My Story about getting signed, My Track, and how Sonic Academy helped make it happen.
Hello all I am a Sonic Academy subscriber that started producing at the end of June during this past summer. I had no idea what an LFO did, what an oscillator was etc. The only prior experience I had was sequencing in an MTV music generator back in high school and I was pretty mediocre at that. On a side note I did start DJing my senior year in high school 10 years ago, so I would imagine that did contribute a bit.
The story goes, I ended up going to a show in Asheville last June, and heard some productions by "In Plain Sight" (Lucus Ledford, Ezekiel, and Nomad in the Dark (Sasha named this guy in the DJ mag top 100 as his favorite producer a few years back)). After hearing some amazing tunes they made and played, I chatting with them about getting started with music production. Within a week, I took the remains of a small inheritance and bought some Yamaha HS80 monitors, DAW's, "A SONIC ACADEMY SUBSCRIPTION"(after searching for production videos on youtube), Audio interface, APC 40, M-Audio Keyboard, acoustic panel materials, and several vsti plug-ins. Unfortunately, my first weeks were spent trouble shooting several technical issues with PC sound but I soaked up every Tutorial I could. I finally exchanged my USB Audio interface for a focus-rite pro saffire 24 and began writing my first track (which is the one linked Below) in mid July. This track was a result of going on my first trip to the beach without my mother that recently passed away to cancer, which served as my motivation to write the track (check the title). Around the end of August I had a first attempt which I was planning on using as a practice track. I knew I needed a lot of work, so I sent this practice track to some producers I had met over the years from djing, promoting, and of course yours truly (rolls the white-noise)..... PHIL, so they could rip my track apart and I could make improvements on the next track. Happens by chance that one of them ("Summer" Brendon Collins) was being charted at the time by Hernan Cattaneo and he was in the process of starting a new record label. Of course he ripped my track apart and pushed me to make it better because he believed that the track had potential. I felt very overwhelmed at the time because (1) I was a noob (2) and I had no idea what I needed to do (3) I did nor ever suspect that something like this would happen so soon after reading bios of producers such as Jaytech taking 2 years before he was ready (although, I still don't feel like I am 100% ready at times) (4) I live in a very small town "Bristol" (that claims to be the birthplace of country music) in the mountains of Tennessee/Virginia, and nothing like this happens to DJ's around here.
Chapter 2.. ;-P
So I sent Phil a nice little PM and he quickly got back to me and gave me some straight to the point feedback which helped take the track to another level. Finally in mid September (after 2 more submissions) and flirting with the deadline, Tulipa approved my track and sent it to the mastering studios, "Intellectual Mastering", where the final stage of the the production process took place. Of course the very last step was signing a contract. (and I would love to give you the play by play but I am sure Sonic Academy doesn't could spare this mundane event regarding pens and legal stuff)
Anyhow, I hope I didn't put you all to sleep with a long post, but I felt I should post something here, since Sonic Academy gave me the training and the help I needed to to succeed in such a short time and allowing me to become an active part of the music I love. Most importantly, I hope this gives somebody motivation to pursue their dreams.
Ohh yeah, I am going to post this in two areas and feel free to delete one if its against some forum rules. Haha
Feb 10th 2011 on Tulipa Recordings.
Will McGlone - Not Forgotten (Original Mix) [Tulipa Recordings]... (PS..soundcloud didn't encode the greatest)
http://soundcloud.com/willmcglone/will-mcglone-not-forgotten-original-mix
This track Will be released on a 14 track compilation "Pedal One", Featuring original tracks from artist Jeff Bennett, Andy Newland & Oscitone, Summer (Brendon Collins), T-Lectual, Nomean, Yuuki Hori, Fabio Scalabroni, Andrea Fissore, Solium, Felipe Blandon, Phanton, Will McGlone, Koen Schepens, and JonQPublik.
http://soundcloud.com/tuliparecordings/sets/tulipa-recordings-pedal-one-tulipa004/