How To Finish An Album This 2026 (My Monthly Song Sorting System)

Hermes of the Sound + Creativity Substack shares his mathematical approach to creativity and productivity, a replicable formula for any creative looking to output more in 2026.

How To Finish An Album This 2026 (My Monthly Song Sorting System)

By Hermes of Sound + Creativity

I’m planning to make at least 60 new songs this year and I’ll be the first to admit most of them will be bad.

Not mediocre.

Not “needs work.”

Actually embarrassingly bad.

The kind of bad where you listen back to and wonder what you were thinking. The kind of songs that make you cringe a little and you promise yourself to never show anyone.

Even though I know this to be a fact, I’m completely fine with it.

Because if there’s a lesson I’ve learned from the last 10 years of making music, it’s this:

The producers who finish the most music aren’t the ones making the best ideas, they’re the ones making the most ideas.

However, most of us approach making music backwards (as I did for years).

We sit down at our DAW with the pressure of making something perfect. Every idea has to be “the one”, the song that finally breaks through, the one that defines our sound, or the one which reaches a production level that proves we’re a legitimate music creator.

So we start a new song, it feels promising for about twenty minutes and finally the doubt starts to creep in.

Is this good?

Is this original enough?

Does this sound professional?

We tweak, second-guess and compare it to our musical heroes’ work. Eventually, we save the project file and tell ourselves we’ll come back to it when inspiration strikes.

Except we never do.

So the problem isn’t lack of talent or ideas, the problem is we don’t have a system for managing the gap between quantity and quality. We’re trying to make every seed grow into a tree, when what we should be doing is planting a forest. Because just as it happens in nature, not every seed is destined to grow into a towering tree.

The Mathematical Approach To Musical Creativity

The breakthrough came to me when I stopped thinking about music production as an art problem and started thinking about it as a math problem.

I know this can feel counter-intuitive at first but bare with me. I promise that thinking about your musical output as a math problem will not suck the soul or magic out of making music…

In fact, for me it did exactly the opposite, it actually helped me create my best music.

Here’s the equation I was trying to solve:

I want to have an album’s worth of finished songs by the end of this year. Let’s say that’s 10 songs I’m genuinely proud of.

Songs that represent my sound, my growth, and my artistic vision.

Now, here’s the question most producers never ask:

How many ideas do I need to start in order to finish with 10 great ones?

If you’re like me some years ago, you’d say, “Ten. I’ll make ten ideas and finish all of them and make them the best they can be.”

But experience and learning about how other prolific artists create has taught me that’s not how creativity works.

• The Beatles performed live over 1,200 times before achieving international fame.
• Michael Jackson wrote more than 100 songs for each album, ultimately keeping only the best 10-12 and discarding the rest.
• Prince released 39 studio albums in his lifetime, and left behind a vast collection of unreleased work that could easily fill numerous more albums for years to come.

Because when you only have ten ideas, each one carries enormous weight. Each one has to be (or become) perfect. Each one has to justify the time you’re spending on it. This pressure builds over time and it becomes paralyzing.

I realized this when I was at the peak of my biggest 2 year long creative block in 2020.

During this creatively dark period of my life is where I understood that my output problem wasn’t about discipline or skill, it was about my own expectations.

I was expecting every idea to be worth finishing, but that’s not realistic at all. That’s not how any prolific creator works.

So I began to do the math differently (One slightly inspired by Michael Jackson’s approach above).

If I want 10 songs I’m proud of by the end of the year, and I’m being honest about my hit rate, I probably need to start 60 ideas.

Yes, six zero.

That means accepting that 50 of them won’t make the cut. That most of what I create will be scrapped. That the path to 10 great songs, it’s simply paved with 50 mediocre ones.

This felt counterintuitive at first.

It even felt wrong, like a waste of creative energy and time. But then I thought about it differently, a new perspective dawned on me:

What if those 50 “bad” songs aren’t waste?

What if they’re the cost of finding the 10 good ones?

What if they’re not failures but they’re the stepping stones to get to the good ones?

That’s when it clicked for me.

How Accepting Bad Music Unlocks Great Music (The Principle Of Creative Yield Explained)

Now the goal was crystalized in my mind’s eye:

Create more than you need, because most won’t be great.

It’s just like panning for gold. You don’t expect every scoop of dirt to contain gold flakes instead you expect to sift through a lot of mud, a lot of rocks, a lot of nothing. But ultimately you keep sifting because you know that somewhere in all that mess there’s something valuable you can extract.

The gold is there, you just have to process enough raw material to find it.

“The function of the overwhelming majority of your work is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars.” — David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art & Fear

This is the truth that most music productivity advice skips over. We’re told to “work smarter, not harder.” To “focus on quality over quantity.” To “be intentional with our creative time.”

And all of that sounds wise, but it misses the fundamental reality of creative work which is that you don’t know which ideas are good until you’ve made them.

