Has it already been a year? Did I really graduate college 3.5 years ago? Have I really been working for TACCIA for 6 years?
It’s always odd doing these retrospectives, but I guess the end of a decade is as good of a time as any to look back.
My years usually find themselves defined by a singular theme—relationships, friends, failures, or achievements. 2009 was no different. With all of the turbulence 2008 brought, 2009 was a much-needed emotional change.
The first half of 2009 brought along a different social tangent. I went out a lot more, met a lot of new friends, and got to know old friends better. The second half was a little counteraction to all the partying; around July I holed back in and hit the books.
Music in 2009 also saw two halves. I started taking online courses in March (eventually notching 3 courses total, with lots of material in between). When I started the courses, I was doing things “by the book”, whatever that means. I wasn’t intimately familiar with my music programs, and couldn’t “feel” the music—my attempts were basically a rehash of my homework assignments and exercises. It was a step up from 2008, when I felt like I was blindly stumbling onto music pieces—at least now I had control over the music—but the music quality arguably suffered and became more methodical and planned.
After I took the last class in August, and tortured myself through laying out a few songs, something “clicked”, and the computer became an instrument again. My music workflow became natural again, and now I had the synthesis, mixing, and theory knowledge to tweak sounds and shape them. I mean, I’m still not an expert, but earlier this year I wouldn’t know where to start to create a specific synth tone or sound effect. Now I can break a sound down in my head, get to a starting point on a synth, and know where to go. I still struggle with perfecting the sound, but at least I have a clue. I can read audio books and at least understand the advanced techniques.
Good music (like most things in life) is created from a person with confidence and experience. Just listen to an amateur guitarist vs. an experienced one—they can both play the same guitar solo, with the same notes, but the experienced guitarist plays with more “oomph” and style. I’ve been trying to figure out what defines this “je ne sais quoi”, and over time it feels like it comes from practice (confidence) and knowledge (experience). If you’ve played 100 different melodies, and labored over them to prove to yourself that yes, #37 has “it” and is the best one… that stuff comes through to the listener’s ears.
So, to sum it up, in 2009 I:
• Took Point Blank Minimal Ableton course
• Took (both) Point Blank Trance courses
• Went over ~20 courses on Sonic Academy (good arrangement tips/exercises)
• Reviewed another 2-3 courses on MacProVideo.com (workflow enhancements)
• Took Point Blank Deep House course (finally made music production “click”)
• Studied DMP Synthesis DVD (great for synthesis/ear training theory)
• Studied DMP Trance DVD (made me realize it takes an awful lot of time to polish songs up, and sometimes, polish is all that makes or breaks a song)
• 12-15 Future Music DVD’s (good insight into professional producer mentality—use whatever you can—samples, presets, etc., as long as it sounds good)
• Countless hours on KVR Forum and Gearslutz ($$ lost, but sometimes the tools really do make the carpenter)
• Read Mixing Audio by Roey Izhaki (awesome book, taught me tons about EQ and mixing tricks and techniques)
• Read Composition for Computer Musicians (one of the better books out there, but I can’t seem to remember anything specific I learned from it, other than to use Latin percussion the same way you’d program an acoustic/rock drum beat)
• Read Mixing With Your Mind (Michael Stavrou) and The Manual (by KLF). (great pop/philosophical books. Catchy music is all about the hook and the groove, never forget a good “hit” or “emotional” song puts people on notice and has them humming your hook.)
• And produced a ton more, read another ton and a half of stuff online, and random Sound on Sound articles, production videos, manuals.
Wow, that is a lot of time. I mean, in instruction alone, that’s at least 500 hours. Probably another 500 hours in production too.
2010 goals/resolutions to follow…
(P.S. Forgot to go over the year’s themes. 2007—Silky’s & Brewbakers, 2008—The Breakup & DJing, 2009—Understanding Music Production. 2010? Applying Music Production :D)