Upon the outbreak of COVID-19,]\and following the mandatory quarantine and lockdowns, I did not know what to do with myself. With me being the kind of person that likes to keep themselves busy, I knew this would be hard for me. So I looked for ways to pass the time that seemed to be blending more and more into a continuous loop with the only indicators being that of waking up and going to sleep. One of those ways I decided to stick with was music.

I had always had an interest in making music and I had experimented with GarageBand in the past, but I could never have the confidence or time to thoroughly immerse myself into the music scene, let alone learn how to produce the sounds. Thus, I made it my goal to now take the time and learn.

It started with random beats and pianos and the more familiar I got with the program and recording, the more I realised that I wanted to make music because I truly enjoyed the process. So my quarantine quest began, however, I quickly learned that making music is actually really hard.

I cannot tell you how many hours I spent putting beats together and finding a good rhythm and making sure it all sounded fine––long story short, it took me about two days to find the correct beat for the type of song I wanted. It took an extra three days to finish the song, and even then a couple more days to be happy with the song from start to finish. Not to mention, I was also creating a few other songs alongside this main song.

The more and more time I spent on making these songs, the more I began to understand that making music is really hard, and not as easy as some artists make it out to be. Even the simplest songs, such as MARINA's "Lies", which pretty much uses only four chords, seem to require days and months of proper mixing and that is minus the songwriting process and final mixing.

Now, speaking of those two, I have come to realize that writing lyrics alone is a separate process that can take weeks and even months to perfect or to even come up with. Currently, I have begun to record some of my vocals that have taken me about two weeks to come up with, and it's only eight words currently. Thus, when I say that making music is hard, it really is and it is very time consuming in the moment. However, during this process I have loved every second of it–– even the times when I would get frustrated with the production and go to bed slightly angry. It is honestly a beautifully frustrating process that I have come to discover that I really enjoy it and I want to possibly keep creating.

Currently, I am in the process of teaching myself how to song write, so I can produce more than just eight words for an entire three-minute song. However, this process has been the most difficult as previously mentioned in the paragraph above this one. More specifically, I have had to sit down and think about what I want to write, whether the beat of the song will match the lyrics and vice versa. This has been the most difficult part for me is getting those two forces to match up with one another. I have read and watched multiple articles and videos of artists describing their processes and I'm just glad that what I'm feeling and the amount of time I'm spending is normal.

For example, MARINA says that her song "Primadonna" took almost a year to write compared to her song "Bubblegum Bitch" that is reported to have taken her 15 minutes to write. On the flipside, Lana Del Rey has reported that some of her songs have taken even years to come to fruition such as her song "Old Money" did, which began even before her debut album and was officially released on her second record. Therefore, with those examples, I have come to embrace the entire process and start feeling more patient with it because hit songs are not made overnight.

Thus, as it began with just something to do, I have decided that this may be something I'd want to dive further into and I'm excited for everyone to hear it. Currently, I will be making an instrumental album that may or may not have lyrics. There are three songs I have released so far on my YouTube Channel, Daulton Beck, with more on the way to be fully released onto my SoundCloud as well.

For those of you who are thinking about it, I say do it! Everyone starts somewhere and it would be really nice to have some company along the way.