Music Production – In-Depth Blog Post #1

Welcome to my first blog post of this year’s In-Depth project! The skill I have chosen this year is… Drumroll please! Music production!
I have been writing and composing my own original music for around 4 years now, and songwriting is one of my favourite hobbies! However, I’ve never had the technical skills to professionally record and produce music with proper equipment and programs. I’ve always tried to avoid the technical part of music editing, because digital editing is something I am not as interested in, and technology is not my strong suit. I would rather stick to the creative aspect of creating music. However, I’ve decided that for the benefit of my songs and for the sake of expanding and growing my music production knowledge, it’s time I’ve finally crossed the threshold and learned how to edit my tunes. I have very little experience right now and haven’t learned the “proper” way to record music. I am currently using a pair of apple earbuds and GarageBand to record music, which is less than ideal. Something others can do to help me along this journey would include listening to my music along the way and giving me feedback on how it sounds. Speaking to other students who have experience in music production would also be helpful.
To help me with this project, my amazing mentor Anja Frohnsdorf will be guiding me through the steps to learning music production! Anja is an incredible musician, singer, and songwriter, and has released her own EP and single. I will link her music at the end of this post. I know Anja through her performances at Coquitlam Alliance Church, as she would often lead or participate in the worship band. She is also the older sister of one of my closest middle school friends! I’ve contacted her a few times last month to sort out the general plan of this project. Once every two weeks, we will be meeting through a Zoom video call. In the first few meetings, we are planning to just talk about my goals and skills I want to learn through this project. Within the first couple of months, I hope to learn the basic tools in ProTools First, (the music editing software I will be using,) and familiarize myself with the structure of music production. By the third month I hope to be recording some of my own instruments and voice to create short musical clips, and by the final couple of months, I want to work on recording full songs with multiple track layers. This schedule is subject to change depending on what Anja thinks would work out best for me, and depending on how I organize my time as I gain more knowledge on the subject. All I need now is an audio interface (Anja is dropping off an old one of hers that I can borrow!) and I’ll be ready to get started! I’m so excited!

Anja’s amazing music: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2rbxwvhelnLmOhNE7jbsTN?si=ok1zI8b2SyydAJdPzS3aAQ