If you want to make music I.

It's very likely that you didn't come to this site by accident. If you are reading this, it is obvious that you are interested in some form of modern music composition, music writing, or even composing songs yourself. Like the content of my books, this writing is primarily for someone who does not consciously make music, has no professional background, and therefore sometimes the end result does not meet the standards required to be considered a truly finished song. I want to help you with my writing so that, when certain problems arise, you can find solutions more easily and save a lot more time until you reach a professional level where your skills are already in competition with the skills of others. The content here will be a bit freer than in my books, where I had to stick to a concise professional description without my subjective opinion on certain processes.

Since this is an introductory text, the first piece of a longer content, I will not share with you the more intimate music editing tips in the first round. Rather, I'd like to talk now about the situation you will experience if you want to stay in the world of music composition for the long term.

Many people have the desire to create something creative. It could be a painting, a photograph, a video, a picture, a sculpture, whatever. Because our world doesn't work without money, many people do this on top of their main job. Therefore, the number of people who try to make music without having any musical training, without having gone to a sound engineering school, is extremely high. Some of these people are really just playing music as a hobby, where it is not a question of whether the song will be a success or not. Others, on the other hand, have the attitude that it will make them money.

Dreaming is a very good thing, even if it has no basis, because it is dreaming that can lead us to be better, to do something about what we want, in short, to take action. But it is very important to recognise the fact that if you really want to be successful in the music industry, it is going to take a lot of work. We need to acquire a level of knowledge that is impossible to achieve in a short time without help. I myself started making music in May 1995, and I was the typical equivalent of someone who now thinks he is making good music after a few months of packing samplers. I felt I had to create or I would go mad. I enrolled in a film directing course, but I thought about it and realised it wasn't for me. To make a film, you have to learn a lot of things and get a lot of people together to actually make something. So I was lazy, so I switched to music. Even then, the tools were there for a person to be able to create music using a computer. I naively thought that from here on, the world would be mine. I couldn't have been more wrong! Over time, I realised that without real knowledge, I could not realise myself. For a long time, I made the mistake of thinking that I could acquire this knowledge myself. That is true, but not always in how much time. The advantage of self-learning is that every mistake or right path is burnt into you, so you learn for life how to do it. The disadvantage is time. In retrospect, I could have easily saved myself five years. Five years! A quarter of my 20 years in the profession! The fact that I'm still here, still playing music, is thanks to my perseverance, but in hindsight, it would have been great if someone had helped me to develop faster. So my books and these writings will help you to master certain learning processes more quickly, or to make the right decision about your musical career in a particular life situation.

I've already helped you: If you have world-changing plans, you now know that you can't really get ahead without learning. And you also know that you need someone to help you, otherwise too much time is wasted.

What can you do to reach your goals sooner? If you're going to study, you should get a music education. Even if you don't go to music school, you still need someone who can teach you the basics of composition. This can save you a lot of time. Another way to save time is to go to some kind of sound engineering school. You don't necessarily have to hope to get a job with your degree, but rather see it as saving time for your money, and thus finding out sooner what you should be using it for.

I don't believe in two or three day Ableton courses. They have a lot of value, but they don't cover everything you need to know. To really get good at using the software that is important for mixing takes months.

Once you're starting from a slightly better position, making relatively good quality music, you should know that you can't do it alone in the long term. You need partners! Facebook is not enough, you need to make real connections with other people.

Unfortunately, if everything is given, you also need to learn marketing. How to sell yourself? You have to seize every opportunity! It doesn't hurt if you're cool, you're not a nerd, you can enjoy life. Again, something you have to learn... In a word, a career in music is all about learning, gaining experience. But the latter can only happen to you if you put yourself in a situation where you gain experience. Whether it's good or bad. If you just sit at home in front of your computer, posting your music occasionally, you won't achieve much. Unfortunately, it's become a world where you have to work triple to succeed because the threshold for success has become very high.

There's something else you have to reckon with! Your age. You can be as good as you like, if you're twenty with a sour cream mouth you're not really going to be taken seriously on any forum. You have to take that into account, even if you are otherwise very good. That's not to say that you're hopeless at any kind of success. I am saying that personal communication is important at this stage. I say, don't say no to anything! If you have the opportunity to do a job related to music, don't let your fears or how much money you'll get dictate your decision! Take it, because you can learn from it, you can build relationships. So that's what this period is all about. If you do it right, your reputation will precede you and a few years later you can become a rapper and a musician for whom nothing is impossible.

The naivety: If you have dreams and hopes, it's good if that's what moves you, but you have to know that there's no profession in the world dirtier than the media. So you have to isolate the necessary evil and use it for your purposes, provided that it is possible. What is important, however, is that you don't put your dreams aside, but take detours when necessary. It takes a great deal of charisma, external help, to be able to move forward arrowlessly to achieve one's goals.

Failure. It can be a simple matter of someone ripping off your music on a forum or someone forgetting to pay for your work. And of course it can be more complicated, when someone brutally screws you over. You might ask yourself, what's the point of all this? Why do it if this is the end? What advice can I give you? The only thing is to look deep inside yourself. You have to know that these phenomena are everywhere in music, you can't avoid them. You have to decide if you want to learn to bounce these negatives off yourself or find a profession where there is less competition, less struggle. I can't decide for you, you have to make that decision. You need to know that with failure comes success.

Success: the definition of success is also highly variable. Success can be that you wrote good music. Success can be getting a commission. It can be success if you're on tour. And you can be successful if you get national recognition. Whatever your achievement, never ignore the fruits of your own labour! Respect yourself, because even small achievements are successes. I'm not saying pat yourself on the back all day, I'm just saying don't take what you do for granted!

Of all the factors I have listed, the most important is not the perfection of the music, but the drive, the ability to exploit personal ambition. If you are basically a reserved type, you will have a very difficult time. You don't have to behave as if there are wolf rules, but you do have to be relaxed.

One way or another, many musicians and sound engineers are wondering what the future holds? I wouldn't say it's easy for someone who has entered this field. It's not like it was in the nineties, publishing songs doesn't make money. What methods are there to make money? That's the next story.