Works of... art (?) Music

At least back in my day, it was mandatory for all Portuguese school children aged 10-11 to spend a couple years studying music, and more specifically, learning to play the recorder. I enjoyed some parts of that, but I could definitely go without some others - the need to put time into actually practicing with the recorder, the fact that the sounds it could produce were hardly inspiring to me… they were certainly a far cry from the produced music that I enjoyed listening to. Nevertheless, I appreciated it much, much more than the handicraft disciplines.

The school I attended was quite lackluster in the arts department, being more STEM-oriented, and didn’t offer the option to study music for two more years; what should have been a choice between handicrafts and music was actually a choice between handicrafts and going to a different school that was more arts and humanities oriented, losing touch with the few friends I had, etc. Me being the kid who, by that age, had already begged his family to teach me to code, you can imagine what option I chose. My sweaty palms had to unnervingly endure arts and crafts for some years.

Growing up, those two years of recorder screeching were the extent of my contact with how music is made. Even though I was fully aware that music was yet another thing you could do “on the computer,” for one reason or another, at the time I didn’t have much interest in exploring that creative outlet. It’s likely that I was still associating it with the rigidity of the school discipline, which at least in my case, didn’t actually explore the creative side of things all that much.

Throughout my teenage years, I vaguely remember attempting to create electronic music a couple times, specifically, playing around with software such as Audiotool, but the results were dissonant and uninspiring, as expected for someone who neither has “an ear for music [making]” nor even a bit of proper music theory background. I was missing the quick and easy tricks to getting something that sounded decent enough to maintain my interest.

It wasn’t until my early twenties, back in 2018 or 2019, that I began taking an interest in music production again. I think the main difference by then was a combination of factors:

1. YouTube had become a mature ecossystem and I was spending a lot more time watching YouTube videos than in previous years, as I was a university student living by myself, consuming YouTube rather than TV at every meal or even just as background noise.

2. I had become sufficiently proficient in spoken English to be able to consume most YouTube videos as well as a native speaker. I had pretty good English skills even as a younger kid, but having learnt most of it by reading programming tutorials and the like (I never appreciated movies and series much), listening and speaking lagged behind by some years. Unlike programming, for something like music production, videos are a much better medium than text.

3. My musical taste had evolved beyond the pop that plays on the radio; streaming services and their recommendation engines had been a thing for quite some years at this point, and I had found my preferred music genres, squarely in the electronic and dance realms.

4. A few music production videos must have randomly appeared my YouTube recommendation feed and caught my eye. I distinctly remember Composerily being one of the first music production channels whose videos I watched actively, particularly his “how to sound like X” videos. It is quite likely that one of his videos popped up as I was listening to some of my favorite tracks on YouTube, and I must have clicked it out of curiosity.

From what I remember, Composerily videos struck a very good balance between teaching music production tricks for specific music styles, making things seem easier than they actually were, and humor. From YouTube recommendation to recommendation, I started watching him and others use software like Ableton and FL Studio - both more conventional DAWs than the version of Audiotool I had used years prior - to make music of the kind I actually enjoy. It was enough to make me procure an Extremely Legitimate™ copy of Ableton… only for me to discover that I was just as bad at composing pieces that sounded good, as I was back when I first played with Audiotool.

Still, the focus that comes with adulthood, coupled with the awareness that YouTube was full of relevant videos on the topic, made me stick with the hobby. I eventually consumed some more beginner-oriented tutorials, specifically for electronic dance music. I found it much more pleasant to start with the specific shortcuts to getting something that sounds good enough, than to study a lot of theory in a boring void and with examples that sound nothing like what I enjoy listening to. In this front, I think the most helpful tutorial I followed was this one by Bound to Divide.

During Covid times, I bought some hardware to see if I found it easier or more inspiring to create electronic music without the use of a “regular” computer. (It was also an attempt at spending less time sitting at a computer.) I bought a cheap Korg NTS-1 synthesizer, and a not-so-cheap Roland MC-101 groovebox, as well as a MIDI keyboard. I have used them very sparingly, and none of my properly released tracks so far have featured their involvement. My musical creative juices flow best while “at the computer,” which is unsurprising, given that that’s also the case for all the other art forms I’ve dabbled in.

I am still far from great at this music making thing, but even if the outcomes are not that great, and even if I finish only two tracks per year on average, I am now able to find enjoyment in the process of music production. It is, finally, yet another thing I can do “on the computer,” after all these years.

My biggest regret, or at least the thing that gives me the most sense of missed opportunity, was not trying harder sooner: searching for tutorials sooner, getting my hands on a more standard DAW, etc. By “sooner” I mean, in particular, back when I was younger and had much more free time than now. Maybe music production could have come more naturally to me, much like I feel that software development became second nature to me, due to having spent a lot of time on it, in my formative years.