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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Wed Nov 04, 2015 2:45 am 
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what i've been doing is listening to some samples I want to use while I work on stuff to plan ahead for my SP. usually works and cuts time

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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Fri Nov 06, 2015 8:06 pm 
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digging the post man.. I'm in the same boat you are dude.

It def gets frustrating at times especially when you have other stuff going on like being in a relationship, family ish, or you might even be in a group or made a commitment to work with an artist.

At some point I really thought i was gonna make this music stuff happen... but as someone posted before this life shit is set up to not work in our favor. So you lose the fire to make it happen.. I found its best to treat this as a hobby unless you plan on really giving it your all and taking that risk. To be honest its been less stressful for me not dealing with other artist hounding you for beats or trying to get you to invest your hard earned money that you busted your ass for into their projects. Working crazy hours sucks especially when you can put that money into gear, a beat tape of your own, buying a meal or saving up for a trip.

Just do you man, make time when you can so maybe you can't put in the hours you want into beats but i always felt taking a lil time off is necessary. Coming back with fresh ears or a new inspiration always puts me in a good mood. As you can tell this shit is hella spiritual for me.

Anyways don't get discouraged my dude..job income is always good. take breaks when you need them. Being back at home with the parents aint a bad thing take advantage of that!

(i still live with my folks and currently trying to make that move as far as finding a new job or heading back to school)

so keep ya head high and ya beats loud
peace!

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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Sun Nov 08, 2015 4:43 pm 
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no.pulp wrote:
what i've been doing is listening to some samples I want to use while I work on stuff to plan ahead for my SP. usually works and cuts time

Yep. For me its all about finding sensible ways to multitask.
I don't have kids to take care of, but do work a lot of hours. Around 55 as well, actually. And yes, its an ungodly amount of weekly work but that is the price of drinking, smoking and eating well while having a layman's occupations, at least here in the US.
The way I stay productive is staying focused. I have two delivery jobs, and on the road I find things to do that serve my crafts. For example, if I have a fresh beat made, I will brainstorm rhymes for it while driving, in the safest way possible, which is by recording them into a recorder that i can operate without looking down at it. If I have trouble coming up with a concept for the song, i might listen to podcasts for ideas. Sometimes I'll record old records or movies to mp3 form to listen to for samples while on the road. Once I have some money saved I plan to find a job, like a clerk at a small liquor store, where I can do the sketches for my sharpie drawings while on the clock. This is reminding me of some rhymes from this SP Balboa project, which is still on the way.. hopefully will be finished around the end of the year.

for me, two jobs is the way to go
because i don't feel trapped even when i'm broke
if i lose or leave Job A
i can work more at B and be okay
we get stuck in spirit cuffs
until we make the system work for us

Another tip for staying productive is to stay between pieces. If you have energy and inspiration left after finishing one, start another right away. I always am more drawn to the pad(s) when I already have something brewing.

Good question.


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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Mon Nov 09, 2015 1:44 am 
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Quit all 3 of my last jobs because of this issue. Feel like work not only puts a strain on how much music i make, but the quality of it as well. That really gets to me. Working minimum wage / labor intensive jobs for 40+ hours a week just kinda drains me day to day. Getting a lot of inspiration from this thread though! Definitely gonna help me once i get another job and grab the 303 out the pawn shop. :lol:

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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 6:30 am 
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Thanks for all the interesting insight, fellas.

I WISH I could listen to samples while at work. Maybe I need to start looking for some kind desk job where I can work and listen to music at the same time. I wouldn't mind that. But, posting on here has definitely reignited a small burst of energy within me, so I'll definitely be releasing tracks soon. :)


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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 5:21 pm 
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Yeah I'm an editor and can't listen to music while I work for obvious reasons but I've come up with workflows that have gotten me even more productive than when I sat at home smoking weed and listening to records all day. Here's a few things I do.

1. I wholesale rip entire vinyl albums. I generally do this in pro tools but you can use whatever. I like pro tools because of how easy it is to rename and export. Generally I'll record the whole thing, normalize, split up the whole tracks and then just label them with the title and track number. I don't bother with the actual names of the tracks because I know I won't be bothered to do it. I'll generally rip at least a few a week which gives me a ton of material. The benefit of this is you don't have to be actively listening. Start recording and go and make dinner or something.

2. When I'm on the train or just on the couch on my phone, I'll do a couple of things. One is that I'll make sure I rate tracks when I'm listening to music already loaded in, or I'll save to a playlist if I'm on youtube. Even if it's not a music video or anything, if something catches my ear, I'll throw it into a samples playlist that I can revisit later.

3. If I know that I'm on a sample hunting mission, I'll listen to stuff off my phone through my sony pcm-m10 field recorder. But any portable recorder with a line in will work, even a cassette recorder (which gives you the added benefit of varispeed if it has it). I like the pcm m10 because it has a 5 second pre-record buffer, meaning once I hear something I like, I hit record and it will go back 5 seconds prior and record from there. That way I don't have to bother cueing what I'm listening to back. This is awesome for youtube hunting where rewinding and stuff is a pain. Or sometimes, I'll record the music in an ad before a video. Anything is fair game. Then you have specific samples to start a session with.

