How long have you been doin' this?

[Ethan Rex]

By this, I mean making music.

I'm not sure where this thread belongs (or really if it belongs for that matter) but as I approach the end of my first year remixing music, I've wondered, how long have you guys and gals been making music? Where there any periods of time in which you greatly improved? Why? Had any prior experience with musical family members or grade school band stuff, etc. influenced your remixing hobby/career?

I know that my first couple of months were awesome learning for me, because I had to work with a demo of FL and wasn't sure when my project would be deleted next, so I learned a bit in time management.

Discuss.

[ectogemia]

I think there's already a thread about this, and I'm not 100% sure this is the right forum for this thread... but I'm also not the type to care about that sort of stuff, so here I go:

I played piano from ages 9-15, but if you took my sheet music away I was useless.

I played alto sax in band from ages 12-15, but I never really took it that seriously.

I played guitar from ages 15-19, but like when I played piano, if you took my tabs away, I was useless.

Up to that point, I would say I wasn't a musician, I was a technician. I couldn't *be* musical, I could only play others' music.

I didn't do anything musical from 19-21, but I kind of missed playing music in the summer of 2010 (when I registered here), so I bought a Yamaha electric piano and something possessed me to start playing by ear instead of printing off a bunch of sheet music. So I started playing the tunes that were always stuck in my head, various VGM themes mostly. I started off being useless. I wasn't really playing by ear. It was trial and error mostly.

Over the next month or so, though, I got much better at playing one-handed melodies . Then, I trial-and-errored with adding in the proper chords. Eventually, I got that down pretty well. Next, I changed the melodies up and kept the chords the same, then eventually, I changed up the chords and kept the melodies the same. I was doing something that I had thought was impossible for someone who didn't have a ton of musical talent. I was improvising, and I was playing by ear, and I did it all without sheet music and without teachers. There's a lesson to be learned in that, I think.

So within a few months, I had developed more musicality than I had in the previous 12 years of playing music.

Right around when I got the piano, though, I got bitten by the OCR bug and just HAD to make a remix. So I "obtained" FL Studio, wrote my first remix ever without really knowing what I was doing, an "Another World of Beasts" (FFVI) remix", and had it summarily crapped on by everyone in the remix forum... especially Rozo . That discouraged me because the people who had written all of this music I had fallen in love with thought my music sucked. bawwwww D: So I left OCR til about a year after my join date.

Next came learning FL Studio and electronic music production and composition. I actually didn't do this until almost a year after I had started improvising. It was May of 2011 when I wrote my first track "Sunspotting". The day before I wrote it, I knew NOTHING about writing in FL Studio. The next day, I went through zircon's "Just Hold On" demo track a zillion times, analyzing how he did everything. I used that knowledge to write my first track the same day. So I guess I've been doing this for about 15 months now, but I started dental school a few months after my first track was written, so I haven't really had the time to be as committed to music as I would like.

Honestly, going through FL's demo projects was HUGE in learning how it all worked. And they're cool tunes, too Various tutorials on youtube helped. Lots of advice and feedback from OCRfolk has been instrumental, and getting to be friends with Ben Briggs and halc in person and analyzing their project files has also been really constructive.

So yeah, in conclusion, in about 2 years, I've gone from musically useless to being able to produce remixes that are OCR-worthy (yes, I'm not posted, but I have several RESUBs that I've just been too lazy to polish up and resubmit) to being featured on albums, commercials, podcasts, etc., and even having Ubiktune interested in me finishing up a chip-funk EP I started so they can publish it. Considering how long/short I've been at this, I'd say that's not too bad

And looking back, the most critical thing I did was throw away the sheet music and start using my ear and not being afraid to suck in the beginning.

[Final Kingdom]

And looking back, the most critical thing I did was throw away the sheet music and start using my ear and not being afraid to suck in the beginning.

I agree with this wholeheartedly, but I still have yet to take the leap ): I'm not afraid of sucking anymore, but I know have to use my ear a lot more.

I've been playing piano for four years, flute for two or three, drums for about three, and guitar for about two months (consistently). To this day, I still use sheets or tabs to learn a song (with a few I've learned by ear). Though when it comes to getting remixing ideas for a song I really want to do, I play the song by ear.

