What I learned after 1 month documenting my music journey online

4 demos and a lot of lessons learned

Listen to the latest version of two of the demos

Demo 1

Demo 4

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As I explained in my latest post, I have started making music and documenting my journey online (mainly on X). I began on June 19, intending to make an album or EP, and it’s been an exciting adventure so far.

Making music is something that I have done on and off since I was a teenager. I used to make electronic music because that’s what I listened to the most back then. As my musical preferences shifted and life got busier, I stopped. However, the urge to create never completely left me. I knew I wanted to channel my creativity through music. So, in late 2023, I produced a couple of remixes/covers. This felt good, but it was still not what I wanted; it wasn’t entirely personal.

Therefore, I decided I needed to do something that “forced” me to put in the effort and the time. And that something was documenting my journey online—a way to feel accountable and to potentially get feedback and learn along the way. Fueled by this desire, I opened up FL Studio (a music-making software) on June 19, and since then, I have locked myself in my room for a couple of hours (almost) every day.

Over the last 30 days, I’ve worked on four original ideas. For readability’s sake, I have split the rest of this post into four parts, each dedicated to one of the still-nameless demos.

Demo 1 - Indie Rock

Indie rock has been one of the genres I have listened to the most in the last few years. I started getting into it in late 2020 when I discovered bands such as Vacation Manor, The Band Camino, and Hippo Campus. The year when covid happened was one I remember as musically transitional if that’s even a thing. I discovered indie music, and it quickly became my favorite. Since then, I’ve dived deeper into it, discovering fantastic music along the way. All this music made me buy my first guitar in August 2022, when I moved into an apartment after an on-campus freshman year.

Anyway, we can discuss my music journey in another post. Fast-forward to a month ago, I picked up my guitar and messed around until I found a melody I liked.

I then created an intro using a similar melody and adding a piano, bass, and drums.

Over the first week, I worked on the intro, the verse, and the first chorus. I laid down the foundation for the track, establishing the melodies, chords, and main elements that you can still hear in the latest version of the demo. I ditched the guitar riff that started everything, which felt like a betrayal.

Day 3 Demo

Day 5 Chorus

These first days were not without challenges. Motivation and inspiration were sometimes hard to find. I spent hours building the chorus without success. Then, on day 7, my external hard drive stopped working, deleting all my files, including the samples and libraries I used in the demo. This setback made me focus on my guitar technique and watch tutorials on music production for some days.

By day 10, I reinstalled everything and applied new production techniques. I re-recorded some guitars and tidied up the project. This is how the demo sounded on day 14.

At the time, I was pretty happy with how the mix sounded. I learned the importance of mixing in mono to avoid messiness and lack of clarity. However, I remember having a hard time finding the right bass fit.

As you can see, the core of the demo is not wildly different from the ones I showed on days 3 and 5, but there are certain specifics, like strings in the second verse, and the mix sounds better overall.

As the weeks passed, I experimented with different instruments and riffs and eventually added a guitar solo.

The next day, I created a chord progression that fitted the solo, and I also recorded my guitar and used it as a bass after pitching it down an octave, a technique I had already used in both choruses.

I still needed to make a bridge to connect the second chorus with the solo, but I was struggling. After a while, I experimented with some horns and a distorted guitar melody that used a few notes from the solo. I wasn’t super happy with it, but at least I was getting closer.

On day 23, I listened to the latest version of the demo in the car and was surprised by how it sounded. It was terrible. The organ and the pianos were WAY too loud, taking a lot of the mids, and the bass was also too prominent.

On days 24 and 25, I focused on fixing those and other less grave issues and uploaded a demo to Soundcloud.

In the final days, I sought a potential vocalist, which will be a significant challenge moving forward.

Demo 2 - Upbeat Indie Pop

This demo is the one I’ve spent the least time on this month. I started working on it on Day 5, when I opened up a new project, set the tempo to 150 BPM, and created an upbeat drum pattern and guitar riff.

