Why 2018 Will Be My Best Year Ever

In my last post, I mentioned that I've made a few minor adjustments in my life that I believe will propel my music making forward. In this post, I want to explain a little more about that. Maybe it will encourage you to also make a few minor adjustments.

This year along with a corporate fast, our pastor encouraged our entire church to follow a one year bible reading plan together, and also read a book (called "Reset") about establishing a habit of daily prayer. So I participated in all this. (In case you were wondering, we didn't starve ourselves for the entire 21 day fast. It's more like a fast "season", similar to the way some people observe Lent (the Lenten season), where we deny ourselves something - maybe like coffee or meat, or media -- or some of us may fast one or more meals for a few days during this time.)

To do all this, I needed to make time in my life. However, I can't really make more time for myself. EVERYONE GETS THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME EACH DAY. So why do some people seem to get so much more done than others? It's all about what you do with that time. So over the past two years, with no habits or routines really established (no good ones anyway), I squandered a lot of time watching YouTube videos of other people making music - supposedly "learning" but never doing anything myself.

This start of year "Reset" prompted me to reassess how I spend my time. I decided my reactionary approach was not serving me well. With full time work, a family and a few community and church activities, where is there any time left to make music? I had tried doing music after my whole day is completed and all responsibilities behind me. Seemed like the natural thing to do since my normal inclination is to elect to stay up late. (I come from a family of night owls.) Being a bit bashful about what I'm attempting to do musically while others were up and about at my house, I found it easier to avoid embarrassing myself with my family by watching YouTube videos with my headphones for hours on end. In reality, the bashfulness was just an excuse. (Here's another shy guy, but I think he's gotten a bit more done than me.)

So much for what isn't working. Here's the new plan for now: Give God the first and the last part of my day. The rest of my life needs to fit in between. And it all starts with my decisions at night. I have a time I need to be in bed to do the daily bible reading plan. If I play it as planned, I get a good seven hours of sleep or more each night, and I awake refreshed and satisfied with life, rather than beat down by everything in my life. Then in the morning, I get up before everyone else and go straight to my computer (that's where my Bible and Evernote for journaling are found) to spend some quiet time (sometimes not so quiet time) with the God who loves me. After 30 to 60 minutes of "God Time", I generally have 60 to 90 minutes of "Me Time" to do whatever I choose. I can use my "me time" for exercise, music making, preparing mentally for work (if I must), or even more God time. The point is, my opportunity lies in the first two hours of the day. With one simple decision (go to bed on time), I "made time" for some of the very important things in my life -- God, health and music. I even included weekends in my plan, knowing that if I don't hold to some standard, I will sleep my weekends away.

This little bit of structure is giving me power over many areas of my life - exercise, nutrition, spirituality, my work day, and now I even have a little time EVERY DAY to make some music, should I choose to do that. For you, this is probably basic common sense, but for me it's radically changing my life. I'm reprogramming myself from 50+ years of resisting structure. I am now living with more intentionality, and things that escaped me for the past few years are starting to move in the right direction. I think it's all connected. I feel this bit of structure will make this the best year of my life so far, because I will be moving forward in all the important areas of my life.

I'm still at the beginning of this. I eventually want a large portion of the morning "me time" to be focused on more creative aspects of music making (songwriting, musical composition, arranging, recording performances) and I would like to spend some evenings or some weekend time organizing, planning and learning new techniques. I also know that with me, nothing really moves forward unless I set a goal. Aside from the daily goals to get to bed and get up on time, I have a musical project in mind that gives me a reason to move forward, and a way of knowing which way is forward. I'll tell you more about that project later.

If I'm going to ever complete that project, then I'm going to have to make some music. Hopefully, you will choose to do the same.

Some resources that guided me in this direction:

"Solid Life" one-year bible reading plan is free. You can also view it in a free mobile app called the  YouVersion Bible App.

Reset: 20 Ways to a Consistent Prayer Life by Bob Sorge.

A Guide to Prayer and Fasting by David Patterson. Here's how and why we fast.

Early Rising: Awaken Your Full Creative Potential by Drew Vespers, (a Canadian music producer)

How Can It Be? Two years without completing another song!

It's been while hasn't it? And look at my last post from November 2015. "I actually completed a song!" So since that last post, how far have I progressed on my "Adventures in Music Production"? Surely I've completed a few more songs, right? How many more songs did I complete in the TWO YEARS since my last blog? Here's a hint, I can't count them on my two hands. That's right - ABSOLUTELY NONE!!!! How terrible! This is so embarrassing. 😞

How can it be that I've completed no more songs? (See what I did there?) So here's the big secret. I'm a scaredy cat. While many people who know me now see me as a very social extrovert, inside is a very shy little boy that doesn't want anyone to tease him, speak harshly to him or criticize him. Turns out I am my own worst critic. I want perfect results. I want it to be effortless. And oh yeah, I am deathly afraid to fail. I never like to do anything unless I know I can do it well. How is it that I've ever accomplished anything in my life? I really don't know. God's grace!