As for making my own music, I started out using loops in GarageBand during my band class. Then I made loops at home since I had the software. Eventually it got boring since there were only so many loops. Around that time, I wanted to get into remixing and I had a keyboard with a USB cable, so I totally could have gone for it. I had joined the forum and everything, but then I psyched myself out and I stopped using it.

I took a class at my music program that introduced me to Reason, and I made three original songs. That made me want to start remixing, but I didn't have the software at home and I psyched myself out yet again.

Last year, I took a chance and started improvising. I was bad at it, but I knew my music theory, so there was no excuse to give up. That state of mind made me come back to the forum not too long ago, and recently finished a track I had started in February. (I couldn't finish it because I didn't have the Reason software until a week ago.) Once I get used to making more songs, I think I'll have more confidence to submit a remix.

So how long have I been making music? The technical answer is four years. If you mean originals and remixes, then on and off for a year or two.

[Garpocalypse]

I accidentally found OCR back around 2005 when searching for sources for game music. OCR was a significant drive for me to develop my home studio but I didn't actually do my first remix until Summer 2010.

Before then I started playing Trombone in 4th grade, went to alto sax a few years later and almost quit the music program since i was bored with it and i didn't feel any connection to what i was playing. My last year playing alto sax i picked up a bass guitar and instantly fell in love with it. The next year i switched schools and on the first day i was planning on walking into the band room and telling them i quit. I walked into the orchestra room by mistake and agreed to start playing Contrabass for the orchestra instead.

Played it through highschool and auditioned to be a music major. My first year was crap but i worked at it and on my senior jury (staff evaluation done once a year) my college orchestra director said i had just raised the bar for bass playing at that school.

For the digital home studio I bought a copy of Sonar 6 about two years before I really got something completed. Before then, when i was in college, i was using Orion a crappy step sequencer and I did not understand anything about Sonar 6. The worst part was that I didn't have any of the resources i needed to tell me how to use the software other than the tutorials. I made some music but had no clue what to do with it and constantly got frusterated that my stuff wasn't sounding good. Things really didn't start clicking for me until around january when I started watching recording revolution.

[Nabeel Ansari]

When I was like 10 years old I asked Shariq to teach me how to write music.

The result was more of me watching him write a song as I contributed small ideas. I did get to play with the step sequencer too!

That never really went anywhere though. He did let me borrow his Dell laptop to play with it by myself occasionally. When I installed FL on my laptop a year or two later, I started to actually try and make my own things. They were terrible, obviously, but I made my first remix and posted it here too, about maybe 3-4 years ago.

Yadda yadda something about being a douche and not understanding criticism yadda

and that's how I found out that Excalibur was an imposter.

Oh, right. I kept sending my stuff here to get butchered by Rozovian for a long time, and then I made a bad final fantasy remix and found out OCR standards were actually pretty low compared to what I thought they were when it got accepted. And then ego happened and then hey you're up to date.

[jnWake]

I started playing piano when I was 12. Obviously, I didn't compose back then. Instead, I played tunes by bands like Stratovarius and Sonata Arctica!

Anyway, I started doing my first "songs" when I was 14/15, using Guitar Pro. They were mainly crappy imitations of my favourite band's styles, so they were crappy lol.

Then I just kept composing, and my song writing started to turn the right way when I started to develop an own style. I've made a lot of songs, and I'm quite proud of a good number of them.

However, they were all done in MIDI, and only on my mind they had decent quality sounds. Only this year I started "producing", thanks to these forums.

[ad.mixx]

It really only happened whenever I got FL Studio, which happened on January last year. I didn't really get into music writing until I was done with my first song the summer of last year.

I was learning a while before that, though, from djpretzels little writeups he gives for each song - just trying to figure out what all that technical stuff by ear. Didn't really mean much until I started actually applying it, though. edit this in: Also, feedback was crucial - but I think listening was even more crucial. I love the type of music I write because I listen to it all the time, and that in turn helped me to be more dedicated in making it as good as the rest. I still have lots and I mean lots of room to improve, but I've started somewhere at least. : D

Took a lot of work to get to where I am - I mean I've been pretty much obsessed with music writing, music production, and sound design etc. for the past year. But I've already found the style that I love, am playing lots of guitar lately and hoping to record it soon, and already have a remix accepted to OCR as of now. It was worth it all : D

[Ryan Jobson]

about 3 years

TL;DR: 3 yrs

[Modus]

About a year and a half.. was in high school band and.. stuff. I don't really have a biography to write.

