When I originally started this websi – sorry, gotta stop saying that – BLOG, I was finishing at least 1 instrumental a night, though might actually start 2, 3, sometimes 4 of them before getting to the one that would eventually be arrange into a song. I almost had it down to a science:
I was able to conclude the following:
The first attempt, rarely a successful on, was practice – a mere warmup exercise meant to familiarize myself with the controls and find instruments that I liked, adjust the key-signature to something “I was feeling” and just working out bad ideas.
Often I would start off noodling something on a Piano VST, or the organ – really anything I have ever played along side with in real life as an instrumentalist – and try to replicate what I heard them do with the real thing. Towards the end, I would compose songs 16 bars at a time, arrange them and be done within 30 minutes or so… …But back then musically I had a real purpose.
Repetition was the primary catalyst sparking my creativity. I sat down and developed muscle memory eliminating the first road block I faced while teaching myself to produce music: a lack of understanding of my gear and what all the terminology meant. Sitting down, starting 5 songs a night sometimes, attempting to use different sounds in each one led me to making my first MAJOR mistake: Hoarding.
I fell victim to obtaining the Sounds of the Stars. i bought Bundles, and DAWs, Hardware, Microphones – granted in the beginning I was working with Artists every night after work, when that stopped I did not stop buying stuff. More than that I was hoarding knowledge. It was not enough that I was able to create so freely, I needed more for this experience. I needed to know I could do more. Logic Pro X wasn’t good enough for me, so I bought Maschine; Maschine was too simple, so I bought Komplete and upgraded all the way up to the collectors Edition over time. Logic pro would not let me use Maschine and eventually Komplete Kontrol the way I wanted to so I Bought Ableton. It was, actually still is, a constant battle I am fighting to not constantly buy new plugins and gear. .
I grew too fast. When I was starting out, with what little knowledge I had from High School and Middle School band, I had my own sound. My own style, whether I knew it or not at this point I already heard music a certain way. The original goal was to learn the gear to learn the basics, but not limited by the financial restraints of other young producers, I had nothing really stopping me from sinking so much money in early on, which would not have been a problem except I didn’t know how to use most of what i purchased. Individually their learning curves were low, but using them together became a pain. More and more I grew dependent on the light guide from the Komplete Kontrol, limiting me for a long time to seamless use in Maschine 2. Logic Pro did not provide the capability for Midi in from AU and again feeling the itch for something new, no longer wanting the simple beats of Maschine, a year after I created my website, I moved to Ableton Live and started all over, from square one with my production.
I don’t finish full productions as often as I would like, though I have finished a couple within Ableton Live, for a little while I felt like all my creativity was saved in the archives of Maschine’s old projects and that is something I resolve to change. This is the first time since I started producing (around 2013) that I am actually considering opening old projects and actually finishing them.
Wish me Luck, I leave you with the Last Instrumental i Ever made Live on Youtube, on the spot.
desensitizedaudio.com 