Making music

I find it comforting that a lot of designers I admire in this industry seam be following a similar path and diversifying their skills. I'm talking about music production but also making physical things. I guess as designers and developers from the web it's nice to make something tangible once in a while. I think music falls into this category because at the end you have a track which you can lay down to vinyl or tape or compact disk. And then you have the process of creating the artwork and sleeve notes which is something I spend hours and hours studying.

I decided to start messing around with music again during lockdown 1.0. I was trapped in Berlin during this period so naturally I started to make dark industrial techno and drum and bass - inspired by the many places I couldn't go to anymore.

I've been trying to make music in one way or another since the mid-noughties. When a friend and I managed to crack a copy of Reason and spent a day sampling 'Hotel Paridiso'. Since then I've owned Reason, various versions of Logic Pro, Cubase for iOS and now finally Ableton Live.

I've read books on music theory and composition - not that these have really helped in breaking out of the 8/16/32 bar loop. But at least now everything seams to be in key. But I've never really been happy with anything I made. Playing unfinished tracks or ideas to friends gives me some feedback and it's generally positive but the old impostor syndrome appears and I shelve it and move on to something else.

It wasn't until a few weeks when I stumbled upon a track I'd made years ago in my Music library. I thought wow that wasn't too bad. It's just a shame I no longer have the original files or Logic Pro which I used to make the track.

But despite this I'm rejuvenated and have started to process the many field recording I made while in Brazil. With these and access to services like Tracklib ideas are know forming. I'm generally not the kind of person to set myself new year resolutions but one is to finish a track or two this year, designed the art work and self publish.