Hey Cal!
I would love to do a pirate takeover to showcase a track that I made during lock-down, on the theme of lockdown with my own vocals and lyrics - it can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/saliahofficial/lkddwn/s-DZtQyOhpjK9.
I would show how I don’t always rely on vocal chops I find online or on splice but I’ll just make my own! I have done this by recording my vocals in pirate studios. What I’ll do is record lots of weird sounds and phrases over a long period of time and then organise them later down the line into samples I can use in tracks. This is often because I can’t find royalty-free Arabic samples and they are often collected into loop packs called ‘middle eastern’ or ‘tribal’ or ‘oriental’ packs which is hugely problematic - so I’ve had to create my own!
In addition to that; in terms of breaking down music production techniques; I mostly use Ableton’s built-in capabilities for sound design, such as Ableton’s operator and Ableton’s waveshaper which is so overlooked - lots of people turn to Serum (we’d do some cheeky @abletontips tagging).
Furthermore; I would cover the experience of someone only a year into their music production journey, what I’ve found invaluable, the things I wish I knew, and being very open and honest about any worries, plus using mind over matter when it comes to committing to music production. For example; being worried about finding your sound can be really limiting and experimenting in different genres can often be the most advantageous to your development because you’ll naturally find yourself slipping back into a certain genre more often than others, and that you don’t always have to create a specific sound - many EDM artists have released experimental tracks (take Chris Lorenzo with his track Spliff break for example).
A Q+A section focusing on:
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Advice for those looking to get into music production in terms of bootstrapping (grab those ebay bargains) but engaging the community to share their advice too.
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Why top-of-the-range speakers aren’t essential and you can do a lot of your production in your headphones (whilst still looking after your ears) then take it down to pirate studio to do a lot of the mix/mastering work.
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Ask how people are really feeling about going back into the performance world post-pandemic
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Ask people what new skill they think they’ve picked up during the pandemic and why I think lockdown has given me the chance to focus on producing with the lack of performance opportunities
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How to reach out to other musicians (people really are generally friendly and the worst they can do is either not respond or say they don’t have the time!)
I also have a community space on Discord called MAZIKA for Womxn and Non-Binary BIPOC music producers that I’m looking to grow - I use several community spaces for music production and would be a great opportunity to get people on board whilst still promoting how good this one is!
I believe that I should do a takeover to give a perspective into music production that is barely covered. We usually see producers do takeovers that are already at the top of their game, and pirate is a space for people at all levels and the staff are always at hand to give any support/advice. I also believe that there is barely any representation of artists, especially womxn from SWANA regions in electronic music - with several cultural, religious, and political barriers at play - it would give me a great opportunity to give some of those womxn a platform by sharing their handles too
Look forward to hearing from you if I get a slot