2023: A Year-End Review
2023: A Year-End Review
Opera, Barbie, sci-fi, a music video, and the launch of this newsletter
2023 is now over and it’s time to move on. Before 2024 crosses the international date line and becomes our all consuming present, I’d like to look back at my 2023 with you.
2023 excited me, established me, and exhausted me. I have spent the past week ruminating and reflecting on the year that has been. It felt as if 2023 did not stop right until the very end. I can feel it coming to a close as I sit here writing. For me, the year usually stops sometime around early December. Normally, I have finished grading student productions and private lessons slow to a trickle within the final month’s first week. That was true of this year as well. However, personal revelations (of which I’ll write extensively about in the coming year) kept 2023’s momentum going far longer than it should have.
I’d like to share bits of all of it with you today. In no particular order, here are some of the most significant parts of this past year.
Rounding out my first calendar year on Substack
One of this year’s greatest successes was the launch of this newsletter. While I haven’t hit one full year of posting yet — that celebration will come this April — the mere act of beginning feels significant enough to warrant discussion in my year-end review. I think it’s worthwhile to celebrate beginnings just as much as milestones or endings. Often, when I look back over the arc of a particular task or project, the hardest part was, in fact, the beginning. The same could be said of this newsletter.
I conceptualized Keep Living With Music as a way to share my practice and as a vehicle of self-accountability. The title of this newsletter sums up my ultimate creative and professional goal. I want music to be my living for as long as I’m alive. To achieve that will take endurance, humility, and tenacity, amongst many other things. I believe it’s a process worth documenting and sharing. I have always wanted a newsletter like this for myself and I suppose my central thesis is that I am not alone in that sentiment. Even in the short eight months that I’ve been documenting this process, over 180 of you have given me hope that I’m right.
If you’re curious to know where things are headed with this newsletter, check out last week’s post. My two major priorities are: a.) moving to a weekly format and b.) increasing the value for paid subscribers by giving y’all a free instrument every month.
My gift to you: a new Ableton instrument every month
Diving headfirst into opera
Over this past week, my spouse, Emma, and I held for ourselves a two-day mini conference of sorts. We haunted several coffee shops around Seattle and had journaling sessions, an annual recap, and numerous planning meetings for the year ahead. When we went through and listed the successes from this past year, the first line item on my list was getting involved in opera.
I had absolutely zero plans to get involved in opera at the start of this year. Hell, even well into this year. It wasn’t until I had my first taste of contemporary opera this past June that I realized I wanted in. I’m thankful that Seattle Opera’s Creation Lab provided a way in.
Now that we’ve reached the end of 2023, my role in the opera-making process will ramp up considerably. In January, I’ll receive a completed libretto and will begin the actual composing process — a process which I’ll be sharing eagerly here. If you’d like to get caught up on this journey so far, I recommend revisiting this post from September.
Releasing Fever Dreams at Ruger Place and the music video for “Death Only Comes When I’m Awake”
When it came to releasing personal work, 2023 was make or break. I had spent most of 2022 focusing on music for my clients, building my skills and confidence in that arena. However, I felt really frustrated that I had yet to release any music of my own. Working with clients and project deadlines helped me to escape the cycle of perfectionism that kept me from finishing music. 2023 was my year to actually apply those skills to my own work.
This past summer, that goal was realized with the release of my EP, Fever Dreams at Ruger Place. It’s a collection of songs dealing with dreams, desire, and the liminal space between wakefulness and sleeping. Finishing and releasing that body of work challenged me in more ways than I had expected. I had so much anxiety and insecurity surrounding my music making process that I had not come to grips with before this EP. It’s a realization that I’m still working through.
As I reflect back on this EP, I do think that I could’ve done a much better job promoting its release. Frankly, most people I mention it to aren’t even aware that I released an EP. They’re only aware of the single because of its accompanying music video. I was so successful in executing “Death Only Comes When I’m Awake,” that I inadvertently dropped the ball on the full EP. As I’m preparing to release so much more music in 2024, I’m going to take this lesson to heart. This also won’t be the last you hear of Fever Dreams at Ruger Place, either. It has one final gift to give in a few weeks.
If you’re curious to know what the process of making and releasing a music video looked like, I wrote all about it in this post from June.
A year of exciting game announcements and releases
I’m thankful that 2023 brought a number of fun projects to my inbox. Two of my favorites from this year are the announcement of Keyword 2: Nightfall and the release of Barbie: You Can Be a Fashion Designer VR. I love that these two games are perhaps as far away from one another as you could get. One is a 3D, open-world, gritty sci-fi detective game and the other is a VR pop-up storybook game for kids.
It’s my goal to surprise myself at every turn. I always want to be exploring new ideas, mediums, and genres. These two projects are evident of that. Perhaps, in the long run it’ll make it difficult to quantify my output but here and now I’m enjoying the challenge of applying myself to such different tasks.
It’s a bit counterintuitive when compared to the common wisdom to “niche down,” but part of the process I’m going through is discovering what that idea really means to me both creatively and professionally. It’s something I discussed pretty heavily in this post from August.
A Rich Music Career Is A Diverse Music Career
I taught my first independent class
Earlier this month, I taught my first independent class. I have taught private music production lessons for years now and I’ve also taught at institutions as well. I enjoy both immensely and will continue to do both. However, I had been excited for some time by the idea of teaching a class of my own design and realization.
That idea came to fruition with Advanced Sampling Techniques: Sample Yourself. This two-hour class focused on one of my favorite compositional techniques: self-sampling. It was so fun going through this idea with everybody who attended live. If you missed it, the recording is available in perpetuity at the link above. And, if you’re interested to hear more about my approach to sampling, you can revisit this post from November.
Thanks, 2023.
As I look back on the year that has been, I’m thankful for it. I’m thankful for another year of music making and growth and self-discovery. I hope to carry all of it forward into the new year with renewed focus and vigor.
Next week, I’ll share some musical resolutions for the year ahead and talk a bit about my planning process for 2024. I’m excited to see where Keep Living With Music goes as it moves to a weekly format.
Until next time.
Quick Hits
I was interviewed on the Sound Business Podcast. Akash and I chatted about how to break into games, finding clients, and a lot more. Listen here.
I wrote music for the first VR Barbie game. This month, Peeka and Mattel released Barbie: You Can Be a Fashion Designer VR. Learn more here.
Do you need help with your music production or composition skills? I offer private one on one lessons over Zoom. You can sign up for lessons here.