I just WATCHED and WROTE notes on every good tutorial series I could find. What I didn't do was open Ableton and play with what I learned. After I finished watching all the tutorials, I decided to watch them a second time but this time following along in Ableton. What happened next was I really didn't enjoy the songs I was working on. It made it really difficult to want to work on a song you kinda really didn't like. I didn't hate it but I didn't love it. I did however love the learning part of it. I'd stall forever to start the next step, but I once I opened Ableton, I wouldn't be able to stop. I'd be stuck following along for the next few hours or until something forced me out of it, like friends. My social life was almost too good for my own good.
Finishing my first tutorial song took me a while to finish and what I ended up with was my track WE.
I like the track because I finished it. I got to 80% and stalled forever.
Last year I signed up for an Intro to Midi Class, Music Business, and Music Of The World classes and I loved it, and I think my grades showed it!
It really reminded me how much I want to do music for a living. It kinda sucked a lot when I'd meet people in class and I'd say that I was a music producer and I didn't have any music to share.
Our final project for our Intro to Midi Class was completing a song showing everything we had learned that semester .
Technically the first song I ever finished was that song named "Project 5".
After that I was really motivated to finally finish WE.
It was such a relief to finally finish it and finally move on to a NEW project. I learned a lot that tutorial. Probably one of the most informative so far, just cause Tom Cosm really breaks everything down, which is probably why it took me so long to finish. The whole series is 10 hours long and I watched it twice!
The 2nd song "ALL" I wasn't completely in love with either but I finished it in about a month so I was happy that I finished it so quick.
That song got a few hey that sounded somewhat good compliments, haha. I'm currently working on Suck. I stalled a little bit because my computer can't handle everything Ableton needs to do and it started getting clicky and it got sooooo annoying. It hurts my ears to listen to it. When I export it though, of course all the clicks are gone and then and I can hear what the song really sounds like. Aside from that, it's not bad, I kinda like it.
I wasn't happy at all with the pace I was going at. If I really wanted to do this, I'd be a lot further than 2 songs in 2 years, and not even originals. I really wasn't happy. I needed to change something, get some sort of schedule to get the ball rolling. I think the reasons I wasn't falling in love with producing was because I wasn't allowed to be completely be creative on my own. I had fun doing the tutorials but these weren't my tracks. I followed the tutorials mostly to a T, except for when I thought it was ok to change things a bit, like melodies and automation, this way I still had some input in the track and at the same time I could show someone and say this is the result I got with this tutorial. I was more in a learning state of a mind than a creative state of mind.
This past month I had a lot of personal things going on and this was the main thing that weighed heaviest on my heart. 2 weeks ago I decided that needed to change. Between watching Renman's Music Business videos and reading The Success Principles it really HIT ME that I'm an amazing dreamer but not an amazing doer. To get what I really wanted out of life, I'd need to start taking ACTION, and a lot of it. Instead of needing to know everything, I needed to just JUMP IN and learn from EXPERIENCE as I go.
If I'm on the clock at work, I put 110% into my job. I'm the guy who takes his job too seriously. I need to take that work ethic and invest it in ME. 2 weeks ago, I planned out my next few years. I made goals for every aspect of my life. BIG goals with small attainable goals along the way. I'm actually really excited about the next two years. Its gonna be a helluva ride. I'm ready to put in the same dedication I had towards drums and my old band and put it towards music production.
There's currently 4 more tutorials I want to finish before I'm completely on my own.... that was my original thinking and look how well that's been working.
I need to start getting creative and work on my own completely original music. I know enough of Ableton to get around to wherever I need to go pretty easy but when it comes to actual sound synthesis I need a lot more practice. For now, I'm gonna say screw it and not gonna care and just use presets and play with knobs til I feel comfortable enough to start making my own sounds. I think that was another thing that stalled me for a while. There's this huge debate on whether its OK or not to use presets on VST's and it's mostly frowned upon but I'm not an engineer. I have a lot to learn before I can get to getting my own sounds. I'm gonna consider presets my training wheels, so I can at least start working on my own songs. YES, I will be using presets, but of course I will also play with the knobs and add and combine and do things and experiment to try to get new sounds. And at the end of the day, who f'n cares. I really could care less if someone used all presets to make an amazing song. I see that as someone used the instruments they were given and made something amazing with it. I don't listen to a band and think, oh well that sucked because they used instruments that were already built, they didn't build their own guitars and pedals.
So my new schedule is to have one song assigned to each day. 3 days of tutorial songs, 3 days of my own songs and Sunday is whatever I feel like working day. It looks something like this.
Monday - "Suck" Sonic Academy Tutorial
Tuesday - "8" My first completely original song. Mostly housey.
Wednesday - "At" Tom Cosms Dubstep Tutorial
Thursday - "3" My second completely original song. Mostly Mostly housey.
Friday - "First" Originally was gonna be a Trap tutorial but it was just a tutorial on building a trap drum rack. So I have the drums ready, just need to do everything else, haha. This will mostly be an original.
Saturday - "1" My third completely original song. Mostly funky
Sunday - Whatever I'm most excited about.
That was my schedule for the last two weeks and.... its working! I feel like my excitement for making music has been renewed. I haven't had this much fun since I learned to play drums. I used to spend an hour a day practicing drums and that was usually my favorite hour of the day. I couldn't play longer because... well I got the cops called on me a lot, so I struck a deal with the neighbors. It helps knowing that if I don't work on this one song today, I'm gonna have to wait another week to work on it and I don't want to wait because I'm genuinely excited about the songs I'm working on, even the one with all the clicks. It keeps me on track to be working on 6 songs continually. I'll always have something fresh to work on, so I wont get burned out on one idea. I'm also playing with different genres til I develop my own "Jamie Cherish" sound cause I love it all.
Once I'm finished with Suck, At, First, and the bonus Mostly, I'm gonna have to revise my schedule.
Part 2 of the schedule will look the same except M,W,F will be replaced by my own new original songs. Every day, I'll watch one YouTube Video or Article and learn something new or keep myself refreshed with new technique. I'm gonna make a playlist of every good tutorial I can find and watch one a day and apply what I learned in the video that same day. After that, I'll work on whatever the song of the day is.
The goal this year is to finish W.A.S.A.F...M by June and release 831 on my birthday, which yes, is August 31st.
This ended up A LOT LONGER than I had originally planned but I'm glad I wrote it all out.
In a way this was my "State of Jamie Cherish Address" 2014.
