The secret to making an independent album.
The concept for 'Genus' first came to me when I saw a piece of artwork by Lauren Marx called 'From Our Flesh'. It is a stunning piece of work, as are all her works, and at the time I had been writing a lot of new music and needed a theme to tie it all together. I also needed a 'band' name. The inspiration for this came from the title of a poem by Muzahidul Reza which I read around the same time. Thus The Animal State was born and the seed for my debut album had been planted. All I needed to do now was learn how to produce an album.
“Youtube is historically the greatest resource for musicians and artists that has ever been.”
Learning on the Job
So I had the concept for the album and I had written all the music. Now what? I had no idea. Luckily, Youtube had some answers. Actually, it had all the answers. From learning how to play guitar solos (#stevestine #guitarzoom #guitarmastery) to tutorials on how to record and mix music (#producelikeapro #mixbustv #recordingrevolution), I turned to Youtube every step of the way. Sometimes it steered me in the wrong direction, but 99% of the time it knew just the right thing to say! Without a doubt, Youtube is historically the greatest resource for musicians and artists that has ever been. It has levelled the playing field and opened the doors for independent artists all over the world to compete in the industry.
But with all Youtube has to offer, and with all the other online resources and all the technology available and the software and the plugins and the streaming services that make it possible for artists to release music independently, the real secret to making an album is time. It's just time. It takes time to make an album. Sometimes it takes a lot of time. And for most people, there's just not enough hours in the day! But if you can put aside just a little bit of time each day, even if it's just an hour here and there, even if it's day after day after day, as long as you remember what it is you're trying to achieve and just keep on going, one of those days you'll look down at what you've created and say, "It's done!"