I’m a small artist but do sign my work. I’ve been enjoying Lemmy for some time now and want to push this community to interact more and grow! So I thought one way I could contribute is to do a little AMA about what it’s like as a signed artist making house music :)
What was your learning experience like?
How long before you got signed?
What was the most important thing you learned that helped you improve?
What is the most recent thing you learned that helped you improve?
Oh I love these!
1: Learning experience was VERY slow. I still feel like I’m playing catch-up, but I can be proud of what I put out now. DAWs have a very steep learning curve, then it flattens out for a bit, then gets steep again as you start to realise just how little you know!
2: I have had no musical training whatsoever, so it took 6+ years of playing around and teaching myself through experimentation to get a track signed.
3: Most important thing, and something I still struggle with, is to focus on the music. It may sound silly, but when you’re a producer, you’re doing everything from start to finish. So it’s easy to get caught up in the production, in the technicals, or even in trying to get a specific style down — sometimes you have to step away and listen after a week so you can go “oh this is actually musically interesting”.
4: Most recent is taking advantage of macros and modulation to give sounds character and slight imperfections, such as a randomised LFO on a cutoff filter that changes the texture slightly throughout :)