We recently connected with Gabe White and have shared our conversation below.

Gabe, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Leopard Step, my current music project, is the continuation of something started earlier in life. I first produced over twenty years ago, and was all self-taught. I figured out a lot of things, but certainly not everything, and after about a year, I didn’t know what to do to improve my music and I drifted away from it. About five years ago I rediscovered the fun of electronic music production and created some songs on FL Studio Mobile on my phone before getting serious and buying a computer and software, and most importantly, training. There are now great educational resources available and I found my way to EDMTips.com for some excellent foundational training, and then more advanced ongoing training with my mentor Neel Erickson. The availability of that technical knowledge is a huge advantage now over even twenty years ago. But the other leg of it all is practice. Some producer friends and I were discussing how many tracks we had made in our lives before any were published, even by a small label. The answer for me was about ninety. I think the biggest obstacle for most people is how long the road may be for any success, and not giving up before reaching it. And this is also probably where I could have shortcut things a lot more, if I learned faster, or really, just got into referencing a lot more than I have. Using other professional tracks as models for one’s own, is a highly effective practice at shortening the way to making a similar character and quality of track.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Leopard Step is the creative musical outlet for Gabriel White, a lifelong practitioner of many kinds of art: drawing, painting, origami, creative writing, martial arts, and music. The Leopard Step name represents a fun and filthy brand of tech house, with a dirty acid rave flava. It is high energy party music intended to grace dancefloors from grungy warehouses and clubs, to more upscale venues that want to burn the place down. Leopard Step tech house has no shame and is 100% pure party. My clients are record labels looking for a hardworking producer with a clear vision and reliable output. If my music is a good fit for your label, you may have a lot of tracks coming your way, and I’m always working to make the sharpest tracks I can.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding aspects of tech house production are enjoying the music myself, and the accumulation of having many tracks released, each one out there in the world seeking its fortune – who knows where it will go or what it will do – and seeing streams with them and knowing that it means my songs are making someone, somewhere a little happier.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Resilience for me is essential, because music production takes so much time and work. It’s no wonder that the biggest problem producers have is not finishing tracks. Or that the second biggest problem is not finishing enough tracks to experience success before the producer gets frustrated or bored and quits. We are all blessed with our strengths and weaknesses in life, and one superpower I am fortunate to have, is that I can sit down and make a track. I almost never don’t finish a track once it’s really started. Finishing music is completely foundational to any aspirations of professional development. These productive habits have lead to having twenty-five tracks released in the course of 2023.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stepleopard3/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leopard.step/
• Other: https://linktr.ee/leopard_step

Image Credits
Gabriel White