It’s hard not to put yourself against others, but simply focusing on yourself and making music is the way to go. To tackle music block, I always find collaborating with others to help a ton. It’s a genuinely unhealthy habit but sometimes you can’t help but compare yourself to others – also in terms of how many plays and followers others are receiving. It’s also hard when you compare yourself to others who are able to release amazing sounding projects consistently every month when you struggle with just making one a year. Sometimes I’ll go through periods of drought where I won’t feel like making anything. That’s the reason “Luv Letters” came to fruition – it was really just a compilation of my favorite tracks because we couldn’t just upload a single.Ĭonnecting with people in the community is really key for growing.Īnother struggle is literally… making music. One of my biggest supporters in the beginning was the YouTube channel “STEEZYASFUCK.” He reached out to me to see if I would want to be featured on his channel. I remember I would get less than 200 plays on my tracks but I still created songs because I loved and it was fun. I understand why it happens though! Marketing at its finest. I might have also been one of those annoying people that spam in the comments and messages. I remember there was this service I used where you comment feedback on other people’s SoundCloud tracks and they would do the same to yours. In the beginning, the biggest struggle was getting anyone to listen. It definitely has not been a smooth road. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you? We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Really glad I decided to stick with just making beats. I reached like 100 SoundCloud followers then decided it wasn’t for me. Not many people know this, but before I even made beats I thought I could make it as a rapper for some reason. I produce in FL Studio, which took me a while to learn and I would spend all after school and weekends just trying new things. I still have that exact same keyboard to this day. Then, because I had no money at the time – I asked my dad to buy me an AKAI MPK Mini. A mutual from high school retweeted a video of another producer live performing one of their beats and I thought to myself, “I want to do what he’s doing!” Before then, I was never really into instrumental music so I hadn’t even seen those MIDI keyboards that light up when you tap them and it was so cool to see, really. The story of how I started getting into music is actually by coincidence… and on Twitter.
I produce lofi hip hop instrumentals under the alias Rook1e. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there. Thanks for sharing your story with us Brandon. Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandon Thai.