I was about this close..

On 2011-12-26 01:24, aciduss wrote:
- Constantly compare your track to professional productions so you keep an idea of how close / far you are from actual success.

- Don't listen a lot to the whole track unless you have too. This one is specially hard for me, I can't remember the thread in which we had already discussed the effect of over doing the listening stage... but yeah somethings lose magic after various listens.

- Play it to your friends even if they are not psyheads, if you do that while they are present in the studio you will feel the music in a similar way than they do. I don't know why perception changes so much in but this one has helped me a lot to identify what works and what doesn't.

Last and best advice: Never give up.

On 2011-12-29 13:13, disco hooligans wrote:
It all has to do with the way you look at things.
You make music because you love making it.
You should never feel like you have to measure up to something or someone in the way that if you are not, you should give up on it.
Be in awe of people who make brilliant music that "pisses" over yours and use that to have a good dance/trip and aspire to make something that will make you dance/trip in the studio.

Peace out.

On 2012-01-25 01:35, Upavas wrote:
True, albeit easy to say for someone like you DH...

On 2012-01-25 01:35, Upavas wrote:
And another thing, once your sound hits a certain level, don't expect to be successful right away, people will compliment you on your music, and then rip it for free. Labels will try to make a buck of you, without your well being in mind, just theirs. Party promoters look at labels and booking companies most of the time, it does not matter how good your sound is for them, what matters to them is how big your name is and how many people it will draw to their parties. Once you hit a certain sound quality, the rat race really begins. You have to learn how to sell your creations, without selling yourself, and that is the other 50% !

On 2012-01-25 13:22, Intertia wrote:
@PsyGalaXy

What exactly is the problem you are having mate?

I think the main reason that my mixes were not coming the way I wanted was because I wasnt trying to write something I would later enjoy. I wasnt really feeling the music or having fun writing it.

Like some say just let the music guide you. Take advantage of your mindset,if you are really pumped up you will likeley make something really good. Dont get too thoughtful on your note arrangement, just write it all the way you feel it, and come back later to do the dirty work

Atleast all this has been working for me. Also smoke some weed sometime sit in your studio listen to your tracks you might enjoy them I always feel as if I am a different person listening to my tracks when I smoke.

I really do not see weed as a drug when Im on the studio but rather as a tool to feel my music, and enjoy it.

On 2012-01-25 13:36, disco hooligans wrote:

Quote:

On 2012-01-25 01:35, Upavas wrote: True, albeit easy to say for someone like you DH...

Its easy for me to say after 13 years at music production. I started off in with sequencing on 1999 on Cubase VST and Cubase on the Atari ST with two synths, two AKAI S2000 samplers and an Alesis ADAT.
And still 13 years down the line, (ok... the Disco Hooligans project had its first release only 3 years ago) we are still only slightly more than nobodies in the trance scene. Played our first big festival last summer, still play small parties and striving to get on something big like the Boom festival, and we still haven't gigged outside of Europe and don't have nearly enough bookings to pay the rent.
But that is all besides the point as I would be doing this regardless of releases and gigs, you'd say that it is easy to say that now, but it is what I said before we had our first release with Ektoplazm, simply because I knew I could make a barely decent mix/production, but it was good enough for me at the time...the important thing was that we were finally giving something back to the music that gave us so much in the past.

Its all about priorities in life and what you expect of things.

I don't consider my self as a pro producer, I consider my self as an addict and hobbyist kinda like a hobby that you pick when you get older and you start building ships in bottles...or build massive miniature train tracks, I just sequence a bunch of sounds that I love listening to on repeat...until I have enough of that order of sounds and make another sequence of different sounds and so on.
The biggest reward is the personal satisfaction from getting something decent sounding, and as selfish/pompus as it might sound, having the people that inspired me to make music, play our music in parties, give me parts to remix, say good things about the stuff we do, etc.

One thing is for sure tho, if you persist on making music and trying to better your self through practice and by getting a decent pair of monitors, treating a room to do a half arsed job of getting the room to sound OK, you will do what you set out to do....even if your idea of good music, deviates wildly from the norm....I mean look at some dark psy artists that play frenetic tempos and music that wildly varies from the full on stuff that gets bookings left, right and center...I don't like dark psy, but if anything is a good example of music that tried to be different, yet had some sort of "commercial" success in terms of gigs to say the least.

Quote:

On 2012-01-25 01:35, Upavas wrote: And another thing, once your sound hits a certain level, don't expect to be successful right away, people will compliment you on your music, and then rip it for free. Labels will try to make a buck of you, without your well being in mind, just theirs. Party promoters look at labels and booking companies most of the time, it does not matter how good your sound is for them, what matters to them is how big your name is and how many people it will draw to their parties. Once you hit a certain sound quality, the rat race really begins. You have to learn how to sell your creations, without selling yourself, and that is the other 50% !

That holds some truth for sure. Then again a good way of selling your self, is giving out the music for free. Ektoplazm helped us get international gigs before we got on Neurobiotic, which basically put us on a different map and landed our first festival.
From my experience, my advice to someone who wants to "make it", is to set small, realistic 6 month goals and strive to achieve those goals. For example if you have 0 releases, finish a few strong tracks in a period of 6 months and in your free time, try to connect with people that will put your tracks on a compilation, send them to Alex at Ektoplazm (sorry Alex, you probably get bombarded with tunes everyday ), be prepared to hear someone say that your music is shit and not listen to them, if you feel your music is not shit, but most of all be very patient and be prepared to sacrifice something, I am not saying break up with your girlfriend, or spend less time with your kids (if you have any), but something's gotta give in order to get.
I sacrificed a well paying morning desk job for an ok paying paying night bar work, for the simple reason that I now have the hours available and most importantly, peace of mind to focus on music.

so after writing a really long post, what I really want to say is, if you enjoy making music, just make more of it.
If it makes you frustrated, take a step back and put things into perspective of what it is you expect and what you are truly getting.

Peace out