My first blog post – Produce music at home - My goal.
One of my objectives by starting this blog is to be part of a community of people that enjoy music and have decided to become creators as I did.
In this blog I will share my personal experience on songwriting and producing my music, I am sharing, and I hope this works for you especially if you are starting as I am. If you are not starting and are more experienced, you can find an opportunity to share your experience here. It would be very useful to learn from your comments, so feel free to use this space for sharing your thoughts and grow together our online presence.
Also, I will be using this blog to promote my music, but at the same time I will be posting about valuable discoveries of emerging artists that want their music to be heard.
Welcome to my blog and I hope we can use it to grow together
Can you produce your own music with limited budget and time?
Although I started creating music sometime around 11 years ago, I think I am starting right now in the middle of 2020, because the previous years have been a learning experience for me.
In this post I share with you the answer to the question in the post title. The short answer is “Yes, you can”. So, in the long answer, I am sharing a bit of my experience, in case you want to take some considerations if you are planning to become a DIY musician/producer and you think you don’t have the money and time to achieve it.
I am a full-time design engineer with an 8 to 5 job, so making music is not my primary activity. However, I have managed to find some time to have 2 projects, and a couple of EPs for each project in Spotify and other digital platforms. Now I need to work on promotion, but that is another topic for another post.
From the process to record my first EP I list some things to consider when starting to produce your music:
Time. What would you think if I tell you that for starting, you only need around 3 hrs. a week?, yes as a minimum, because you will need more than that in the future, but now, you only need that ridiculous amount of time to start with songwriting. Sometimes it is overwhelming not to have sufficient time to sit down and write a song, especially when you need time to work and pay the bills, to take care of your family, for parenting, to be a student, etc. So, go ahead and record or write some riffs, that is where all it starts. For recording you can read about the equipment you need, but if you want to start right now, just grab your smart phone and do some recordings. Do not rush, enjoy that time.
Songwriting. For starting, you do not need music theory at all. Again, please note that you will need to learn it, but in the beginning of your journey, just start playing what you like and sounds good to you. Remember, you are recording random riffs, not writing songs, but have in mind that each riff you write is a potential song that captures all the emotions for that unique time. I will write about turning your riffs into songs in another post. By the way, I want to mention that I am not trying to disregard the importance of knowing music theory, this is a continuous learning process and we always need to recognize and learn from the people that have spent years of their lives studying music and making a living from it professionally.
Equipment. Long story short: Start with what you have, everything works for your purpose. Now, digging deeper in the topic: You can start with a minimum of equipment. This is what ideally you need, but I mention the equipment I had when I started so you can see that lack of gear cannot be an obstacle to reach your goals:
A PC or MAC or laptop with sufficient processing power for multitracking. Experts recommend getting a hybrid system with an SSD for running operating system and DAW, and an HDD for storing your work, it is also needed to have a backup drive or media. I have a hybrid laptop running windows 10 and the following specs with an Intel® Core™ i7-3740QM CPU @ 2.70Ghz with 6 GB RAM. It is not a monster and not even a computer for music production, but my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) never crashes when working multitrack with several VSTs and VSTis at the same time, good enough for me, but eleven years ago I was using a very slow machine with a Celeron™ processor or something like that, and I was able to record and mix my first EP (it was hard, but I did it).
Have fun, be creative and do not fear the criticism. Creating original music is exposing a part of yourself that is unique, so never let the criticism found in internet to put you down, you always must move forward. Also, do not become your worst critic, since at first sight, you will want to sound better and better each time, this can be frustrating especially when you start comparing to other artists, please learn to appreciate your own work and effort, and keep learning, growing and achieving a better sound each time, feeling proud of what you are able to do.
Set your goals. Ask yourself, what you want to achieve (an EP, a full length recording, a single, etc.) and set realistic due dates, do not rush take your time to learn, experiment, read, watch tutorials and get every resource available to improve your sound.
Finally, just go ahead and do it. You can start right away, after reading this post. As I mentioned before, you just need to take your guitar, or keyboard, or drums, or your voice, and record it with your smart phone, keep it and decide when you need to take the next step to turn it into a song. You will find a lot of resources in the internet for the next step: Arming the tracks in the DAW for recording. Now that I mention this, there will be a post soon.
A quick comparison. Just for reference, I have been talking about my first EP, so if you want to know what I am referring to please check it out.
It is my metal project named “Uprising now!” the EP “Insane Therapy” was released to Jamendo.com in 2009. You will notice that the sound quality needs improvement, however it was achieved with the old gear I have mentioned in this post and many limitations (no interface, no condenser microphones, slow computer, etc.). This one motivated me to keep improving.
Now you can check my latest “Uprising Now!” release in spotify “Welcome to Uncertainty”. Please have in mind that it was recorded at home. Do you think it improved?
You can do the same comparison for my second project named “Mesaya”, first EP released to Jamendo.com in 2010 and please notice the quality of sound. I struggled to achieve good recordings and that complicated the mix and mastering processes, but it worked a lot for my learning process.
Now check my “Mesaya” latest release. Can you notice the difference in sound quality?
There is a lot of room for improvement for the sound quality, but it is getting better and better, as I move forward.
In summary. Everyone interested can become a producer of their own material. At the beginning, it is not needed to have a large amount of time and money to start creating music. There is a minimum of equipment that is needed to be considered for getting in the short term. Meanwhile, everyone can start as we speak.
More challenges will come as increasing sound quality continuously and promoting your music, but the first step is to start… now. Good luck.
dededos
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
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romaincrisis