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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHKf92Ta-9E this video is directed toward soloing guitarists (i.e. not me  ) but i've tried to think of these same ideas while arranging each section of a song as well as the overall song itself and it's been really helpful. thinking of things as a narrative with scenes and story beats helps me figure out how things flow by letting me rely on feel once i have an end goal to move toward. i can see where the melody criticism came from on your track, but i think i disagree with how they phrased it. you have a ton of cool melodies in there that i could hum along to! but the reason i have a hard time humming the tune afterward is because you have so many of them and none of them take center stage. i tend to have the opposite problem where i have one little riff but have a hard time coming up with others that compliment it so it ends up too repetitive. so maybe we should be thinking about it in terms of revealing new information that builds on previous information over the course of the song? i'm just thinking out loud at this point, but i'm gonna try that next time i sit down to write. i guess the times i struggle most with songwriting are when i don't know what i want to say with a piece, let alone how to say it, which is not something i'd thought about before.
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Dec 8, 2022 19:23
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Pollyanna posted:I absolutely hate the sound of my own voice This right here. Even if I can hold a tune a little, the tone of my voice makes me cringe.
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Dec 9, 2022 16:49
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Throw a little reverb on there, it'll sound a little more like it does in your head with your skullverb going on
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Dec 10, 2022 21:42
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Luna posted:This right here. Even if I can hold a tune a little, the tone of my voice makes me cringe. To a certain degree, I think this is simply natural, i.e., everyone feels this way. It takes a while to get comfortable with hearing one's own voice, and even longer to get to know how to use it as an instrument. The more you try to sing (not just on your own stuff, but along with other music, and especially different styles of music) the better you will get at it, the more control you will have, and the more you will understand the limits and unique features of your own voice. With that, you'll be better able to use your voice effectively as an instrument. I think the other thing I might add is that I almost always hate my own vocals after I record them, but that judgment will often change after I've had time to live with the recording for a while. I'm a teacher, and I always tell my students that they should try to give themselves a day or two between writing and editing their final papers for me, and the same thing goes for music. Don't feel the need to come to an immediate judgment about what you're doing. Take some time away from the track, and then come back and listen to it with less awareness that it is you, and you might find you like it better. We are our own worst critics after all, and being able to adopt a critical distance on our own work can make it easier to perceive what works and what doesn't. InternetOfTwinks posted:Throw a little reverb on there, it'll sound a little more like it does in your head with your skullverb going on Also, this^^^: Blixa Bargeld from Einstürzende Neubauten calls this "mercy reverb," and you'll be a lot more comfortable singing when you've got it on, even if you don't use it on the final vocal take. El Miguel fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Dec 11, 2022 |
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Dec 11, 2022 15:29
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My situation is a little different. I've thought about vocal training to strengthen and master what I do have, but my pitch and timbre are set - my voice is not going to change to something I unabashedly like. --- My attempts at cultivating understanding and insight continue. I found an interesting snippet of advice:  And thought hey, there's a lot of music I like and wish to learn from - why not try this out? So I spent Thursday evening and almost all of Friday transcribing a track from a Sega Genesis game: Devilish - Stage 1 Graveyard (Hitoshi Sakimoto) Compare to the original. My goal was primarily to understand the song's arrangement, because I think it has a really fun and exciting progression. But I also want to learn the lower level too, as in how each track/piece is written and why. The Basics Time signature is 4/4, with a four-on-the-floor beat. The rhythm is subdivided into triplets, with (I think) a 2:1 shuffle beat: https://voca.ro/1oX3jv7dd0xy The sequence looks like this in Renoise:  You can see that it's got an Intro, an early Bridge, an A section, and a B section. Pretty standard. It's also fairly short - this is about 