my 2022 retrospective

to reflect on the past year (and subject myself to being perceived on the internet), here’s a retrospective of what i did over the past year, music-wise:

i finally made an online music presence! i’ve been learning and producing music for so long now, but never had the time, energy, or courage all lined up to do it until this year. i’ve also tried to branch out into my university music-making community as well as online communities, and i’ve learned so much over the past year because of it.

i released an EP! sweet daydreams is my first ever “official” release. what started as beatmaking assignments for a college class ended up becoming a passion project that is helping me discover my direction as a musician/composer/producer. i think im slowly but surely building my skill set enough to create what i hear in my mind, and making the art that i’ve always dreamed of making.

people listened to my music in real life! i had a few great performance opportunities this year, including two electroacoustic concerts, four beat battles, and a small house show! there’s a quite a bit of unreleased music from all of these that i’d like to figure out how to release soon, so that i can move on and focus on this year’s opportunities.

i did quite a bit of teaching this year! over the summer, i helped run my university’s school of music summer camp, where i spent a week helping high school students compose electronic music. they were super talented and honestly didn’t need my help that much, but it was great to be in more of a teaching and nurturing role for music, and i was able to learn a lot from them! and over this fall semester, i helped teach introductory beatmaking and DAW skills to both elementary school kids and college students. all of this helped me build strong relationships with music faculty at my university, so i’m hoping to continue doing stuff like this this year

in general, i feel like i’ve grown a deeper appreciation for music, music-making, art, and the creative process in general. i’m trying to enjoy this process as much as possible while forming healthy boundaries with the work that goes into creating. being a music student in university, it’s hard to detach my day to day music work from my personal music work (not everything music-related is enjoyable lol), but that’s just part of life and i’m learning good mechanisms for dealing with it. also, finding communities in-person and online has been very fun and helpful in all of this!

i have a few goals that i’d like to achieve this year, as well as some exciting opportunities, but i think i’ll explore these in a future post ( i need to sleep). i think i want to write about each of these points in their own posts as well. in the meantime, i’m really looking forward to 2023!!