I made what I consider my first ever music recording demo tape in late 1993 using a simple Fostex four track tape recorder and a Casio SK5 sampler keyboard.
The first few I did was trying to figure out how to record dance music in a live way as I had no access to digital as the loops on the sampler could only be played in real time, so I had to continuously hit these pads for a few minutes to get the drum track laid down.
Then I would sample a vocal and use the other pad and then delete those samples and add two more to fill up the four channels on tape deck.
Once I had spend a few weeks doing this, I then got what I thought was good enough to make this track, so I went for it and put together a demo of a piano riff a couple of beats and a vocal snippet and that was it. Crude and raw as any earthly element as it was, I was proud I had finally begun my journey.
I played it to my fellow friends and my dad, but it was obviously in need of work. I still have this demo tape today and it needs more work than you can possibly imagine. It was a house music recording that was performed live and in real time with exhausted fingers at the age of 16.
My point is this, I knew in my heart that the track was poor quality but it had substance due to my enthusiasm and desire to become better. But mostly to become known as a producer even though my first proper attempt was dreadful. My friends were polite and so forth but had I not played it them at that very early stage of my production life I may never had played them anything again. However the friends who mattered did say that there was improvements to be made, which I knew there was, but I was willing to improve.
I was strong enough to have had the drive and to have also been lucky enough to have been around in the early 1990s when the UK club scene was taking off after the rave era had begun to splinter off in its own direction. The club scene was where I was headed and in those early US imports and UK funky and progressive house tracks that were coming out in those days, I had a direction to follow by trying to emulate those sounds in that period around 93-95.
Why am I telling you this? Well it was during this period that I made over 100 perhaps more demos on that cranky Fostex tape recorded and the Casio sampler. Many of them took many many takes to get close to quantization but I battled through night after night and on my days off from work which coincidentally was in a record shop, so my access to the latest grooves was fortunately for me a good position to be in.
The demos I made were not great at all but the ideas and the determination was through the roof. I knew if I could just keep at it, something good would arise. But the most important thing of all was that I always played my demos to people who came round or to my co workers in the shop etc. I am certain I tried to impress various girlfriends who would be in my company too at this time with my fancy demos.
So basically I played my crappy stuff to everyone I could in the days before the internet. Which in hindsight was and is much more terrifying to do than to get a total stranger hear it from another continent.
This is where you now come into it. You need to find a way to overcome the fear of the following things.
SHAME
CRITICISM
JUDGEMENT
BEING MOCKED
BEING HATED
TRYING TO BE PERFECT IN AN UNPERFECT WORLD
These are the most common things that prevent you and so many others like you from sharing your art with the world. This is at the time of writing February 2025 and the world has been online long enough now to understand and experience hateful and negative comments being thrown at one another.
We all know what damage words can do but when it comes to just releasing music they are just the words of a person who has way more problems than you do. You see the negative comments from someone who may criticize your music comes from an unhealed wound within that person and has nothing to do with you.
I have experienced hate from so many different people over the years and it has been difficult to challenge at times, I have had to learn myself to combat the responses and to develop ways to kill them with kindness also. It has been a battlefield but one in which I have conquered. You see I love a bit of hate from people as I am now in a position to literally destroy them with a clever response or in some cases simply keep my peace and press the block button. They are your two options. It is that simple. Remember those words from those people are unhealed traumas and have no real value in your life.
Being afraid is ok but letting it prevent you from sharing your art and progressing in this one life you have which lets face it is very limited. Yet you will decide to limit yourself and shrink yourself through an imaginary fear that is not a physical threat, yet people allow it to feel as though it is just like one.
This is just music and it is designed to be enjoyed by all and not by all. There are 8 billion people on this rock and so therefore not everybody is going to like what you do, so let that be your guiding motto.
Not everyone likes the same food, so its no different to the arts. If you fear words then you need to look at that deeper and overcome that in some way and then just release the music like a bird in a cage.
There is nobody on this planet who is successful today that didnt suck at one point. Not one, Everyone had to dive in at the deep end eventually to gain a footing in the world in which they succeed now.
So if you want some more scope on this, then watch the video below for a shorter version but a very direct approach on the subject of fear in music production releases.
REMEMBER YOU ARE IN CONTROL HERE. NOT THE HATERS OR THE COMMENTERS.
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