Make Music with What You’ve Got
When I was a student, my friends and I would often wander into the city during our lunch breaks. For a while, there was a busker who appeared regularly in the mall. His name was Adam. His instrument? A severely damaged acoustic guitar he’d salvaged from a rubbish bin. He’d patched the body with aluminium, and restrung it with just three strings.
Adam had never had guitar lessons. But through weeks…maybe months of experimentation, he developed his own way of making music. He rested the guitar on his lap and ran a bottle along the lowest string like a slide. The other two strings were tuned so he could form a chord when combined with his voice. It wasn’t conventional, and it didn’t sound like any guitar you'd know. But he’d written countless songs within the limitations of this self-made instrument.
The aluminium panel gave the guitar a unique, buzzy timbre. It also doubled as percussion when slapped. From what I could tell, Adam’s sound couldn’t be replicated on any other instrument.
He had a natural musicality. His songs ranged from blues to rock and funk. There were even a couple of ballads. All original. His voice was amplified through a toy speaker made to look like a tiny Marshall amp. Tinny. Distorted. But somehow, it worked. He leaned into the imperfections, letting them colour his music.
This was a real lesson for me.
In music school, we were often reminded of the importance of high-quality instruments. A Stradivarius versus a Yamaha. A Steinway versus a Kawai. And sure, for certain kinds of performance, it matters deeply. But as producers, we should take a page from Adam’s book. We’re surrounded by sound. It comes in all shapes, sizes, textures, and colours. Our job is to shape it into music. Whatever sounds good to you…use it. Don’t worry about its age, brand, or origin.
Today, music production is flooded with choice. Endless plugins, virtual instruments, DAWs. There’s always something newer, sleeker, “better.” I’ve sometimes found myself replacing a virtual instrument before I’ve even explored what it can truly do.
But chasing the latest thing is a trap.
I’ve been doing this for over four decades. When I revisit my early productions, they still hold up. Yes, I hear the lo-fi synths, the hiss from old analog gear. But the music was whole. Of its time. And I’m proud of it. I have no desire to give those tracks digital makeovers. They were made with the tools I had, and I made them work.
Listen to a classic ‘80s mix on Spotify. You’ll hear the sonic fingerprints of that era: the tempo, the punch, the space. Go back further to early Beatles recordings, or Billie Holiday. Lo-fi. Muffled. But timeless.
I have a friend whose studio is a shrine to 1980s synths and sequencers. It’s a glorious mess of cables and keys. They use basic sequencers, and manually change patches midsong, and the recordings capture everything live. The results? Full of personality. Sometimes imperfect. Irreplaceable. And I love that approach, even though I’m often someone who weeds out unintended things from my own productions.
At the end of the day, the music we create becomes a snapshot of our lives….how we see the world, how we interact with it. Whether you’re writing on a beat-up, three-string guitar or scoring with the latest state-of-the-art music software, the goal is the same: to make good music. Music that moves people.
