Music Making Is Puzzling

Who doesn't like a good puzzle?

One of the hobbies I picked up, before life got more challenging for me, was creating music. I never dabbled in any sort of music creation unless you count making mixtapes on actual cassette tapes. I know, I'm a dinosaur.

What finally got my attention to the wonderful world of making music was a T-Pain Twitch.tv stream I happened upon. I can't remember exactly what he was creating, but I was mesmerized on how effortlessly he was adding drums, finding the right 808 sound to then put into a pattern that complimented the main melody on the piano he played earlier. It was like watching a top level Tetris player manipulate the pieces so fast an accurate that you'd swear it was a bot playing.

Soon after that, I downloaded FL Studio. I wanted to see for myself if I could create something that could be maybe 5 percent of what T-Pain could do. After making about 20 or so beats, I came to the conclusion that making music was way harder than it looks.

Just wanting this to be a hobby, I decided to look for sample packs to essentially turn on easy mode for myself. Less stress on learning how to make music by mixing and matching samples. It became an addicting game of grabbing a drum loop, melody, vocals, and FX just to figure out how to make them all fit rhythmically. Much like Tetris, I am average at the game, but it scratched an itch in the videogame portion of my brain that I didn't care to be average. I just wanted the satisfaction of being able to make those random samples not only fit together, but to sound decent as well.

I did get lost in the ease of using sample packs and I'm slowly getting back to learning the basics. I still want this as a hobby so I have to gently remind myself that it's okay to take my time learning things but still keep the excitement of finding new puzzle pieces to put together.