timothyallan.com

I’ve had many questions from people just starting out wondering if I could give them any advice on how I approached doing this whole electronic music thing. So instead of typing up emails all the time, I’ve compiled a good chunk into this oh-so enlightening piece of material that I like to call…

When I was starting out making music, the three best things I ever did were:

1. Read, practice read and read… and practice.

I lucked out; I had a computer job where all I did for 6 months straight was join every forum, bulletin
board & magazine related to electronic music. Then I would find every tip, trick and article and compile them into different sections and
print ‘em out. You –will- forget almost everything you read if you do not print it out and review it every now and then. There is so much
content available, you will just overload. I’ve got about 6 of the 3” binders full of printed material that I gathered. I would read the
article, and then try what they were talking about. Then do it again with a different article… and again.

2. Realize that I’ve gotta make shit before I can start making decent sounding stuff.

EVERYONE has to go through this; it is like an initiation of sorts. Deal with it, and have faith that it will just get better with age and practice. (Look for a book called The Artists Way, it focuses on all this. No, it isn’t all stoner hippie stuff).

This next one is a biggie for most people. I have seen so many guys just starting out who ask “How come I don’t make stuff that sounds like my
favorite group/producer??” or “How do I get that professional sheen to my tracks? Do I have to use the flux mambo super EQ, or the Barry Wood compressor pro?”.

The bottom line is that it comes down to experience, and/or a crack team of sound engineers who have been mixing/mastering for a living for the past 30 years.

Make the crap first, and FINISH it too. Just finishing a project/tune is a mental reward. It gives you a little subliminal boost that says “Okay, now on to something new!”. If you have hundreds of 8 bar loops saved, but nothing that is actually ‘finished’, you will always regurgitate the process, and just keep on making 8 or 16 bar loops! The trick is to finish all your projects, and then that will become your habit.

Nobody has to hear it, and it could be laughably horrible, but you can smile and think that it is completed. Then back it up so you can laugh at it later, take a deep breathe, and go down some other avenue you haven’t explored yet!

3. Limit yourself (and sometimes your tracks).

I made a promise that I would only use the gear that I bought, until I could use them with my eyes closed, then I would add a new piece. It started off as me not using a computer, because I worked as a programmer all day, and the last thing I wanted to do was to stare at monitors again when I was at home. With all the free warez stuff flying around, it is way too easy to pick up thousands of plugins and software programs. All this does is cost you time trying to figure them out. Time which could be used practicing, or ‘gasp’, even making some tunes!

So my basic gear list was a keyboard, a glorified 4 track recorder and a small drum machine/sampler. Three things I know absolutely inside and out. However, when I use them together, cool things start to happen.

Now that I’ve moved out of the country for a while, I had to leave all that at home. I’ve now had to venture into the land of the laptop, but I’m still trying to hold onto that principle of not getting overwhelmed with all the newest fancy stuff out there (Although it’s hard!).

Instead of thinking “Man oh man, do I ever need a nice hi-hat sample for this track, I better download a copy of Reason/Fruity etc and rip some samples out of it!” I start to think how I can accomplish it just using the tools I have. Why not just make some white noise with the keyboard, maybe add a volume envelope, and a ring modulator or some other effect it has built in, sample it with the drum machine and voila, synthesized hi-hat!

Limiting myself makes my brain work overtime trying to figure out a cool solution to an audio ‘roadblock’ that I might hit. It will also force me to think in a different light about what I am making, and will also surprise me when some crazy stuff starts flying out of my monitors (Oh yeah, BTW – Get a nice pair of monitors).

Bottom line… research and know your gear inside and out, THEN add new stuff. Biting off more than you can chew gear/software-wise is a major killer.




One other bit of ‘duhhh’ info is to actually buy your plugins and software. If you have hundreds of cracked apps and plugs, you’ll never get the excellent results you would if you have 3 or 4 that you actually bought. You’ll find that you get deeper into the plugins if you buy them and that there’s a whole other subconscious mindset that takes over you’ll find when you’ve actually spent your money on them.

Also, how do you think software houses stay in business if no one buys their product? You’re only doing yourself and the rest of us a disservice if you hack and slash your way through music making. If you keep on using cracks, we’ll all soon run out of software to make music on.

I haven’t been doing this for as long as a lot of folks, but those are the things that have helped me the most. Of course, some things may pertain to you, and some won’t. Most people in the electronic music scene are pretty cool and helpful, because they all started at the exact same spot…the bottom rung of the ladder.

Also, if you’ve found any tidbit of this useful, let me know via the contact page!

Cheers,

Tim