1:09 long. (yes, it took me that long to transcribe just over a minute's worth of music  )The Intro is roughly as long as one section (4 patterns x 2 bars per pattern = 8 bars), and the Bridge is half of that (4 bars). Only three "parts" play throughout the entire track: Slap/Distortion Bass, Percussion, and Detune Pulse. They usually highlight the 2:1 shuffle beat. If we group Slap/Distortion Bass, Percussion, and Detune Pulse together in section A (which sounds reasonable to my ears), there are only ever three unique musical ideas "on" at a time (besides a couple Bass/Treble pads). Most of the track is in some form of D phrygian(/maybe G natural minor?) according to the bassline. Except for section B, which is relatively all over the place - anyone know what the gently caress is going on? Percussion Percussion is a fairly simple BD+SD+CH, with either toms (played by BD at higher notes) or SD used for fills. There is one core drumline pattern. The pattern is 1 bar long. So for example, if A represents 1 bar of the drum loop and B represents a fill, the intro looks like this: AAAB AAAB The core pattern is used throughout the track except for section A, where it is slightly altered with an additional snare hit in places (I don't know why). There is a second drumline pattern that is only used on bars 3 and 4(/7 and 8) of Section B, which I suspect is intended to highlight the standout rhythmic departure around then. Fills happen every 4 bars. Different fill for each section, and only one kind is used within each section. I'm completely useless at fills so I rarely make any - maybe I should use them more... I couldn't figure out what note BD+SD+CH were tuned to. I suspect something in the relevant key. It probably matters, but I have no idea. Bassline Of all the parts in the track, the Bassline is the simplest and most consistent. There is only one musical idea. That idea is used everywhere and constantly except for the breakdown(?) in Section B - which also uses a different YM2612 patch. There is only one variation on this musical idea, used as a transition between the Bridge and Section A. Probably a "fill", like with the percussion. Only the bassline's form stays the same over time. The bassline is played in different intervals for each section, as such: Intro: 1st (D) - 1st - 1st - 1st Bridge: 4th (G) - 4th Section A: 4th - 7th (C) - 4th - 7th Section B: ??? - 4th? - ??? - 4th? I don't have any more insights here. Drums and bass are like the most important thing to understand completely, so I need to practice.Main Melody The main melody is slower than the bassline and the detune backup, and seems to be a lot more mobile in Section A than any other part. Main melody duty in the intro is shared between a Brass patch and a Distortion Guitar patch. Here, they are identical in progression - what appears to be a 1st-2nd-3rd-4th over four bars. Elsewhere, lead duties are split between the two voices. Only one of Brass or Distortion Guitar plays in any section - Brass takes Section A, Distortion Guitar takes Section B. Section A's melody is a lead Brass following this progression: code:Section B's melody reminds me more of the bassline and I don't know what to think of it. Lead Brass x Backup Brass Section A's melody (Lead Brass) and countermelody (Backup Brass) are dope as poo poo: https://voca.ro/1mdJ6U8j6pSx For some reason, I hear Final Fantasy Tactics in this. I don't quite understand it, but one thing's for sure: the contrast between slower melody and pluckier/quicker countermelody is quite effective. Chords One note about intervallic interplay: as far as I can tell, Backup Brass and Distortion Guitar always play two notes with some sort of 7-semitone interval. e.g. in section B, G and C are 7 semitones apart, as are F and C (but in the opposite direction). Power chords!!! Wow!!! Conclusions Derive all your musical ideas from a single source. Sakimoto probably came up with the melody in Section A first, and then derived the key, bassline, and triplet-divided rhythm from it. A few good related musical ideas are better than a lot of decent but independently written ideas. This track actually reuses its musical ideas a fair bit, just in slightly different forms. For example, listen to the Slap Bass, Detune Pulse, and a Bell patch in Bridge+Section A: https://voca.ro/1dyIiFPJQulB ABAB is a very effective structure, especially when fills are used to connect different ABABs. Use melodic and harmonic variations to signal the end of a section and transition to another. Don't go overboard, but definitely use them when appropriate. Keep the drumline consistent, but fill every four bars. Use the same fill within each section. The bassline helps keep rhythm and also establishes the home key/scale, so take advantage of that. Reflect the percussion in the bassline and the bassline in the percussion. Try an ABAB chord progression across 8 bars of the bassline. --- I could go on - I didn't even cover the pulse waves - but I'll stop there. Sakimoto cites "old techno and progressive rock" as his musical influences. I should dive into those. Maybe he has a Spotify playlist?
