Are Music Schools Worth The Investment?

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Whether or not music schools are worth the money might spur a heated debate—schools worldwide might not like what I’m about to say, but I think that this topic needs to be addressed. What’s outlined in this post is based on my personal experience(s); I invite anyone who want to discuss this topic further, to contact me if necessary.

Music schools: an overview

Many people over the last few years have been asking me about my opinion regarding enrolling in music production schools. There are many production and engineering schools in the world, and a lot of them ask for a lot of money to attend. In Montreal, we have Musitechnic (where I have previously taught mastering and production) and Recording Arts. Most major cities around the world have at least one engineering school and if not, people can still study electro-acoustics at Universities. University takes at least 3 years to get a degree; most private schools will condense the material over 1 year. During that time, the physics of sound will be studied, mixing, music production in DAWs, recording, and sometimes mastering. While each of these subject usually take years to really master, the introduction to each can be very useful as you’ll learn the terms and logic of how these tasks work and what they are for.

If the teachers are good at explaining their topic(s) and have a solid background, there’s nothing quite like being in the presence of someone with a great deal of experience, not only for the valuable information they provide, but also, the interpersonal context. Having a good teacher will pay off if you ask questions and are curious. While I don’t teach at Musitechnic anymore, some of my past students are still in contact with me and ask me questions—I even hired some for internships. I’ve often been told by many students that they remembered more from hearing about their teacher’s experience(s) than the class content or material.

One issue with audio teachers I hear about a lot is that many times, teachers might be stuck in a specific era or on a precise genre, which might be difficult for a student to relate to; there might be a culture clash or a generation gap between themselves and the teacher.

For instance, if a school has teachers who are from the rock scene, many people who are interested in electronic music or hip hop will have a really hard time connecting with them. Similarly, sometimes the teachers who make electronic music can even be from a totally different sphere as well, and mentalities and approaches can clash.

The advantages of attending a school or program

There are, however, many beneficial outcomes from attending a music school:

  • you’ll get a solid foundation of the understanding of audio engineering, and get validation from experts.
  • you’ll end up getting a certificate that is recognized in the industry.
  • you’ll have access to resources, equipment and experienced teachers that you might not otherwise find.

The main issue I have with some music schools is how they sell “the dream”, in most cases. The reality of the music industry is really harsh. For instance, a school might tell students that when they graduate, they can open a studio or work for one. While after graduating you might have some skills and experience that you didn’t have before, nothing guarantees that people will come to you to have their music mixed. That said, getting your first client(s) will eventually bring in other clients and opportunities.

“What’s the best way to get a full time job in the music industry or to become an engineer?” I’m often asked, and I’m very careful about how I answer this question. I described my thoughts on finding full-time work in the music industry in a previous post, but I’ll share some points about this topic again here and how it relates to music schools:

  • Whatever anyone tells you or teaches you, even if you applied what they say to the finest level of detail, it’s likely that things still won’t work out the way you envision them. I know this sounds pessimistic, but the reality is that no path will provide the same results for anyone else in the music/audio world.
  • The industry is constantly changing and schools aren’t always following fast enough. If you want to make things work, you need to make sure that you can teach yourself new skills, and fast—being self-sufficient is critical to “make it” out there.
  • Doing things and learning alone is as difficult as going to school, but will be less expensive. The thing a school will provide is a foundation of knowledge that is—without question—valuable. For instance, the physics of sound won’t change in the future (unless one day we have some revolutionary finding that contradict the current model; this is not going to come in anytime soon).
  • Clients don’t always care where you’re from or what your background is, as long as they get results they like. Your reputation and portfolio might speak more for itself than saying you went to “School of X”. Where schools or your background can be a deal-breaker though, is if you apply to specific industries, such as video game companies, and maybe you already have some experience with the software they use—companies will see that as a bonus. But I know sound designers for some of those companies who’ve told me that your portfolio of work matters more. For instance, one friend told me that they really like when a candidate takes a video and then completely re-makes the audio and sound design for it; this is more important than even understanding specific software which can always be learned at a later time.
  • The most important thing is to make music, daily, and to record ideas, on a regular basis. Finishing songs that are quality (see my previous post about getting signed to labels) and having them exposed through releases with labels, by posting them on Youtube channels, self-releasing on Bandcamp, or filling up your profile on Soundcloud can all be critical to reaching potential clients. One of the main reasons I am able to work as an audio engineer and have my own clients is mostly due to the reputation as a musician I built a while ago. I often get emails of people who say they love my music and that was one of the main reasons they want their music to be worked by me specifically. Not many schools really teach the process of developing aesthetics (i.e. “your sound”) or the releasing process. While some do, both of those topics also change quickly, and you need to adapt. I’ve been feeling like every 6 months something changes significantly, but knowing some basics of how to release music certainly helps.

Would I tell someone not to attend a music school?