You actually have to create enough volume that the good stuff has room to emerge.

Now, I want to show you the thinking and math behind this Monthly Song Sorting System so you can implement yourself.

The Math of Creative Yield:

• Desired outcome: 10 finished songs I’m proud of
• Realistic hit rate: ~1 in 6 ideas will be worth fully developing (2 or more if I’m lucky – it happens!)
• Required input: 60 initial ideas
• Monthly breakdown: 4-5 ideas per month
• Annual result: 60 total ideas → 8-10 keepers

Those 8-10 keepers?

That’s enough for a couple of EPs or an album. That’s a year’s worth of music I actually want to release and genuinely feel proud to share.

This is the shift you have to make within yourself if you want to be more prolific. Instead of “make it perfect” think “make it abundant.”

When you’re working on idea #4 and it’s the only idea you’ve made this month, the pressure is crushing. In your mind you’re thinking “It has to work. It has to be good.”

But when you’re working on idea #37 out of a planned 60? The stakes are completely different. You can experiment, fail, try something weird just to see what happens because you know that even if this one doesn’t work out, you’ve got 23 more chances this year (maybe even more).

The paradox here is that quantity breeds quality, because it’s quantity that gives you permission to find quality without the paralysis of perfectionism.

Understand this and you will begin to see creativity in a whole new light.

How To Implement My Monthly Song Sorting System

So how do you actually generate 60 ideas in a year without burning out?

You break it down, create a rhythm, and turn it into a system that’s sustainable for you and your lifestyle.

Personally, I break down my yearly goal into individual months.

In my case, I have a full-time job which takes up my weekdays from 8am to 6pm so I build around this constraint. Not just music but writing these newsletters, creating content, family and other life responsibilities.

You might have a different schedule. Maybe you just work part-time job or work the graveyard shift, so it’s extremely important to calibrate this system with your unique schedule.

But if you’re following along with my system focus on the monthly goal of 5 songs for each month, it’s proven to work if you have a 9-5 and other life responsibilities.

If this still feels daunting, I’ll show you exactly how I achieve this and the logic behind it.

Let’s go deeper.

1) Week 1: The Idea Sprint

The first week of every month is dedicated entirely to idea generation.

My goal is 5 initial song ideas.

Remember these are songs that are finished, not incomplete arrangements. But quality of these songs or how much you like them is irrelevant.

Even if the song is just some drums and a bass line that is valid. As long as there’s a beginning, middle and an ending. Try not to overthink it.

To give you some more ideas, these song ideas can begin with:

• A simple chord progression
• A melodic hook
• A rhythmic pattern or even a textural idea.

The key is to create something with enough identity that I can build from it later.

I like to schedule five 40-minute sessions during this week. Usually Monday through Friday, first thing in the morning when my creative energy is highest or later in the evenings if I miss out the morning session.

5 sessions × 40 minutes = 3.3 hours of pure idea generation per month.

That’s all the time I dedicate to creating new ideas. Whenever I can I go for more I do and I consider it extra.

If you have more available time or still feel inspired feel free to do more.

The 40-Minute Rule

The timer is everything for me and if you’re going to give this system a shot I recommend you get yourself a timer as well.

A physical one works better than the one on your phone because the phone can suck us into a vicious doomscrolling black hole. It’s best to simply eliminate the distraction completely.

When I set that 40 minute countdown, I’m giving myself a constraint.

It’s a deadline that’s short enough to prevent perfectionism but long enough to create something real.

For me 40 minutes forces momentum.

“Speed is absolutely key to creativity. The more time it takes to create something, the less likely you are to create something.” — Patrick Stump

It doesn’t allow time for second-guessing or endless tweaking. It demands that I trust my instincts and make decisions quickly.

It’s about creating a minimum viable song as soon as possible. The sooner you can establish the core elements and flesh out an arrangement, the more time you’ll have to come back to it and refine it.

I’ve found this process works significantly better when I come prepared with curated ideas.

(I wrote a full newsletter on curating ideas, read it here)

Before each session, I jot down and curate loose concepts:

• A style I want to explore
• A specific sound design techniques or presets
• A reference track I want to learn from
• A mood or emotion I want to capture
• A structural experiment I want to try

I did this so when it’s time to walk into the session I already have some direction, even if it’s vague. It makes those 40 minutes exponentially more productive.

Here’s the critical part when creating these songs under time:

Don’t judge them during creation, don’t compare them to anything (yet), just create.

By the end of week one, I have 5 new songs. Probably really bad songs, but they are songs nonetheless.

2) Week 2-4: Review, Selection & Development

After the first week, I step back for a couple days.

I listen to all five ideas with fresh ears. This exercise is meant to feel out which songs are the ones that pull at me.

This is where I allow myself to judge and be more critical.