Anyway now I'm back. I've had to get over myself. I've had to remember how it was when I first tried to learn how to play bass. I didn't really get it. I couldn't really figure it out. I tried to follow books, but that didn't teach me the things I really wanted to know. Eventually, a simple lesson from a friend, and everything started to click. I learned to copy bass lines from songs I liked on the radio - SOS Band, Cameo, George Clinton, Ohio Players. I tried to mimic Bernard Edwards (Chic), but I could never duplicate his style. Another friend introduced me to the music of Abraham Laboriel and I was hooked. His is the style I most try to emulate. Fast forward 20 years from when I first started: In a foreign land, people I never met before said I played like Abraham. For me this was the best compliment. The point is, it took time and effort to get past my initial attempts to make music to where I could play whatever, wherever (and fool people into thinking I was good). 

So, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to recognize that for this year, I'm going to screw up all the music I produce. Nevertheless I'm going to produce more and more music this year. Just copying music that I know and love. And then. . . well, lets' not get too far ahead of ourselves. Let's just say I have a project in mind to complete this year. If I achieve any results at all this year, that will be more than what I've done in the past two years combined!

So why is this year going to be any different from the past two years? I've made a few life adjustments. Basically, with a little reorganization, a little reprioritization (and a few strategic music purchases) I've played more music in the past week than in the past two years. 

We'll talk about what exactly I'm doing later, but I'm already seeing improved results. I'm actually spending a little time everyday, actually making music, actually putting in the effort, and actually learning how things work in my own mini studio, on my computer, in my room, on my mic and keyboard (and other toys). Things I will probably share in more detail later. 

Until next time, I'm going to get over myself, and get out of my own way, and start making some music again. You should too.

How Can It Be? I actually completed a song!

In my last post I mentioned an app called Caustic, and I posted the audio of a two bar loop over which I improvised a solo with a sort of flute sound. Well, that little two-bar experiment turned into a (sort of) complete song with lyrics and everything. (I even kept the original solo!)

I learned a lot of stuff about mixing and sound and tried to apply it here. Maybe later I'll share some of the journey with you.

In any case, take a listen and tell me what you think?


If you use Ableton Live, you can pull the project on Blend:

How Can It Be Project by Dennis Dillon

Hopefully my little experiment here will inspire you to go make some music

The Caustic DAW

How much would you pay for a digital audio workstation for your phone or tablet? What if you could pair it with a matching desktop program? Well remember rule number 1- Pay for Nothing! Surely a free tool will not allow you to make real music. Surely. 

Well if you are just playing around with music and you haven't really gotten your system completely nailed down, you might want to take a look at Caustic, by Single Cell Software . Caustic is an app for Android and iOS. The free version of the app is a full featured demo (with save and export functions disabled). The matching desktop version for Mac or PC is fully functional (including save and export),  however with no technical support.  That said, the developer provides a comprehensive manual as well as a number of tutorial videos for using the app. 

Of course there are limitations,  but here's a taste of what you can do. (for free!)

This is a little track I created using Caustic. I was just experimenting with the instruments, effects mixer and sequencer features. If you have heard some of my other music, you may recognize the feel. This track was actually first, before I learned anything about music production.

Excusing the amateurish overuse of reverb, you can tell this is more than just a toy. I played all the musical ideas into the tracks using my MIDI keyboard via my USB audio interface. The biggest downer is there is currently no audio recording in this app. However, I think you can creatively use another SingleCell app to record audio and combine the resulting WAV files into Caustic. Since I decided to go ahead and purchase Ableton Live, I did not experiment any further with this app. However, I would expect that this app meets the needs of most beginning home music producers. I think the graphical interface makes it easy to create decent sounds on the several available instrument (which are called "machines" in this app). And one machine called "Modular" provides a unique workspace for additional creative sound design flexibility.

I could tell you a lot more about this app, but you would have so much more fun using it yourself. So go check it out and make some music! And when you're done come back and tell us about it.

A New Experiment

You may recall from an earlier post that I enrolled in and completed an online course called Introduction to Music Production. I highly recommend the course if you are interested in recording or otherwise making music, and you have never really studied the topics. In any case, I really enjoyed the course (although, due to taking a second course at the same time, I had a difficult time keeping up with the deadlines.) To me the most value in the course came from having to absorb the content, and then apply it to your own context (e.g. how to record audio using the tools in your home studio). For most of the course, the best presentation format would have been video. However, I found the process of creating video to be horrendously difficult, until I found a free video editing/video screen capture program called Active Presenter. So for my final assignment I created a video. I had a rough time with making the video due to computer resource limitations that I have now resolved.

Once I completed the course, I told myself that I would go back through the entire course on my own once again, and work more carefully through the assignments. Now that I have this blog space, I have a forum for posting the things I learned. I can make the topics accessible to the average recreational musician. The lesson section of my blog (see the sidebar) is where I'm posting my "assignments" as I would complete them if I were taking the course now. In a way, I am taking the course all over again, but now I can take my time and let the information soak into my mind so I can retain it a little longer. I'm going to try to keep the articles (and videos, if I dare to try again) somewhat brief. Enough to learn something and maybe give you something to look up elsewhere. Keeping them short may require that I write a bunch of articles, so I'll try to organize them into categories the list grows. (As you can see, I'm already starting the categorization. I probably need to learn how to use tags too.)

