Mind Mastery & Music | Armin van Buuren on Personal Growth and Success

Try to have your own sound. Try to invent, you know, dig into yourself. Music only became interesting when people stepped over boundaries. You don't want to be stuck in just doing one thing. As an artist, you got to develop. I noticed if I don't enjoy myself, the crowd is more flat as well. And I want to stress that the word passion is probably the most important in that. The past is who you are, but you cannot change the past.

Hello, Believe Nation! My name is Evan Carmichael, my one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs will solve all of the world's major problems. So to help you on your journey today, we're going to learn from legendary Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren and my take on his top 10 rules of success. Rule number 1 is my personal favorite, and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best. And as always, as you're watching, if you hear something that really resonates with you, please leave it in the comments below, put quotes around it so other people can be inspired, you might win a prize as well. And also when you write it down, it's much more likely to stick. Stick for yourself as well.

Enjoy! Look at other DJs, see why their sets are good, but try to have your own sound. Try to invent, you know, dig into yourself and see who you are and, you know, kind of bring something new to the table. Because if you just copy another DJ, then you'll just be a copy. So you've got to find your own identity before you go out there. If you do what other people are doing out there, then you're not going to stand out. I always take Deadmau5 as an example. Hate him or love him, but what he's done is you can put your finger on. Putting on a weird mouse head, making excellent music. That makes a difference. That makes you stand out. And I think the most important thing is if you want to be successful, that you do whatever you love. You look at other artists, of course you look at other artists. I do that as well. You get inspired by other people's music. But try to make it your own. And I mean, think of all these people, right, sitting at home and you're doing a concert in their city. Ask yourself, why would these people when they're at home, you know, they're comfortable, they're warm, they're having a pizza, they're having They're watching TV. Why would they come out to see you? Answer that question in 2 sentences, and that's your answer right there. I mean, why would you go see Deadmau5? Because he's a brilliant producer, a brilliant DJ, and he puts on a weird mouse head, and everybody goes crazy. You know? So that tells you the whole story. And I think that's what you have to do. Look for— look inside yourself. Who do I want to be? What do I want to represent? And what is my sound? And of course we all look at other DJs, but if you want to add something, don't copy what's already out there, but try to make things— make your sound current, but make it your own. Sometimes an instrumental tune can get in the charts, but it won't get as high. Like, Full Focus was obviously the first single from Mirage. I consciously made the choice to make an instrumental track as the first single. That wasn't a commercial choice. I just wanted to show the people, hey, you know, this is what rocks the dance floor, and I know where I come from. But I think all music grows if you try to step over your boundaries, you know. If you look at the history of music, whether it's Bach or Beethoven or the Beatles and Bob Dylan or Pink Floyd, they all looked at each other. And music only became interesting when people stepped over boundaries. You see the same thing happening now with David Guetta and all kinds of hip-hop artists teaming up. I think it's only interesting for music. So I made the conscious choice to make half the album of Mirage instrumental trance tunes. That's where I come from. That's what I DJ, that's the sound that people know me for. That's what I like, tracks like Orbion, Coming Home, Mirage, and all that sort of stuff. And then the other tracks are just a little bit experimentation, you know. I like all kinds of music. I like the more housey stuff, I like the more techy stuff. I like a good song. So for me, Mirage is also a little bit of, yeah, a little bit of a tryout to see if people like this new direction that I'm taking. I think I'm the first DJ that ever did a tryout show like what they do in theaters. But it was incredibly inspiring to work with such a big group group of people to travel around the world. You know, normally I would just show up with a bag of records and maybe my tour manager and a light guy, and now we traveled the world with a group of 35 people. And even though financially it was the worst year I've ever had, it was creatively, it was such an inspiring, uh, thing because I learned so much. Uh, actually, in my current DJ sets, we still use a timecode system that we designed for the Armin Only show. Uh, so, you know, I learned so much that my performance just got better thanks to that. And it's just I think as an artist you should show to the people that you don't want to be stuck in just doing one thing. As an artist, you gotta develop, you have to, you know, get in touch with new sounds, try different things. Like on the Another You record with Mr. Probz, for example, I hired an entire string orchestra. If you listen to the track, the strings that are in the track are real. So you can actually hear it, because they're not exactly on time, they're a little bit off, but that gives it the human feel. So I was actually conducting an orchestra, you know. That's crazy. And it's great because I'm not a conductor. I'm not a musician in that sense, but it's great to learn. I learned so much from that experience, and I think you should show that to your fans, you know. I can't do the same thing twice, even though I have a lot of nostalgic feelings for the past. I want to keep learning, and this is something I've invested a lot of time in, musical. I've been educating