[The Coop]

Let's see...

I started playing the trumpet when I was in elementary school, and did that for a couple of years. Switched to the French horn, sucked at it, and dropped that like a bad habit. I eventually got a little half-sized Yamaha keyboard from K-Mart, and began learning to play piano versions of some of my favorite video game music (Stage 1 from Ghouls 'N Ghosts, "Rise From Your Grave" from Altered Beast, "Light Song" from Sword of Vermilion, "The Grubby Dark Blue" from Thunder Force III, "Into the Deep Blue Sky" from Master of Monsters, etc.). I never took any lessons, and so never developed a particularly good level of dexterity with my hands when it comes to piano playing. But, I did my best, learning everything by ear and not being able to read a single note on sheet music. It took some time, but I also eventually began writing my own compositions based off of stories I was writing at the time, and recording them (I still have the cassette tapes... not that you young'uns know what they are).

From there, I got to tinker with the music program on a friend's Amiga, and had some fun with that. But that only lasted about a year or so, and it would be a while before I touched another music program. Years later, in 2001, I bought a program called Music Creator 2002, and began fooling around with it. It was a lot like the Amiga music program in ways, so it had a familiar, intuitive nature to it. Around the end of that same year, I came across VGMix 1, and learned about remixes (which I'd kind of been doing by playing piano versions of game songs). And around April of 2002, I sat down with that copy of Music Creator 2002, and my old Windows ME Compaq PC, I gave making more in-depth remixes a try... with varying degrees of success as the result.

These days, I still write original music using a copy of Music Creator 5, and they're based off of the novels I'm working on. I also continue to do remixes from time to time as well... again, with varying degrees of success. I've yet to learn how to read sheet music, so everything continues to be remixed/composed solely by ear. But hopefully I've managed to produce some music that people on VGMix and OCR enjoyed.

[SuperiorX]

My grandma first got me one of those little 54 key Yahama keyboards when I was in elementary school, so that was probably my first experience creating my own music. Needless to say, I was hooked from there. I taught myself piano from that point on and I started playing trumpet in 5th grade (throughout high school). I still play piano today for fun, but unfortunately haven't touched my trumpet much since high school because I never had time to play in a college or community band, and playing alone was kinda boring.

I started remixing music soon after discovering OCR around 2002. I made some crappy songs in the 2002-2004 time frame (on ModPlug Tracker and Sony ACID 4.0), that mainly involved ripping MIDIs and changing instruments haha. After that I started college so I never really messed around with remixing music again until 2009 when I started visiting OCR again some more. I hadn't really devoted any serious time into learning more about remixing (and creating electronic music in general) until Shariq's Wily Castle Remix Gauntlet tournament last year. I'd have to say competing in that competition was the single greatest thing that's helped me improve dramatically in a 3-month time period (moreso than I had in the past several years). That, and then just talking and working with other remixers in the community here has been a big help.

That's about it!

[Rozovian]

I have some details on my music history in my remixing guide (see sig), but I've basically been screwing with computer music since I found a tracker for mac, in 2002. Eventually, it even sounded like music.

For anyone that doesn't know about it yet, post your remixes on the remix feedback board, learn that you're doing stuff wrong, learn to tell what others do wrong, learn to tell what you're doing wrong, learn to avoid it, make better music.

also lol neblix' post.

[eskAe]

i been producing since i think 04, FLS4 was the hot new thing at the time, i was using version 3 though. i have no actual music background so im bad with notes but great with sound design. was originally inspired to learn so i could remix some stuff off of extreme-G from n64 but never got around to it lol. now im gonna do it for real!!

[DusK]

Guitar for about 10 years, with the most recent 3 or 4 years being something more than just casual playing. I was in a few bands for 5 years from 2006 on, and I've been doing VGM remixing steadily since 2009.

[Benjamin Briggs]

music itself? I wrote my first song on piano when I was 9 years old, so that's 15 years.

I started using computers for music at age 14, so that's 10 years as a "remixer"

damn I'm kinda old or something

[Lemonectric]

Took some piano lessons when I was a kid. I was supposed to write a song for one of the recitals, but I just improvised something stupid because I didn't like reading music off a page. After a while, I convinced my parents to let me stop taking lessons.