Along the way, I'll also try to provide links to the work of other folks that I find helpful. After all, I'm no expert. I'm just learning all this stuff. Let's learn together!

The Reward for Kindness

A few weeks ago, while thinking of more ways to keep from spending more money, I said to myself, "Hey, this clip launching in Ableton Live would be so much easier with a touch screen!" The concept would be similar to the hardware MIDI controllers on the market for Live (e.g. Akai's APC line, or Ableton's Push). I considered the alternatives: add a touch screen to my existing laptop, purchase a new all in one computer, design a monster computer and include a touch screen like the ones we have at work - all expensive propositions. What about one of those computers that doubles as a tablet (e.g Microsoft Surface)? I started looking around online. I saw a thorough review of running Live on the Surface. Seemed to be some issues. Finally, I wondered if there were any Android apps that function as MIDI controllers. Whadaya know about that? There are MIDI controllers on Android. I also saw a video of someone using remote desktop to run Live from their tablet.

I decided to check out a controller app specifically designed to work with Live. After the 15 minute trial I was sold! Why? At a 90-95% savings over buying a hardware controller, I could have essentially the same functionality. So I went ahead and bought two of the four modules available for the app.

Like all Android apps, there were a few issues, and I had a few questions about using the app. I contacted the developer, letting him know first of all that I loved the app, so that he would understand my questions were not complaints, but observations so he could help me understand which issues were limitations of my hardware, and which may be "features" of the software. I provided a lot of details. I also noted to him that between the time I started using the app and when I wrote the email, I added a faster hard drive and increased the memory on my laptop (that I'm using as my music workstation), and that this improved PC performance resolved some of the issues. I also offered some ideas regarding features I would like to see in the future.

The developer was greatly appreciative of my feedback, and responded quickly with answers, recommendations and intentions to correct some issues. He also offered to provide me the other two modules for free because of my helpful feedback. Sometimes it pays to be kind.

In any case, that app is called LK (available for Android or iPad). Here's a demo of the app.

I actually used this app to rearrange one of the assignments from that Intro to Ableton course. Here's my posting from Soundcloud.


There, so I'm not just talking about it. I'm actually making music. You need to go make some too!

Until next time. . .

Is There a Loudness War?

There's an interesting debate going on in the Music Production world with accusations of sonic sabotage being thrown at your humble music producers. They are being berated for literally squeezing the life out of music. I actually observed this phenomenon during the Intro to Ableton Live course that I took in February. Live is very popular among Electronic Dance Music (EDM) practitioners. In the course, you prepare and submit a track meeting certain criteria, and then evaluate the submissions of five other students taking the course.

I've never listened to this EDM before, so this was quite an ear opener for me; 80% of the tracks I evaluated were of some variant of EDM. How do you evaluate something for which you don't know the rules? And how do you encourage others when their work does not really suit your taste? But I did it. I even listened to and evaluated more than my share on the side. 

Anyway, many of the EDM-ites produced their tracks so that their sonic profiles looked like solid rectangles holding max volume from beginning to end. Here's an example from one of my peers:

Unlike Your Dreams by Lavric

Being brought up as more of an acoustic musician, I've come to appreciate how dynamics breathe life into most of the music I love and listen to. But with digital recording and mastering, the producer can precisely control and correct every little human "flaw" in a performance.

Apparently, some music industry experts have found that the purchasing masses want to listen to their music really loud. So these experts have coerced their producers to squeeze the dynamics out of the music using such tools as compressors and limiters, and make the recorded tracks as loud as possible without distorting. At least that's what some would have us believe. They call it "The Loudness War". (Google it; it's a thing!) The irony is that in moving from recording on tape to recording in digital space, producers now have a wider space to play in from the quietest sound we can hear (the noise floor) to the loudest we can bear. (One technical term for this is dynamic range.) However, the opponents of the Loudness War claim the producers excessively use compression to force all the quiet sounds to be elevated. Here's an example that tries to illustrate the issue


The problem is, when I listen to the examples of "overcompressed" music, I cannot hear the problem. The music sounds the same to me, with and without compression. In the example above I hear different EQ (high and low frequencies), but I don't hear the loudness or compression issues. It must be like one of those pictures popular in the 90s, where people will swear there's an animal in there, but you can't see it. Then when you finally do see it, you will never again not see it. Like the shark right here in the middle of this picture. Don't you see it?

Likewise, I can't hear compression (but I can see that shark!)

So here's my position on all of this. I'm not planning on getting my tracks played on the radio or making any hit charts. So I will use dynamics as part of the musical expression. Where the use of compression makes sense, I will use it, but I'm not going to try to compete in the Loudness War.

Does it seem to you that music these days seems to be artificially loud? Have you noticed the difference between the loudness of a typical classical track vs. contemporary music? Do you think this controversy is just a bunch of (ahem) noise? I'd love to know what you think.

 Until next time, go make some music!