In my experience, music production typically takes the form of developing a piece of music in a Digital Audio Worstation (DAW). My DAW of choice is Reaper, initially because you can use it, fully featured, for free, as long as you don't mind waiting through a 5 second nag screen every time you open it. Then I watched this video on reaper and realized that it's actually an incredible piece of software, and I ended up getting a license for it.
I made this youtube channel in November of 2019 for the purpose of uploading my own music. This was around the time that I discovered Jacob Collier, which opened my eyes to the kinds of music that could be made by a single person. The first video I uploaded--an arrangement of Christmas Time Is Here--is still public. Linked below are a few of my favorite things I've produced for my main youtube channel.
Three Little BirdsI met Isaac Wilson when we were both in UNW theater's production of Anastasia in the fall of 2023. I don't remember exactly how it played out, but somehow we realized that we are both excited by music in very similar ways. Isaac had the idea of producing an arrangement of Three Little Birds, so over the following months, we had a few sessions in my home studio, and this is the result!
I started my groof series when I got my first electric guitar. I didn't know what to call the first thing I ever made with it, so I decided to just call it "groove 1". At some point between groove 5 and groof 6, I discovered the woody goss video where he says groof rather than groove, and I loved that so much I decided to start calling them groofs.
This is an arrangement of Jacob Collier's song I Heard You Singing. I initially had the idea for this arrangement when I was working at Wendy's in the summer of 2020. I remember washing dishes as the melody looped in my head, and suddenly I started hearing it in a round. I worked on the arrangement for roughly a year, and then finally made a video for it in November of '21. I'm not super proud of the production aspects of it at this point, but I still enjoy listening from time to time, and it remains one of my largest projects to date. I think there's something in the range of 700 tracks in the reaper project. I also made a reaper project breakdown of this track.
I made this youtube channel in September of 2020 for the purpose of uploading music-related videos that I didn't want to upload to my main channel. I kind of wanted my main channel to feel more "polished" and be dedicated to just the pieces of music themselves, whereas the second channel could be things like score videos, reaper project breakdowns, and video essays. Linked below are a few things I've produced that aren't on the main channel.
Book of ChancesThe Book Of Chances is a product by Andrew Huang that is designed to help inspire music composition and production, and this video documents my first use of the cards.
O Sacred Head is one of my favorite hymns, and one man choir is one of my favorite styles, so this is my attempt at combining the two.
Bloom is a song by The Paper Kites, and after learning the guitar part, I decided to make this track which just modulates up a half step a bunch of times, and harmonize it with vocal textures.
I also do music production for others! Linked below is an example of that. If you'd like me to produce something you've written, shoot me an email at jordanolson767@gmail.com
Sweeter - Josh Coyour