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Comment by toptal | Hacker News Reader

Sound engineering. If you're a good sound engineer, you can basically get any album or record signed. All major labels look for excellent sound engineering first, and creativity second. This may sound counterintuitive, however if something is very creative and sounds unprofessional, they won't sign it. If it sounds excellent though very uncreative, it's still professional so there is a high chance of them signing it.

Of course you need both, much like anything great, however a well engineered track will get you significantly further than a creative track with poor engineering.

If you can do both, you will be a rockstar, literally.

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Isn't it insanely complex and difficult to get some music sounding professional, refined and diminished? Not to mention the cost of equipment... Only from watching friends trying to get their music published, and even after paying big names in the industry it was still rubbish..

Not that I have mastered it, but what I have found richly rewarding, and in a similar vein, is learning about MIDI and beatmaking. I bought a MIDIFighter 3D from DJ Tech Tools, and just started messing around. I'm still a novice, but expanding out from there and purchasing a Roland TR-8 (rebooted TR-808) and learning how to program beats into it has been a blast. And I have learned a ton in process. You naturally move into how to get better sounds for your recording, and learn what you need to know to try to get the sound in your head into the recording. You get to experiment. You get exposed to new types of music, and whole subcultures of enthusiasts and professionals that you probably never knew existed.

I've mostly tried to practice "controllerism" or "finger drumming". There's tons of different soundpacks for Ableton (Lite is free, but limited), Traktor, and other software. It's really relaxing sometimes to just sit and tap out beats and clear your mind by concentrating on it. It's like an adult version of Simon where you get to set the pattern. It's really fun, and you can get a capable USB MIDI controller for a hundred bucks, even better deals on Craigslist. There's a lot of tutorials on Youtube to get you started, if you decide to give it a try.

Here's a good example of what controllerism is, if you are curious: https://youtu.be/mUUbbaBkZHw?t=28 (skipped ahead of some cursing at the beginning of the video).

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