The Covid-19 Pandemic has forced us all to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. Many of us decided to learn some new skills or hone existing ones.
For me, it was an opportunity to revisit a few old skills of mine. Playing Electric Guitar, Music Production, and DJing, all of which were part of my previous life as a Producer/DJ. It’s been over a decade since I’ve properly attempted any of these. Revisiting them was a great opportunity to reflect upon my abilities in the present.
However, I was unable to successfully revitalise two of them…
Playing Electric Guitar
I must admit that it was always going to be an uphill struggle. While I could jam some riffs and enjoy myself, I confess that I was never particularly great at it. Though I loved feeling steel strings vibrate beneath my finger tips, even back in the day I lacked the discipline to learn it properly.
In trying again, I was hoping to develop some good habits, which would allow me to keep the practise going beyond the pandemic. I told myself that I could will myself through this.
Sadly, I failed miserably. After only a week, I found myself giving up and being more interested in other things.
Maybe one day, when I’m doing nothing else and I’m desperate, I might revisit it again and give it a proper try with a teacher etc. It’s possible that this could be similar to maintaining fitness, in the sense that the motivation to continue will be much higher when a teacher is pushing you along. I’ll chalk it up to that for now.
At the moment, all I can do is to try and motivate my sons to play.
Electronic Music Production
I actually started to get back into electronic music production during post-production on my film, Ravers, for which I scored two scenes. However, in order for my music to be good enough to be in the movie, I handed it to my composer, Ty Unwin. Thankfully, he didn’t change too much, but he did make it sound much better than I’d managed to. It clearly showed me just how rusty I was at that point.
Fast forward to the pandemic, and I found an excuse to get back into it properly. The task itself wasn’t actually that difficult – I had the time, I had my monitors. Restarting with Propellerhead Reason as my DAW wasn’t difficult at all, as I‘d used it before. With some helpful feedback from friends, it didn’t take me too long to relearn old tricks, retrain my ears, and learn to recreate what I heard in my head.
My struggles started when I realised that I was missing one key thing. I simply lacked motivation, because I had no idea what I’d end up doing with this music. In the past, the music I made was always intended to be released, either on my own label or on someone else’s. That really pushed me to regularly create new material.
That motivator does not exist for me anymore. I have no label connections and even if I did, it is unlikely that I would start touring/djing to promote the music. I would effectively create music for the sake of creating it. Though that sounds like the purest form of making art, I would also want people to listen to it.
Without that goal to push me on, it’s been very difficult to find the motivation to even finish some of the tracks I’ve started. Though I’ve not quite given up, I’m definitely not as active as I thought I’d be.
That said, despite not performing in front of a crowd anymore, and not having any real future prospects for publicly displaying my next skill set, this one seems to be the one which stuck…
DJing
Revisiting DJing proved to be a very interesting experiment. It required much more of me than to just plug in the turntables and play some records. Getting my DJ setup going again took proper work. In fact, it’s easily one of the biggest DIY projects I’ve ever attempted, and I’m still looking at ways to improve the setup.
First, I needed to clean everything. Wiping the layer of dust off the turntables and mixer alone took serious effort. It was thick and grimy and I realised that there might be more dirt inside the mechanism, as well as on the surface.
I started to disassemble my turntables and mixer. I had NEVER done this before and was scared to do it. However, I found it to be an exciting adventure to embark upon. I watched videos and read manuals, trying to learn what each part of the turntables and mixer does and what powers which module. That exercise alone resulted in me having a vested interest to keep going.
Once everything was clean, I realised that several things on my turntables were broken.
- Both needles and cartridges needed replacing.
- The grounding cable was broken on both turntables.
- The audio cables had loose connectors within, cutting out the sound.
- The tonearm assembly couldn’t be lifted, because the wheel was stuck.
- The locks for both tonearms were either broken or very loose.
- The groove lights were broken.
- One of the LEDs on the RPM switch was broken.
Realising this, my gut reaction was: “I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never done this. I can’t do this. Somebody needs to do this.”
I even contacted several people who fix turntables, but due to the pandemic, none of them were open for business. If I wanted it done, I had to do it myself.
I bought a soldering iron, a multi-tester, and a new screwdriver set (among other things), and then went on to watch as many youtube videos I could which explained how to do all of these things.
Let me tell you, it was one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. In fact, I got completely hooked. By then I wasn’t just looking for things to fix, I was looking to upgrade. The more things I could do, the more fun it was, and the more invested I became.
This is the final result of all my work:
Just looking at that picture makes me incredibly proud. The only serious drawback of all this was that my dinner table became my work desk. Yet I pushed on and also finally organised my record collection, which had been in a chaotic state for many years.
This project was truly a labour of love, and the result is that I’m now recording a new Dj set almost every week. It was a bit of a rough start with my first dj sets., but lately I’ve managed to find my footing again and all the skills from back in the day started flooding back to me. I’d even say that I’m a better DJ now than I was when I was performing…
Why I think I failed with the previous skills but succeeded with this one
A simple argument would be that DJing is just more fun, whereas playing guitar and making music are much harder work. I don’t necessarily agree with that. Lots of things are fun, and I could do them regularly, but I don’t. Also, any skills you try to revisit is fun – that’s why you do it in the first place. So that can’t be all there is to it.
I think it came down to two factors: 1. Investing time & energy. 2. Having an outlet
To my mind, a big factor in retaining a new skill, or reviving an old one, is creating a vested interest in the form of time and energy spent. In my case, the effort of fixing up my DJ setup directly resulted in the desire to use my turntables more. I had a clear investment in them and now I want to collect the dividends.
I’d also like to emphasise that it cannot be just a financial investment. Simply buying a bunch of equipment is far from equivalent to a personal investment of your time and energy.
Having an outlet, a place to actually make use your skill, is hugely important too. In my case, it wasn’t just rebuilding the decks, but also recording and live streaming my DJ sets. It didn’t matter how many views I got. The satisfaction of putting them out there was a good enough motivator by itself.
This is why my music production will always struggle to get going again; It doesn’t have a clear outlet. But I do intend to play some of my own music in my DJ sets in the hope that that will help it along.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, a guitar teacher could help create that initial time and energy investment for playing. However, I think joining or forming a band would be as important to make retaining that skill a regular part of my life. It would also be a great motivator to keep improving my skills.
In short:
- Choose a skill that you think you’ll enjoy
- Make sure you invest time and energy. That creates a personal stake in keeping it up.
- Have an outlet, whether it’s online or just among family or friends. That creates purpose.
And now that I’ve gone on and on about it, here are some of my DJ mixes. I hope you enjoy them!