I ask myself which ones feel special, seem like they might have potential or if any of them excite me.

What I’ve found is that if I’m not excited about an idea in its raw form, I definitely won’t be excited about it during the tedious middle stages of arrangement and mixing.

WARNING: The inverse can also happen, ‘meh’ ideas have blossomed into beautiful songs so be discerning.

With all this I’ve learned that sustained motivation is the fuel that carries projects across the finish line.

So usually I choose 1-2 ideas that feel and sound the most compelling. Those are the ones I invest my time in to develop for the rest of the month.

(If you listen back and none of them pull you, simply go back to the drawing board and create more ideas. It’s only 40 minutes for an idea. That’s a small price to pay for a potentially great song in the grand scheme of things.)

For the songs I reviewed and selected I take them through arrangement, sound design, mixing whatever stage they need. If you have mixing or mastering engineer this process might be different for you so use your own discernment.

But the key to understand here is:

I’m only working on ideas that genuinely excite me.

How about the other 3-4 ideas from that month that didn’t make the cut?

They go into an archive. Maybe I’ll come back to them later years down the line, maybe never.

Either way, they’ve served their purpose by giving me creative options.

The Finishing Habit

Finish your songs.

That’s my mantra throughout these monthly sprints. Even if they’re not strong or musically cohesive, strengthening this habit of finishing what you start pays dividends.

When you finish songs (even mediocre or bad ones) you’re training yourself to be a finisher. You’re building the neural pathways, the muscle memory, the identity of someone who sees projects through to the end.

I used to abandon tracks the moment they stopped feeling magical. If a song wasn’t immediately brilliant, I’d move on to the next shiny idea.

But I learned that was just fear.

Fear of finishing something imperfect.

Fear of confronting my own limitations perhaps.

The truth is, I’ve learned more from finishing a bad idea than from abandoning ten promising ones.

You learn how to solve creative problems, how to make decisions under pressure, and to find beauty in imperfection.

3) The Annual Review

Lastly, let’s zoom out and see what this monthly song making system creates:

• January: 5 ideas generated, 2 developed, 1-2 album potential.
• February: 5 ideas generated, 2 developed, 1-2 album potential.
• March: 5 ideas generated, 2 developed, 1-2 album potential
• …and so on through December

By the end of the year:

• 60 total song ideas generated
• 8-10 songs I’m genuinely proud of

Those 8-10 songs?

That’s the gold, it’s what I was panning for. But I only found them because I was willing to create through the other 50.

Creating From Abundance

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” — Henry Miller

The reason why I like using math oriented approach to making music is because when you adopt this system the pressure evaporates.

When you’re working on idea #37 out of 60, you’re not careful and tip-toeing around every creative decision because you’re not asking it to be your masterpiece, you’re just asking it to teach you something.

Maybe it teaches you that a particular chord progression doesn’t work the way you thought it would or a new mixing technique was the lesson.

Maybe it just teaches you that you don’t like making that style of music or using that preset pack.

All of this is valuable information that moves your skills, sound and creative process forward.

This is the abundance mindset thinking, and it transforms creative pressure into creative play.

Instead of sitting down with the weight of “I need to make something great today,” you sit down with the curiosity of “I wonder what I’ll discover today.”

The stakes are lower, the experimentation is higher and ultimately the fear is quieter.

Paradoxically, all of these elements in conjunction creates the ideal conditions for our best music to emerge. This is because creativity doesn’t thrive under pressure to be perfect, it thrives under permission to be abundant.

A place where our creativity can flow freely with no restraints.

This is why I believe becoming a prolific music creator is more about your mindset, habits, and beliefs rather than your ideas, musical or technical abilities.

And when you peel back the layers you’ll notice that this system isn’t only about hitting exactly 60 ideas or exactly 10 polished songs at the end of the year.

It’s the journey, lessons and experience found in the pursuit of these quantified goals.

It’s about building the habit of finishing.

It’s about training yourself to see projects through.

It’s about creating enough volume that you stop treating every idea like it’s the last you’ll ever create and start treating your creative practice like it’s your sacred sanctuary.

The Path To Prolific Music Creation

What if this 2026 you stopped trying to make every idea perfect and started trying to make enough ideas that allowed more perfect moments to emerge?

Now you have the roadmap and with a proven system, all that is needed is your commitment.

By the end of this year, you won’t just have an album’s worth of music. You’ll have transformed into the artist who actually finishes songs, the artist who creates from abundance rather than scarcity.

Hope today’s letter was insightful, inspiring or useful in some way.

Good luck to you and your creative endeavors this 2026.

The Sound + Creativity newsletter helps music creators unlock flow, finish more music, and uncover their signature sound without waiting for inspiration. If you’re an artist and want 1-on-1 help implementing this Monthly Song Sorting System in 2026, simply fill out the application and Hermes will be in touch with your shortly.