4. Speaking of youtube, if I'm really at a loss for where to start, I go here - https://www.reddit.com/r/vintageobscura/ and then follow the youtube suggestions.

5. Finally, if I'm on my computer, I use audio hijack pro to constantly monitor my computer audio. If you hear anything, itunes, movie trailers, even some horrible pop up ad while paying bills, tell it to record and then you have a folder with a bunch of samples as starting points.

Once I started gathering samples in a way where I'm not specifically searching for samples, I've gotten a lot of great stuff that I normally wouldn't have looked to. And once I started previewing all this stuff in Live over some generic drum loops I've been super productive, but that's a whole different story.

Anyway, hope that help - no need to find another job! :mrgreen:

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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Mon Nov 16, 2015 2:39 am 
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some pretty genius sample hoarding skills

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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 5:35 pm 
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I am going to school and working freelance jobs as a graphics guy and still have to make time to make beats. I don't get near enough time to do what I want. If all I did was make beats, I'd probably have an album out every week and quickly tire out anyone who might even dig my music by oversaturating them with too much stuff...

Don't be so impatient with your music. You keep adding little bits and pieces to a musical sketch book, before you know it, you got an album.

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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 9:17 am 
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Hi there group,

Little SP-time lately since I've been focusing on really getting up to speed in Ableton. This subject hits close to home and it seems you can wrestle this forever and just feel disappointed. God knows I have been complaining during the years. Don't.

Some strategies.

Creativity is all about working within restraints. If time is limited, teach yourself a faster workflow. Turn your hurried speed it into an estethic expression. How many 15-minute microwaves can you make in a week? And how many microwaves does it take to be really good and efficient at it?

Constant dropping wears the stone away. Right now I'm on my first 30-day challenge in Live. I work (at least) 15 minutes in Live every night no matter what. It's about building a habit. And I stay on the same project. Never abandon an idea til you have at least a good prototype.

Make a list of where your time goes. Which minutes could be used better? When commuting I listen to rough mixes in the car. On public transport I have even brought the SP with me.

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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2015 2:06 pm 
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If had this problem most my life, rapping beats sketching work is a absolute buzz kill and iv suffered for my art. Recently worked part time for the first time and was great until I knocked up my girl... and now I'm back on the grind stone. Due to suffering for my art previously I don't have the greatest skill set in the eyes of a potential employer so I do pretty labour intensive jobs which zap my energy big time but just stay on it man I'm pretty spiritual about it swell aswell so I almost obsess until I get in front of ,y equipment. Live eat breath... one

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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Tue Dec 15, 2015 2:45 pm 
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I have a few things I've been trying to do…I agree with one of the posters above, when I have less time I generally can get more done.

I have a couple of things I do: first thing is I don't watch TV during the week really. That frees up some time right there. Second thing is: if I don't have a lot of time, I try to whip off some microwaves really quickly. On weeknights I feel like I don't have a lot of time to hunt for samples etc so I save that for the weekend. I whip off some sketches and then wait for the wknd when I have more time to work them out. Also on the wknd I fill pads on the 404 with samples from vinyl. I catalogue them on the computer so if I want to make something quick I already have a folder full of samples to work with.

Finally when I'm unmotivated I watch beatmaking videos…there are many to choose from and you can always learn something. That usually gets me motivated to at least get off the couch and make something.

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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Sun Dec 20, 2015 11:58 pm 
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I just took a second job coz I was only working 3 days a week. So my full day beat making sessions are over for now. However I feel like its made me a bit more appreciative of my free time so I actually get more done. Before when I had time in greater abundance I was being much more lazy

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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 5:01 am 
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im in the same boat. i work about 58 hours a week. Usually I'll find time after work or on the weekend

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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Fri Dec 25, 2015 1:22 pm 
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word 2 the setup plebman

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 Post subject: Re: Balancing work and beats
PostPosted: Fri Dec 25, 2015 3:40 pm 
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I felt this way years ago. I tried to be dedicated to music but work takes up 8 to 12 hours a day and by the time I get home, the family needs my presence. Can't be a drug dealer and I tried a few get rich schemes to make enough money to buy time to make music while off the grid. I had all these inspirations that needed to be released but it felt compressed in and was frustrating not to create.

After being on the street for 3 years trying to live a producer's dream, I figured it was time to find a good job with benefits and something with not "too much work". It was a hard search, I fought the world and finally landed my job as an agent at the city coliseum. I get to see music concerts and sports and my job is mostly walking around looking for unusual activities like theft, water leak etc. When there are no activities, I'm alone in an office doing nothing. Well, not nothing, I bring my iPad, MPC500 and SP303 to keep me busy. This job has been a Godsend for balancing my life. I even drew my album covers on shift as well as going through 90 scifi DVDs searching for quotes you hear on my albums, for 5 seconds of a quote it takes me hours to find it. All done at my job.

I hope this can be an inspiration to some, though I know times are hard. Times were hard then and I picked up my sword and conquered. Keep positive and never bitch and moan when you can take action.

Peace my fam


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