I would say in my last post on my song I said pretty much what my goal is - mostly to share my music and get more listeners, release some songs.
I am starting to figure things out finally, but the thing I struggle the most is bringing variety and I like my songs around 7 min long so I can see how some people might find my music a bit boring.
A few years ago I heard the term minimalist producer and I knew that is where I am most comfortable. In some of my songs I prefer making very slow and gradual changes building up 5/6th min with more chill vibe. I always bring a change every 8 bars so I started thinking it migh be the very subtle changes where most people can't pick the difference. Definitely something to work on since very sudden changes bug me a lot on my own songs, not so much in others people music.
Anyways I have a playlist with about 25 songs that I think are worth releasing. I am go through them and work on small improvements where they lack - mostly structure and automation stuff. Enhance the drums and I am going to try to enhance the overall mix too. Then I am going to try real hard to pitch the whole album to some labels or if they like any song I can exclude them from the album if the label is interested just in a particular song and release it separately. If everything fails I will just self release the album.
What has improved, I think is my creative process. I used to be a purist, I want to make everything on my own, using loops or preset as minimum as it could be, and that leads to boring production process. Today I embrace happy accidents. I let myself be flexible with any resources available. Presets, loops, etc... my current fav plugin is actually a radio streaming vst lol, but this what makes producing exciting again. Dealing with surprises and unknowns is where the fun is. I don't see perfection as something worth to pursue anymore. Perfection is boring, the moment I have vision for the track, it become predictable. For me, producing should be an adventure.
I have to agree I went from using only a few samples here and there to up to 5+. I actually love the whole happy accident philosophy, there is so many freak sounds and mistakes that I heard after and I was like 'Oh I like this, I am definitely keeping it'. Favourite mistake - drawing a random note, how/why - who knows...
Like Simon says:
It's a shame, really, because I feel I have some good works with great potential. But I have to be honest and say that I'm not talented as much as I would like to be. For me it's simple: I'm nowhere near my idols such as Airwave or Junkie XL, and if I'm not, there's no point in putting out what I consider average work - the scene is already full of it. I don't really have my own style either, so I'm not exactly bringing anything new to the scene. I have high expectations which I cannot reach. In addition, my interest in trance is not what it was when I started out either.
I am going to be honest I live and breath music, I've been listening to 50-60 hours of music a week for probably 20+ years now. At this point I can't even function in public without my headphones/music. I travelled once a few years ago without music, honestly I had the worst time ever.
I never ever thought of myself of talented actually. I definitely have some affinity to music and I do believe in music you have two types of artists
1. Some mega talented people that just amaze me
2. And people like me who can work hard and can put 100's of hours in a song they know its a fail from the first few hours, but keep working until it comes decent or just as working experiment figuring where things got wrong. Happened twice already and was a really good lesson - the last one I uploaded last week after completely redoing it for the sake of finishing it.
I HATE THAT SONG and atm in 4 fucking days it made almost 300 listens on Soundcloud making it my most listened song, I have so much mixed feelings about it.
Most of the times I put myself down thinking I am a shitty producer and a fraud and not good at all, but deep inside I know its not true. In 4 years I've put basically almost every moment of my time not sleeping into music - listening, djing, producing. I actually took 4 months this year where I made only a song a month, still listening a lot of music while I travel/work, but for me this is just business as usual my whole life.
Sometimes (MOST TIMES) I really wonder if I enjoy it all, but I know there is nothing else in this world I rather do.
What I actually wanted to say its up to you to enjoy it or not and to put in the work or not. Think of the 10000hours rule. Put that much time into something and you will be a master of that trade.
Sometimes its about the journey getting to somewhere, not just the end goal.
I have to say for the four years of just doing this on the side I've managed to impress myself, mostly because I expected to get bored and quit, because that's my thing. I've tried so many things in my life, but ultimately I always got bored and quit and I was actually good in most of them. I always had my expectations low and when I saw I can do this or that and there was no more excitement in it.
So my advise is just DO IT and see where it goes. If a tone deaf person like me can start in his mid 30s with no prior music experience then anyone can do it with putting hard work in it.
version just to get some TF collabs going, but that means learning yet another DAW ffs 
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