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Dec 11, 2022 20:34
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This percolated up in my youtube recommendations, might be a bit of derail in here but I found it pretty interesting to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGCxBVu1-sE As portrayed in the video he spends almost no time on sound design (though to be fair maybe he doesn't need to, he's got decades of experience) but rather does something quick and seemingly random, samples it, and then starts arranging a track out of it. The video doesn't directly focus on it but you can pick up a bit of how he arranges sounds too. So maybe I need to stop obsessing over finding the perfect sound and just slap stuff together.
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Dec 13, 2022 17:58
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Hey that's a good direction and exercise you came across Pollyanna. Mimicking the masters you aspire to learn from for practice can teach you a lot. Hunter S. Thompson used to type out Hemmingway novels repeatedly as a way of gaining insight into how it felt to actually write them, and gain skills on the typewriter.
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Dec 13, 2022 18:19
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Hmm, either this melody in my head is in 12/8 or I suck at counting. Listened to a lot of Tool in high school so both are equally likely.
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Dec 13, 2022 19:36
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B33rChiller posted:Hey that's a good direction and exercise you came across Pollyanna. man if it took me that much to mimic one video game track ill be dust by the time i get whole albums down lmao Re: the bolded here, guess what it’s Higher Level Rambling Time. xzzy posted:This percolated up in my youtube recommendations, might be a bit of derail in here but I found it pretty interesting to watch. Basically, yeah. He doesn’t dwell on sound design much in that video (the way it was cut and edited, at least) not necessarily because he does not and has never done so, but because he has done a lot of sound design in the past. Considering the most sound design he does before arranging the track is vaguely tweaking a DX patch, he’s probably built up a large stockpile of sounds he already likes and wants to use again. So what you see is a result of, not a lack of, a long history of sound design. Also he’s making techno/house (there is no difference you can’t convince me otherwise) and literally anything works in those genres as long as it’s repeated over time. So sound design, composition, and arrangement for EDM is turbo easy mode. Which is a good thing, actually. One of the most important things to do as a musician is to make a lot, a LOT, of crap. That’s the best way to not make crap. Thing is that humans are really bad at knowing what should come next, but they’re really good at knowing whether they like something or not. It’s a lot easier and more productive to say “aw this is garbage I hate this part I’m changing it” than it is to say “I have no idea what my best option from here is”. So take the opposite approach and make something good after it already sucks. —- Also, never forget the Golden Rule of music: https://youtu.be/qX-YfuVQmX8 Don’t think about being good at music. You aren’t and may never be. Even if you are, there will always be someone better. Even if you are, the rest of life can and probably will still kick your rear end. Even if you are, you are still you. Don’t think about being successful at music. You aren’t and may never be. There are far too many randos out there with Ableton, and terabytes of $20 sample packs for you to be a blip on anyone’s radar. Even if you are successful, it doesn’t last long anyway. Don’t think about being great at music. You aren’t and may never be. My favorite musicians are almost godly in my eyes and make some of the best music I’ve ever heard and 99% of the planet doesn’t give a gently caress about even the ones with Grammies and it certainly won’t care in 50-100-500-5000 years when all of us are dust. Try not to think about any of this, and making music will stop being depressing and frustrating.
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Dec 13, 2022 20:06
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Yeah, music confuses me. I do photography too and I know I'll never be famous or make money off it and I'm comfortable with that, but it is trivial for me to go for a walk and capture something I will enjoy and hang on my wall. Doing a song just for myself that I like listening to is still super elusive.
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Dec 13, 2022 20:21
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I feel that. Best option I’ve found is to recognize and understand that it is elusive and let go of trying to catch it or hold onto it when you find it. Eventually you will make an entire track that will appeal to you perfectly, but you are not in control of that - all any of us music makers can really do is make choices. Sometimes those choices turn out well.
