It’s been about a year (already) since I started recording my hours working on music production, and with this last push in October, I was able to make my personal goal of reaching 5% of the way to my ultimate goal!
Over the past months, I’ve worked with 6 different DAWs, bought new speakers, made 3 complete songs (plus two others from sample loops), and basically gained a decent foundation with which to build the Chimney Sparrow empire.
It feels very much like a “practice year”, one to mess around and slowly pull in ideas about where to go from here. I’m on the cusp of purchasing my first DAW (articles reviewing the Reason DAW and my final purchase decision will be – hopefully – forthcoming shortly), after which it’s going hard into making music!
I’ve also come to the difficult decision that it’s time to start thinking about a career in the music industry. I love what I do currently, but well.. Without going into detail, it’s just not fitting my life as well as it used to. Besides, it would be amazing to start getting to know more of the equipment first-hand, working with patch cables and mixers and whatnot.
There’s a few different recording companies in Halifax, so the plan is to start researching them, pick my favourite one or two, and basically hassle them until they take me on, even if it’s just volunteer work at first.
That’s a seriously scary step for me, by-the-way. I dread going back to handing out resumes, networking, and all the rest. And I can’t deny there’s some pretty big inadequacy demons standing in the way.
As I used to tell myself: “You are only one job position away from feeling a lot better about this.” I am a damn hard and innovate worker when I’m doing what I love – it’s just a matter of convincing others.
500 hours in one year equates to just over 41 hours a month. Starting in November, the plan is to bump that up to 50 hours/month, or 600 hours/year. That’s a scary goal, but as my discipline improves, I think it can be a feasible one.