 LA, California, USA
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im a college student?
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i use ableton, and have gotten into programming Pd; etc etc.
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Electronic Music other: DAW block
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Written February 29 2008 , Tags: writers block, daw, composing, frustrati
All day I think about cool melodies, rhythms, sounds, transitions, pretty much entire songs that I could be writing when I am at work/class/riding my bike/talking to my girlfriend, but when i finally get the time to sit down at my computer and open up reason(or any daw for that matter) and start transcribing/writing/recording those thoughts it turns into something terrible and ends up in my chainging together like 40 matrix's and making some wacky loops or spending 30 minutes trying to perfect one subtractor sound or just jamming on my midi controller. Then i finally get one cool loop and im pretty much stuck and dont know how i would build the song into that loop and then make that loop interesting for more than 4 measures and then end the song.
Its terrible. When i am done i will go to bed and listen to cool songs in my head and then fall asleep. Does anyone have any tips for transcribing/writing/recording/making music. I feel like theres something I am not getting, its frustrating. I can play all the stuff i think about, but when i record/transcribe it; it just doesnt sound the same  Comments
just don't pressure yourself.
relax. it seems like you have been building up quite a lot of expectation. be easy with yourself. to think every bit you do must be really great. a lot of stuff i do, totally sucks. (basically it's everything – people just don't recognize it) just sit down and try to make something cool. it doesn't have to be a song. just start with a loop fool around with it, let it evolve a little bit more. add a little detail. and you will see that sooner or later there will be a song emerging under your hands. or another good idea is. just take a four bar loop and make let's say 4 or 8 different versions of it. one set which are just version of the timbre, one set with versions of pitch, one set with timing version and one with fx version. that will give you a least some great variations of your loop, so you can expand your four bar long loop. just some thoughts. and really relax. there's no need to pressure yourself. this is probably what happens to most of us sometimes
my personal tips: stop forcing yourself to make music, but hold back it for a while stop making loops, but try to make something that feels more like an improvisation (a 'solo' for what it's worth) don't and i repeat don't mix endlessly while you're writing don't look for that perfect patch/sound yet, but try to get a feeling down sit down for a while and make all the loops you want, you'll make so many of them, you tend to forget what you've made, then start building a track with some of those loops try a mixit good luck, and it'll pass, just remember to have fun and that creativity can't (really) be forced
Recent blogs: STFU Antwerp, Sound on Sound Synth Secrets archive
hehe, simul posting (seems to be a bit of a universal theme)
Recent blogs: STFU Antwerp, Sound on Sound Synth Secrets archive
what works for me is
turning off any looping/repetition. don't fuck with patches, load up presets, no fx, nada. - you wanna keep the juices going, not get stuck. just get it out there, quickly. record one track start to end, with no stopping regardless if i fuck up or not. freeze it, lock it, turn it down a little. DO NOT EDIT. don't delete it either, if it's horrid, just mute it (save for laffs later) pick a different instrument, do the same thing. do not edit. repeat until I have 4 or 5 tracks, which at this point. if it's crap, save it, close it. if you still have creative juice, make another one. sometimes by the 2 or 3rd try, I'll have something decent to work with. later on, after I've got the creative stuff squirted out, THEN I can then get to editing, customizing patches, fx, mixing and effects. hth, it's just one strategy to break the block
Recent blogs: MBM pictures
I'd offer a lot of the same advice:
Don't Mix while you write. Do participate in the mixit. Don't delete any performances. Don't loop. I would add this: If you have a cell phone that allows you to do voice memos or otherwise record sound, record your ideas that you have throughout the day with that. It sounds like junk, but it gives you a reference to an idea you had earlier. If you have good aural skills, you could just transcribe on paper during your day. That's what my roommate does. Trying to remember a musical idea from earlier in a day can be impossible. I think you just have to make a note of it, if not a recording. off topic, but do you do all your music in reason? that would be weird and i understand why you would be frustrated.
