Music Production

I did it!

I’ve finally connected all the production dots to be able to publish my own song. It took quite awhile as obviously I have my family commitments, day job, church activities etc to occupy my tiny headspace.

Take a listen here for Apple Music or Spotify.

I’ve always had a dream ever since I was a kid to publish my own music. And with the advent of internet ubiquity and streaming services, everything seemed more plausible. I’ve always had childhood dreams of working in the music biz but alas that reality seemed impossible on our tiny island and I pivoted towards the internet and digital projects when the technology arrived.

I’ve actually completed a Diploma in Audio Engineering, hustling through it during my NS days so that’s how serious I was in this “hobby”.

Music has always been a big part of my life and I’ve finally cracked the process on how to get published on the major streaming platforms. So if you’re curious how I did it, this post is for you 🙂

I did it the lofi way and just wanted to get through all the steps, so this is laying the groundwork for future songs. My daughter is now into playing the keyboards and I’ve also started recording some of the stuff she did so that it can also be a bit of a daddy / daughter project that will make for some great memories. My journey took about a year to research for the gear needed, how to use them, and how to publish onto the streaming channels.

Music sources

I started small and began mucking around with Pocket Operators and bought the PO-33 (K.O.!) and PO-20 (Arcade) as a starter. They are tiny and fun to play with although the interface does take some attention and effort to figure out with the help of YouTube. The PO-33 allowed me to sample my daughter’s voice as an effect in the song and the PO-20 was the main driver of the music in the song which mimics the arcade game console sounds and effects of the 80s.

For tiny calculator-sized devices though, they produce big sounds and deep audiophile-quality bass as you can hear for yourself on the song.

Recording

To satisfy my desire to record something on a multi-track, I was surprised to discover the existence of the Tascam DP-006 which was low cost and seemed like a great device to record demos. I think it performed pretty well on my song which made it onto the various streaming platforms. Quality was quite good and its a great portable device to get started on recording multi-tracks and bouncing them onto the 2 stereo channels to create your own song masters.

I’m also taking a phased approach to recording physically on a multi-track instead of going digital on Apple’s Garage Band or something similar because I wanted a shorter learning curve with a physical device and buttons, instead of learning all the UI elements on a software. Will definitely explore recording straight into a Mac in the future.

Music Distribution

This was probably the simplest part of the process to figure out once I stumbled upon DistroKid. Its a music publishing service that will push your songs to all the major music streaming sites like Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, Deezer etc

Once you’ve signed up to the platform, you just need to upload your music file, artwork and fill in all the ownership details and credits like who is the Songwriter, Producer, Musician etc click submit and wait several days whilst the various streaming sites do their own vetting of the uploaded material.

Spotify published my song in two days and Apple Music took about a week before it went LIVE.

Future Plans

Now that I’ve figured out the mechanics of publishing my own music online, I’m definitely going to just jam with this new canvas at my disposal. I’ve recently purchased a Roland TR-08 drum machine and my daughter has an AKAI MPK Mini Play keyboard that we’ve been fiddling with and recording.

I also play guitar and bass, and have plans to record live instruments as a next step but I wanted to start off with electronic sources as they would sound professional from the get-go and you didn’t have to worry about analog source quality and static etc

Hope you found this sharing useful and happy jamming everyone!