I also recorded a bassline and added a synth. I didn’t really mix any of it as I like to lay down whatever idea I have in my mind before starting to process stuff.

On Day 6, I added a Juno synth to the intro and built a verse. Adding that new synth wasn’t the best move. I felt the track was empty, and I should have double-tracked the guitars or added a second layer instead of trying to fill up the gap with a different element.

As I’m writing this on Day 27, I haven’t opened that project since day 7. I still think the melody is catchy, and I'm sure I can turn this into a better demo with some of the new things I’ve learned since then.

Demo 3 - Vintage Chill Demo

For this demo, which I started on Day 18, I used a guitar tuning I had never used before: F A C G C E (The Standard Tuning is E A D G B E). I learned about it online and wanted to try it out. Immediately, I realized how cool it sounded. Experimenting with alternative ways of playing always brings pleasant surprises. I put a capo on the 5th fret, came up with a cool arpeggio, and added a piano melody and some chords.

I created a retro-sounding demo using a vintage piano preset and processed the guitar to sound old. The demo featured 808-style drums, bass, and atmospheric strings. It sounded quite beautiful.

On Day 19, I added a verse.

It wasn’t until Day 26 that I worked on this demo again. I realized I had gone too far with the processing in the guitar arpeggio — it sounded too old.

So, I turned it down a notch and double-tracked it. I also added some guitar chords, drums, and a bassline to the verse. I was happy with how it was going, but I kept having to repress my urge to add more stuff. I liked the simplicity of the demo, and I wanted to keep it that way.

Demo 4 - Midtempo Indie Rock

This is a demo I started more than a year ago, but I hadn’t touched it in a long while. I was never satisfied with how the mix sounded.

This is the old demo

On day 28, I decided to “start over” and basically rebuild the entire demo, using what I have learned since I made it. This overhaul involved re-recording guitars, adjusting volumes, adding or subtracting elements, etc.

That first day, I remade the intro and was happy with how it sounded. In the old demo, the intro guitar sounded thin and didn’t glue with the rest of the elements. I solved that by playing the same melody and octave lower, double-tracking, and using a different processing chain.

On Days 29 and 30, I dedicated quite a lot of time and was able to have a full-length demo available to upload to SoundCloud. It sounded very different from the old demo. I made it simpler and more balanced. I once again listened to it in the car and was excited to learn that it sounded pretty good! Now, I need to give it the final touches and find vocals for it.

Some Lessons learned

I’ve learned a lot about making music over this first month. Many things came as a surprise to me, and I had some realizations that shifted my paradigm.

• Making music alone is TOUGH: having to create a whole track by yourself isn’t an easy task, especially when you’re not someone who can play many instruments and sing. In my case, I can only play guitar (at a beginner level), and I can’t sing, so it has been a struggle for me to complete the puzzle that a song is. I need to figure out how I want to go about this. Do I want to hire people? Should I find people to collaborate with? Should I find/form a band? These are some of the questions I’m trying to answer right now.

• Documenting the process is very helpful: writing posts as I made progress in the demos helped me clear my mind about different aspects, and it also made me feel more socially accountable as I was posting my progress online (despite not getting any attention). It was also great to be able to come back and see earlier versions of the demos, my reasoning for making this or that decision, etc.

• Having reference tracks is fantastic: I created a playlist with songs that inspired me for this project and listened to the songs in it carefully many times. That made me pick up details, patterns, and techniques I could apply to my music. Painter Pablo Picasso said: “good artists borrow, great artists steal.”

The Future

What now? Well, the journey has only started, so it’s time to keep working on music and facing the mentioned challenges and the ones ahead, too. I’ll keep you guys updated! I would love to have 2 or 3 demos finished and ready for release by the end of October.

I’d love your feedback on my music and my writing! If you liked this article, consider subscribing! Please leave a comment or message me on X, Instagram, or Facebook, and we can chat! Thanks for reading!