Started getting into video games around 2002, found OCR in 2003, started making MIDI remixes in 2004, downloaded the FL Studio demo in 2005, bought the real version in 2006, made some vague progress for a few years, got posted in 2010. Now life is over.

[WillRock]

Oh, right. I kept sending my stuff here to get butchered by Rozovian for a long time, and then I made a bad final fantasy remix and found out OCR standards were actually pretty low compared to what I thought they were when it got accepted. And then ego happened and then hey you're up to date.

Basically that, minus final fantasy. Oh and before OCR I did remixes on youtube. And before youtube, I did originals. And all that dates back about 8 years...

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Been studying music and trying to improve guitar skills for about eight years I guess.

When I was in elementary school, music was a mandatory class so we all took some guitar lessons. Learning basic chords and such. I never really cared about music when I was that tall so I retained next to nothing. Then I got an electric when I was 11-13 years old and stuck with it.

In 2010, when I was 18, I discovered this "DAW" thing, "virtual instruments" and a whole pile of other technology I never even knew existed or was possible with music. Looking back, trying to learn on my own was sort of a bad idea. That's part of the reason why I've decided to take music courses at the college next year.

Hopefully it will help me suck less.

[PROTO·DOME]

August '08.

[Gario]

For your viewing pleasure...

http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22420

tl;dr: Into music - about 20 years. Into composing and remixing in some form - about 12 years. Found OCR in 2005, started participating in 2008. There's all sorts of answers in that thread, too - check it out.

[Benjamin Briggs]

August '08.

put that back in your pants buddy

[StreetFlare]

Eh, I started playing piano back when I was five, so around '99. Always had my heart set on guitar, but my parents left me with piano lessons for about five-six years, over a variety of teachers, until I finished primary school. It was mostly the standard classical blather, and I wasn't interested. However, I was a bit of a singer and lyricist, with a keen ear, and although my singing skills were alright, they weren't up to scratch.

Come 2007, and I got my first guitar. Man, was it awesome for me. I learned fast, faster than my teacher expected. However, looking back, while he was decent as a teacher, I wasn't that good a student. I've been learning guitar ever since, although there was half a year where I didn't have lessons. In the same time, I've had about...oh, I don't know, three month's vocal tuition. Even so, I taught myself to play and sing, and from there, I've gotten into playing and singing almost by ear. I say almost because I still look up chord sheets for more contemporary things, and the chords are reasonably basic still, but I'm improving.

In the last three years, I've gotten a new guitar teacher, written a song (completely), had said song recorded, using my trusty second guitar (first one died when the head fell off...long story), and then had the song used in a video/YouTube documentary (I can give links, it includes a little of me performing), and included in the attached free album. I'm still in the level of looking at chord sheets and doing covers, but VG remixing is growing closer by the day, I can feel it. Oh, and I'm decent at improv, given a few small pointers.

[evory]

Well in typical Asian fashion I started (or rather, was started) on piano around the age of 4 or 5, and didn't like it very much at all because lessons comprised 3 exam pieces every year and nothing much else. I picked up the erhu at 13, but didn't think very much of it then either.

Definitely learning to play without staring at sheet music was something that fostered my love for music, because music is after all a way to express yourself, rather than what your piano teacher thinks an examiner would appreciate. That was around 4 years ago. In any case, I started to learn to play by ear, then to improvise, then to remix, and then to compose. I discovered OCR somewhere in between, but never thought of making my own remixes till a couple of years ago, and hopefully I still have a long way to go.

[Bahamut]

Haven't written a song yet, but I've been around music. I played violin when I was 8, quit when I was 11 after my brother 2 1/2 years younger than me got better than me while I spent one summer away for several weeks. Sang while in middle & high school too, although it has been so long that all those fundamentals are out the door.

So instead I'm the serial album director! But I never jumped right into it - I actually bided my time for years before Taucer propositioned me with co-directing Serious Monkey Business. I observed the patterns of successful album projects and the failings of others and tried to take as many lessons as possible from them. Of course, hitches still happened in spite of careful planning & observation, but it's a continual learning experience.

[derako]

I've been remixing FF6 music since I was 14, so 1994. Can anyone beat that?