I recently published my first track, Dwarven Future, and I have an awful lot to say about it.
Getting Into Music
This has been a long time coming, and a journey that started almost 2 years ago. I began with a Yamaha Reface CS and later an Arturia Drum Brute Impact. Since then, I’ve slowly built up a collection of equipment to make music entirely on my own.
Doing it Blind
This was the single largest barrier to getting into music production. In a stunning stroke of irony, music is actually quite difficult to get into without vision beyond simple listening or playing an acoustic instrument: sheet music, complex software for scoring and composing, and the myriad of screens on electronic instruments. Name a popular electronic instrument: Volka Drum, Minilogue XD, Digitact, and you’ll find a screen on all of them. I originally explored the avenue of physical instruments because I wasn’t aware about software accessibility. The most I knew was about Reaper accessibility, but I had little luck in climbing the learning curve it presented. This meant I went physical with cables and mixers and all of that expensiveness. Anybody who has attempted this will know that the cost of music and audio equipment skyrockets terrifyingly fast. It quickly became obvious that was not viable. At all. I have neither the budget nor the space for a home studio built on euroracks and hardware synths. I played around with my Reface and my Drum Brute for a while, but this would not do. Some more research led me to stumble upon Logic Pro, Komplete Kontrol, and the community of blind musicians using both. This was it. I’d found my path to making music. With the help of many people, I set up my station on a trusty little Mac Mini and got to music production.
From Making to Posting
Over time, I grew my skills as a musician and met a group of incredible blind and vision-impaired content creators who have helped and supported me through my journey so far. Everything from production to streaming is done by me, but I learned those skills from others who have come up against the same struggles. In order to release my music on the most popular sites like YouTube, that meant editing video. Yes, I did that myself, though I had help in learning the basics of Final Cut. The process is slow-going and swear-inducing, but it means I can publish my own releases. So, that brings us to today. My first song is up for everyone to listen to. I hope to make music and help other blind content creators achieve what they want. If nothing else, I figure I can have some fun and use music to make my way through this wild world.