Thoughts On Problems We All Have in Common...
I'd like to share a conversation I had with @Rick_Forte on Twitter.
It's probably the most popular type of question people ask me. I think it touches upon something most of us feel, regardless of our ability and experience. My response is just as much to myself as it is to Ricky. Maybe it will help you get to work today :)
And if you haven't already, connect with me on Twitter.
Hey Brian!
First of all I love listening to your podcasts. Awesome content. I was wondering how you got over the hump (if there was any) in your music production? The first several years I started out I was just messing around in Ableton, watching LOTS of YouTube/reading unthinkable amounts of tutorials but mostly just not getting too much of anything done.
As of late I've become much more comfortable getting a beat down and messing around with sound design seriously to get a cool melody going from something I've synthesized myself. I have some cool beats but I don't know what to do to take my production to the 'next level'. I read somewhere (maybe it was you) that there's a couple stages to music production that went something like "learning curve/struggle to progress > exponential growth > plateau > breaking through the plateau to get professional sounding mixdowns and arrangement." Not verbatim but something like that.
I believe I'm in the beginning of the exponential growth phase but still finding it difficult to understand how certain elements of a song interact with each other as well as how/what effects (and knobs on the effect) are actually doing to the signal.
I think the my biggest concern is trying to compare myself to my favorite artist which is absolutely ridiculous at this stage but hard not to do when I have a bar set for myself. I know I can get there eventually and I truly love the process but I don't even have a finished song yet. That's a concern of mine. I need to finish songs and lots of them to see improvement.
Do you have any suggestions or tips you could share with me?
Thanks!
Best, Ricky
And here is my response...