Julien G. – Making Music and Mixing With ProTools

Writing and recording music has become one of the greatest areas of interest to me, ever since I began quarantining when the pandemic hit. Despite my mother and father’s careers as pop musicians, music was never something I gave much thought about for myself. It was only at the onset of the pandemic that my curiosity began, when I was given a small music recording setup by my parents and began familiarizing myself with the world of recording. I started by first exploring the internet, looking for free instrumental beats that other artists had made and uploaded for public use. I found most of the beats I liked on YouTube, imported them into my DAW (ProTools), and then worked on experimenting with finding melodies in my head, and writing lyrics to those melodies, and then ultimately recording my voice….singing on top of those YouTube beats. When our senior project process was commencing, I knew that making music had to be my choice. However, I still had never really played around with the hundreds of plugins ProTools has available, many of which are necessary to understand and master in order to be able to have a finished product that sounds professional. But I was confident that throughout the 6 weeks of my senior project, I could learn what to do and teach myself how to properly record and mix my vocals and ultimately make a professional sounding song. It was a daunting challenge, but I was eager to continue to strengthen my singing skills as well as to take this opportunity to learn about mixing and mastering pop music.

Hello everyone, my name is Julien Goldberg. For my Senior Project, I decided to write, record, and mix 3 songs using an industry gold standard application called Pro Tools. In order to achieve my goal of creating a 3 song EP, I needed to first learn how to use and (obviously) become familiar with my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), in this case Avid’s “ProTools”. Over the course of the 6 weeks, I had been taking an online ProTools Mixing Master Class which allowed me to better understand its plugins and how they could each affect my voice differently. I also came across a podcast called “Song Exploder” which essentially breaks down musicians’ songs into in-depth steps. This allowed me to understand more clearly the seemingly endless ways in which artists come to create their music. The podcast ultimately helped pave the way for me as I began creating my own songs. Throughout this process I learned that really focusing intensely and putting your mind to something, even for a few weeks, can open up a much bigger path to success. Even with inexpensive, basic recording devices and a rudimentary foundation in mixing techniques, almost anyone can still create music that sounds professional and which people can truly love and enjoy.

Below are the 3 songs I have created. I hope you enjoy it!

Click here to read some of my critical reflections and process posts over the course of the senior project experience.