Just wanted to write out this post to the waveform community and say my thanks to everyone who's been participating and lurking in this community so far. It's amazing to see your posts and projects here every day and it genuinely makes my day a little brighter to know that something I posted helped someone on the other side of the screen!
Anyways, I'd like to ask you all to help me bring you better content. I can't really post Kush, In The Mix, or random youtubers everyday, I find a lot of channels don't go nearly in-depth enough on a lot of topics and just scratch the surface, and well established youtubers just post the same content and advice over and over again. We should all benefit from different perspectives here!
I got a new job (yay!) earlier this week, so I'm gonna be a bit short on free time, which means if I don't do something about the way I search for content it'll be hard to make it consistently.
Finding noteworthy youtube channels can be quite time consuming. Writing a quality post also takes time: watching, researching, writing, reviewing, all that sha-bang! Takes me on average about 2-3 hours to do all of that. I might have ADHD or some form of inattention so that might explain if those hours seem like a bit too much.
So I thought we'd pool some interesting channels and websites in this thread, that way it'll be easy to reference for newcomers and I'll be able to curate the best content in here. It will also be interesting to know what your guys knowledge levels are and what areas of production you find most difficult: mixing, mastering, sound design, songwriting, etc. It will help me curate the content better as right now I really have very little idea about all that. And also, your likes in terms of genres and artists would be cool to share in the community. Let's see what kind of music we like to make!
Here are the discussion questions in a nice order. You don't have to answer every single question and it's completely okay to answer just one! All of these have full potential to be a really interesting standalone comment!
- Tell us about yourself! How long have you been making music and how much time do you spend producing a week (roughly)? What made you start your journey?
- What are your favorite genres to make and/or listen to? What unites them or makes them different to you?
- What are your most favorite artists? What makes them great to you?
- What resources (websites and youtube channels) do you use for learning? How do they help you?
I'll start with myself in the comments to this post!
Allright,
I´ve been making for 25 years now. Began with 16 and drumming on Dejmbes in tunnels broughtme initially in before I continued with Reason were I just mixed loops together and than began diving deeper into music after a friend tought me the first pieces of music theory.
After some training years I tramed up with local MCees and we had a first band called Quintesense with pretty smart story based texts and all. We had a few live perfomrances and its was huge fun.
Most of the time I spent with the next Group called Spruchpiloten and we released an Album and had a few hits like "Zurück zu Hause" ind Bombe. We had plenty of local club appearances sometimes completely improvised into electro or Drum n Bass territory comibined with rap vocals. A concept that later on Deickind started to make popular :D https://knsm.cc/kpmp3-015-spruchpiloten-starke-turbulenzen/
Maybe two hours a week is for producing if at all currently but thats fine as I prepare a massive solo comeback if all goes well.
Primary listening genres are HipHop, Drum n Bass, Electro, Deep House as well as Jazz and classic indian music or anythin that has rhytm.
Artists: Tribe called quest, Bad Company, Noisia, Misanthrop etc but also Khruangbin, Laufey, Lianne La Havas, Michael Kiwanuka on the softer side.
Random stuff, sometimes, music theory for weeks than a little mixing or stranjah for DnB stuff as I never had much ressources along the way except try and error and friends here and there.
I used to have a friend back in middle school who was getting a music education at the time. That was right around the point when I just started producing and he mentioned that my music sounded like it was from a videogame. And well I kinda took that to heart and looked up a bunch of itch.io games. I found a cool project and they were just in need of a soundtrack, so I said "let me give it a go". They liked my drafts and the rest is history. I've learned so much since then. Working on the game for the past couple of years boosted my skills into something release worthy. I even rewrote the whole thing twice because the skill gap was so massive between the first and the last track in the playlist. This last rewrite is gonna be final, and gonna become my portfolio in case I want to hit another studio after this. Hope it works out!
Thats a cool path for sure.
I havent even considered working for other projects except the last few years. Made a jingle for a podcast and some advertisment tracks, some for me, some for clients in other directions.
Fun experience to bring something on point along guidelines but I rather prefer the musician as an artist kind of thing where I just put out albums. When we released our album over 10 years ago we werent aware of all the sales channel that exist today. We hoped for some label that picks us up or something. We didnt even make CDs or vinyl I thin despite many people seem to like it and the forbidden and wild live impro recordings even more :D