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Author: Jim on March 15 2007 Viewed 2425 times. 34 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
People who enjoyed reading this: Zanf, bodo, astroboy, ignatius, dach, reehc, sAMsKi, 11t1, daswesen, Moriarty, Roshi, Otterfan, VC, bleen, license, vveerrgg, electrodan, theflame, energygiant, j_chot, soft, zfigz, Fredo, jef, Logo, mulletballet, SenorFrio, prugelknaben, emulsion, opticecho, indeep, mixedtape, ejectorset, erieshore
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So I've been in this band (myspace.com/thepositivejam) and it's been going really well. I feel like it's really helped me reconceptualize how I write, and figure out what I'm really in this whole thing for.
1) Songs must come from one place. If I think in "loops", songs never happen. Moving to the arrange view in Live (versus the session) early in the process is good.
2) I need concepts and messages, things I want to say with the music/lyrics. I need to feel focused. I used to be afraid of concepts, but I like the limits they can provide sometimes.
3) Good pop music is hard.
4) When I cook, the dishes never taste as good as they do if someone else makes them. Sometimes, with music, knowing how each sound was created, hearing the song over and over, kills some of the thrill of hearing that melody for the first time.
It's also reinforced this: 5) When the inspiration is there, let it burn. I carry a tape recorder with me to record little snippets of melodies that come into my head.
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03/15/07
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astroboy
i absolutely like this blog!
03/15/07
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ignatius
me too! 
#3 can be very true and sometimes the stuff the sounds the simplest is the best/most memorable.. but it's plenty obvious sometimes when an artist/producer is phoning it in and all the lazy uninspired-ness of a song comes right thru.
loops are easier to deal with if you are writing music w/someone or if you're jamming and mutating on the fly. the loops tend to morph.
it must be refreshing to play in a band then write music by yourself. you get to appreciate both environments.
03/15/07
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astroboy
loops are the death of creativity!
i started approaching a new song with creating loops like 10.000 times, but it never lead to a finished track.
i hate loops.
bah!
loops fuck off!
03/15/07
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sAMsKi
sage. agreed on all points...
03/15/07
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11t1
good pop is hard, and what ignatius said about simplicity really rings true for me. i've got a head full of all these concepts that were jammed into my head at jazz school, and for the longest time i really made an attempt to cram as much of that into my pop songs as i could - deceptive cadences, borrowed chords, slash chords, odd meters, you name it, i've tried it. but while i was trying all those things, occasionally these really simple songs would just fall out of me, usually while walking or biking, once or twice in the shower. i'd get home & grab my guitar to figure out what my head was singing to me, and only a couple of times has it involved anything tricky.
now, when i look back on the tunes i want to record for my pop project, it's all the simple ones: the ones where the verse and the chorus have identical harmonic structures, the ones with the most friggin' obvious modulations, the ones that keep it very diatonic (with only the occasional iv minor chord thrown in as tribute to the beatles) with the simplest melodies.
pop's charm is in its simplicity. why is that so hard for me to remember sometimes?
03/15/07
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sAMsKi
if anyone can point me into the direction of the study that was recently done into successful pop, i'd be grateful. it claimed to help identify what will make a hit...in terms of chord progressions etc...i mean, i dunno if it is any good, which is why i want to see it i heard they had a 90%+ rate of predicting which tunes would go top 10, from this approach...anyway......blah! (i think i can say i am not into pop but i am interested nonetheless...)
03/15/07
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vveerrgg
It's so true....
Great points to keep in mind!
03/15/07
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delete
loops indeed kill creativity and make you lazy sometimes
i just can't figure why some of them are so damn good that i wish the looping would never stop
i don't know what i would vote in a poll "loops vs creativity"
thank god they co-exist sometimes
03/15/07
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rrooyyccee
i remember when i first was exposed to loop based music, i found the effect stunning and experimental to be exposed to the same sound repeatedly:
steven reich
some early 4ad stuff
new order
velvet underground
so may if one approaches loops in this way, as an odd thing that is a departure from reality, loops are still interesting.
for everything else, what you wrote about in your blog is really true. interesting.
03/15/07
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Roshi
I don't really find loops to be all of that limiting. Mainly because I guess my loops are background loops, and they are about as long as a section in my song.
In fact, that's what I loved about ableton when I got it. Starting with a quick improvised loop, I could improvise melodies/basslines on them until I found one that stuck, often many variations on that same bassline Oftentimes the original loop gets expanded and varied.
Then I would work on another section, not knowing its relation to the previous section, and continue to work on sections until I had a bunch.
Then I put together sections like lego and figure out transition chords.
Granted, my music is not pop music, so YMMV.
03/15/07
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Roshi
Er, and I'd just like to say that I liked this blog.
03/15/07
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j_chot
03/15/07
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Fredo
I totally agree man. Great blog!
edited: Mar 15 2007
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Logo
Good blog...
Yeah, #4 completely kills it for me. It's hard for me to surprise/interest myself to the point of finishing much. I feel like the whole process of composition for is really forced and unnatural for me. I think I just have to get over it, accept that I love making racket (but not organizing it), or come up with a way to work in the immediacy of real time and edit later.
Music is a bitch imo, compared with anything visual (my 1st  ). It's like some sort of amorphous blob with a million parameters that I can't seem to control, but feel the constant need to.
03/15/07
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5l4
I don't believe i can agree with comment one. When creating electronic music, moving to the arrange session too early can completely stagnate a composition. If you want a piece to come from one 'place', then you need to work spontaneously so that you, as a composer, can interact with the subtleties and imperfections of music in motion. It's the difference between painting a picture from life and painting a photograph.
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