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Dec 13, 2022 20:30
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59-DHpDgkpo&t=19s Found this guy talking about his approach to making (in the context of the video) acid techno, and thought what he had to say was interesting. He's DAWless, but this could easily apply to the DAW. quote:The studio instrument is an important part of understanding how I make [music]. So how do I make [music]? It starts with this massive thing called a studio instrument. And it's fair to say I don't use every single part connected altogether and then hit play on my DAW. No, it doesn't work like that for me. This more or less confirms that it is 100% possible and apparently not unheard of to make music the way I originally thought you could - just layering things on top of each other that all have a commonality (e.g. a common beat, the same scale or key, etc.). Making the layers themselves is pretty easy. Experiment, do what sounds good to you, go in interesting directions, and expect to spend a lot of time on trial and error. There's no guarantee that you'll be completely happy with the result, therefore don't let that stop you at all. So then it becomes a matter of thinking about the layers themselves, how they relate, how they interact, and how they group together. You have to start thinking about what layers make sense to play at the same time, and what layers sound better when mutually exclusive. At some point, I started getting overwhelmed by everything that could possibly be in a song or track. I tried to deal with it by starting with the percussion/rhythm and trying to figure out what my next step "should" be. That honestly hasn't helped a whole lot, so I want to try the aforementioned method for a while. See if that helps me more. I don't necessarily want to make music for dancing. I like a good beat, and it's dope if you dance to it, but there's no assurance that this works for anything other than electronic dance music. Let's find out!
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Dec 30, 2022 17:03
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Most of the chat so far has been about individual pieces, so here's some thoughts on putting together an album. All the releases I've made up until recently have been tracks I finished individually, then pooled together when there were enough of a given style to release something. With my most recent record I wanted it to sound cohesive and intentional. I decided very early on which constraints I would use: The instruments would be electric bass, drumkit and chromatic percussion (marimba, xylophone, etc) I would focus on rhythm rather than harmony I would try to make some of the rhythms using generative methods When not made generatively, I would try to use polymetric rhythms There were some few deviations from this - for some tracks I used sampled sounds, for one track I used electronic drums - but the constraints were immensely helpful in getting me started. The idea of using polymeter and generative rhythms solved a problem a lot of people are discussing in this thread: looping or repetitiveness. When you've got short-ish rhythms that overlap one another in complex ways (since they don't repeat at the same points) you get a lot of variation and interest "for free". Another thing that's coming up often in this thread is originality. I've been pretty up-front about my influences on this record: Steve Reich, LCD Soundsystem, Meute. I'm not trying to be original, but rather to combine these influences in a way I'd like to hear. I think the result is original enough - it doesn't sound like a straight rip-off of any of these artists, but it's clearly indebted to them.
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Dec 30, 2022 18:04
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I have literally no idea what an album actually is outside of a collection of songs released together. I suspect that that's all it takes to make an album, but I think the ones that we remember most vividly and return to have a common touchstone throughout. Constraints and specific instruments help. Other than that, I'm not really sure. I'd love to learn more about making an album as opposed to just a single song.
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Dec 30, 2022 21:27
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Pollyanna posted:I have literally no idea what an album actually is outside of a collection of songs released together. I suspect that that's all it takes to make an album, but I think the ones that we remember most vividly and return to have a common touchstone throughout. Constraints and specific instruments help. Other than that, I'm not really sure. A concept album is a good example of something that only works in the album format. A classic example is 2112 by Rush, but there's more recent ones like A Grand Don't Come for Free by The Streets (ok maybe not that recent, it came out 18 years ago  )
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Dec 30, 2022 22:07
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Yeah, if you want to tell a bit more of a complex story in multiple scenes, or acts, spreading it out across an entire album is one way to go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YYeU_TR5ow
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Dec 31, 2022 00:05
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I consider all of my releases to be mixtapes. Trying to be more like Lil B, keeping the runtimes in the multiple hours and the curation low. I'm mainly grouping songs by what part of my studio they were made with and when they were made.
