Meet Dreaming While Awake, a Marin County-based producer and bassist whose journey into music production blends years of self-taught skill with a deep love for jazz and rock. With a straightforward setup - featuring his 1973 Fender Precision Bass and Audio-Technica headphones - he builds tracks from bass grooves up, often collaborating with vocalists to add the finishing touch. Platforms like RepostExchange have been key to his growth, helping him reach new listeners and refine his sound through feedback. For him, music is a journey of continuous learning, creativity, and connection!
I’ve been producing music for about 10 years; three years very seriously. I’m self-taught and I have some friends that produce music that were able to show me some basics, like how to work a sampler. I’m also a jazz and rock bassist of 30 years and I have a background in programming.
I use ACID Pro because it has been around for a while and I was able to get my hands on the software early in my life. I find it to be intuitive to use. I can use just about any DAW because I’ve been able to figure out what I’m trying to do.
I rely on an M-Audio Keystation 49e midi controller mounted under my desk, an SM57 mic I use for my vocals, and I also play a 1973 Fender Precision Bass. Almost everything I do is midi except for my vocals and when I record my electric bass. I wear M50 and M30 Audio Technica headphones when producing and mastering.
I love the Poise free sampler, I love Vita VST3’s, DN-e1 etc. Pretty much any basic sampler or midi synth that has a library with presets such as piano, synth bass, pads, and arpeggiators. When routing the tracks through software buses I am applying simple effects to the signal. I love using sidechaining, compression, and a separate pass for mastering to achieve a unique sound design and mix.
I try to channel creative energy rather than force it. I live in the world of midi. I start with the drums and bass and add melodies from there. I’m a bass player so the groove is familiar to me. The vocal phrasing tends to be the most difficult so often I use other songs as ideas for vocal phrasing, and it then evolves into something unique and original.
I like to listen to song ideas in the car and play with phrasing in my mind. I like to collaborate with singers by sending them backing tracks and letting them either come up with their own lyrics and phrasing or giving them ideas so they can just record the song and not have to think about it. I tend to make music I’m not good at so I can get better at it. I look at music as a lifelong spiritual endeavour, I try to learn everything.
YouTube mostly, I am like many people who listen to tutorials at night before bed. I try to get inspired by listening to other people’s music, often through RepostExchange. I try to watch tutorials that are high level. For example lately, I’ve been watching Rick Rubin videos for information about creativity and the creative process - nothing specific about genres or software. I try not to listen to music too much, I try to get inspired but I also try to safekeep my own sound.
Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of tutorials on sound design, mixing, and mastering - which I do myself for almost all my tracks.
Slow down and make better quality music. My strength is making hundreds of songs across many genres, my weakness is high-quality songs in specific genres. Quality is one of the biggest milestones of human achievement. Great music is hard to make, so take your time. Quality creative work is like a fruit that the human species produces, much like fruit produced by trees. It takes time to create and resources to grow. I say all of this and I still tend to rush through songs and release early.
Privacy, interruptions at home during work, and having a hard time finding team members that actually finish. I try to sit down and work on something if I don’t feel like going into the DAW, maybe writing lyrics, or making artwork.
The hardest part isn’t making music, but sitting down to make music. The next hardest part is being alone, this is why I like to collaborate. After that, the hard part is getting people to actually listen to your music. I can only be around certain types of people anymore, people that dream or respect my dreams. I try to keep a very open mind. I found that I really have to love music, and I have to love myself. The further I go, the less people I can relate to, and the harder it is to find people that I can trust.
Having said all of this I love making music and I love bringing society up and bringing people together through music. I believe there is too much division today and music is a tool to express ourselves and create unity.
Learn the piano roll editor. Learn how to play basic basslines, chords, drums beats via midi. Do this slowly, let yourself be slow in the beginning. I like to piece together melodic phrasing using the keyboard as a musical typewriter. I start with the bass, and drums, like mentioned before. I come up with a groove over the top, which then becomes a melody. I grab pieces of this melody, and listen to it in sections… for something that makes sense. I build on what makes sense.
I then write the lyrics, and try to build the melody around the phrasing of the lyrics, as if the phrasing was an island and the melody a marsh around that island. Surprise the listener. Use sounds that create discord and clash a little bit, sour notes like the blues. I use a combination of classical and jazz voicings. Don’t get stuck in a genre. Think music.
Sometimes I measure the BPM’s of a track, or the key, using an online spectral analyzer. Sometimes I use Soundcloud’s mastering tools.
I use RepostExchange to get a gauge of what songs are popular as well as comments for feedback. I like the encouragement but I also like constructive feedback. I post my songs to my now large following on Instagram and TikTok, and along with RepostExchange I can see very deeply into how a song is received and why.
I cut my songs into sections and run them across various platforms to measure engagement. I also run dollar a day ads to better understand what kind of art to use and what songs are better performing. Branding has become more important to me along with connecting with my audience. If the music is good that isn’t quite enough, it needs to connect with my audience and I can tell when it does through metrics.
Cloudwalker by Dreaming While Awake and Kenna-Rae, because it is our first song to hit 100,000 streams on Spotify and is still one of our best songs. The song was effortless to make and was a testament to a successful creative process which was also fun. Kenna-Rae came up with the lyrics and recorded the vocals, I did everything else. We made the song in a few hours and it has been heard all around the world. The song connects deeply with the listener.
RepostExchange has given me the courage to get out of my shell by helping me grow beyond my small ecosystem on SoundCloud. It has helped me understand promotion which has in turn affected the way I make music. It has taught me that feedback can help guide us to make better music.
If your song is hitting ratings of 8.8 to 9.4 on RepostExchange there is a good chance you can break even on meta pixel conversion ads, so much to be said here… Knowing what sounds good to others is important as well as how things sound to yourself. Reposting is a mechanism for growth as an artist and it also gives us great data with regards to where we should be spending the advertising to convert new listeners.
Connect with Dreaming While Awake on RepostExchange, SoundCloud, Instagram, and TikTok!
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This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