I do the very same. Thinking about making music all day (and listening to a lot). I get excited about new ideas to try out and by the time the day is over, I'm completely burnt out and have no energy to start on a track. Try save your brain for the evenings, as you are probably noticing no amount of daydreaming gets a track made.
That's funny, I thought I was the only one who went through this for some reason and I was feeling kinda shitty about it. Thanks for blogging about it.
Great pointers. Yeah I think my problem is what programmers refer to as "early optimization". That definitely seems to be a theme with the advice here. Gotta keep it loose and sloppy. And fun. i keep my life seperate from working on music. i give it about 2-3 hours a night/day. when i do it in blocks of a few hours i get a sense for how much time i need to do what. its also is gets rid of stress when you know theres always more time to work on stuff
I'm going to echo the "don't loop" committee, just let it flow naturally start to end. Once you've got a single track down you'll probably be unimpressed... so layer up the next audio delight and repeat. If you are using a synth, just ballpark the sound. Ignore all the tweak possibilities. Accept any mistakes (I think the mistakes are actually a lot of times better). After a bit of layering, your idea will begin to manifest. Then go back and mute parts of individual tracks if you are keeping it simple, or edit in the details. Also, if you are getting stuck... I think you should consider saying fuck the mix. Worrying about even a decent mix will eat a hole in your head when you could be moving on to the next piece of inspiration. The discipline of completing projects will make it easier. Then once you have a few, take a break and focus on the mix if it's important. Probably the best and worse aspect of computers for music are the infinite possibilities.
well, sounds like by the time you get home you still remember your ideas, and that's a good thing. next time, instead of trying to recreate the complex sounds you heard in your head that go along with the melody or music you'll be making, make the music itself with the simplest sounds possible and just try to go pass the loop into more complete composition with these simple sounds. make notes of what each track/melody/section should sound like. when you get something long and intelligent, then start building your sounds... this will lead you into replacing sounds with other things, normally what they are supposed to sound like, but occasionally with sounds you didn't really think you would use, and this can also motivate further creative flow of ideas...
i'm sticking to my shorter advice. i will not use your blog as a platform for talking about my own interests
hi, great discussion.
this advice could be very bad, but hey, it's free. is it possible that you have alot of true musical talent? if so, then composing using tools for electronic music could be akin to giving an excellent chef tv dinners as raw material. the problem is the material is so removed from actual music, that you actually have to work backwards into the "raw materials" before being able to move forward. alot of the em asthetic seems to be its wrongness, and the irony of the wrongness turning into something interesting. much of the better em is marked by the ability to be satisified with something that shouldn't satisfy a conventional musician. i agree with the advice not to force it or not to worry. on the other hand, if it is not happening, then perhaps the process is not a good match. the same thing happens to me all of the time. these days i think that the reason why is that the music that really got me into this was composed primarily on trx0x boxes, and much of the interest is in hearing those boxes interact. that is a completely different process that composing even in a program like ableton live, in which one is constantly having to dive through that window into a virtual world that is interesting but has nothing to do with music. thinking aloud, for myself too(!) here. . . perhaps recording your doodles as audio. . . getting good at performing the changes. . . and then cleaning up the doodles, and then and only then, go back and add those goddamn robotic quantized blips that make us all smile. good luck, blog again soon. rrooyyccee was there a 1000 word minimum requirement that i missed?
if you're using reason, it would be a smart idea to build a few basic combinator presets that sound good to you ... and using those as a starting point instead of reinventing a new collection of instruments every time you start over. for instance, make a preset with a redrum computer with gates connected to a set of subtractors and so on, or making a combi that makes the default sound on the subtractor not sound like complete @$$ (it takes a reason pro to do this) so you can instantly tweak away and get faster, more impressive results. this greatly eased my workflow in that program, as i could just pick one of my bass combis if i needed a bass sound, or an arp combi if i wanted an arped synth, or a drummachine combi set to trigger a column of subtractors or an nnxt. dont forget about effects either.
seriously, this is a really good thing to do. a side effect is that your tracks will have a more cohesive feel to them, and will sit really well together as a collection of tracks. Signup to comment
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