myself a lot. On my iPad following courses online and learning a lot of new techniques, new plugins, new sounds. So you have to do that to stay fresh and stay focused. Recently I started touring with this Armin Only concept, which we brought to Madison Square Garden in New York and the Forum in LA and a couple of other venues. It was really exciting to do. The, the idea behind the show is that I'm the only DJ, hence Armin Only. Then we have the State of Trance, which is basically my own festival. It's a radio show that I do live events at. The radio show is weekly But then once a year I throw a massive event with 5 areas, and that's all broadcasted live and for free, so that's different. I'm just trying to evolve, you know, doing things that I like, things that make me exciting, keep me excited, and, you know, keep focused on the music. It's all about, at the end of the day, what do you want to deliver as an artist? What do you want to bring? What do you want to tell? It's so, I mean, the thrill that you get of an idea. I mean, I had the idea for Ping Pong, for example. I mean, everything in dance music right now is so serious. I wanted to add a little bit of a fun element. I mean, it's a little bit of an ironic track. I did it in 4 hours. Ping pong was just, uh, you know, silly, but I didn't even want to release it initially. But it's so great that with all my tracks, they're all my babies, and you see a crowd going crazy to an idea that you had in your head, and they go, and that gives the biggest kick. Self-education is key. Why not, instead of watching another series that everybody's talking about, use that exact time and go online and watch a couple of these tutorials because that's what inspires me. I learned a lot of tricks for producing, making specific sounds. You know, how can I make this pad and make it sound really wide? How can I make this trance riff? How do you program that? How can I make my kick sound really fat? How can I have that clap with a big reverb behind it and reverse it? And how do you do that? How do I arrange my song? Do I have enough elements to arrange myself? All these questions and a million more more, you get— you find answers online. I promise you, as soon as you finish a couple of these courses, you'll be so inspired and the music will start writing itself. Well, before we start doing this, we had a massive rehearsal time and we hired the Brabant Hall in Den Bosch in the Netherlands. We flew all the artists to the Netherlands and for 3 weeks we rehearsed. So every single track was rehearsed with staging. We had the entire stage there and no crowd, and then we did tryout shows. We had 2 tryouts in front of a live audience, and then you immediately see where, where the problems are. So then we again, we rehearse and rehearse and rehearse to get it better and better and better. And then we did the premiere show at the ZiggoDome in Amsterdam. We did the show for the very first time, and then you see that the show gets better every time you do it. Also, my freestyles change every time, so it's exciting for the crew because they don't hear the same music every show. So every Armin Only show that I do is different. The tracklist from the show I did in Oakland was different than the tracklist from the show I did in LA. So it makes it exciting for everybody. And the crowd, the crew feels really relaxed because they know exactly what's gonna happen. So if I select a track with a live element, my stage manager backstage sees it on his iPad, he sees what tracks I select, and then the next artist will be ready. And the artist knows, okay, whatever track he has running before, he knows that he or she needs to walk on stage at 1:40. So everybody's prepared. And, you know, preparation is key. And that's what I learned from working with a theater director. You know, so instead of, you know, the awkward feeling, like sort of pushing a microphone in a mixer and say, hey, okay, sing. Go, sing. Instead of doing that, We make sure that the artist gets vocal coaching, an artist is relaxed, an artist gets treated well, gets a good hotel room, pickups, everything is organized and arranged. But it's a big operation. I don't feel God is a DJ. I don't like that expression. I feel I'm really part of the crowd in a way. I try to enjoy the music as much as possible, because I noticed if I don't enjoy myself, the crowd is more flat as well, you know. People expect me to enjoy myself. And I'm enjoying the music just as much or even more than the crowd because I'm really, really into it, and I feel that's my assignment. And I want to stress that the word passion is probably the most important in that. You have to really, really, really want something, and I think in life it's so much more easy if you are devoted and dedicated to something. If you like your job— no, not like your job, love your job— you'll be 200% good at it, because you're passionate about it. So ask yourself on a daily basis, is what I'm doing right now, is it something I love? Because if you don't love what you're doing, you're actually wasting your time. You should stop doing what you do. You should try and search for something else. Because I'm convinced that if you don't love what you do, you're only doing it maybe at 50% or 70% of your of what you could do. And if you love what you do, you're really passionate about what you do, you love your job, or you love your work, or you love whatever you're doing, then you'll go for it 200%. And then you'll see that you can really excel. You can reach stuff beyond what you expected you would. I mean, people always ask me, like, why do you do 8-hour DJ sets? It's because I love it, man. I want to play all this music. And then physically, it's not healthy to not go to the bathroom for 6, 7 hours. And I do it because I just don't think about going to the bathroom. I just feel the need to perform. I'm in the zone, I'm in the moment, I want to rock that crowd. And that's what I mean, you excel, you go beyond your— a human being can really achieve. It's like what Obi-Wan Kenobi said, you