Eat Your Own Dogfood

The phrase 'eat your own dogfood', sometimes shortened to 'dogfood' and verbised to 'dogfooding', is not a new one. I know it from my interest in computers and software development. Consider Microsoft Visual Studio, to take an example. The guys and girls who write that use Visual Studio to write Visual Studio. If the product is bad, they have to experience that for themselves, which is a more immediate motivation to make things work well than some product manager saying something in a Powerpoint presentation in a meeting you were half-asleep in.

When it comes to presets and synth programming, that means write your own presets, and learn how to program the synths for yourself. Using third-party presets is like dining out at a fast food place, or eating a late-night kebab full of who-knows-what. Don't do that. Learn for yourself, and make stuff for yourself.

That means, for example, if you want a noisy whoosh or a riser, know how to quickly make one in a synth. Then just take a minute or two to make the risers you need for your track, bounce some to audio, and then use the resulting audio. That audio is the 'dogfood' you made for yourself, and you use that 'your own dogfood' in the track. Just as a pianist has to play the keys for themselves each and every time they want to hear a tune they know how to play (or else record themselves), they have to play the keys every time. With practice it becomes natural, almost instinctive, and far more rewarding than simply playing a CD. Sure you likely won't sound as good as a full-time professional in a million-dollar recording studio with a top producer working the console. But hey, if it's something you made, then it's something you made, something uniquely you. As for professionally produced CD's, anybody can buy the same CD as you, play it through the same hifi as you, and everybody knows that.

But back to the dogfood thing: by forcing yourself to only use stuff you make for yourself, you get far more quality, quantity, and intensity in your practice, and thus your learning goes faster, further, deeper, and the end result after months and years will be far more fulfilling.