ILM was great, or I should say, is great. Everyone is helpful and approachable, I learnt a great deal about making electronic music and got to use a lot of different equipment. I also made some good friends along the way. Before I got here, I was fiddling around with FL studio, probably like a lot of you. I realised that I wasn’t going to get anywhere without guidance, so I asked around and a friend of mine, also an alumni of ILM, Avraan, suggested this academy.
When I started at ILM, I did the DJ course first and was taught by Kount and Jayman. I learnt how to mix with LPs and turntables, which is something I enjoyed the most during the course. I also learned how to mix on CDJs. In addition to these skills, there were sessions on marketing by Nakul, where he taught us how the Dos and Don’ts of how to market ourselves.
During the Producer course we were taught Ableton extensively, along with recording techniques and some basic audio engineering, by G-Force and Puneesh. We had interactive sessions which made the learning experience great. They were patient with us even when we had dumb questions like “what is SPL?” (me), it’s sound pressure level btw. This goes without saying but, everything they teach you will go to waste, if you don’t practice it, which they stressed on, a lot, after every session.
After the course, I started making music, on an irregular basis. My irregularities came because I thought, I may not be good enough or I’m not getting anywhere or that it’s taking a lot of time, but the fact of the matter is, if you want to become an artist, you need to put your art before anything else, and for that YOU NEED TIME. As you practice more, you will get better at what you do, and recognition will come on it’s own!!
About the music I make, I don’t stick to a genre because I feel like I’m forcing myself to do something, so I try everything. My first release was with Qilla records. I went on a full on track-making spree and stumbled upon a granular synth, which gave me so many ideas. After sending a few tracks to different labels in Delhi, I got a reply from Qilla records, that they liked one, and I agreed to a release.
My second release is going to be an EP on Cut records, which is run by Stillhead. This EP wasn’t planned at all; one night as I was about to sleep I got message on my Soundcloud sent by Stillhead from Riga, Latvia. At first, I thought it must be some kind of spam, because Riga, Latvia?! But, I looked into this guy, and turns out he’s quite the big deal. He stumbled upon my tracks and said he wants four tracks that he’d like to release as an EP on his label and I was excited! So the second release is a hip hop beat driven EP, that releases on the 1st of May. Every track I’ve made until now, hasn’t really had a plan, and the ideas behind them have been random.
P.S :Correctly tagging your tracks goes a long way on Soundcloud & the name of the granular synth is “The Mangle“
