress, not perfection.

By all means, if you somehow manage to make that perfect recording on your first attempt, then great, fantastic! It happens at times, it's rare, but it happens. If, however, you make a recording that is good enough to really demonstrate how great the song is, whilst still being flawed, the qualities that it has will push the band forward more than it's limitations will hold it back. It could even be argued that recording a demo that falls slightly short of the band's full potential will actually help you to achieve each of these objectives to a greater level, with your potential fan base, record labels and music journalists recognising that the band is still at their formative stage. There's no more exciting time to start to take notice of a band than at the stage where their potential is raw, unrefined and improving with each release. There are few more exciting opportunities in the music industry than being able to draw a line in the sand at a moment in time, and to say that you were able to help a band at the point before their potential had been realised. Any band that is holding back on promoting their music for fear of exposing it's imperfections, fails to understand the appeal that such factors have. At that stage of a band's career your audience is not expecting perfection, and it's likely that they don't even want it.

History looks kindly on the bands that embrace the unknown.

The music industry is a tug of war between music, and industry. Music is about creativity and freedom, but more than anything, it's about "the unknown." The more than bands embrace "the unknown," the more they will prosper. The height of The Beatles commercial success was in April 1964 when they reached positions #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5 in the US Billboard Charts in the same week with songs that were great, but that stuck to a formula based around 12 bar blues, skiffle, and inoffensive love songs. Within a year they were using fuzz pedals on the bass and sitars, experimenting with backwards tape loops and were using string quartets while 3/4 of the band sat out the studio session. It doesn't make much business-sense to reach a level of commercial success that still - to this day - is unmatched, and to then disassemble the formula behind it and reinvent the band, yet that is what The Beatles did. They chose creative freedom over the tried and tested path to commercial success, and in doing so they escaped the fate that most of their contemporaries faced, by remaining not only relevant long after the 1960s ended, but the foundation that commercial success in modern music is based on.

The Beatles could have reasoned that their set formula was bringing them huge success, so why change it? That would have continued the short term commercial success that they were enjoying at the time, (with the band first arriving in the USA 2 months earlier), but it is never the path to artistic success. They knew that bands cannot repeat the same tried and tested formula if they want to truly become a great band - yet this is exactly the trap that many bands today follow. They follow the tried and tested formula of success that other bands have laid out for them. By focusing on the "known", a band can see what worked for another band, and replicate it. They can see which record labels helped other bands that were similar in style to them, and approach them. Such an approach can be somewhat rewarding at times, but at the same time it's based around focusing on what other bands were able to achieve, and then aiming to replicate the same success for your band, despite the fact that the band that you take your inspiration from will have likely had vastly different circumstances, as well as ignoring the hundreds or thousands of other bands may have made those same decisions and taken the same route, yet failed. The bands that failed have been ignored, and those that succeeded are held us as examples to follow. 'Survivorship Bias.'

The Common Denominator.

If you were really looking to replicate another band's success, then as obvious as it sounds the only factor that truly unites all successful bands was their ability to make their music connect with their audience, whether it was their intended audience or not, or whether it was in the way that they intended. Regardless of how they did it, their music connected with an audience to a level that allowed the band to focus on creating music full time, which in turn allowed them to develop their craft. Ultimately, so long as that connection is made, then it's irrelevant how it happens, it only matters that it does, and that cannot happen without that music being recorded.

There is no bigger factor that prevents a band from becoming successful than them not recording their music. If music cannot be heard, then it cannot be loved, and it cannot attract the attention of the people that you need to help you, yet despite this, many bands wait years before recording their music. They spend those years promoting something that doesn't exist. They put the horse before the cart. They allow "perfect" to be the enemy of "progress."

What is it that holds bands back from recording their music themselves?

​The biggest reason why bands wait before recording their music is based on them trying to retain as much control over their band as possible. Up until the point that they record that music, it has the potential to be as perfect as possible, yet the second that it's committed to magnetic code, it's flaws are set in stone, and that is a scary thought for most bands. They would rather hold onto the potential that the band has, even at the risk of it being ultimately unrealised, rather than face the reality of the diminished results that they may get from recording their music independently. Subconsciously they want to control every aspect of their band, like the mother of a newborn baby who refuses to allow it to leave her sight. The band is so precious to them that they want to have total control over every aspect of it. The idea of releasing music that only reaches that 80% standard is an affront to their potential, so they decide to spend another 2 years striving to reach that 10/10 standard that their music deserves. In doing so, they feel that they have the best interests of the band at heart.

At the same time, the biggest limitation that the band has is in their inability to fully control their own destiny. If they truly believed that they had total control over their own success, then there would be no reason why bands would be so desperate for the best support slots, to get those great reviews in popular magazines, to get that investment from a record label that can not only give the band the opportunity to focus on their music full time, but that can also open doors to the band that the band could never open themselves. The fact that these are the biggest targets that band's aim for is an admission of how vital outside factors are in a band's progress, and key to that is the ability for other people to contribute towards a band's success, whether that be as a result of their love of the band's music, and them wishing to see it connect with a many other people as possible, or from them wanting to personally profit from it.

The biggest factor that holds bands back from recording their own music is their inability to control what happens to it once it leaves their control, and their inability to predict what will happen when the music is released. They would rather wait 2 more years, in the hope of recording the perfect 12 track album, rather than rush release a strong but flawed 5-song EP. It's understandable, since there are few projects that will ever be as precious to the people involved in it than being in a band. It's a creative outlet, a source of future employment for it's members, it's a regulator for it's members emotions, a form of expression, a surrogate family, an identity, and a way to even create a potential legacy that extends past the years that they will remain on this mortal coil. Unconsciously, many bands may feel that as the band is so precious to them, therefore they need to exert as much control over the band as possible, for fear of what will happen if they relax their grip of control and allow the success of the band to find it's own feet. What if the guitar is a tiny bit too loud, and it holds the band back? What if they release the album and no-one likes it? What if....... But that's the whole point. Ultimately there's no way to know what will happen, but that's also not a bad thing. The bands that succeed learn to embrace that step into the unknown, knowing that success may sometimes be bestowed on the band by outside forces, but that it will always be built on the quality of the music. Without that music being heard, that cannot happen. Once the music is recorded and released, from that moment onward there is no way that the band will have full control over their destiny. Bands have spent 10+ years making music full time to a limited audience, only to enjoy a huge surge of success off of the back of their music being used in a commercial. While some will lament and even criticise the means at which the band was able to find their audience, with the suggestion that the band only became successful due to the 'finger on the scale' that comes from a major company paying the band to, essentially, promote the band's music, ultimately the band will have found their new audience, in which case the ends will have justified the means. Success is hard enough to come by as it is, without demanding to dictate the terms of that success.

Let go of that steely grip. Record your music. Send it into the outside world and let it stand on it's own feet. Take a chance and see what happens. Let your audience iron out the imperfections within the music. Trust them to see past its blemishes. Trust that the slight imperfections in a £300 recording will hold your band back less than you think. Trust that the qualities of the song are good enough to shine through on such a recording. Trust that "good enough" is good enough for you.

Put it this way: the below video is from a 4 hour recording session in which 5 songs were recorded. It has minimal mixing, and was recorded completely live, with no overdubs. It shows the band as they are - and in the music industry, being seen is 99% of the battle.

​So long as enough people are able to see your band and hear your music, eventually all of the other issues that bands have will resolve themselves.

Solve today's problems today, and leave tomorrow's problems for tomorrow. Make that recording, and let people hear it.