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I started this as a comment in bla's blog about doing shit the hard, stupid way, but decided to expand the idea to its own rant/blog/whine.
Every time I've listened to cbit,ml,delta,implexgrace,lowlifi,nq,adjective,albatrocity or, really just alot of you who create these sounds and tracks I just cannot figure out, I think I MUST be doing shit the hard, stupid way, and even if I weren't, it would still take more time and devotion to finish one track than I have to spare. I usually spend the four to six hours I can alot per week just getting a melody or wrestling with the technology, and lose the spark and give up. I have about 3 hours of recorded melody and bassline ideas saved as impromptu clips from just the last year, since I posted that gearpron blog. I also have a few saved sequences going back 8 years that are all between 20 seconds and a minute, and they each took days to get to that point.
Some of you peeps here should hold classes for money on how to do this stuff right, with a curriculum, demos, assignments and so forth. By the end, I would be able to use the tools in the class to make compositions without once getting lost or stuck. There could probably be one style per course. I'd pay for that, seriously. If you were worried about giving up trade secrets, consider it a motivator to come up with new sounds and teach the old, standard stuff.
It reminds me of learning Linux or Unix: There's often only one way to get the shell to do what you want in a certain situation, and you could spend years learning the OS and never get enough of it down to make it work for you completely, whereas you can find your way around windows or OSX in one sitting. Just to get one command to work, sometimes you have to read and read and read and read and read and read and read and you finally find that what you needed ends up being a difference of three characters from what you origianlly typed.
If someone had been standing over your shoulder and you'd asked one simple question, hours or even days would not be lost.
This whole music thing is just like that for me, mostly in terms of technique for generating timbres I hear in music posted here, but also to a great degree on sequencing and producing non-repetitive drums that sound good. If someone stood behind me and said "You start with this drum loop, easily found online, and run it through this chain of free plugins to get this specific sound, then use this magic thingy to chop it up" then I could apply it and better focus on how to creatively arrange it into a track. Maybe it would change later, but it's part of the process, and impedes progress until the task is done.
I spend copious amounts of time either trying to get something simple that doesn't sound like ass or trying and often failing just to get the software to cooperate. It isn't fair that you spend all this money and the software crashes or doesn't work like expected, yet it's overwhelming with all the possibilities and directions to go when it works.
Timing is a big, big problem for me, even with some jittery plugins, and especially when trying to sync two apps together when both vendors were too arrogant or incompetent to allow their product to be a Rewire slave. Most importantly, Midi jitter and latency from the external devices can make life miserable, and you start to imagine timing problems that aren't even there.
I can see how those of you who only possess a PC and a controller, and use one main sequencing application, with an arsenal of plugins, can get so much done. But even then, I constantly hear things posted here that sound like if I tried to do them, they would take two lifetimes to finish. So many notes, so many events, and how much of it was done by hand versus not? And "I know that that sound there resembles a snare, but how did it get that way?", and on and on. I just get angry that I don't understand how it was done, and possibly because I know I would never have the time to do it right. I start trying to reverse-engineer little tidbits from all the different posts into my own ideas, and just get frustrated. This has been going on since I first noticed em411 in June 2003.
It's clear there is a new breed of virtuoso, as evidenced by RDJ,Tom Jenkinson,etc. whose proficiency lies in manipulating software to compose and produce, and in comparison, maybe I'm the chimpanzee with my typewriter. But I can't help thinking there are just some key techniques and ideas that no one mentions because they take them for granted, yet I've never even thought to try them, despite reading posts here regularly for five years. I've asked people on this forum how they did this or that before, and usually people either don't remember, or it's too complex to explain. But I have to wonder how many of those people ever read books, took classes or the like. More than likely, this modern method of composition and production is mostly self-taught for nearly everyone who tries it and succeeds.
I know, I know. Just get in there and do it with no expectations right? If it sounds like ass, then at least you had fun, right? I've made piles of infantile,amateur tripe for 11 years now, and nearly all of it is incomplete. I want to do something I can actually publish and be proud of. Not for once: For good. | |
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06/06/08
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RogerRoger
I was thinking about doing that for "Peaches in Regalia" just the other day. Odd you mention jazz chords, I just bought a book for it two weeks ago and have barely started into it. The crux of the problem there, is obvious. I need the motivation to really do this and not fuck around.
06/06/08
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papergoose
My two rules were always:
1) Don't take shortcuts. If you know something would sound better done in a certain way, don't take a shortcut to an inferior sound. Spend the time.
that said,
2) Enjoy the process. That's why we're doing this, right? It can very hard to remember, for me at least.
So yeah, basically, it's finding that balance as mentioned above, that dialectic.
It's a constant battle though. It's far too easy to take yourself too seriously, and far to easy to not take it seriously enough.
06/06/08
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papergoose
also, all of my best tracks almost always come in one big burst, when I've got that balance, that flow.
Speaking of flow, I whole-heartedly recommend this book:
link
and a web condensed version
link
06/06/08
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RogerRoger
I wanted to mention the one time I did try Recycle was "Yes,continue" if anyone remembers that one. The sequence itself was spat out of SoftStep 2 as some extremely complex pattern with alot of crap I had to filter out and re-quantize. ie. the drums were still generative. Maybe it's some kind of integrity insecurity or maybe it's an intuition that doing it all by hand will sound better, but I can't help being overwhelmed by having to manage the levels, snap timing and offset, rearrangement and further processing of dozens of tiny samples. I also have built two PD patches that chop up loops, but neither of them are really that satisfying. Just gonna have to get in there and do it the real way.
