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Season 3 ·

S3E12 – Sometimes You Gotta Wing It

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This post contains affiliate links – Read affiliate disclaimer

This episode shares behind the scenes of a music production educator.

I was notified I needed to submit new photos to an upcoming music production course website.. (see pics below!)

And!!!! BEAT TAPES By GratuiTous Vol. 10 is complete!

A new beatmaking course will be created for how to release music on Spotify (and other online music distributors).

BEAT TAPES By GratuiTous Vol. 10 – COMPLETE!

BEAT TAPES By GratuiTous Vol. 10

BEAT TAPES By GratuiTous is an on-going music series of mine.

I always tell you that Releasing a Professional Beat Tape is a phenomenal way to practice all aspects of music production, and truly become a well-rounded producer who can make beats, arrange, mix, master, and actually complete and release music!

It’s really important I practice to keep my beatmaking skills fresh being music production education business.

The hardest thing about teaching beatmaking is it can take awhile to find something catchy.. the last thing I want to do is bore you! 🙂

Listen to all my BEAT TAPES By GratuiTous >>

Listen to All Music by GratuiTous

PHOTOSHOOT? – Be Ready for ANYTHING as a Producer!

GratuiTous - Photoshoot - April 2023
GratuiTous - Photoshoot - April 2023
GratuiTous - Photoshoot - April 2023
GratuiTous - Photoshoot - April 2023
GratuiTous - Photoshoot - April 2023
The 1-week turnaround photoshoot..
Also requesting some “fun” shots, too..

The other morning I got an email..

Hey, because you have so many FL Studio Courses, we need pictures of you..

This is where the podcast title came from (about winging it lol).

I started scrambling because I didn’t have recent “professional” photos of me!

Thankfully I had the camera equipment, as the turnaround time was 1 week! (And there’s no promises you’ll get quality results if you hire someone, either!)

My old Canon M6 (first gen) with 50mm prime lens did a stellar job!

It was my first time using burst mode.. it rapidly took about 10 photos in a matter of seconds to capture tons of photos and “the moment”!!!

I also had a handy Canon Remote Control laying around to make sure there was no camera shake! All these little tools really add up to a professional result.

Thank-you mom for pulling the trigger to take the photos 🙂

Wrapping Up..

A new Serum Course and How to Distribute Your Music to Spotify Course will becoming soon.

I also have Serum Presets to Buy!

This podcast episode just shows, sometimes you gotta wing it as a producer!

Thanks for your patience everyone..

I hope you have been enjoying the membership to learn FL Studio!

BEAT TAPES by GratuiTous Vol. 10 Branding Music Career Online Music Distribution Photoshoot ROMpler Serum

