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http://musicproductionblog.tumblr.c...-as-a-lifestyle
My first article. Would love to know what you guys think, in case I'm barking up the wrong tree!
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I will use certain terms such as dance music, producer, artist and electronic music with ambiguity, due to the fact that not everyone completely agrees on how to use these terms.
Music Production as a Lifestyle
What will start off as a hobby could turn into an international effort to bring joy, ectasy and bliss to thousands perhaps millions of people across the globe, or remain as hobby just for personal satisfaction. Either way, knowing what you are doing is key. It’s not for everyone, which is why this article is entitled, “Music Production as a Lifestyle”. If you are new to production and you envision yourself to eventually be a solid artist/producer, your current lifestyle as you know it will change dramatically.
You have to hook yourself into thinking that even if you start off knowing just a little bit, you will eventually be rewarded by knowing a lot more if you keep working hard. The inspiration, or the “high” you get from comprehending a once unknown thing, will hopefully enable you to accept and embrace a lifestyle of constant openness, learning, adapting, and creative evolution.
There are songs from the very late 70s and early 80s which have minor, but noticeable semblances of what is on Beatport today. They are not the same style, but the echoes of those earlier synth sounds are everywhere in modern dance music. Like any genre, it continues to evolve. If you do not love music, production simply isn’t for you. Half of writing good dance tracks or electronic songs is drawing off your own listening experience, a semi-subconscious effect will emerge allowing you to draw from the years of (hopefully) good music you have been listening to. A passion for music is entirely necessary, if you only like a certain style/artist/genre, you are probably not musically equipped enough to make good or memorable tracks.
To say that you have to love all styles of music from every era and genre is a bit of a stretch but it is partly true. Creative expressiveness is nurtured by a background in listening to diverse music. Music must be understood objectively. You must have been free of any preconceived notions of what is good and what is not. Let’s say you enjoy all forms of music to a degree, but you have a style you prefer. This is what makes not just a dance music producer, but a good artist. Listening to music is also a skill, because it requires abstract thought, objectivity and experience.
A diverse listening background offers cognitive contrast which demonstrates itself subconsciously as well as consciously. There will always be huge differences in certain styles of music, but a weekend at a blues festival, then a hiphop show and then a rock show the next week, will set you up with a magnificent pallete of constrasting sounds — putting your brain into abstract mode, allowing you to truly “hear” music.
Music we enjoy is based around expectation, the pleasure center of the brain is rewarded when that expection (cadence and resolution) turns out to be true, but the euphoria is magnified (sometimes explosively) when that expectation turns out to be not exactly as expected, but something better and indeed, unexpected. So to be a good producer, you must be a good listener.
Lifestyle is the focus of this article mostly because of how your habits or routine will change. Your digital audio workstation and dance music production itself is something you assimilate into. It will require at least some of your time, every day. That is only the beginning. Once you begin to learn how things work and put them into practice, you will want to learn more and more and more. The nature of production is that one aspect of this art form breaths new life into others areas and aspects of production you may have struggled with or are simply unfamiliar with. You can try to learn everything at once, which is daunting and nearly impossible, or you can choose something to focus on (compression, synth design) until you feel that you have learned enough and sufficiently put into practice what you have learned.
Now that you have selected an aspect of this artform to focus on and learn about, it will build bridges to other elements of what it means to make a truly great dance music record. A mental cadence will emerge and it can be nearly exponential in nature the strides you can make, simply by hunkering down on at least one thing and not looking back. By the time you know it, you started off learning how to properly set a compressor, and now you are starting to notice some of intricate and relational properties of dance music production.
If you become inundated with how much there is to learn, and you are not having fun, you will fail. You must find joy in this, and pleasure in the progress and results you make, even if they seem only microscopic in nature at times, or at first. Be proud and satisfied that you learned something you didn’t know before. You must find and identify your own foundation within the realm of music and production then slowly your discoveries and practices will begin to support each other in beautiful harmony. Above all, learning how to make music in this art form is the same as learning most anything else - practice and perseverance, and these are your essential keys.
Last edited by Evolve140 on Apr-22-2011 at 22:22
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