Certainly not. Some people do well in a school environment, and similarly, some people don’t do well at all on their own. So knowing where you fit most is certainly valuable in your own decision-making about schools. Perhaps a bit of both worlds would be beneficial.

Will a school get you a job in the audio world?

Absolutely not—this is a myth that I feel we need to address. It’s not okay to tell this to students or to market schools this way; it would be as absurd as saying that everyone who graduates from acting schools will find roles in movies and make a living from acting.

What are the alternatives to music schools?

If you don’t think music school is for you—because you don’t have the budget for it, or you’re concerned about the job market after, or even because you’re not someone who can handle class—there are still other options for you:

  • Take online classes. This is a no-brainer because there are a huge number of online classes, courses, and schools online, and you can even look for an international school. You can also work on classes during a time that fits into your schedule. This means you can invest some of your time off from work into it. Slate Digital has some nice online classes, as well as ADSR.
  • Become a YouTube fiend. YouTube has a lot of great content if you’re good at finding what you need. You can create a personal playlist of videos that address either a technique or a topic that is useful. There are also videos where you see people actually working, and they’re usually insightful.
  • Get a mentor. People like myself or others in the industry are usually happy to take students under their wing. While you can find most information online, one advantage of having a mentor is to speed up the search for precise information. How can you learn a precise technique for a problem if you don’t even know what it is? Well, someone with experience can teach you the vocabulary, teach you how to spot a specific sound, and teach you how to find information about it. “How do they make that sound?“, I sometimes hear, as some stuff feels magical to students until I explain that it’s a specific plugin. In my coaching group, we even have a pinned topic where we talk about certain sounds and how they’re made.

I hope this helps you make your own judgments about music schools!

SEE ALSO : On Going DAWless

Building a great groove

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Have you ever been on a dance-floor and heard a track that connects with you in a very physical way? Physical connection creates a sort of energy that is infectious and makes you want to dance until your feet give up. This feeling is all about the groove in a track; creating a groove makes the combination of elements and arrangement feel just right to keep you dancing. What follows in this post is my personal take on groove, and the steps I’ve learned that I think work best to create a great groove.

Taking into account that everyone has a particular taste, a groove that can give me this irrevocable urge to dance may not do the same for you, and on the other hand, you may relate to other tracks in the same way which don’t do anything for me. To better understand groove, I recommend that you take a step back and subject yourself to some critical listening.

Critical listening includes listening to some reference tracks with your eyes closed and making mental notes of what seems to work best. How do the elements in the track relate to one another? What kinds of sounds are used? Is the groove driving or swing-y? Listening this way will give you great ideas with regards to what works and what feels forced for you personally. I cannot stress this point enough. Have you ever made a track which you felt was “good” but didn’t create a sense of physical movement or urge to dance? Review the groove and change it, and you’ll hear an improvement.

Based on my own personal taste, I feel that when it comes to groove, less is more in terms of what works best. Subtlety coupled with taking extra care in the sound design/sample-selection stage will help your ideas flow smoothly. Understand which sounds you want to be the “protagonists” from the get-go, and you will be able to fill the space much more naturally. 

Workflow for creating a groove

  1. Build a simple pattern. After designing some sounds you feel are nice, take them and start constructing the foundation of your groove. While most of the time drums and percussion are associated with the groove, they are not the only parts which have to work in order to have a nice flow. Pheek’s Guide to Percussion has some great tips on call and response—a concept you must focus on quite a bit to build a solid groove.
  2. Once you have your pattern, add some variations to it. A variation could be muting the kick every eighth bar, or having a hat come in and out sporadically, or even changing the note of a synth stab you are using for the groove. You’ll notice that your groove already feels more complete once you add some variations. Micro-variations help to keep the listener interested as the pattern evolves a bit within itself.
  3. Swing is your best friend! It doesn’t matter if you’re working inside the box or with hardware—take your pattern and apply some swing to it, whether it be via Ableton groove pool or just micro-timing changes (moving things just a tad off grid), this will make this pattern feel less robotic which is what we are going for. This last point is very important for a nice groove, but some kinds of music don’t apply this technique as aggressively because they are just hard hitting and energy driven, but many others rely on these small details and time changes to give a human touch to the pattern. 
  4. Add some effects to your sounds. Instead of programming each MIDI note or step, add some delays—both triplets and eighth notes work well—with some very short feedback and dry/wet. Here’s where you can go crazy experimenting—you will notice that when you use these delays and reverbs your sound begins to morph and ghost notes appear in the background, which make things feel fuller and glued together.
  5. To continue morphing it, apply some modulations and LFOs to control different aspects of a sound; from panning to volume, modulation allows a pattern to evolve on a macro-scale and creates movement, which is crucial in creating a great groove. 

