I started down a rabbit hole in December of 2021. As part of prepping myself for retirement, I begin to plan new projects to keep me busy. I thought it would be cool to get back into making Videos and working with sound effects and music. The more I started learning about all the current tech in music, the more I wanted to learn. I continued to work another 3 year before I made my retirement official on Halloween 2024.
During that 3 years I watched everything I could find about sound design and got back into music theory. When that wasn't enough I got online to several colleges and looked at their course curriculum for their music degrees and purchased all the text books and lab adjacent materials and begun studying. I've been involved with music since 1986, but never really pushed myself to get outside of my trumpet and guitar playing.
The rabbit hole was deep! Just finished my Recording Engineering, Mixing Engineering, and Mastering Engineering classes. I will continue my Music Theory studies, likely forever. I also enrolled in DJing classes, since they weren't too long or expensive. Also studied DMX lighting programming and taking two Voice Acting classes. I've already started to DJ last year and can't believe how easy it is to get gigs. I don't want to DJ too seriously, but it's cool to know that I already have a profitable side hustle. I want to score documentaries, commercials, and my personal pet projects. Just finished writing 2 rock songs (wasn't planning, just woke in the middle of the night with ideas and had to get them down). I'm currently working on a Halloween double album and redoing the Sound track for the 1922 silent film Nosferatu using Modern synth sounds instead of the old piano and orchestra (It's in the public domain as are most silent films, so plenty of fun projects to be had).
Originally I was just shopping for a synth for simple stuff for video accompaniment. I ended up building a recording studio in my home($145,000). I also built an art and gaming studio.
I also draw with graphite pencil. Here is one of my first drawings where I actually got some decent paper to draw on and my first set of pencils. Before I only used a number 2 pencil with crappy printer machine paper. I know it's rough, but with some practice and now more time on my hands, I should get better.
I'll be working on a studio tour video that I'll be posting soon. Maybe I'll include the art and gaming studio as well.
