Mind Over Music: Playing The Mental Game and Dominating Ableton with Jason Timothy
The Veteran Music Producer, DJ and Trainer Puts On A Clinic in His Quintessential Book
Ever hear of the expressions “writer’s block”, “jack of all trades”, “half-assed effort” and “lost in the woods”? How about “ADD”? These are just some of the mental plagues that vex modern producers, writers, designers and other creatives. There’s a million books you can read, and 10 videos for every one of those books that you can watch. You can try to learn every button, dial, curve, feature and shortcut on your DAWs, plug-ins, software and hardware. That’s great. But are you producing solid music deliverables, and getting things across the finish line in an efficient way?
“What are you settling for? Does your creativity call for better tools or are you giving yourself so many choices that it’s stalling your creativity? Give it some thought and then do something about it.” – JT
Jason Timothy is a guy who has been in the trenches of music production since the last millenium, and it wasn’t all a golden bowl of cherries with happy melodies mingling with their fragrant scent. The music industry, and the idols they put forth, especially in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, projected role models that were as self-destructive as they were productive. Chasing that dream was a caustic tonic of sought after glory and nightmare, emotive aesthetic genius fed by lifestyles that ferociously attacked the mental and physical well-being of the artists themselves.
“You don’t need to fabricate a difficult , dark and addicted lifestyle to be great.” – JT
However, not all of the book focuses on behavioral habits and lifestyle tweaks that can enhance your time in the studio. The second half of the book is a deep dive into specific tips and tricks covering a range of music production topics from compression and EQing all the way to anticipating how the brain receives and interprets sound signals. This latter audio-psychology perspective really complements the first half of the book, which deals with the mindset of the producer, by forcing the reader to appreciate the mindset of the listener and their conscious and unconscious biases. The book earns its title, The Mental Game.
“Keep in mind that your brain considers sounds with a faster attack or click (stabs, percussion) more important than sounds with a slower attack that kind of fade in (pads). If you want a pad sound to be more prominent, you may want to speed up the attack.” – JT
After many years of music production, Jason Timothy realized that Ableton Live was his weapon of choice, and opened up a training school devoted wholly to teaching people how to make the most of this beast of a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). He has also been a resident producer and DJ at the P.U.N.C.H.I.S club in Las Vegas. In case you didn’t find enough in this review yet to convince you to read his book, here’s the straight dope from the man himself, telling you how to be the musical GOAT:
Jason Timothy is based out of Denver, Colorado and in addition to running his training school, is a Producer & Resident DJ for P.U.N.C.H.I.S. Records which is hosted by Beta nightclub. You can find Jason on Facebook @JasonTimothyMusic and Twitter @AbletonVids and his Ableton Live focused training school at http://www.musicsoftwaretraining.com
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