I haven’t written in a few weeks, and there’s a good reason.
A few weeks ago, I was thinking about how cool it’d be to send some of my beats out to an artist, and start my journey to taking music production seriously. Instead of just thinking about it, I decided, for once, I’m going to actualize it.
I’ve always enjoyed music.
I’ve taken up the guitar, and piano on my own, and learned the trumpet and trombone in high school band. Having not played recently, I turned to music production to fill that void.
Creating music, and perhaps creation of any sort, serves as a necessary outlet for me.
I tend to enjoy creating things more than I do consuming them.
Whether anyone listens to my beats, or reads these posts that I write, I’ve found purpose in creating something that’s bigger than me.
When I go to sleep, my blog is still awake, offering my creation to the world. When I die, these things will still be here. I think there’s something fulfilling about creating outside of the realm of yourself. It’s timeless, in some sense.
The same joy I seek in writing, is the same joy I get when producing beats.
I decided, if I want to do it, I’m going to commit. I picked the date before I head back to school and work, and decided that’ll be the day I send my beats out.
I had a goal in mind, and ensured I contributed to accomplishing that goal each day. I produced a few beats each day, iterated on them over the coming weeks, sample hunted, mixed, mastered, and engineered, given the skills I have developed thus far.
By no means am I an expert. I’d classify myself as the opposite, an amateur.
I used this experience to learn, and hone my craft at a basic level, from end to end.
I’m terrible at mixing, and at sampling, but I did see improvement nonetheless.
I learned all that I didn’t know.
I produced work I’d listen to, and that’s all that mattered, really.
With most things I create, I tend to leave them to myself. I don’t really promote my blog. It’s standalone.
I write for myself.
With the beats I have made, I ended up following a similar trajectory. I’d produce them, and leave them in my collection, to be listened to by me, at a later time.
I was planning on keeping it that way, until I found an opportunity to exercise risk taking.
It’s hypercritical to get used to taking risks, and I wrote all about that here.
I wanted to step out of my comfort zone, and send them out to an artist I listen to in my day-to-day rotation.
The artist, AR Paisley, is an artist I often listen to, to gather motivation.
He sits side-by-side with rappers like J Cole, and Meek Mill, in the function that they play in my life. He spits real messages, and when I discovered him, I couldn’t help but go all the way back and listen to all his older work. It’s all really good, and a lot of what kept me going to feel encouraged to take this risk was his music.
There’s a learning opportunity in anything. Whether my beats are good or not, is perhaps unrelated. Finding the confidence in yourself to put yourself out there is, really, what I’m practicing here.
I consider this an experience a success, regardless of where my beats end up going.
If my beats go nowhere, then I know I need to work on my craft.
I know I need to tweak my approach in communicating with an artist. Perhaps I didn’t present myself as best as I could?
If I can acquire feedback from the artist, that would be a big win, and far exceed my success criteria.
I find joy in being able to try something new, step out of my comfort zone, and actualize a dream.
I want to get better at putting things in to play. I tend to think a lot about what I want to be, and what I want to do. This is me exercising that muscle, and going at it.
I’ll probably post a reflection on the situation and how things unfolded.