Meet Jeff Dodson

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jeff Dodson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jeff below.

Jeff, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
What continues to spark creativity I believe is unique for every one of us. For myself learning to embrace the need NOT to milk creativity at every moment was truly liberating. Working in the creative industry there’s a pressure to always be producing and that pressure gives a false urgency. When I stopped mentally beating myself up for not coming up with more creative ideas that lifted burden and created space for my best creative ideas to start occurring.

I find that creativity comes in waves, and being prepared for it is better than trying to force it. Creative ideas happen all the time and to not be burned out from abusing yourself with unnecessary creative goals for me allowed me to be prepared for the opportunity of creativity.

Don’t force goals for creativity. If what you’re doing isn’t working how you expect, dump it. Move on. Returning to an idea after time has passed allows for all sorts of experiences between then and now that may spark exactly what was needed.

Changing how you work is another great tool for new ideas. Mick Gordon did a great talk about how applying new methods of creation can help create and I think it’s very true. It’s easy to get overly comfortable doing whatever your creative output is a specific way. If you change how you’re creating you challenge yourself to approach a creative problem from a new perspective. You cannot crutch on old or comfortable methods. Nothing spawns creativity like trying something new.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I’m a composer and sound designer that focuses in Trailer and Production Music with a specialty in synthetic sound design. I try to explore the world of strange sounds and bridge them into a commercial usage by hybridizing it with orchestral or other recordings. I’m well known for shaping the sounds in film trailers with the help of the talented editors that build those worlds.

My primary outlets are through my own company Rainfall Films with my 2 partners, where we explore VFX and other post production needs for advertising as well as make our own projects when we want to make something new and unique. We produced advertising trailers / campaigns and VFX for 100’s of music videos and films.

Alibi Music is my other main commercial outlet who give me almost total creative freedom on producing many genres, and exploring recording SFX from all sources to shape the most innovative and creative music and sound for library usage.

Defrag is my artist outlet. It’s a workshop of all the music and sound design that’s too extreme for work, Ideas that I want to explore musically outside of any box. I put out a vinyl release every few years of where my head is at in the world of extreme electronic music through German label and creative outlet Ant-Zen.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
For music production I think this can be broken into 3 sets of skills.

Production Skill is the raw technical ability of making whatever you’re working on sound good. This knowledge can come from all sorts of sources, self experimentation, collaboration with other artists that you respect, or through research and investigating online. I always aim for the more obscure places to learn as the easy paths of youtube can lead to sounding too similar to other people sourcing that info or downright misinformation which is very common on social platforms. Having a lot of views doesn’t mean the info is correct or useful.

Creative Skill is the ability to create something that is interesting to listen to. Formatting a piece of music in a unique way, choosing chord theory and applying unique percussion pattern choices to create music that is creative in it’s origin. Processing your music in a way to give it a specific feel with purpose. Hand in hand with production ability having incredible sounding music that is boring in format or uninteresting to hear. It doesn’t matter how great your music sounds if your structure and melody motif’s are all garbage.

Emotional Skill is the ability to accept criticism and apply it to the production and creative elements. If you are difficult to work with in the industry you’re not going to grow as an artist and you’re certainly not going to make a career of it. The skill to be able to hear or feel the signs of criticism and be able to translate that into new ideas or changes in your production and creative choices would be the final piece.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
Not being afraid to see an opportunity and act on it. I think a lot of opportunities are available to people but they are too afraid or unaware of it and don’t seize it. Waiting for someone to discover you is a poor mindset as it creates a narrative that you’re already better than the opportunity that hasn’t discovered you. Exploring the communities and work environment / events that are in those worlds and actively involving yourself with people that might respond to your work is the best method of growth. If you feel your music or work belongs some place, actively try and discover avenues to get your work to the right person and be interesting and likeable during the process. If you’re interesting, project a personality that is easy to work with, and talented then the opportunities to work on interesting projects with like minded people will reveal themselves. Then act on them.

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