The first album I ever made was terrible. And it was the most important thing I've ever done.
Before the beginning
I need to take you back to a time when Humanity Record didn't exist. When it was just me, a microphone that cost more than I could afford, and a laptop with free recording software that crashed every twenty minutes.
I wasn't a "music producer." I wasn't even a confident singer yet. I was someone with a voice, a hunger, and absolutely no idea what I was doing.
"Your first creation doesn't need to be good. It needs to exist."
That's the lesson. Not the polished version people share on podcasts. The raw, uncomfortable truth: you have to make the bad thing before you can make the good thing.
The bedroom studio
My first studio was a corner of my bedroom in France. The "acoustic treatment" was a blanket hung over a clothing rack. The "control room" was a pair of headphones that bled sound if the volume went above 60%.
Here's what I had:
- A USB condenser microphone
- A cracked version of a DAW I couldn't afford (I've since bought every tool I use — bootstrap doesn't mean steal)
- YouTube tutorials on mixing that I watched at 2am
- Absolute, irrational belief that I could make something worth hearing
The recordings sounded like they were made in a bathroom. Because, acoustically, they basically were.
Making the album
The first album took me six months. Not because it was complex — it was simple, almost painfully so. But because every step was a lesson I had to learn from scratch.
Recording vocals: I didn't know about gain staging. I didn't understand proximity effect. I recorded take after take, listening back, hearing every flaw, every breath, every room reflection that turned my voice into something that sounded like it was underwater.
Mixing: I watched tutorials on EQ, compression, reverb. I over-processed everything. Then I stripped it all back. Then I over-processed it again. The learning curve wasn't a curve — it was a wall.
Mastering: I didn't master the first album. I just turned it up until it was loud enough and called it done.
The moment of release
Releasing that album felt like standing naked in a town square. Every insecurity I had about my voice, my production skills, my right to even call myself an artist — all of it was compressed into a single click.
I uploaded it anyway.
Not because it was ready. Not because it was good. But because I understood something that most people don't learn until it's too late: perfectionism is procrastination in a fancy outfit.
"Ship it. Learn from it. Make the next one better."
That became my operating principle. Not just for music — for everything.
What the first album taught me
That album taught me more than any course, any mentor, any book ever could:
- Your voice is an instrument you have to learn — even if it's your own
- Production quality matters less than you think when the emotion is real
- Nobody is waiting for your debut — you have to create the audience alongside the art
- The gap between your taste and your skill is where growth lives
- Finishing something imperfect beats perfecting something you never release
From one album to thirty
After the first album, something shifted. The barrier was broken. I'd proven to myself that I could take an idea from nothing to completion. The process was ugly, the result was rough, but it existed.
Album two was better. Album five was significantly better. By album ten, I actually knew what I was doing. By album twenty, I had developed a production style that was distinctly mine.
Now, with 30+ albums in the Humanity Record catalog, I can look back at that trajectory and see what it really was: not a discography, but a training log. Each album was a set of reps. Each release was a lesson.
The skills I built making those albums became the foundation for everything else:
- Vox Method exists because I learned vocal technique through obsessive practice and Estill training
- Vox Studio exists because I spent years inside DAWs and knew exactly what vocalists needed
- My ear for detail comes from thousands of hours of mixing and mastering my own work
The catalog as proof
Thirty albums is not normal for a solo artist. People hear that number and assume I'm exaggerating, or that the albums are short, or that they don't count somehow.
They count. Every single one.
Some are vocal-only. Some are produced tracks. Some are experimental. Some are the best work I've ever done. A few are albums I'd rather people didn't hear. But all of them are real, and all of them were made by one person, in a bedroom, then a home studio, then a proper setup in Dubai.
The catalog is not just music. It's proof of concept. Proof that one person can build a body of work that rivals what labels do with teams of twenty. Proof that consistency beats resources.
What I'd tell the girl with the blanket on the clothing rack
If I could go back to that bedroom in France and talk to the version of me hanging a blanket over a rack, thinking it would improve the acoustics, I'd say:
- The album you're about to make will embarrass you in five years. Make it anyway.
- The skills you're building right now will become the foundation of a school, a software product, and a publishing house. You can't see that yet, but keep going.
- The people who don't take you seriously right now will be irrelevant. The work is what lasts.
- You're going to make thirty more of these. Each one will be better than the last.
The real story
The story of my first album isn't a success story. It's a starting story. It's about the gap between where you are and where you want to be, and the decision to start walking across it even when you can't see the other side.
Every creator I admire has a version of this story. A bad first draft. A terrible first recording. A failed first launch. The ones who made it aren't the ones who started with talent. They're the ones who started with stubbornness.
Thirty albums later, I'm still that person with the blanket on the clothing rack. I just have better tools now.
The first album was never about the music. It was about proving I could begin.