For very long that I don't even remember clearly, since like 1995? And if to count some pieces on piano then even earlier. At first, I wrote a little bit at my friend's home on FastTracker 2 and Windows Midi Studio. A year or two later, when my parents bought a computer, I started to make some more music at home.
I have a few pieces left from that time (not my favourites though). But I did not upload them anywhere. One of my favourite pieces, I remembered in my head for years and recently I recreated. It is an unfinished project at the moment. I hope I'll finish it.
For a long time, I learned to make music just by myself. I am not sure how long it was in trackers. FastTracker 2 and Impulse Tracker and a little bit in Sony ACID. Maybe up to 2006. Because I started with Fruity Loops 6.
I never searched to learn anything in music like up to 2012. I just did it as it goes. But then I figured out some people like my music. For example, I made music for my Flash Games (under GameBalance nickname). And people often asked where is this music from?
Also, I had pretty positive comments on Newgrounds.com; It was the only place I uploaded some of my music.
So from that time I believed I had some real musical talent and started to learn mixing and sound design.
Also, I can mention that through the years I had hours of music produced that was lost forever with the data. It's a sad story for me. And it's not about backups, I had them. I deleted them myself, which was the most stupid thing I did and it will always be a pain for me!
FL Studio. I just stuck with it and could not push myself to switch to Ableton. For me, it's not easy to switch to something. I tried to learn Ableton and I liked it. There is the sampler which I really liked and some other great features. But just could not stick with it. Working with ongoing projects from FL Studio made me forget about Ableton.
iZotope stuff and FabFilter stuff are my favs. Also FL Studio stock plugins of course. iZotope has a great multiband compressor, amazing saturator (they call Exciter) and great limiter (Maximizer). You know I can hear on some top commercial tracks there is that sound of iZotope's Exciter. For example Dua Lipa's voice on some records I've heard. It's hard to say that it was exactly iZotope because maybe other saturators can sound the same. But it can be sure done with iZotope's Exciter.
FabFilter Pro-Q 3 not just great EQ but also super useful as an analyzer.
As for synthesizers my favs are Sytrus, Harmor, FM8, Massive, Serum.
I recommend remembering that plugins are interchangeable. They can do just the exact same thing. Or they are slightly different, but all do the same great and that difference does not matter.
Not very effective and not organized. Pretty random. When I started to make music I had no internet to learn some great tips and tricks about organization. I was just making by mood. And I still have not applied some great advice about organization. In more recent years I mostly learned mixing.
So if to summarise I just open FL and start work. I don't think it's a good one and I hope to change it. For example with some current song I work, I had a headache to rearrange the tracks into some order and colour. They were just randomly ordered as they were added. Some channels were unused. Automation to a track could be far away. 100 tracks without a system, it's a real mess hard to navigate.
Tutorials are a big part. With time I figured that a lot of people on YouTube talking about things which they don't really understand. Some techniques are just copied, pasted and retold by a lot of them. But they don't really understand the details. That can be misleading. I think the situation is getting better with this because information from closed paid tutorials spreads out.
That's a hard question. I watched probably more than a thousand. So I don't pay attention anymore what I have watched. All are very task-specific. I will just put something that pops in my head first: 8 Crazy Things You Can Do With Serum.
However, I can definitely say that the YouTube channel Behind The Speakers was the biggest changer for me. It's not about electronic music. It's about mixing live music like rock, soul, county, jazz, pop. I warn you that this guy just gives away just small portions, as he is selling his courses. But as I watched tons of tutorials before I could use his points as a key piece of a puzzle and finally realised things about mixing. If I had the money, I'd go to his courses. He's provided the best knowledge I ever found.
Mixing stuff. There are hundreds of people giving advice out there. And each one of them matters and adds improvement. I can't say there is one that matters most. They all matter together, like teamwork. It also depends on the approach. If some person can afford to send his production to a good mixing engineer then it's all different story. Anyway, mixing is the key to a great sound. And it also can be a big part of sound design. So for some producers, it can be important to know about mixing. Even if they send the project to a mixing engineer. And as I see now how it affected my work I wish someone had explained to me that I needed to learn mixing.
All kinds of challenges. And I didn't overcome them. I can't advise anything here. I have all kind of problems with many things!
Use bx_solo if you want to make great mono compatibility. It allows you to listen Mid, Side, Left, Right as a mono sound. I have bx_solo on the master and I listen to mono, sides, left, right with it. Also, listen to great commercial tracks with it. How they sound in M/S/L/R can reveal some serious things compare to your tracks.
There are tons of things in mixing and each one will make a little improvement. For example, mix/sound design in context. There are some specific tasks where you click the solo button and listen to a track/instrument isolated. But it can be very misleading if you try to sculpt the sound of the track/instrument in solo. So most of the time EQ, compress, reverb, tweak your tracks/instruments with everything else playing. Don't use the solo button often. In solo the sound of the instrument can be terrible but when everything else playing it can be just great. It'd take me a long time to explain why this happens. But learn to make EQ and other stuff without solo.
No. I never tried those yet, but I hope I will.
I wish to have feedback while I work on a track. I don't have. The only thing I have are comments when a track posted. I consider those for future tracks. Maybe with time, I'll find some people to give feedback before the release of a track. My friends are not my fans, they are into different music.
The one that I'll be proud of is yet to come! From the old tracks, people are very positive about 'Cold Hope' and 'Dancing In The Air With Sparkling Snake'. They can't be found on SoundCloud and are very old from the ’00s.
On SoundCloud, it is 'Orbox Power'. It's not the best track I have but best sounding at this moment. It's only a second track where I bothered seriously with the mixing. Originally it was a music loop from the game Orbox B: Rebirth. I extended it to the full track. I spent too much time with it because I don't have much experience with serious mixing. And the result is that the track has some downsides in the arrangement. For example, the rhythm section is very simplistic. But it was a trade-off between spending time on a better arrangement or on the mixing.
It's hard to say. Probably it did affect me indirectly. Because when I found RepostExchange, I had like 20-30 followers. And in a few months now I have 480. Some of the people left comments which gave me some thoughts on improvement. There is one guy who posted me a comment that my track is one of the best electronic he heard. I thought it was a joke. Until I saw in stats he had over 60 listens. He also came back a few weeks later and had over 20 listens more. So as RepostExchange can bring some real people who actually leave some helpful thoughts that is some kind of indirect affection. Few people asked me for a collab. I did not have time for that at the moment. But if I did agree it could be a kind of indirect effect too.
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This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
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