06/06/08
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sweettrip
yeah, put the effort to do it manually. be patient and try things out. it's not magic or some obscure science. start with a a few basic samples, maybe a kick, a snare, a hat or two, and make a simple, and then expand that beat. go crazy. like astroid mention, maybe you're trying to be too responsible with your production, so try to be irresponsible... hehehehe.
from what i've read, Photek took months perfecting Ni Ten Ichi Ryu.....
06/06/08
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RogerRoger
But then I listen to Cbit's "Gang Gene", which I often follow up with the Aphex remix of Wagon Christ's Spotlight and always determine Cbit has the better chops, then after I change my shorts, I just shrug and say "Where do I even fucking start?"
06/06/08
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cbit
lots of interesting comments.
rr said: "If someone stood behind me and said "You start with this drum loop, easily found online, and run it through this chain of free plugins to get this specific sound, then use this magic thingy to chop it up" then I could apply it and better focus on how to creatively arrange it into a track. Maybe it would change later, but it's part of the process, and impedes progress until the task is done."
I've thought about this kind of thing too. The thing is though, that after the guy who was hovering behind you left, you'll be in a position again where you're using the same tools as him, but you would't know what to do with them in the way that he does.
Still: it's usually a huge source of motivation for me when i find out that folks who i think make (technically, sonically) exciting electronic music have done so with the same (or worse) tools that I have. I suppose it could swing either way; you could also get discouraged when you find out that its not a magic plug in that theyre using, but that the tracks sound good because of skil/experience etc. But i guess it cheers me up to learn that slogging away is almost always the answer.
rr said: " I think I MUST be doing shit the hard, stupid way,"
haha! I catch myself regularly thinking the same thing. And thinking this is a great way to push oyurself to find new techniques. In the end though, the people who's technical skills i'm impressed with probably also spend many hours on tracks. Here are some of the geezers who's techniques i've (tried to) study: Squarepusher, aphex twin, autechre, Clark, edIT, jonas the plug expert, toktek, astroid.
Slogging away: It's certainly hard work. The tracks i'm working on now are on version +-50. On a day of working on a track, I'll probably save 2-3 new versions of it. So that works out at about 20 days per track full time. For me it can be difficult, tiring, and for most of that time it feels like work and not play.
Tricks: there certainly are tricks though. Trying to dissect what other people have done is the source of mine. Usually i don't feel as though i figured out what i set out to unmask, but i end up with a new 'trick' or two. I agree with roshi, even with your tricks, you have to pull them into a good track.
rr said: "What would be great as opposed to the class idea, is maybe some kind of "work history" repository, be it by blog or wiki or video site or whatever, where people can document their track progress in an instructive and intuitive way"
Great idea. I've thought about this too. I'll give it a go with the next track i begin. Perhaps in a year or so there'll be something to see 
06/06/08
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hecanjog
What would be great as opposed to the class idea, is maybe some kind of "work history" repository, be it by blog or wiki or video site or whatever, where people can document their track progress in an instructive and intuitive way, and without much distraction from the work itself. Or at least document progress in a way that is helpful to improving the composing process.
I think this is an excellent idea. Documenting your working process would be really helpful to yourself too I think, just like it's helpful to record when you practice to listen more objectively later. What if i built in something for this purpose for the remixourband.com website i'm working on?
Interesting thread too folks, I'll just say for now that I think a working process is such a personal thing that a magic formula for success is impossible. That said, we can all learn from each other just by sharing our ideas and approaches, even if it's just to look back at ourselves and re-evaluate what we need to change ourselves.
06/06/08
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sweettrip
yeah, i like that idea too. maybe i'll try it myself as well. if it turns into something interesting or constructive, i'll share it with everyone...
06/06/08
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RogerRoger
I'm all for a publicly viewable work history. I guess people would have to check their ego at the door, because this type of thing is liable to expose any trade secrets if done thoroughly and instructively.
When I talk about things that are nigh impossible to reverse-engineer, I mostly mean things like the sound you get when combining two different sounds playing in unison for a new sound, and those wild, yet deliberate processing techniques on drums, like in the aforementioned Gang Gene track, where they sound like they were once natural sounds, but have been heavily modified, and modified only digitally.
06/06/08
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p
I was reading something yesterday about the ultimate breaks and beats series (you know the vinyl that collects breaks for hip hop djs/producers) and some of the artist commented that they didn't like the series while others said even if you exposed certain breaks that they had many more where that came from and those were only the obvious ones. It made those into it dig further and not rely on the staples.
I think the same idea applies to what your suggesting.
06/06/08
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license
I like the wiki idea. This would make it a lot easier to group and find similarities between different peoples' techniques, and in turn to stimulate synthesis of new techniques. Who is the hosting king now that panicnow is closed?
06/06/08
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quip
daswesen.
i would like to talk about my train techniques.
06/06/08
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RogerRoger
license said: "Who is the hosting king now that panicnow is closed?"
John mentioned Site5. Anyone else having good results from this hosting?
06/06/08
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jdg
i like mediatemple but they are the cheepist.
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