Community

Questions about this episode

Transcript

S3E12 – Sometimes You Gotta Wing It

  1. Season three, episode 12. Sometimes you gotta wing it.
  2. So being a music producer, typically we are beatmakers.
  3. Well, at least that's who I'm talking to on this podcast: beatmakers, right?
  4. In the music production industry, we have mastering engineers, mixing engineers,
  5. even people who just like recording.
  6. Around here, it is not about any of that stuff.
  7. We are beatmakers, which means we are using our MIDI keyboards, virtual instruments,
  8. creating custom drum loops from one-shot drum samples.
  9. And I always try to tell you guys that is the biggest reward if you can truly learn
  10. that stuff because you can truly find your own sound.
  11. You will never get beat block, you will always be able to just flow because you have
  12. put the time in to learn the beat making secrets.
  13. Alright, so before getting into this episode, if you guys want to learn how to make
  14. professional beats with FL Studio, you can go to it's gratuitous.com forward slash
  15. FL Studio. I have some free training videos for you.
  16. You can sign up, check them out.
  17. And if you're interested, there is a beginner's bundle there for you, which contains
  18. my FL Studio Beginners course and my FL Studio Beginners book.
  19. That's it's gratuitous.com forward slash FL Studio.
  20. Alright, so a lot has been going on since the last episode.
  21. So I actually have not worked on the serum course yet.
  22. I'm sorry for that. And there's a couple reasons, which we'll talk about in this
  23. episode. I was actually just playing with serum today, so I am continually
  24. practicing with serum, and honestly, serum is a very, very hard synth to teach
  25. with. So in other words, like I can create this course and make it very, very boring
  26. and dry and saying, Oh, this is this knob and this is what this does.
  27. But I want to teach you guys how to use it as a beatmaker, and as I keep practicing
  28. with serum,, I just feel that I, even myself I just got to learn it a little bit
  29. better. I've been using serum for probably seven or seven years at least now.
  30. And I've read through the help manual at least two good times, and I've created tons
  31. and tons of free and paid serum presets.
  32. So I have put a lot of time and a lot of hours into using serum, and I still feel
  33. that I'm just like a noob at it.
  34. Because again, I'm a beat maker, I'm not a sound designer.
  35. And I always tell you guys if you're wanting to learn to make really, really good
  36. beats, always use a rompler. It's the easiest way.
  37. But using tools like serum, silence one, and pigments does allow you to
  38. learn how to get the sound that you're looking for over time.
  39. And another really big benefit of understanding how to use those synths is how to
  40. undo presets. So for example, let's say there's a preset and you like it, being able
  41. to tweak it to how you want, that's a huge skill to have, right?
  42. So for example, imagine the tail is too long.
  43. Well, is the tail too long because the reverb is too long, or is the tail too long
  44. just because the release knob is too long?
  45. And honestly, just being able to just to dial back that release knob and tighten up
  46. the sound can really really give you the sound that you're looking for.
  47. Because when we're making our beats, you have to understand that we have our plucky
  48. sounds. These are sounds that really, really stand out in the beat, but they're
  49. really short in tail, right? Then we have our sustained sounds.
  50. These are sounds that are very long, right?
  51. And if you think this way, it just allows your beats just to be a lot clearer and it
  52. makes the mixing a lot easier.
  53. So, okay, so again, the serum course is coming.
  54. I'm working on that. again, I'm practicing in the background, and when I create it,
  55. I promise that it will be worth your time and it'll be enjoyable.
  56. You'll learn a lot again from a beat maker's point of view..
  57. Okay A couple things that I want to follow up on.
  58. So, one, I was talking to you guys in a previous episode where I bought a mountain
  59. bike, right? And it was a higher quality mountain bike.
  60. It wasn't super expensive, but it was, you know, a decent amount of money to get a
  61. good experience, and I'm still having problems with it.
  62. So, again, I'm telling you guys in this music production industry, it's not about
  63. how expensive something is, it's about does it work?
  64. All right. If something is $20 and it just works phenomenal, like perfect, like
  65. that's what you want. You don't have enough time to try this piece of equipment and
  66. this piece of equipment. And so this bike that I purchased, the shocks seized.
  67. And I have had bikes over my years as a kid or whatever, and they've always had
  68. shocks on them. The shocks have never failed.
  69. And this one, like they would not go up and down.
  70. I brought it into the bike shop.
  71. Thankfully, it was under warranty.
  72. They've been super awesome, but it was super funny.
  73. I brought the bike in and they're like, hey, Riley, and you know, because I've been
  74. in there before, like I was telling you, I think the brakes weren't doing good.
  75. They fixed those and now they're great.
  76. That's awesome. But now the shocks are seized.
  77. And so I told them, I said, Hey, the shocks are seized, and they're like, seized,
  78. like that sounds really weird, right?
  79. So the guy comes and tries them, and he's like, Ooh, that's not good.
  80. So they bring the manager, he tries them, and he's like, Okay.
  81. So now it's under warranty the shocks, right?
  82. They seized. What I'm saying is, hey, I thought I was gonna be purchasing like a
  83. really good bike to the point where it's like I don't need to bring it in unless I
  84. need to switch brakes, you know, replace brakes, or maybe something breaks over
  85. time, whatever. But these are just little things from a brand new bike, and they're
  86. not working very good. So, moral of the storyy, more mone does not mean better..
  87. It just means you need to find the tools that work for you
  88. The tools that work for me, they may not work for you, but generally I like to work
  89. really, really simple. Yes, some of the tools cost a bit of money, but it's you
  90. know, you just pay, you get to enjoy that product, and you get to make high quality
  91. music, okay. The next thing I want to talk about is I've actually been doing a photo
  92. shoot. So there's a new website for music production courses coming very soon.
  93. They asked me to submit my courses, but I also needed to submit some special photos.
  94. I didn't have them, so I had to do a photo shoot, and thankfully I had tons of
  95. different lighting and I had like a white background from just over the years of
