What are the most important skills for developing a successful psytrance artist/DJ/producer career?
There are so many steps and different professions involved in developing a song/track and this process in the past was done with many people involved. In Electronic Dance music, almost all steps are done by the same person. That means, writing, composing, sound design, mixing, engineering, mastering, promoting, managing and so many other things.
In a search for an answer to the question, Why Did I Need more than 18 years to get to the point that I am 100% sure that I know what I do, I came to the conclusion that I was learning so many things at once without being aware of it. For me, I was only making music! Now, after more than 18 years, I finally understand that I have learned so much and that I was learning to do many different professions.
Some of those roles have been connected to the creativity, but some the have not, for example, Audio Engineering, or Mixing as we call it, actually requires so much technical knowledge, about the Sound Waves, Physics, Electronics, understanding Electricity and Voltage, Gaining staging, phase, and so much of many technical parts that in reality do not have much with creativity. Somebody might perceive this as creativity but I would not agree. In my case, this was the hardest part of them all, as it was pretty frustrating in many cases, and I have been losing my mind in a search for great-sounding tracks. This is no ending story, as there is always a space for improvement, and everything can always sound a bit better. Listening or hearing is all about perception as well. It will depend on how we feel emotionally and our emotions can also affect that we experience the same track differently depending on our emotional stage in the moment of listening. Learning the have the best sounding tracks will not affect the progress of your career that much and by learning this hardest part, you will gain more respect from your colleagues and other artist or producers, but the audience will not be interested in your understanding of physics that much. So in the end, IS IT WORHT OF ALL THE TIME NEEDED TO BECOME A MASTER OF AUDIO ENGINEERING?
Well, I guess that depends on the plans you have for your career. If you plan to make an Audio Engineer career and do mixing for other people, that definitely is the case. But if you dream about playing and releasing your music, then I would say spending that much time learning to engineer is a waste of time, as there are a certain set of skills that can boost your career much faster and much higher.
If you wonder what those skills are, check this video in which I have explained what I think are the skills that will help you to boost your career to the highest point?