We were lucky to catch up with Ethan Schmiel recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ethan, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Over the past six years of my music production journey, I spent a vast majority of my time on YouTube trying to learn the ins and outs of the craft. As you probably know, there is a massive amount of information on YouTube covering just about any topic you want to know about, no matter how niche it is. I remember searching “How to make beats in GarageBand” because that is the only software I had at the time and I had no music knowledge. I’m very grateful that I grew up in the generation with the internet because it helped me learn much quicker than I would have had I not had the internet at my disposal. In the past year or two, I also started to use TikTok to learn small tips that are extremely beneficial to perfecting my craft. Both of these platforms along with consistent practice is how I learned to do what I do.

Knowing what I do now, the only thing I really would have changed to speed up my learning process would be switching the order I learned things. I feel as if I knew more music theory and song structure before I just threw myself into the software, I would have made quicker progress and improvement in my craft, which carries into the next point.

The most essential skill was music theory. Learning about keys and chords helped me to achieve a deeper sound in my music, and had I learned it sooner, I would be further along in my music career than I am now.

One major obstacle comes to mind when I was first starting out, and that was the monetary aspect. I used to watch a ton of videos and the creators had all of these fancy plugins and sounds that were hundreds of dollars. Me, being 15/16 at the time and having no job kind of left me hopeless for improving my skills. As soon as I upgraded my equipment, however, I saw so much improvement.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Ethan Schmiel, also known as schmiiel, and I am a 21 year old producer from Frederick, Maryland, although now I spend most of my time in College Park, MD. Essentially, I produce music. I have always thought music is a great way to express yourself. When I meet and hang out with new people, whatever kind of music they listen to gives me an idea of their personality, and this is why I started producing; I wanted to truly show my personality through my craft rather than songs from other people.

My production style is very diverse; I cover genres from rap, trap, to rock and EDM and can do almost anything else in between, and this is how I feel my personality is reflected in my music. I’m generally a very positive person and open to almost anything and everything (obviously including my music genres of choice). My specialty in producing is making melodies and melodic samples. This truly allows me to express myself as I can invoke a wildly different feeling in the listener depending on the key, chords, and sound selection, and this is what I believe sets me apart from others in the producer space.

I’m mostly proud of who I am as a person, willing to make friends with anyone and everyone, whether they are involved with music or not. Producing is one of my favorite talking points, and I am proud that I am able to talk about it.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

This is a great question! The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is being able to share my work with the entire world. If you ask anyone who I’m close to, they’ll tell you that I love to play my music for other people. I really value the opinions of others on my music, whether it be good or bad. If it’s good, great! That’s exactly why I love to share it, and I hope my music can brighten someone’s day because, maybe, it’s something that they would genuinely listen to. If it’s a bad or poor opinion, I also see no harm in that. I take that as feedback and can use it to improve myself in the future. It’s a win-win situation in this case; I get to play my music for others (which, again, I love doing) and I also get feedback on it.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Although I don’t have the biggest social media presence, I have a strong network of like-minded people who I have met online and also people that I know in real life that all support me and my endeavors. I would say that most of the people who have heard my music have heard it through TikTok. It’s one of the best platforms to get engagement, and this doesn’t have to be just for creatives. People can do anything on the app and gain an audience of people who are interested in that topic. In my case, I post screen recordings of my songs from the software I use, which is called FL Studio, and my video appears on the For You page of other people who use the app. If the viewer likes my video, they may follow my account, which helps engagement and gets my videos to more and more viewers in the future. It’s a snowball effect. You start small and keep grinding until you see results.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prodschmiiel/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethan-schmiel-3674b7246/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBICAnAJZF2wIMRTJQA-ezg
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/prodschmiel