  96. doing courses and stuff. I've been very busy in regards to just kind of running the
  97. business in behind the scenes.
  98. So if you're on the email list, I will send you a picture of the kind of little
  99. studio setup I had for photos, as well as maybe a couple of the pictures of how they
  100. turned out and the turnaround time was pretty quick because in order to hire a
  101. professional photographer, first of all, you gotta find a you have to find somebody
  102. hoping that they're good, just like I'm saying, just because someone charges more
  103. money doesn't always mean that they're better.
  104. That is something that's coming up, so I'll let you guys know about that.
  105. But again, my courses are on very reputable music production websites like modern
  106. producers, ADSR Sounds, or again, you guys can visit my website wherever you feel
  107. comfortable learning. But if you guys ever want to stay updated with what's going
  108. on, again, you guys can always join the newsletter just by visiting the website
  109. there, okay. The last thing I want to say is beat tapes by gratuitous Volume 10 is
  110. done. If you're on the newsletter, you guys will get to see the artwork, which is
  111. now complete. I will listen to the beat tape over and over and over, and I think
  112. it's ready for release. I want to actually. create a course on how to like I already
  113. have a course on how to release a professional beat tape
  114. Again, that's in the platform, but I want to create a specific course about how to
  115. prepare your music for online distribution, such as if you want to submit it to
  116. Spotify or wherever. I want to walk you through the whole process in regards to
  117. organizing your folders. Because again, I've been creating these beat tapes by
  118. gratuitous for many years. This is volume 10.
  119. So from volume one, volume two, volume three, etc., all the way to 10, it needs to
  120. be organized for a fast workflow.
  121. Because if I want to go to volume one or volume seven, everything is organized.
  122. I know exactly where things are.
  123. And I will be creating a course on that here soon as well.
  124. So be on the lookout for the course about online distribution for your music.
  125. Again, I like to do beat tapes because they're amazing for practice.
  126. And the serum course is coming too.
  127. Again, the serum course has been pretty tricky because again, I have to learn it a
  128. little bit better to really, really be able to improvise like I normally do in my
  129. courses. Most of my courses are just on the fly learning because you know, when I'm
  130. making my beats, that's usually how I make beats, and I kind of walk you through
  131. step by step, you know, what's going on in the trainings.
  132. But this serum course, because it's you know, learning synthesis is very, very hard.
  133. Like even just learning ADSR, so attack, decay, sustain, release.
  134. Then some of them even have that hold in there too, right?
  135. And when you're first starting, just learning that concept of ADSR is pretty
  136. overwhelming. But I want to make it more than just learning ADSR, learning
  137. like, oh, here's the serum interface.
  138. Here's this knob, here's what this does.
  139. So again, I'm not an expert sound designer, but I have designed a lot of presets
  140. over the years, and again, when I'm designing my presets, I'm designing them for a
  141. beatmaker.. Okay What you'll notice when you go through any synthesizer, it doesn't
  142. matter if it's serum, silent one, or pigments, the actual presets most of the time
  143. are not designed for beat makers.
  144. And if you're confused by that, you really need to understand what is a good preset
  145. for a beat maker. So, for example, we have film music, someone who scores musical
  146. compositions for movies, or there could be people who are using sounds to create
  147. games or sound effects and stuff.
  148. There's different presets for different usages.
  149. But when we're a beat maker, I really always need to have those presets really,
  150. really good for chords. I need them to be able to be playable in high octaves and
  151. low octaves, and then even to take it further, what type of genre are you making?
  152. Because you know, as a beatmaker, you can be creating dance music, you can be
  153. creating hip hop rap. But let's talk about let's say dance.
  154. When we talk about dance, there is so many different genres of dance.
  155. So when we're choosing sounds for let's say dance, you know, is it house?
  156. Is it tropical? Is it electro?
  157. Is it hard style? Is it jump style?
  158. Whatever style of dance music you're making, you want to be selecting presets that
  159. emphasize that style of music, right?
  160. But the underlying principle for those genres is many times you need to make sure
  161. that they're good for chords. And what you'll notice when you go through the default
  162. presets is many times they're not very good for chords.
  163. And if you don't believe me, go through them and try playing chords yourself.
  164. And if you struggle with chords and learning the piano and stuff, again, you guys
  165. can check out my piano lessons for producers.
  166. It's helped so many people learn the piano with improvisation as a
  167. beatmaker. Alright, so there you guys go.
  168. So a little update on the bike, which you know, I don't want to keep talking about
  169. the bike, but it's just the whole thing I was trying to tell you.
  170. It was a pretty expensive bike, and I've had nothing but problems with it.
  171. I have purchased really cheap stuff over the years, and sometimes it's perfect.
  172. So again, money does not always mean quality, and it also doesn't mean convenience
  173. either. So sometimes you have to figure out what tool works for you, and that could
  174. be just be your secret. You don't always have to share things, right?
  175. The second thing is I again I was doing a photo shoot.
  176. I had my mom taking the photos, and then the last thing is again volume 10 of beat
  177. tapes by gratuitous is now complete.
  178. If you are in the email list, I will send you the artwork and be on the lookout for
  179. the actual official release for you to listen to it.
  180. And again, I will be planning to create a course about releasing your music to an
  181. online distributor about how to properly prepare it.
  182. Also be on the lookout for the serum course, which I am continually practicing here
  183. in the background, but I want to make sure it's enjoyable that you learn a lot, and
  184. it's all designed from a beatmaker's point of view.
  185. I will talk to you guys in the next episode.
  186. Again, don't forget about that free FL Studio training by going to it's
  187. gratuitous.com forward slash FL
  188. Studio.
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