Don’t forget that it’s important that all your elements work well together. If you feel something is out of place, take a couple of minutes to review it—experiment and you’ll create “happy mistakes” which end up being great. I like to use the word coherence to describe how things work together in a track. If a track has a coherent groove in which the drums, bass-line, synths, and other parts work well together, then it will be infectious. Many people use the coherence approach, and you can go crazy with it. Again, listen to some references and use them as a starting point while asking yourself the important questions:

How much swing does the pattern have?

How does the bass-line relate to the percussion and main drums?

Are synths being used rhythmically or as background sounds?

Don’t be afraid to revise a groove, but also learn when to compromise—after a session take a break and come back to it with fresh ears. If your groove is solid, you will feel it. If not, you’ll have an easier time fixing it when your perspective is fresh.

SEE ALSO : Honing your production skills before releasing music

Sending demos to record labels as an “unsigned” artist—an online experiment

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Being a “signed” artist is a big topic; it’s both a good thing and a bad thing at the same time. People’s perceptions of being “signed” to a label is mainly the issue, in my opinion. In a past article, I stated that you could go label-less and still do fine in music. But what if you want to be signed and want to collaborate with others and constantly face obstacles? For the sake of this article—which took me a while to write—I went undercover using an alias: I made some music outside of my usual music signature and then contacted a bunch of labels to see how things go when you have a very low profile on Soundcloud and are sending demos to record labels online.

The idea of going undercover was primarily to see how labels reacted to an unknown artist with quality music, but also to decipher how to make things easier.

But before I share the story of what happened, let’s talk plain strategy and I’ll share a few facts with you that I had in mind before embarking on this experiment.

What a label will look for in new potential artists

1. Labels want music that fits the label’s sound/ethos, and an artist that fits their image, so it can be presented and sold properly. Listen to the latest releases of the label on Bandcamp/Soundcloud to see if your music fits. Note: many people will contact a label based on music they released years back, and that’s usually a big mistake.

2. Usually labels will want someone from within their network. If you’re not friends of friends, the odds you fit into “the circle” is less likely, so it’s important to do a bit of name-dropping or to get to know people that the label knows.

3. Having depth in your collection of tracks is critical. If the label likes 2 of the 4 songs you have, they might ask for more. Having a bunch more is very useful, plus it shows that you write on a regular basis. In other words, it shows you’re serious.

4. It’s a huge win if you tour, play gigs, or have important releases up your sleeve. This can be an issue for many. There are way too many producers and performers compared with the number of opportunities to release and play out. So it’s a catch-22; you’re more likely to release because you already release music, and you’re more likely to play out because you already play gigs. If you don’t, then you’ll get less traction. One doesn’t guarantee the other, but either definitely helps your profile. Your network of contacts is a very important factor for finding success with your music, so whatever you do, building a contact network is equally as important as making quality music.

Getting back to my unsigned alias experiment, I decided to take on a role of someone who is completely outside of the system, is new to production (but is knowledgeable), and never plays out or releases anything. I created an alias—which I won’t reveal here as I want this experiment to be ongoing—and I said I was from Scandinavia, where the scene for micro-house is not super strong. My communication skills were okay, but I didn’t know anyone in any of the label networks I contacted.

So how did it go?

This experiment went terribly.

I contacted thirteen labels with four tracks. I validated my work with a friend who said the tracks were good, playable, and release-worthy beforehand. As a label owner myself, I’m very picky about how someone should approach me, so I wrote a professional email for each label. I contacted each label on Soundcloud and through email if possible. Ideally, I knew the best way of getting a label’s attention would be to go through an artist on the label, but I didn’t want to blow my identity. Here’s the message I sent:

Hello! My name is [XXXXX] and I’m a young producer from Scandinavia. I got familiar with your label through discovering releases that I believe are similar to the music I’m making. I checked your latest releases on Beatport to see what you’re up to recently and I think you could probably enjoy these 4 tracks I’d like to present you. Let me know what you think.

The four tracks I sent out were in private mode on Soundcloud, and I made sure that people didn’t listen to them before sending them out. My account on Soundcloud had no followers, and the profile picture was pretty enigmatic as well.

Out of all of the thirteen labels I contacted, only four took the time to listen to some of the tracks, not all. Only one label replied to my initial message with a “thank you.” Honestly, if I was the guy I pretended to be, I would be pretty discouraged. I’d say that even myself as a veteran musician, when I try contacting labels sometimes it’s still, very, very hard. I even followed up with the non-responsive labels with my Pheek alias and even then, still no replies.

From this experiment, I concluded that no matter how talented, polite, and organized you are, it’s very unlikely for things to work out well for you if you submit your demos online like a cold-call. The most successful deals will happen because you’re part of a network that probably has in-person contact. In past posts, I have been insistent on the importance of working on what you can control: the quality of your music, originality of your ideas, working with people you can count on…etc.

