Everyone’s music production journey is different, of course, but it can be disheartening to discover that, even once you’ve got yourself a computer, a DAW and a MIDI keyboard, you can’t immediately start making tunes that you’re happy with.
It might be comforting to hear, then, that FINNEAS - brother of and producer for Billie Eilish - had to spend five years tinkering with Logic Pro before he created anything that he thought was up to snuff.
“When I was 13 or 14 I got Logic Pro on my computer,” he told Consequence Of Sound. “The price had gone down, which was why I could afford it… and I started to love music production.”
Despite this new obsession, things didn’t immediately fall into place for the budding LA-based musician, as he’s happy to admit.
“I recorded terrible little demos and stuff, and I didn’t really make anything that I thought sounded good at all for probably five years,” says FINNEAS. “It was about five years of making stuff all the time, and thinking it was all really bad.”
The breakthrough moment, it transpires, was what turned to be Billie Eilish’s debut single, which was uploaded to SoundCloud in November 2015.
“When I was 18 I made Ocean Eyes for my sister, and I remember being like ‘this is good’. That was the first thing after many years of really bad stuff.”
There’s a nice piece of symmetry here, of course - the project file for Ocean Eyes is now included with Logic Pro, so users can see exactly how the track was put together.
Those early demos, on the other hand, are unlikely ever to see the light of day, but clearly played a vital role in turning FINNEAS into the producer he is today. Which just goes to show that, when it comes to making music, perseverance is just as important as talent.
FINNEAS has just released a new single, A Concert Six Months From Now, which is taken from his debut album Optimist, available 15 October. Billie Eilish’s second album, Happier Than Ever, was released last week.