know, if you can put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything. But you have to understand, for me, when I'm in the studio, I'm not thinking about creating a hit record or creating a pop record like you were saying. You're creating what you want to create. I'm just doing something that comes from my heart. And sometimes it will please you and sometimes it won't. So one day I'll make, I'll produce a track for the Gaia guys, one track, one day I'll make a 138 Game of Thrones remix, and then the next day I'll be making a downtempo track. It's good to have a plan. It's good to have a clear idea of where you want to go. But along that— if you take that path and along that road, it can be bumpy. And sometimes the road's blocked and you have to go somewhere else. You have to take a detour. I think it's really important to look after your health. I mean, really, don't smoke. Don't drink too much. Take care of your own body, you know, your body is your temple. It's the only thing that's with you all the time. So the past is who you are, but you cannot change the past. In my job, I'm always looking for the next gig and the next album and the next tour, so I'm always living like 2-3 months ahead. But I want to be more in the now, you know, when I'm with my family on holiday, when we're having dinner, when we're going to the beach or something. I wish I could just stop this head, you know, stop the train and be in the now. For me, I can say that trance is emotional, uplifting, mostly instrumental music that just touches your soul a little bit. It's very, very close to classical music, you know, it's about the melody more It's more than the beat, it's about the flow that you get into listening to it. You just know, you know when you're in love. It's just very simple, it's one of those strange things in life, you know. I mean, anybody that's married can tell you this, it's so easy to fall into the trap of being roommates with each other, you know. So me and my wife, we go on dates. We totally brought back date night. Doing a big show, especially when I did the Armin Only shows for my last album Intense and now for the upcoming album when I want to do a new tour called Embrace. It's so much energy that you see when you see these people in front of you. You get so much love from that crowd, but you always have to pay a price somewhere. So the day after such a big performance, I'm empty, man. When I get up in the morning, the first thing that goes through my head is not like, oh, how can I make a million bucks, or how can I be number one DJ in the world? That's not what goes through my mind. I get up thinking, hey, Mr. Probs is coming over and we're doing a track together. How exciting! And that's really what moves me. The motivation is to have fun in the studio, and I understand that now. It's so important to go into the studio and have fun. I find it hard to believe that you have the time to, you know, start working on an album, start, you know, doing collaborations. Collaborations, but also at the same time, how do you pick your collaborators? It's sort of, it just happens, really. You meet somebody, you say, hey, let's do a track together, you send each other a text message or an email, and then, you know, you try to find a date, you sit in the studio together. I mean, honestly, half of the collaborations that I tried to set up didn't work out simply because the artist didn't want to, there was no time, or had other priorities. One of the collaborations I'm really proud is actually not on Embrace. Is with Jean-Michel Jarre, the synthesizer legend, for his album. He approached me and he said, I want to do a track with you for my next album. I remember I was a little kid looking, going through my dad's record collection, seeing these humongous covers of Jean-Michel Jarre. So, you know, the day that I could tell my dad that I was actually working with the legend himself, was unbelievable. So we created a track together that I'm really proud of called Stardust. It has more of my older trancey melodies, my older sound, and it was so much fun to do as well. So this is what I want to show you, you know, in one year working with Jean-Michel Jarre, working with Hartwell, working with Mr. Probs, working with a jazz trumpet, I mean, that's fun. I mean, you go into the studio and you're like, wow, it's not just another singer or another celebrity who wants to work with you. No, it's about you go into the studio, you try and do different things and you try different sounds and you go out of your comfort zone a little bit. And that challenges me. I mean, I'm so inspired right now. I could easily, if you put me in the studio right now, in a year from now I'll have another album. I have so many ideas and that's because I'm having so much fun in the studio right now. Last time I was here I told Ferry I had an idea for this, to use this drum kit, because it sounds like a march, you know. Like you hear the army coming, like the big break is coming, the war is about to start. So you hear the army further away. This track is going to be on the next album. But this is, like Armin said, it's just, this is a an addition to, to the actual track. It's just in a break, like a little teaser, so it's not that you listen to a song that's only doing this.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because DJ Valens asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, check out the link in the in the description and you can go and cast your vote. I also love to know which clip resonated the most with you. What lesson are you going to take from this video and immediately apply to your life or to your business somehow? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm really curious to find out what you have to say. I also want to give a quick shout out to Lucas Alexander. Lucas, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and posting that picture to Instagram. I really appreciate the support, man, and I'm so glad that you enjoyed it. Thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love.