What labels look for in the online profiles of artists

If you still want to submit your demo online despite the difficulty in getting it heard—let alone signed—here are some tips about what labels are looking for:

  • An online presence: presence on the most important websites such as Instagram, Soundcloud, Resident Advisor, Mixcloud.
  • Material published on a Soundcloud profile with comments from listeners. No one wants to see 5k plays or less and no likes or feedback. As a label owner, I also don’t like to see a profile with no music posted publicly. As an artist, it’s important to have some kind of portfolio. It can be published material, but if you’ve never had a release, posting music you’re working on is a sign that you’re serious about what you do.
  • Self-published material is always a plus. I like to see people who don’t wait for things to happen to them, but are proactive and have the energy to make things move, even if not much is going on afterwards. Seeing someone who has a non-empty Bandcamp profile shows some seriousness and experience with how to create a release.
  • An artist with tons of quality music that is unsigned. There’s nothing more exciting than to discover an artist that is emerging that has tons of quality tracks waiting for getting signed. I can’t emphasize enough on this to new artists I work with with mix and mastering. Keep making music—tons of it. Make sure your work is quality so that the day you find a label who wants to work with you, you’ll be more than ready to present them the best quality album you have. Additionally, when a label knows that you’re working with a mentor, an engineer (myself or someone else), it shows your dedication and passion, which is also something labels really want to see in you. One of the hardest parts of finding a label is presenting yourself to the world and to DJs, so anything that can leverage your release(s) is something that can make a big difference in the end.

If you’re unsigned and you’ve had feedback from people you trust saying your music is quality, stay focused on making music and dedicate some time to trying to find people who want to work on it with you. Part of me believes that anyone talented will always find a place to release. Usually my clients hate when I say that, but I’ve had people come back to me years later who’ve finally found some level of success. I think some of the best places to meet people that you can rely on are festivals, record stores, and other in-person events where you can spot artists. You can reach out to DJs right away, but perhaps it’s more effective to reach out to a network or a group of people. What if you’re socially awkward? Typical issue for us nerds. I’ve worked with people in this position and the ones who “made it” were the ones that were picky about the contacts they made. I’d encourage you to join our community on Facebook, too—we’re friendly 😉

SEE ALSO : How To Reinvent Your Sound

On Going DAWless

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Dawlessness (a word I have just coined) seems to be something that people are quite passionate about at the moment, both for and against. There are popular synth YouTube channels devoted to it (see Dawless Jammin’ with Jade Wii) and some people wear their DAWlessness as a badge of pride (see Look Mum No Computer). In case anyone is not familiar with the whole DAWless thing, it’s just what it sounds like—making electronic music without the use of a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). This usually means a number of sequencers playing synths and drum machines, all synced over MIDI, perhaps supplemented with some live keys and/or vocals. The real puritans then record the whole thing to cassette. Don’t ask how they upload it to YouTube…

Advocates of this way of working offer a number of reasons for rejecting what is the most powerful music tool available today. They say the computer is a distraction – that you shouldn’t make music on a machine that also gives you access to Facebook, Instagram, streaming news, cat videos, etc. They talk about the sense of immediacy and feeling like you are playing an instrument rather than doing your tax returns. Some people cite the benefits of imposed creative limitations.

On the other side there has been a certain amount of mockery and meme-ing that asserts that DAWless jams are tuneless, formless, one-groove affairs with no journey. Why on earth would anyone willingly give up the boundless possibilities that a modern, fully-fledged DAW offers, they ask? Investing a lot of money to set creative limitations seems a little perverse, does it not?

I’m not here to argue one way or the other. Both approaches are perfectly valid. The explosion of external, mostly analog hardware over the last 10-15 years has made a DAWless approach accessible—and not just for the preserve of synth collectors with vast studios of vintage gear. Thanks to Roland, Korg, Akai, Arturia and others, you can now buy a mixer, drum machine, synth, and standalone external sequencer—a complete DAWless jamming setup in other words—for well under $1,000. Meanwhile, computing power has continued to grow and DAWs have become even more sophisticated, with ever-more powerful and creative VST instruments available. In reality, the vast majority of electronic music producers use some hardware alongside a DAW, and there is absolutely no need to choose.

Still, I think it is interesting how in some ways we have come full circle with electronic music production. After all, most of the greatest early electronic dance music tunes were made in a similar “dawless” way. Before PCs had the muscle to host virtual instruments and record multiple audio streams, their role—if they were used at all—was as a sequencer. A series of machines, synced over MIDI or DIN-sync, effects on the mixer send/return, a multi-track tape recorder or ADAT. Whole tracks would be built up by playing the mixer faders and mutes. Of course, the DAW itself is merely a digital simulacrum of this whole setup—instruments, a powerful sequencer, a mixer and a multitrack recorder, all in a single software package.

