“You will be in charge of the sound design for this film.”
The classroom went quiet, and for a second, I thought she was talking to someone behind me. Then my face grew hot, and I felt really uncomfortable. I felt I was not able to do that at all. It was my freshman year, and I was sitting in the film club I attended when we were about to start a new film. In that club, we needed someone with sound design experience to make all the BGM and sound effects, but none of us had such experience. The teacher then asked if anyone was in a music-related club. At that time, I had just joined the music technology club that focused on music composition that semester, but I was completely new to music and had not yet composed any complete tracks. But still, the responsibility fell on me, so I had to take on the task.
After I got home, it was a sunny Friday afternoon, and it should be a relaxing day if I didn’t get that task. But it genuinely troubled me. I kept wondering how the teachers and classmates in the film club would react if I couldn’t finish a demo by next week. I felt anxious because I had no confidence. I knew that I couldn’t possibly create a full music track. But there was no other choice, and I had to give it a shot. I slowly walked into my study room and turned on my computer. After I double-clicked on the FL Studio logo, the program launched, and a huge blank project window appeared. I froze because I had no idea how to start. I wondered, what if I just gave up? I could only hear the noise of the desktop fan as time passed, and I sat still in my chair, doing nothing. At that moment, I thought that I could never finish it.
Although I was anxious and frustrated, I remembered the words my teacher had spoken to me. She had placed such faith in me, and I couldn’t let her feel disappointed. Even if I could only produce a very simple work, at least it would be something. Thinking of that, I opened YouTube and searched for “FL Studio electronic music tutorial.” I didn’t know what I was looking for and randomly clicked on a video. Fortunately, there was something helpful. Although I had no idea why I had to do those things or what would happen if I followed the video, I just followed every step he showed. If he changed a parameter, I changed the same parameter. If he dragged a pattern into the track, I did the same thing. Even so, I changed some notes to make sure I wasn’t copying the melody.
I kept doing that for almost the whole weekend, from morning to night, and sometimes even forgot to have lunch or dinner. Finally, I completed a track, and I was really proud of it, full of different elements compared to the intimidating empty view at the start. Although it sounds awful if I listen to it now, it was a meaningful piece to me. The next week, during the club block, I showed this demo to the teacher, and she said it was really good. I think she was probably just being nice to me, but I was moved by this praise. Even beyond that, I found it interesting to work with those plugins and MIDI files when composing music, and that became one of my hobbies in the following years.