We were lucky to catch up with Tony Chetta recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tony, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I love this question because it begs a further reflection of how you view the creative work that you do; as a business, as an art, or a marriage between the two?

I’ve felt from the beginning that it’s very important to nurture both the business and artistic side of your work and I believe that’s what has led me to having the privilege of being full-time today.

When I first made the jump into producing full-time, I had been pursuing it as a side hustle with the intent of eventually growing it into a career for about 5 years, balancing it with college and other day jobs. But after graduating and then losing a day job due to Covid, the timing was perfect to dive head first.

These are the 2 most impactful things I began doing on both the Business and Art sides once I made that dive…

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BUSINESS
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I started having weekly “meetings” every Sunday morning with myself as if I was speaking to a team of people at a large company. I made a Google Doc that contained the following sections:

Client Acquisition / Marketing
Creative Systems
Organization
Writes
Production
Vocal Editing
Mixing

For each section, I acted as if I was speaking to a separate department in charge of that task and we would review the task’s performance from that previous week and then brainstorm specific ways we could improve it for the following week. Of course in reality I was just typing these ideas out alone in a studio, but it helped begin each week with a list of actionable items that would actually move the needle and could then be prioritized.

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ART
—–

While the process I laid out above seemed a little extra and “left-brained” to me at the time, it did provide a framework for me to exist within creatively. Since my production work was now laid out in the calendar and other areas of the business had at least been noticed and accounted for, the worries of unsolved issues in those areas weren’t on my mind during writes when I had to be open and creative.

I then had the freedom to use my writes as time to experiment. I’d listen to what the artist had been interested in lately, intently trying to hear things the producer did that caught my attention so I could try to emulate it during the write. I was never aiming to just recreate a reference track in order to “get a cut;” I was always only trying to create something that myself and everyone else in the room really loved.

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So long story long, I believe organization gives way to creative experimentation, and both of those together will allow you to grow as an artistic business with some reliable longevity.

Tony, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I hang around people who turn their traumas into song ideas and I help them turn those song ideas into finished records that ideally feel like an extension of themselves, their brand, and their experiences.

I bring a strange pallet of musical backgrounds with me that each contribute to what you could define as “my sound” as a producer. I was classically trained in piano between the ages of 6-17 with some jazz thrown in towards the end, dreamed of being a rock star at 8 years old, played in worship bands starting around that same age and then some small local cover bands in high school.

I always had a fascination with melody and sonic texture so I decided to pluck around with my first “song” (just piano chords and melody) at 10 years old and experimented with adding guitars and midi drums with my dad’s version of Cubase about a year later. This sparked an obsession over the next few years of making instrumental rock/electronic songs that I always wanted to add strings to for some reason. Every song was made with the intention of shocking the listener with very dynamic arrangements and tempo changes and key changes, no matter how jarring and cringey it is to listen back to today, I found a true sense of joy and escapism in creating it.

At 15 I produced an 8 song EP for a couple friends of mine which would be my first time being responsible for someone else’s art. It was supposed to be just guitar/vocal recordings, but I decided to surprise them and add more instrumentation. Although the quality was what you’d expect from a 15 year old kid, their reaction of, “This is how I heard it in my head!” was so incredibly satisfying and inspiring that the hopeful idea of one day getting paid to do this started to make its way into my mind.

10 years later, I’m lucky enough to call this my full-time career and that satisfaction and inspiration hasn’t gone away.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

This isn’t necessarily a lesson, but the school of thought that you will improve by analytically focusing on each imperfection as it arises is one that has tended to plague me at times and prove to be very paradoxical.

This typically shows up for me as I listen back to music I’m working on and think, “This WOULD be great, but ____.” Anything from the vocal isn’t mixed right, or the bass tone is wrong, or the drums are too busy, etc. The difficult thing about thinking this way, is that it’s often true. Sometimes the vocal could be mixed better, the bass tone could fill in the low end more, and the drums could be simplified. These are usually things I learn from other producers who are further along than I who point out specifics like this to me; that is where I find the most growth in my craft, but also where I find my source of creative hesitation and perfectionism.

I often encounter people with the same problem who seem to combat it by brainwashing themselves with its opposite perspective and approaching their music with a delusional assignment of perfection. This is a terrible solution and is equally harmful to the artist. Saying that the art you make is perfect is really just saying, “I’m incapable of improving it.”

So what I’ve found to help me with this is listening back to music I’m working on and thinking, “I know how great this could be.” It encourages you to look for things to fix while simultaneously acknowledging that you’re capable of improvement and growth.

This applies to your craft, your personal development, your business, your relationships, really anything.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

I’m a big fan of stoic philosophy.

There’s a common misconception about stoicism, that it turns you into someone dull and emotionless and incapable of any degree of enthusiasm. But if you really look into some of the writings, both modern and ancient, the intent is really to experience life as fully as possible and regain control over your sense of wellbeing by tapping into your rationale.

The way this has affected my business and my art is that common issues like jealousy of successful peers, occasional financial strain, overwhelm, rejection, etc have much less of an impact on how I view myself and my career path. Issues like these are inevitable when pursuing a creative career and ignoring or denying them is denying yourself the opportunity to grow through being present with them and figuring your own way out.

Contact Info:

• • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonychetta/

Image Credits
Michael Dove Matt Gill Rae Janicke Autumn Buysse