And if you think about what a DAW really is—a Digital Audio Workstation—you can see that in fact, many so-called DAWless jams are not really DAWless at all. Because what is an MPC Live, or a Elektron Octatrak, or a Synthstrom Deluge if not a Digital Audio Workstation? These modern devices are MIDI sequencers, samplers, synths, mixers and, in the case of the Deluge, even recording devices. With such a richness of features it is not surprising that people are finding that they can make full tracks without using a computer. In a future post I will look at these devices and compare their potential for making full songs without using a DAW.

Finally, I would argue that one of the key drivers of the popularity of going DAWless is the perceived need to deliver visually engaging live performances. The often voiced suspicion that the laptop artist is probably just on Facebook seems to have been taken to heart by a whole generation of electronic musicians. As a result some people seem to feel a table full of devices is required for a fully authentic “live” experience.

The history of music is full of arguments over authenticity and musical integrity. There was a time when people expected a recorded song to be a faithful rendition of a band playing live. Nobody expects that now…we have become totally accustomed to the notion of the creative, artist producer—from Brian Eno onwards. In a way the DAWless movement is taking electronic music out of the producer world—where things are iterated, planned, adjusted, and finally released—into the musician world, where you just play. From asynchronous to synchronous music making. There is nothing wrong with this at all; most people are attracted to one approach than the other.

Do you always use keyboards and hate programming sequencers, or vice versa?

Do you think of yourself as a musician or a producer?

Is a DAWless setup appealing to you or would you rather watch a succulent grow?

SEE ALSO : “How do I get started with modular?”

Taking breaks from music-making

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It’s strange how some topics seem to pop up in the music world again and again, both online and in person—taking breaks from music being one of them. During the summer in Canada most people—including musicians—don’t want stay indoors as much. Many musicians seem to get FOMO this time of year because they’re not making music. Other people I know are hit by writer’s block (including myself), and some people have asked me if I think music-making should be a daily routine or not. While I love this topic, there are multiple ways to approach music production routines and taking breaks from music; I’m sharing some of my own views here, which are based on my experience.

Taking breaks as you work

This usually surprises a lot of people, but when I work on production or mixing, I take a lot of breaks. I often notice that even after just 10 minutes of working hard, you can lose track of the tone of your song. You get used to what “works”, but the low end or the highs might be too much and you can’t tell because you’ve lost perspective. Even volume can be difficult to assess when your ears are fatigued; you might be playing too loud and not realize it.

Taking a 10-second or so break every 10-15 minutes can prevent fatigue and will help restore your understanding of your song.

If you’re in a creative mood and want to do more, I would strongly recommend taking a break after 1-hour to test the true potential of your music. If you’re familiar with this blog, you probably aren’t surprised to read that I recommend to actually stop working on a particular song after an hour and work on another one instead, or even do something completely different.

Taking breaks and making new songs

Sometimes you’ve made a bunch of songs and you feel like you’re repeating yourself, or worse, everything feels annoying (red flag: writer’s block ahead). Some people feel they need to take a break and not open their DAW at all for a while. Is that a good idea?

Yes and no.

My studio is in a building in Montreal that also houses other studios as well, with all kind of musicians. The ones that impress me the most are the jazz and classical musicians. They have a very, very intense schedule for practicing. In talking with them, they say that skipping just one day of practice has an impact on how they master their instrument(s). I can relate; when I take time off over a 3-day weekend, on the Monday I am a bit slower to figure out which tool works best for a specific situation. If I work on music, it takes me a bit more time to problem solve. In a way, I have to agree with the jazz and classical musicians here even though our music worlds are quite different.

The difference between me—as an audio engineer and electronic musician—and classical and jazz musicians, is that I’m constantly working in a space in which I need to invent new ideas, as opposed to practicing something over and over to master it. For my live sets and productions, I do rehearse and play my music—my workflow isn’t just mastering mouse-clicking around a screen. I humanly intervene by using MIDI controllers, mixing by hand, and when working on sound design I’ll also play with knobs too to create new ideas. I see creativity as a muscle that needs to stay fit to be powerful, but if you’re going to gym regularly, you know muscles also need rest in order to grow.

My conclusion on taking breaks from music is this: I think it’s important to work on audio-related tasks daily in order to stay focused, but when it comes to creating new ideas, creativity is not something that can be forced—it needs to come by itself, naturally. Whenever I push myself too hard to force an idea to come to life, it sounds wrong. The best ideas are spontaneous, often invented quickly, and done without much shaping.

So what does this mean for the musician?

Consider taking long breaks if you have really negative feelings towards what you do, or if you don’t feel good about making music. When taking time off from pursuing your own music creatively, what are some of the other alternatives and things you can do when you need downtime from working on your own songs?

Sound design. Try to see if you can spend time creating one sound you like from scratch, i.e. a pad.

Learn production techniques. You can register with online classes to learn something new; ADSR is full of examples with low prices.

