Here's the deal, I began writing this back in March and just didn't finish it.  My intentions have always been to do a regular blog but a combination of factors have prevented me from doing it.  Mostly fear that what I have to share is not good enough but I also forget to finish ideas sometimes.  In an active effort to improve myself, here ya go!

Getting Started

In February 2017 I started a project where my goal was to spend a short amount of time each night creating different sound design elements/effects.  My goal was simply to have fun and free myself from normal project constraints.  I'm happy to report that I consider my attempt successful.  I wanted to take a moment to share my outcome and feelings on this with you - even if it is a little late.

I'll be honest, my execution of this plan wasn't perfect.  I missed some days, and sometimes even though this was supposed to be fun it felt like just another chore.  Mostly I carried out my intentions and had fun doing it but I'm not going to sweep my shortcoming under the rug...  Without going back and checking - I'd say about 40-50 days were "meh" results and some of them were me falling asleep on the couch producing 0 content. On the flip side there were nights I was super into what I was doing and much more creative and productive.  I suppose there is a balance to it..

The Outcome..

I ended up creating a large library of sounds over the year, probably around 400-450 individual assets.  To be clear, recording wasn't necessarily an aspect of this challenge although only using material from my own library was.  I gave myself different limitations throughout the year, such as using only certain pieces of software/plugins or using a DAW that was unfamiliar etc. 

The tools themselves aren't really important for this discussion.  The big thing is that doing this helped me develop a more varied creative approach to my work and allowed me to actually be less reliant on any one set of tools available. 

This challenge was equally about discipline of course.  I wanted to develop and maintain more consistent work habits.  This has always been somewhat of a struggle for me and I backslide from time to time.  Setting and accomplishing this small goal everyday definitely made me feel good.

So.. where are the cool sounds?

I did announce that I would be doing this project and I feel like I owe it to reveal some of what I created.  Doing this challenge created a virtuous cycle in that I had all these cool ideas for entire libraries that I wanted to make.  Some of which I released - Industrial Drones and Magic Spells for example also more to come very soon!

Early on I had the intention of blogging the design process for different sounds - I'm not going into that level of detail here but you can take a listen to some examples below.  I'll probably explore ways to release more of them in the future.

I knew I was going to write this post a year ago and I thought I might have some big revelation to share but the outcome is pretty much what I was expecting/hoping.  Coming up with concepts and iterations quickly has become much easier for me.  For the time that I spend in the creative zone, I'm much more efficient and effective.  It has also been a great way to strengthen my discipline and create an overall feeling of accomplishment everyday.