earpick

There’s been a lot going on lately. It doesn’t really help this supposedly audio related blog that my full-time job is in web design and there is also photography in the picture (ha!).

To add to all that, there is the added pressure of Fluke users to improive it + I’ve been working on a super-secret social/community type of website with a good friend of mine, along with trying to finish some of those new tracks that I have cooking. I’m a little tired of putting music off and never finishing the tracks that I think have potential.

How often does that happen to you? And how do you write your music anyway?

In the world of electronic music the creative process seems to be quite different than sitting down with a guitar or a lined piece of paper to write lyrics on. Let’s face it — a lot of electronic musicians are not very musical people. We are often gear nerds, knob fiddlers or both. Not to say that can’t get you off your ass and start dancing, it’s mostly about the beat after all. But few have the skill or education to write complex melodic pieces.

When it comes to electronic music, I personally start out with a 4 or 8 beat loop and build it up until I have almost all the tracks the finished piece would. They may not sound great altogether but I just selectively mute and solo the parts I like and jot down notes about it onto a piece of paper or into Google Notebook. And then when time comes, if it does, I just sort of extend everything out of that one loop into a full song.

The upside is that I can get a lot of ideas in quickly cause when the musical/knob muse comes along she usually doesn’t stay around much. The downside though is that unless I jot down detailed notes, later on when extending the piece I often struggle to maintain the same level of momentum and excitement in the piece. It seems to me that after it’s all done, it sounds like a boring ’staircase’ build-up to that one 4-8 beat loop. Lately I’ve been able to partially solve the problem by having multiple 4-beat loops spread out on the timeline that capture different moments in the track like snapshots, and later on it’s easier to come back to those same ideas and just build transitions between them.

That approach works for me because initially I don’t often have a clear idea of where I want to go with the piece. I might be in a certain mood, or feel like making some weird noises, or just want to fiddle around with synths, which ends up becoming a track of some sort. Hardware synths or controllers are great for that - quite easy to toy around with a hands-on approach.

Speaking of fiddling and new tracks, there are a few new ones that I would like to release and have decided to dedicate regular time to. One is a remix for the upcoming Ferdinand contest, that’s a must, although it was quite greedy of them to only include the guitar in the free stems. Secondly, an electro-track for which I after some fun time with Ultrabeat synthesized an entire drum kit, along with some fun sound FX. It’s coming up, promise. I have a new updated website in the works with MP3s available.

Let me know how you make your tunes.