Explore presets. Each effect or instrument you have has presets. You now have time to explore everything. The strength of knowing how many presets sound helps to be able to quickly access a specific aesthetic when needed.

Create templates. Have you considered creating a template for Ableton? I have multiple templates for sound design, mixing, jamming as well as song structure templates to play with.

Build macros. Use multiple effects and assign them to some knobs to see how you can alter sounds quickly.

Sample hunting. So many sites exists for finding samples, but finding time to shop is rare. You can do that now.

Build new references. If you don’t have a folder with reference tracks in it, it’s time to start, and if you do, add new ones. A good way is to make reference playlists on Soundcloud or YouTube.

Try demos and sample them. I love getting a bunch of VST/AU demos to try out and then sampling them. Eventually I get to know which new virtual synth or effect I really like.

Re-open projects that have been pending or recycle them. You might have unfinished songs and sometimes they are a good place to scavenge for samples or ideas to use in other songs.

Revisit past projects you’ve worked on and liked to remind yourself of methods you used that worked. Whenever I feel I need a break but still want to spend some time on music, I go through past projects to see how I worked and what could have been done better—I always learn something from revisiting old work.

All that said, most importantly, when you take a break from music, do not sell any gear or buy anything new. Just wait. If you like music and making it, chances are high that you’ll be doing it for years to come. Sometimes we need a break, but breaks don’t mean you have to give up completely. The feeling of needing a break is temporary—even if it’s a long break—but your love of music is permanently with you.

SEE ALSO : Are Music Schools Worth The Investment?

Why should you make music?

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Why make music?

This simple question might seem like it has an easy answer, but when I was asked recently why I make music, I realized that the more I started thinking about it, the more complex the answer became. Today it can feel like everything in the modern world works against musicians, but the more I think about it, the more I think that this isn’t exactly true. Let me explain:

You might not be aware of this, but between the 1930s and 1970s in the US Baseball was a very important part of national culture and identity. During this time, the inclusion of immigrants in the sport was quite important—Jackie Robinson was the first African-American to play American baseball professionally, which helped to promote the inclusion of the African-American community in professional sports in the US at that time. Baseball wasn’t the only thing promoting the inclusion of immigrants and minorities in the national culture, but it definitely played a role (I recommend Ken Burns’ baseball series if you’re interested in this topic).

We can see the same sort of trend in the history of music. The countless occurrences of music becoming a part of politics are too numerous to describe in detail here, but electronic music specifically had its popularity grow due in part to its early adoption by gay communities—same with disco. Even nowadays, Montreal’s MUTEK festival is playing a similar role—forcing gender equity in the artist lineup and giving artists a platform to express themselves safely, no matter what their gender or orientation. Music is a platform for self-expression and provides artists with a chance to share their own personal views. MUTEK’s early vision was to create a space for artists to share the fruit of technological research in music and present it as an art form beyond trends, movements, etc., but over time it became clear that personal touches were also quite essential to the festival.

So, when I was asked “why do you make music?”, some of the points I have just explained came to mind, but I also paused and thought about my own inner motivation(s) and how they have evolved over the years.

I think that for me, every 5 years the purpose of making music has changed directions; my motivations were originally very goal-driven. This is something I see a lot with people I work with—their inner motive for making music is directly linked to where they want to go next. For young artists examining the careers of older ones, the point of making music and how it changes over time is a worthy discussion to have.

Based on my understanding and experience, there are common goals that unite many artists and might help to answer the question “why should you make music?” (the answers to this question I’ve compiled below are not in any specific order).

To learn a skill or to have a hobby

My earliest interest in music was in the early 80s, but back then it was nearly impossible to make electronic music. Music lessons felt boring and pointless, but DJing music for break-dancing was pretty dope. However, learning to be a DJ while living outside of Montreal at that time was pretty much impossible. Presently, I often have people ask me if I could teach them to DJ because they’d love to do it for fun for friends, but I refer them to YouTube as it is quicker and cheaper. Many people with this motivation are simply into the idea of assembling music and playing it. DJing music is quite fun and a great hobby that you can do with friends. After you start doing it for a while, the point of DJing might shift from just doing it to entertain some friends towards connecting with other DJs, or sharing demos on Soundcloud and aspiring to play in front of a crowd. The “why DJ?” becomes purely related to the attraction of doing it. It’s rare to see people really asking themselves “why”, but I remember when I was starting to DJ that I had close friends and family asking why they should take my hobby seriously. I was really into theatre back then, and to people close to me the idea of being a DJ seemed silly.

Regardless of your original motivations to start messing around with music-making, making music as a hobby is really fun—it’s a wonderful creative outlet and can even be useful with friends when you have evenings together and everyone wants to be entertained.

