• Audio
• Photos

Lyrics

so, this is week 8.... sorta. i think it actually took me closer to ten, eleven weeks to get here. but whatever. week eight. and, i think this will be the last of the weekly project for awhile. i want to take a month or two off from music and really focus on digital painting. i'll still make music, it just won't be the focus of my day like it has been. i usually either focus on art or music, doing both every day, but with one or the other taking precedence. and now i think i'm going to flip the precedence for a while.

anyways. maybe i should talk for a minute about the process i've been using to make these tracks.

i usually start out with two drum tracks and two synth tracks, one melody and one bass. i'll take a drum loop or bit of noise or whatever and chop it up into a drum pattern. then i'll usually muck about and try to find a melody that fits the drum pattern more or less. once i have a melody (midi) track, i copy it to the other synth pattern, and change it about so that it complements or accentuates in some way the original melody. then i fill in odd sounds in the second drum track, as a way to fill in the rhythmic elements and add more life to the piece.

i do this ten times. each time i'm creating a unique pattern for each element, the (primary) drum, the other drums, the melody synth and the (usually) bass synth. i make ten different chunks of music, trying to make them as different as i can from each other. usually among the ten chunks i have five or so that are decent, one that's excellent, and a few that are a little boring.

then i spend some time just trying to arrange the chunks in an order that makes sense. some pieces of melody or percussion just can't be put next to other ones.... so you have to figure out where each piece is going to fit. maybe one sounds like an intro, maybe you want to save this one for a "chorus" type moment. sometimes you have to come up with transition pieces just to get from chunk a to chunk b.

sometimes there'll be a chunk that you love, but just won't fit with any of the other chunks. that's always a terrible moment, letting that one chunk die......

anyways. so, i make an arrangement that flows, and then i usually start to work on synth patches. up until this point i usually just use some random preset that has the shape i want. maybe it's a drone, maybe it's a pluck, who knows. but now i don't want to just have the same synth playing over the whole arrangement. it's hard on your ears, no matter how great that synth sound is.

so i usually make about twenty synth presets. again, trying to get some variety in there, but this time you have to keep some things in common too. can't go completely random.

then it's just a matter of deciding which synth patches go with which chunks, then spend some time mixing and checking all the levels.... maybe a few effects to keep things interesting...... and you're done.

yeah. it's a long, backwards ass process. but i think the results can be remarkable. at the very least, it's not repetitive. and sometimes when you're arranging it, it's like the song comes to life right there in front of you. you had all these little bits and pieces, and suddenly they all fit together and it's this living breathing whole.

one thing i cannot do is sit down and go "okay, here's the first four bars, and now i need another couple of bars here, now a chorus type thing....." yeah. it just doesn't work for me that way. i have to make all these chunks, and then after the fact i can listen back to them and go "oh, that's an outro, and that one's a good one to lead into this one here.....". it's just the only way that ever seems to work for me.

and yeah, i tend to overthink things. i want to try and apply this method to making a guitar based song. maybe make ten chunks of drums and guitar, then come up with different fx solutions for each of the ten chunks..... arrange it, and there it is.

could be interesting.