Producer and Educator Nurve/Macabre Unit Shares his Motivational Mantra
By Jodie - 3 years ago
When looking at success in the music industry, it’s easy to get caught up comparing yourself to other artists. Social media glorifies everyone’s journey and instead of considering the inner system that guides an individual, we can find ourselves dwelling on what we’ve not achieved rather than what we have. Finding a philosophy – a set of principles that guide your mind and behaviour – is frequently overlooked but is often the driving force behind creative success. Our ability to stay motivated, build resilience and maintain our mental wellbeing can be key for our progression, especially since the global pandemic has thrown a spanner in the works. In this blog series, we talk to five established producers who have developed their own set of precepts to success, kicking off in-house with producer and educator Nurve’s motivational mantra.
Raff aka Nurve/Macabre Unit got his first set of decks at just 14 and quickly built up a solid reputation around Bedford and the surrounding areas. After leaving school, he went on to work in a local record shop ‘Just a Groove’ and by 18 he had already played at huge events such as Hysteria, Helter Skelter, Pure-x, One Nation, Dreamscape and Slammin’ Vinyl. It was through these events, that he became fascinated by how his favourite tracks were made, so he set himself up with an Akai sampler and Atari 1040 and started learning the fundamentals of music production
Skip forward 20 years and Raff has taken on various successful aliases and roles spanning across Grime, Dubstep and Drum & Bass. Continuously developing his skills so that he can fine-tune his sound, he is not only a passionate producer but also an influential member of the E&B team who is dedicated to passing on his knowledge and making sure music education is available to everyone.
“My passion is to learn, and my purpose is to teach”
“I am a very positive person. I live my life knowing that there is always someone out there far worse off than me. I work on myself as a person every day and if I can be just 1% better than I was yesterday as a person then I am happy with that. I surround myself with good, positive people and try my very best not to care about what others think of me.
Social media is something I am very strict with. I set myself a total of 20 minutes each day across all platforms which allows me enough time to post what I need to as an artist and for my work with E&B. In that time, I also engage with responses and support friends on their posts. I don’t aimlessly scroll through timelines. You can lose half of your day doing that, something I have done in the past. It can also put you in a terrible headspace and nobody should want that. In regard to my creative process and staying motivated from day to day and during the worldwide pandemic, I have a very simple outlook on things. I don’t make music to be a superstar, I don’t do it for money, and although it is nice to get recognition, I don’t do it for that either. I do it for the learning process and I do it so that I can learn from every track and teach what I have learnt to others. With that mindset, I never get writer’s block and I never struggle to stay motivated and write material.
My passion is to learn, and my purpose is to teach” – Nurve