I'll see you soon. We had 10,000+ people in, so you saw it yourself. Yes. And then also we had a vinyl set. Vinyl set, yeah. What was the idea behind the vinyl set? Well, I always see Armin Only as Christmas dinner with Armin van Buuren. So, you know, I also want to show my fans I'll never forget where I come from. And instead of playing reworks of the classics, I was just like, you know, why not just play the original vinyl? Because it brings back the original sound of the classics. And I always felt that, you know, vinyl added something special. The sound of vinyl added something special to the trance music because Actually, you're getting less information than from a CD or from a USB key because the sound characteristics of vinyl, they cut away the parts of the frequency spectrum. But it just adds something to the sound, you know? And yeah, it's a little gift to my fans, I guess. Love it. You know, I've been DJing for such a long time in my career that, you know, to keep it interesting and exciting for myself, I love doing various things. So what keeps me excited for all these years is of course the music, the fans, but also, you know, doing all these different shows and trying different things. And I mean, a show like Armin Only is not just, you know, the way to promote the music or whatever, but it's really also for myself to keep it, you know, exciting. And, and, you know, I want to wake up in the morning thinking, wow, I'm going to go to LA and do the show. I'm going to bring this person and that person. Secret to success, um, there's a couple of elements that are important in success. Uh, first of all is your own level of expectation. Uh, you also have to learn to be happy with what you achieved. Sometimes it's impossible in life to always achieve exactly what you have in the back of your head. So you need to learn also to be happy with what you achieved, even if it's only half of what you had in mind at first. Um, I like a quote of John Lennon: life's what's happening, life's what's happening to you when you're busy making other plans. And that is what I keep telling my wife as well, and, and all a lot of people around me. You always expect something, and then something along the way comes, and then you have to alter your path again. And if you can learn to live with that, if you can be practical like that, then success is more easy. Maybe it's good to have a plan, but it's also good then if you're working really hard and you're walking up against a door and you can't go through that door, then you know, you just find a back door, just find your way around it. And that's just the way that life is. Sometimes you cannot get exactly what you want or what you had in the back of your mind. Yes, it's very important that you have to have a a good work ethic. Nobody gets anywhere without hard work, and you'll have good and bad days. Even myself as a producer, I run into disappointments almost on a daily basis because I try to work with artists that on the last moment pull back their song, or, you know, you don't see that, you don't read that in the news, but it's a fact of the matter. And I think all artists have to deal with stuff like that. You don't get the set times you want, you don't get the billing you want, you don't get the hotel room that you requested. It's something you have to deal with, and it, you know, defines your character, how easy you are to deal with stuff like that. You know, life is, is, is a roller coaster ride for everybody. It has its ups and its downs. But if everything goes well, you'll have more ups than downs, and you'll remember the ups more than you'll remember the downs. But it's a fact of the matter that everybody, no matter if you're a big artist, a successful artist, or a successful businessman, everybody works hard to get somewhere. It's not about, you know, how many Grammy nominations you have or how many times you won DJ Mag or whatever. It's not about that, it's at that point you're just trying to rock the crowd, you're trying to interact with people and it's so beautiful. I mean, to feel that connection with the crowd, seeing all those people having the best time of their lives. They're in an office during the week and they dress up and they go out and you get to be the guy that gets to entertain them. That is so beautiful. I mean, from all the things that I'm doing in my career, you know, jet lags, airports, waiting, taxes, everything. From all the things that I do in my career, that is the only thing that I'm still not bored with. You know, it's a thrill. I mean, why are the Rolling Stones still playing when they're 70 years old? It's because you can never get enough of that kick of the love of the crowd. I mean, it's an addiction for sure.