To establish yourself as a part of a community

A sense of community comes for most after they’ve started DJing, but many people also start here. What’s interesting about music is it can be a side-project throughout your entire life. Going from one community to another is also not uncommon. I was really into raves in the early 90s and wanted to contribute to that scene by playing music I thought was suitable for that community, but over time my music tastes changed. My circle of friends changed a few times as my passion for what I loved (music) created some distance around people, but music has always been there in the background.

Having music as the centre of your life gives life purpose in-itself, as well as creates a lifestyle around it—there’s no good or bad way to approach this. I know some jazz and classical musicians that have so much devotion to their craft that it would make anyone I know from the electronic scene blush. Is making music the centre of your life to that degree better? These devoted musicians aren’t necessarily happier in the end, but what music gives them personally is the most important reason why they make and/or perform it and a very valuable and satisfying part of their lives.

The tricky part of motivation is that sometimes you might never really feel like you’ve reached your end goal. Being part of a community, for example, is hard to quantify and depends on the feedback you’re getting. This type of internal/external motivation loop is where a lot of people struggle and get lost. It’s common to see people who are under the impression that it would be better to abandon everything and sell all their music related toys than to keep trying to reach their goal. Is there a way to avoid this thought? Why do people slip into negativity all of a sudden and react drastically?

Say you’ve tried to sustain a music “career” or project for years and it never really went as far as you wanted it to—it’s easy to pin the problem on a lack of recognition from others. Same goes for an artist who has been around a long time and has “done everything” and then gets lost when thinking about what to do next. Sometimes your music community might change directions drastically if they reach that point—a lot of my peers switched to making house music at one point—which can also make you feel lost yourself. When you feel lost or tired of trying with music, it really has nothing to do with other people, but more with your personal approach to music. This might sound cliché, but it’s true.

Personally, I have been experimenting with my approach to music quite a lot; I find a lot of relief by focusing on people who care and appreciate what I do. Building your own community or small circle of music friends has been for me the only thing that can get me back on track when I feel lost. I lost my patience after chasing others for years and decided to shift my energy towards those who cared instead—and I didn’t have to search very far.

To make a career out of music

Once people feel included in a music community, the next logical goal is to try to “make it” on a professional level. This can mean many things:

A career for self-expression and self-realization

One of the most important needs of humans is to feel they’re able grow and to have others (and themselves) witness it. If you’re pushing yourself making music, you’ll see and hear the growth of your music yourself, and with time and patience the quality will get better which provides great feelings of satisfaction, especially when it’s turned into a career.

A community-driven career

As I’ve covered in multiple past posts, one can be attracted by a community of artists or genres and want to join their movement. The beauty of this approach is connecting socially over electronic music, which can create opportunities for many conversations and projects, technical, philosophical, or otherwise.

You can also do music for multiple reasons and those reasons can morph through time, through life changing events or simply because your interests are shifting. I come to question myself every now and then. Asking yourself this question also helps you understand where to go next. One of the reason why the base of this question is more relevant than what we think of.

SEE ALSO : Workflow Suggestions for Music Collaborations

“How do I get started with modular?”

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Modular synths are fascinating, complex, and alluring machines, but to the uninitiated they can also be enigmatic and confusing. The vast range of available modules, the high price of entry, the obscure interfaces, and the images of gigantic, room-filling systems can make modular synthesis seem like a hobby mainly reserved for the independently wealthy PhD candidate. But the truth is that modular is more accessible now than it has ever been—in this post I’ll offer some of pieces of advice for those of you who are just getting started with modular synths.

Of course, there are unavoidable costs—it will probably never meet most people’s definition of cheap (although Behringer might be about to try and change that.) The lowest priced case and power supply combinations are still hundreds of dollars (the TipTop happy ending kit with power is around $175). Still, once this hurdle is passed, it’s in fact easy and beneficial to start small. Buying a couple of modules at a time, and getting to know them well before buying more, is a great strategy to take when starting out.

Let’s look at some relatively easy entries into modular in a variety of price ranges, looking to answer the Eurorack novice’s question, “How do I get started with modular?”

The semi-modular

Semi-modular is a great way of getting some experience with patching. Standalone, semi-modular synths like the Moog Mother32, Moog Grandmother, MakeNoise 0-Coast, or the Behringer Neutron, give you a taste of the modular experience and are all highly capable synths. They are all fully compatible with Eurorack; essentially they are Eurorack format but with their own power supply and case. Which leads us to a possible disadvantage of this route: if/when you want to go deeper down the “rabbit hole” you still need to buy yourself a case and power supply for your modules. If you are committed to getting into Euro it will be more cost effective to get a case and power right away.

