It’s been a little while since I updated the diary, so I thought I’d give you a summary of what’s been going on.
After the release of ‘Dans Met Mij’, the streams went completely crazy. It was amazing to see, but it also came with a lot of pressure for the next release. Because of that, I locked myself in the studio for a few days and finished two tracks while also starting a third one.
After that, I had to focus on uni again. I had exams for two really difficult subjects. I constantly switched between studying and music things I had to do, so the last three weeks were incredibly busy. I barely had any time left to work on the website or update this diary sadly :( The exams actually went better than expected. Now I’m just hoping I passed them both.
For the music, I already have a new release planned for the end of June. It’s a much more bouncy track with Dutch vocals. I now am looking at ideas for the artwork and trying to figure out what direction I want to go with the visual things.
And lastly... I got some absolutely insane news yesterday. I can’t tell you what it is yet, but I’ll be able to announce it soon hehe
Last week I was so busy with the release that I didn’t have any time to update the website. Luckily I did have vacation, so I could fully focus on preparing everything for the release. I was really nervous about how it would go, but when I saw the track reached 10k(!) streams in one day, I was so happy. So many people DM’ed me saying they liked the track, which honestly was so very cute.
The only downside is that I now feel a lot of pressure for the next release haha. I want to make something a bit different from ‘Dans Met Mij’ and ‘Alles Wat Ik Wil’, because I don’t want to keep repeating the same formula. So I told myself: let’s make a bouncy track with Dutch vocals.
I made a little break and drop with a melody I really liked, but then I struggled a lot with the lyrics. After about a week I finally finished the vocals, but by that time I had started hating the rest of the track… I kept trying to fix it, but that only made it worse. The vocals were the only thing I still liked. So eventually I deleted everything except the vocals and started from scratch again. I now have a version I like a bit more, but there’s still a lot of work left to do.
I also need to record a new set, but because I’ve been shifting styles a bit, that takes a lot of time. I like my sets to tell a story and have a proper buildup, but finding the right tracks for that takes a while when you need to start over with a sound. But I think it’s slowly coming together.
Besides that, I had a really good vacation and even took two full days completely off from everything. That was very needed.
I had a stressful week. I had midterm exams, and with the release of ‘Dans Met Mij’ next week, I had a lot to do. I worked nonstop to get everything done, but now I finally have a vacation. The exams actually went much better than expected. I do have two very difficult subjects at the moment: quantum physics and electricity & magnetism. I like quantum physics, but the other one is sooooo boring.
Music-wise, I started a new track. It’s a bouncy techno one. I’m already really happy with the melody and groove, but the vocals aren’t there yet. I also don’t know what the lyrics will be about yet, but I’m sure that will come soon.
I spent a lot of time on Instagram promoting the next release and I actually reached 4K followers, yay! It grew so fast all of a sudden. It did make me check out my phone a lot to reply to everyone. I don’t really like social media, so on thursday evening I switched off my phone for a little detox time.
I actually spent the whole evening producing something just for myself, inspired by a track (see track of the week). I wanted to learn how to recreate that sound, so I rebuilt the drums from it and worked it out to a little song. I really like those nights of producing something only for me, because I don’t feel any pressure. For me those nights are so important to keep liking producing.
This week has been insane. After posting my first reel of my upcoming track ‘Dans Met Mij’, my Instagram has completely exploded. So many people liked and commented and I gained an insane amount of new followers. I’m really grateful for this, so thank you for the support <3. This made me even more motivated to keep posting regularly. For the first time I actually felt like I was getting the hang of social media. It has always been a love/hate relationship, but now it feels like something that actually helps to get my music out there.
Because of the traction, I had to speed up the release process. I originally thought I would need 2/3 months for promoting the track, but now I had to move much quicker so the interest wouldn’t die. I did some research and found out I had about three weeks max before release, which stressed me out haha. So I had to suddenly finish the mix and sent it to the master engineer as soon as possible. Luckily I made it work and it’s now ready for the release on 30/4.
I also started a new track. It's a bouncy one with Dutch vocals. I love the production so far, however for the vocals I don’t yet know what I want to write about. But I know I’ll get some inspiration for this one day soon.
On thursday I went to the K3 concert with friends. This was so nostalgic. I sang along to every song even though I hadn’t heard them since I was a kid.
At my studies it’s been going less great… I have two very difficult subject and that’s why I’ve been crying while studying on this, so I hope I’ll figure it out before the exams.
But overall I actually feel really good because I’ve been doing a lot of sports this week and also the sun has been shining a lot.
This was a very good week. I had so much energy to work on music.
I focused a lot on the mixes of ‘dans met mij’ and ‘hart verloren’. Mixing hart verloren went pretty smoothly. I cleaned up the drums which made a huge difference for the groove.
I’ve been getting better at using Decimort 2 subtly for drum texture. It makes everything crispy but still warm — exactly the sound I want.
‘Dans met mij’ is still difficult, but I got help from Wanton who gave me useful tips.
I decided to finish it quickly instead of overthinking it forever.
I also started a new semester at uni, which has been interesting so far.
On top of that I’m finishing this website — just writing texts left now.
This week was nice, but a bit stressful.
I had exams so I studied a lot. After Thursday they were done, so I went to a wine festival with a friend and did a salsa dance lesson there.
In the weekend I worked on new music again. I added melodies for ‘hart verloren’, but I’m still not fully happy with it.
I also worked on ‘dans met mij’. That one is tough — it lost some emotion after mixing.
I might restart parts of it.
I also spent a lot of time on this platform. Coding feels like being inside the matrix.
Firebase was annoying at first, but I figured it out.
Decided to switch genre this week.
I’m going to create a balance between pop and dance music.
I refound my love for music, but also for branding.
I have exam week so I’m a bit stressed.
Also drank way too much coffee.
Might collapse soon.