🙏🏻 Blind faith and serendipity in field of music 🤞🏻

I hope you've stayed productive. To me, autumn is definitely a creative period. I'm still kind of "recovering" from finishing my recent album, Classy Coffee Cuts, but I'm definitely enjoying working on new ideas etc (finished a new song this weekend, yay!)

📹I have exciting stuff lined up for ya: e.g., I have Ableton Note tutorial, new DAW stuff (!?), new album song walkthru video, plugin giveaway etc etc…you just wait! 📽️

I want to inspire people, and maybe this little story could do that to an extent.

Some of you that I've been tutoring a bit may have heard it.

In 2017, I was going thru a somewhat depressing period of making music. I have only had two really kind of heavy periods; another was maybe around 2011-12 or so, when I thought for a while I'd quit (couldn't, luckily!), but around 2017 I recall feeling quite down, and I felt things weren't going anywhere (I've learned in a way that these periods do happen, and I can take them) instead of trying really hard – there were no gigs, not much in terms of any sort of recognition etc (btw I could prob write another whole post about how rewards rarely come when you actually expect them).

I've always been the type of person that if I give myself a goal, I will stay hell-bent about it to make it happen: I've moved from the worst countryside to capital city, earned a university degree, become Ableton Certified, established myself as a full-time audio engineer, earned gigs to travel the world etc., had my hip hop released on my fave (now defunct) instrumental hip hop label…

And getting on Metalheadz was one of those goals.

I remember sending music to Headz for a while; among the first things I sent, I think, was an album around 2005–2006, and some talks were in the air about Goldie releasing it, but that didn't happen (you may believe it or not, but Photek was considering releasing it, too, as crazy as it sounds – that album was my Daylightless album).

I kept sending stuff over the years and around 2017 I was about to give up. Like I said, many things felt like they weren't going anywhere, and I was about to give up on the Headz goal to not be depressed about it.

I recall working on a slower song back then, around 135–140 BPM. Someone had randomly sent me a breakbeat via email, and I don't usually get that stoked about getting samples from elsewhere, as I guess I've always had a healthy pride in finding stuff on my own, I admit.

But I was working on a song around that breakbeat. I felt that was something nice. There was something truly dope about that song. You know how sometimes you get a feeling that you're creating something that's kind of different and it excites you?

I recall the song was around 60% done at one point and I thought I need to finish that one in order to not have it be one of those numerous unfinished ones.

I recall on the Friday or Saturday when I had promised myself to work on that one, a friend sends me a message saying they're doing a housewarming party and they have tons of free beer and they want me to come. Normally I might be stoked. But I told him that even though this might sound nerdy, I'd be working on that song only, because I had some sort of silly blind faith in it and it should be finished. I'm a man of my word when it comes to promises, and that mostly applies to promises I give myself.

Well, I did finish that song that weekend. Wasn't hungover, wasn't tired, as I didn't go and get wasted. Well, didn't get fun memories from a party with friends, but I had this one song.

I recall sending it to Metalheadz the following Monday. I felt a bit silly about it, as the tempo was slower than DNB. Also, I was about to send it, I kind of said to myself that this is just kind of desperate at this point; if I have been sending tunes for that long, why on earth would this make any difference, being slower than the stuff they usually release. I literally said to myself this will be the last tune I'd send to Headz.

Two weeks later I was contacted by the label A&R about the song, saying he and Goldie love the song. I said it's still available, and soon after that I was told they want to sign it.

That was massively inspirational to me. The rest of the EP wrote itself really quickly as I was so massively inspired about this one getting picked up. The song in question is "Baretta" on that EP.

A few months after that I got a call from Goldie and we discussed the EP and that was it.

What's the takeaway here?

Getting somewhere in the field of music takes some blind faith (me working on that song) and rewards may not happen when you expect them to (sending it out even though I kind of felt it doesn't make sense at all, as none of the other stuff that I found much more fitting did stick).

Maybe things take some sort of luck or serendipity too (someone I don't even know sent me that breakbeat, and I made the song around it).

Also, my first-ever hip hop release was originally released by now defunct Redef Recordings. I was absolutely obsessed about that label at one point and their output (Damu, K-Def, Def Dee etc) inspired me so much, I struggle to recall another period when I was that inspired by one label alone (aside from Metalheadz).

I was quite hell-bent about getting on the label because I knew that stylistically it'd fit.

I made an album worth of material – it was honestly a 100% finished package – and sent it to them on Soundcloud. I was msging them about it for weeks, and I said to myself, "I'll take a rejection OR getting signed to the label, but there will be no between".

It honestly must've been the 15th nudge to them (Was I already ashamed about the amount of nudging? Yes!) when they finally replied along the lines of, "Hey we just heard this and it's great and we'd would love to sign and release this".

Moral of the story? Don't give up – a lot of times, the life of a producer takes a lot of that blind faith!