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Dec 31, 2022 01:09
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B33rChiller posted:Yeah, if you want to tell a bit more of a complex story in multiple scenes, or acts, spreading it out across an entire album is one way to go. I can barely derive music from personal emotion and artistic intent as is 
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Dec 31, 2022 02:32
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Pollyanna posted:I can barely derive music from personal emotion and artistic intent as is  same. Don't feel bad. I count it as a big bonus if I can elicit any emotion in a listener. Getting my own out with intention? nah. At best, it's hinted at, or the sounds are coloured by it. I just really like listening to a lot of it
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Dec 31, 2022 02:49
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Oh fer sure. If I don’t like how my music sounds, even if I think it’s dorky and could be better, then what other people find in it doesn’t matter. I better be able to enjoy my own music. Album talk: I want to make this the year that I release an EP. I have a name and one single constraint (use only one specific VST for synth voices), but nothing else. I wanted my next constraint to be the genre, in this case dungeon synth. (EDIT!!: actually probably not cause I’m not hearing a lot of synth in this genre, so wtf mate) But I don’t naturally write music in the style of dungeon synth. I mean yeah, right now I don’t write music at all because I’ve released next to nothing. It’s that there’s no guarantee that my natural tendencies are the same ones for composing dungeon synth, and that makes me worry that what I make isn’t going to be “correct”. How do you get over the fear and anxiety of writing in a genre that you don’t have experience in or deeply understand? (I’m of half a mind to dispense with the genre constraint entirely, and instead treat it as a prompt instead. A guideline, not a rule.) Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 02:07
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I’m going to try making something akin to a concept album. Really, it’s just a bunch of tracks that share a common design goal, but the phrase “concept album” is close enough. My music has felt very aimless to me, and I want more guidance and structure to what I make. I have a relatively developed document, but haven’t scoped any work or considered what the timeline would look like. Anyone here made an album (for lack of a better word) before? How did you make it?
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Jan 11, 2023 18:11
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i'm also in the middle of making a concept album! my college band also did a concept album as our only full-length release, so it's not entirely alien to me, but i was much more in a supporting role in that case so this has been a little bit different. effortpost ahoy: a couple years ago, my current band released our first album. the process for that was largely the same as the EP we had done prior, where i would write a bunch of music and my cousin would write a bunch of lyrics, and then i'd take those lyrics and match them up to instrumentals, adding to and modifying them as needed. the only real exception to that was when one set of lyrics called for a Rage Against the Machine feel, which meant i wrote the music specifically for those lyrics. that was a really fun part of the album, since i did a bunch of research on Morello's pedal board and dug into their first couple albums for structural ideas. assembling the finished songs into album form was done last, and while we specifically wrote an intro and outro, the rest of the tracks were put together just based on how they felt. the first half was mostly assembled based on energy levels, and the second half of the album ended up being where we stuck all the songs that had clear (to us, anyway) influences. at the end of last year, we decided to start work on the second album. in the time since the first my cousin would occasionally send me lyrics, so i had a backlog to dig through and decided to approach this one differently. i went through the pile and ended up finding some common thematic threads through a lot of them, so i pulled the dozen or so that i liked best and started doing demos. again, one had a specific feel called out (this time it was B-52s), so that one was easy enough to figure out, but i decided i wanted the music for all the songs to be a bit more thoughtful and reactive to the lyrics like that instead of bolted on to whatever would fit. to that end, i'd recently been learning a couple covers in D drop C and really liked the idea of using that instead of defaulting to Eb standard like i usually do. adding that constraint seemed to help a ton with a cohesive feel, not just because it's the same tuning across the album but also because it's a tuning i've never really worked with, and so figuring out how it worked with both my ability to play and also to sing led the demos to end up with a good balance between experimentation and cohesion. one of the demos was a silly little superhero theme. once we started trying to think of a framing device for the album, that theme along with another song gave us the idea for a sesame street-style kids puppet show, so i wrote a draft of the interstitial segments, which ended up dictating what the final tracklist will be. we also ended up digging out an older song idea we'd shelved from the first album since it fit here in a way we were really happy with. and that's where we're at today! up next is revising the interstitial segments, and we decided to write one more song because we wanted to flesh out a topic that came up in those interstitials. once that's done, i'm going to sit down with a friend whose album i did vocal mixes for last year and punch up the demos since i really liked some of the structural things he did on his album. once the song arrangements are locked in, we'll record those, and then i'll get ahold of the actors i have slated to play the characters in the interstitials. i'm definitely interested to hear how other people approach making an album. i have a tendency to take forever since i (and everyone i work with) just do it during free time, but i can imagine blocking out a week or two to just work on an album would go a long way.
