Today, I had another production private lesson with Tom. We spent the majority of our lesson today discussing our plans for the final few lessons, specifically the portfolio project. The portfolio project involves me composing several drum samples / groove packs that I can eventually distribute to my followers. These will be home recorded acoustic drum samples enhanced with processing. 

Tom also gave a cool suggestion that I might want to consider recording a drum sample pack that is built around needed samples for producers. Specifically one shot claps, shaker sounds, bass drum shell hits, edge of cymbals, etc. Producers have access to hundreds of snare and kick samples, but not necessarily those other sounds I mentioned, hence why it would be a cool thing to record and make available!

Tom also mentioned to me about a cool site called XLN. XLN has various MIDI drum packs available for purchase, as well as some fill variations. These are mainly separated by different genre, and there are several variations within that genre. I asked Tom if it would still be worth it to make my own version of these packs. He said ultimately, it would be hard to compete with XLN, but as you build experience people might be interested in purchasing your particular MIDI groove packs. If I were to work on something like this, I would aim to make a gospel pack in the style of Phil Wickham or an Americana pack in the style of John Mayer.

After my music business class, I met with Brandon for the evening. We hadn’t discussed pre-production for his tune “Sandcastles” for a while, so I wanted to spend a bit of time on this. The last time we met, we recorded a voice memo to click of Brandon playing through the form.

Our goal for today was to start creating an instruments by section document based on our reference tracks. This document outlined which instrument textures enter and exit at different parts throughout the form of the song. This is a great exercise for producers as it allows you to look at a foundation on which you can customize based on the artists vision. We didn’t finish this document fully because the reference track had a lot to unpack and we needed to give our ears a bit of a rest. 

I’m happy with the progress Brandon and I made today, and I am looking forward to the next phases of pre-production!