I was digging through old hard drives yesterday trying to find some old Pro Tools sessions with all of the audio files intact (I have some songs that I’ve been wanting to do a new mix on for a while, but I’m missing some of the vocal files for a couple of sessions) and I came across some folders of backup from old cellphones. One of those folders had a photograph of what my bedroom music production setup looked like in 2008.
This was right around the time, based on the date in the file name, very shortly after, that I got into Pro Tools. Right after I got that nice $4,500 tax refund and dropped $1,100 on a Command|8 (the biggest equipment purchase I made myself at that point besides the $2,200 2006 Gateway laptop in the photo that I asked my father to finance for me; I think finished paying that off with that same tax refund).
Seeing this photo made me think of how much I’ve put into this hobby over the past almost 20 years and what I’m ready to do with it all now that I’m no longer chasing the dream of making music a career as well as having an extremely deeper interest and taste in both the music I enjoy listening to and want to make.
I thought that I’d be making that music now, but although I have all of the equipment and software I need to do it, the hurdle of having it all in a place where I can’t focus has halted that. I’m really hoping that this next transition coming in 3-4 months changes this, and I’m able to start doing what I wanted to do when I first figured out how to really use my MPC 2000XL.