# 2 - Making the Record ### Do What Matters To You. Having made this decision, I moved forward with producing the album. It took approximately one month to find the concept and two months to record all nine tracks ( even if sometimes I think it took more like 15 years to get to this point - eheh). Filippo, a trusted friend I’ve collaborated with for years—who also took part as the mix and cutting engineer for this album—was an essential piece of the puzzle. He asked me questions that no one had asked me before: _Why do you make music? What is the album concept? What do you want to achieve with this album? Are you doing this for yourself, or for other people?_ Sometimes, it’s important to have someone ask you these questions, so you can answer them for yourself without also playing the role of the interviewer. ## For whom am I doing this? In Rick’s book, he claims that _doing it for yourself is the best thing you can do for your audience_, and I truly resonate with that. My goal was to make it for myself—meaning not trying to be liked, not letting anyone tell me how I should sound, what BPM I should be at, or anything like that. **Freeze an emotion. Listen to your guts. Start patching cables.** Find a melody—it resonates—write the notes down. You’re sad? You’re angry? You’re electrified? Go to the synths, turn them on, and make something. You know a talented flute player and end up in the same studio one afternoon? Ask him to improvise on your beat, and suddenly, you’ve captured someone else’s soul in there too. Do that with a narrative, and you have an album. Once the whole album is done with this in mind, you know it’s something truly yours. It will be worth it, no matter how many people receive it. The wish, of course, is to share it with as many people as possible, hoping someone will resonate with it. Look, all of this might sound high and overthought. I’m not trying to save lives or preach—I’m no hero. I’m just a lucky guy who can sustain his hobby with a full-time job, trying to make the best of it. At the end of the day, sound is just sound, and we’re just normal people making music. My goal was to make my first album, and that’s what mattered. Finding a label wasn’t part of the equation. I did send the record to a couple of labels I admire—a long shot—but they were clearly out of my league. I stopped there. The turning point that made me press the _go_ button for the DIY route was getting support from a distribution company called **Bordello A Parigi**, which was happy to distribute my record. In the next article, I’ll share more in-depth details—like costs, how to approach distribution, and the different types of deals available. _"The act of listening is equally important as the act of composing."_ —John Cage