EYE OF ZEPHYRUS

3/10/23

After five years of tirelessly working on my craft, I acquired skills and gained the personal confidence to begin releasing music again.

I’m going to summarize the last few years in between my first start of Dossas and where it’s at now. My first three releases are all about building up confidence and getting my foundation set.

(These first 3 singles will be available for free download on SoundCloud.)

After I had some professional criticism back in 2020 from some various music supervisors (MS) that work at big production studios, I realized that I was far from ready to tackle my dreams. I had a library of around 20 songs prepped and ready for sync licensing. I chose my best few and targeted 3 different pitches to MSs, and because my mixing and recording skills were less than stellar, they couldn’t use any of my songs. The sonic qualities were too lo-fi and muddy and there wasn’t enough punch and clarity. My songs wouldn’t have stood up next to others in the movie or show so even though they loved the music, they told me to either pay for some mixes and record vocals better and then reach back out.

After about a year or so of recording more and mixing more, I started offering my services to others to keep learning. So in 2021 a client I had was working on a solo project that had only vocals. They came from a more tailored background and had a very specific sound in mind. I couldn’t deliver on those expectations, and they were gracious enough to part ways, but not before giving me their old engineer’s number. I reached out to the engineer and had a long phone conversation about how I was setting up their recording signal chain and how I was mixing the vocals. He gave me some great advice that night and taught me the value of simplicity and getting it right at the source. He also sparked my interest and gave a recommendation for me to join an education program that allowed me to work one on one with an engineer in a professional setting with 24 units to fly through. Fast forward to the end of 2022 and I finished a solid program that gave me a good foundation to now build off of.

I’m no world class mixing engineer, and I don’t intend to be, I just needed to have professional results to put together a library that can stand up to the others in the industry. But this doesn’t mean I’m not obsessed now with the science of sound; I’m absolutely enamored with the process of it all. I love taking a rough production song like a demo into a final production that’s mixed and mastered. I want my products to sound good on any sound system so that my energy is delivered and received in the best way possible. There are so many nuanced decisions that go into making any song. By the end of a song, I’ve made thousands of decisions to tailor the sounds into the message of the song. Mixing music is a lot like witchcraft in the sense that I get to brew the best potion for a very unique and mystical song.

This first release is an opportunity to start building up confidence again and showing myself that the quality of my sound is getting good enough to stand up against the rest of the industry. I know that this mix isn’t perfect, but the journey is there on any system, so it’s a great starting point. The song itself is so cool. It’s mystical and meditative all while being bouncy and boppy. I hope that the journey it takes you on allows for tuning in some confidence and courage to change and take on new challenges. Many of us all have the ability to learn, no matter what our ages or circumstances are, so dive in and see what you can do. Be the apple of your own eye and the love yourself for what you can do today.