Hearth - Hip-Hop Instrumental Album from 2018
Somewhere around 2018, I started to have some thoughts about working with other artists (mainly vocalists/singers). I have always enjoyed rap and hip-hop, and quite often found myself scrolling through my "rap vocals" collection when working on solo stuff, to fantasize about what vocals could sound like on my tracks.
I enjoyed making sample-based music, and the majority of hip-hop instrumentals lean way, so this seemed like a perfect match. Soon after, Hearth was made—a 7-track beat tape of electronic sample-based hip-hop instrumentals.
The Art of Making Incomplete Music
I don't intend to go through every instrumental in this post; I will let them speak for themselves. Generally speaking, I really enjoyed making this album. One thing that I did find very challenging, and something I struggle with to this day, is leaving room. And I don't mean leaving room mix-wise, which is always recommended. I mean, leaving room for the vocalist.
I was not used to making music that, by design, was not sufficient on its own. It felt outlandish to work on music that was at the same time interesting and missing something. I found myself often making some sort of lead sound, only to delete it after hours of work; not because it didn't fit the music or sounded bad in the mix, but because I needed to leave room for vocals. I remember one time a client told me that they felt "afraid to hop" on one of my instrumentals I was working on.
The obvious medicine for this problem was quite simple; every time I make something intended for a vocalist, I have some vocals from the previously mentioned "rap vocals" collection as a placeholder. It's not perfect, but it allows me to see the instrumental as a companion rather than a main character.
The remaining question that has kept me awake for many nights when working on instrumentals is this: What makes a good instrumental? It's not the amount of sounds, obviously, but a boring instrumental is definitely not a good one either, right? The answer? A good instrumental is a compelling instrumental. Although not easy to acquire, it is an adjective that I will stand by, and that is an adjective that will give enough guidance for any project.
Website
So it happens that during the same time, I was starting to get involved with C++ programming and coding. It did not take long for me to go from "I want to make beats" to "I want to have a website". The rest of the story is quite straightforward; I spent a day or two thinking of a name, went to Amazon Web Services and registered it, spent north of two weeks trying to learn JavaScript, gave up on it, and settled for a static HTML website with an embedded store.