A couple of days ago I was a little frustrated with several problems. I am a Latin American musician and I know how difficult it can be to make a musical project according to modern standards.
Recording a song can be something hardly complicated in other countries, where the economy seems to be more stable, allowing the emergence of various opportunities for each of its citizens to develop as best suits them.
There, perhaps, all you need to do is go to a recording studio, pay a certain amount and make a reservation. The same would apply for the rest of the process until the completion of an album.
However, in countries like mine (Venezuela), doing something like the above has long been a thing of the past, or more specifically, in the memory of those of us who lived during the decades prior to the social and economic collapse.
Not to go into too much detail, I will only say that a recording studio in Venezuela can charge quite a high amount for just recording a song, while getting a professional mix and mastering may require an even higher investment.
In the end, the previous investment is usually higher than a possible later profit. In short, you spend much more than what you could earn later by selling your music.
Nowadays, professional productions are relatively rare in my country. Although, those who can still afford to record something decent, do it in most cases using their own equipment acquired some time ago, before everything went down the drain.
At this point, here I was, but thinking big, trying to do things like in the old days, like people in other countries do, like it's supposed to be.
Then an acquaintance sent me an audio via whatsapp, telling me how he was solving those same problems. He was referring precisely to self-production, to using the tools at hand, despite the fact that, evidently, they were not the latest generation equipment.
Thanks to his comments I then remembered my own strengths, abilities, skills and also that I had the foresight to purchase some equipment in the past, along with various software packages.
That was at a time when people were only thinking about enjoying the moment, spending their money on parties, trying to impress women or men for ephemeral encounters or keeping up with the latest fashions.
At that time I feared for the future. I prepared myself, I invested my money in things that in some way or another could help me overcome the first steps on the road to fulfill my dream.
Moreover, my vision was not only limited to the immediate future. I tried to visualize everything much further ahead and to leave things already prepared for possible future inconveniences.
So, when the economic crisis, which was being prepared behind the scenes by this corrupt government, arrived, I limited myself to learning how to cope with the situation, and that it would not affect my aspirations in the least.
The success in such an undertaking has been regular, but at least it has been bearable, and in a much more pleasant way than in the case of other people I know, who had no choice but to give up and die trying.
Now, the problem with adapting can often lead to habit. And that is something one should avoid at all costs.
Adapting is supposed to allow us to live better in the present, but at the same time it should serve as a basis to generate a change, to prepare us to get out of that temporary comfort zone we have entered.
I only hope that these new skills and paradigm shifts will lead me to reap the equivalent level of success in the short and long term.