The micro-system

Full voice modules, like the Atlantis from Intellijel or Mutable Instruments’ Elements, function something like a desktop synth module, but in Eurorack. In other words, they combine all the oscillators, VCAs, envelopes and filters of a full mono-synth behind a Eurorack panel. Pair one of these with a Eurorack sequencer, or a MIDI sequencer and a MIDI to CV module like the Hexinverter Mutant Brain, and you have a full synth voice in Eurorack. Without any other modules to patch up it’s not the full modular experience yet – you have a synth voice that you can trigger with gates and CV from your sequencer or MIDI-CV module, but you do not have any modulators. Modulation is the heart of modular, so, tempting though it may be to stick one of these all-in-one modules in a tiny case and use it standalone, it is probably wise to leave some space for growth.

Another approach to build up a micro system is to go for a range of relatively cheap, bread and butter modules. Doepfer, the company that created the Eurorack format back in the 90s, are still a great choice for reliable, straight-forward modules at reasonable prices. Their active product line is vast and you can build a huge system with their products alone. Then there are the very small, low-priced modules from various companies such as Erica Synths, TipTop Audio, and 2HP (whose name refers to the size of all their modules—about as tiny as it’s possible to get). These are great value and can be highly useful but beware, they have tiny pots so too many of them too close together can get extremely awkward. While it might seem like a great cheap solution, a whole system made up of these tiny modules would be pretty annoying to use.

The ready-made, full system

On the other end of the spectrum in starting tiny with a micro system is splashing out on a full-size system. Why not bypass all that decision making, scrimping and saving for one module at a time, and just hit your bank account/credit card one devastating blow? The easiest way of doing this is to go for a single manufacturer’s system – a curated collection of modules by one company, which are sure to work well together. A the ultimate single manufacturer system is probably the stunning MakeNoise Black and Gold Shared System. This is a great option if you have the money and are totally sure of your commitment. But a makeNoise shared system is around $5.5k USD…so there’s that.

The modular drum machine

If you are a producer heavily focused heavily on electronic drums—which you probably are if you are reading this blog—you may want to build up a modular drum machine. Modular drums are capable of more extreme tonal changes and generally have a wider pitch and timbral range than a typical drum machine voice. They can also be triggered in a variety of unconventional ways, allowing for strange, unexpected rhythms. The good thing about drum modules when you are starting out is that they are, by definition, whole voices—they contain a sound source or two, an envelope and VCA, and perhaps a filter. You just feed them a trigger and they do their thing. There are now a huge number of drum modules available from many different manufacturers, analog and digital, covering a vast sonic territory, so you can mix and match to create something truly unique.

When getting started with modular synths, it’s useful to know that you can easily combine modular drums with external drum machines by using the same sequencer (e.g. sequencing your modular drums with an external drum machine) via a MIDI to CV module. This makes starting small simple—just add one drum module at a time. Of course, just as with any other approach in modular, modulation is key, so at least one step-modulation source, such as the Malekko Voltage Block (an 8 track, 16-stage CV sequencer), should be an early addition to your modular drum machine.

The other aspect of a modular drum machine, and one that really shines in Eurorack, is sequencing. Conventional, 16-step x0x style sequencing is of course easy in or out of the case, but you can quickly move far from a typical drum machine sound by using more idiosyncratic sequencing options. Methods of sequencing in modular is a whole other topic but take a look at digital modules that use binary logic gates for a taste of what can be done. For example, Noise Engineering’s range of digital trigger sequencing modules can create unique, ever-changing rhythms.

The DAW-integrated system

For many people, modular synths are totally separate from the DAW; indeed it is almost a point of principle for some modular users to “only” use their DAW, if at all, as a sort of tape recorder. But this is by no means the only way to approach things. If you are already fully committed to a DAW workflow—perhaps you already sequence standalone synths via MIDI from Ableton, for example—there are many options for fully integrating your modular synth with your PC. Sending gates, triggers and pitch CV is easy: the aforementioned MIDI to CV converter can achieve this via a MIDI interface connected to your computer. Expert Sleepers make a range of modules that can give you even closer integration, with smooth control voltages that a MIDI to CV module cannot send, due to the limitations of MIDI. Finally, if you use Ableton and have a soundcard with DC-coupled outputs (most MOTU soundcards have this feature) then you will very soon be able to use Abelton’s new suite of CV Tools in Max for Live to control your modular through your soundcard’s output jacks.

The obvious appeal of using the DAW to control your synths is that you immediately gain the equivalent of several modules-worth of functionality in terms of sequencing and modulation. The drawback is that you perhaps risk sacrificing some of the exploratory potential of modular in favour of greater control.

DIY

Going DIY would seem to be a great option, especially if you are short on cash. But beware, unless you actually enjoy soldering and are keen to learn a little bit about electronics, it might well end up being a lot more expensive than buying your modules ready-made. Remember, if you mess up your build the company is not liable to fix it for you. Basic synth DIY is totally doable and can be great fun….if it’s the kind of thing you like doing. But if you’re doing it only to save money you might find that:

a. It doesn’t save you all that much and,

b. Lots of your modules only kind of work and some don’t work at all!

SEE ALSO : Using Modular Can Change the Way You View Music Production