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Jan 11, 2023 20:01
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CaptainViolence posted:one of the demos was a silly little superhero theme. once we started trying to think of a framing device for the album, that theme along with another song gave us the idea for a sesame street-style kids puppet show, This sounds amazing!
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Jan 14, 2023 16:06
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haha, thanks! i'll be delighted if we can pull it off--i know a couple people through work that have experience making puppets, so we're hoping to be able to do a music video down the line as well. it's amazing how easily ideas can occur and be evaluated once you have a clear direction to work toward. one takeaway i've had during the process so far is that writing the story out in prose was wildly helpful with organizing the thoughts and themes in a way that makes it easy to compare how well any given peiece of the puzzle is contributing. i really want to try scaling it down to work on an individual song, because it seems like it could be a good way to establish a metric to compare the actual songwriting to and guide the songwriting/arranging
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Jan 14, 2023 19:09
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Good stuff here, thank you!CaptainViolence posted:a couple years ago, my current band released our first album. the process for that was largely the same as the EP we had done prior, where i would write a bunch of music and my cousin would write a bunch of lyrics, and then i'd take those lyrics and match them up to instrumentals, adding to and modifying them as needed. Completely independently? That’s surprising, I figured lyrics and music came one from another, if not developed together. Is there a reason they were written separately? Just to split the work up? What went into adding and modifying the instrumentals and/or lyrics? quote:assembling the finished songs into album form was done last, and while we specifically wrote an intro and outro, the rest of the tracks were put together just based on how they felt. the first half was mostly assembled based on energy levels, and the second half of the album ended up being where we stuck all the songs that had clear (to us, anyway) influences. Interesting. The work I have in mind - probably better to just call it a story told via music - follows a general story beat, and I don’t really know what the energy should be at each point. How did you assemble based on energy levels? Was there a particular pattern you followed? quote:at the end of last year, we decided to start work on the second album. in the time since the first my cousin would occasionally send me lyrics, so i had a backlog to dig through and decided to approach this one differently. i went through the pile and ended up finding some common thematic threads through a lot of them, so i pulled the dozen or so that i liked best and started doing demos. again, one had a specific feel called out (this time it was B-52s), so that one was easy enough to figure out, but i decided i wanted the music for all the songs to be a bit more thoughtful and reactive to the lyrics like that instead of bolted on to whatever would fit. Okay, that addresses my previous question. quote:to that end, i'd recently been learning a couple covers in D drop C and really liked the idea of using that instead of defaulting to Eb standard like i usually do. adding that constraint seemed to help a ton with a cohesive feel, not just because it's the same tuning across the album but also because it's a tuning i've never really worked with, and so figuring out how it worked with both my ability to play and also to sing led the demos to end up with a good balance between experimentation and cohesion. Why that tuning in particular? And what made you choose a specific tuning as the throughline for the entire album? What did you do to ensure that throughline was present in the entire work? quote:one of the demos was a silly little superhero theme. once we started trying to think of a framing device for the album, that theme along with another song gave us the idea for a sesame street-style kids puppet show, so i wrote a draft of the interstitial segments, which ended up dictating what the final tracklist will be. That is adorable.  So the framing device for the album came afterward, instead of being the first thing about it? Did you ever feel like the framing device felt forced or inauthentic? Like whatever decisions and assumptions you make about the work were somehow wrong, even though there is no “right”? For my work, I have a framing device, a very generic story (I can’t write for poo poo), a relatively dark and medieval tone, and a plan for instrumentation. These elements are individually sound, and on the surface they seem cool to put together. But I can’t get rid of this nagging feeling of doubt, of not being able to prove that what I’m doing is right or makes sense. I also get cold feet because I have no idea what I’m doing and that makes me freeze up - I’m really bad at doing things unless I have explicit instructions to follow. Did you ever have that? Ever try something very new to you and get tripped up or frozen by not knowing for sure what step to take next? quote:
I’d love to hear about what arrangements you end up making, and why! As far as I can tell, there is infinite choice in putting a bunch of phrases, rhythms, harmonies, melodies, and voices together. That doesn’t make me feel free - that makes me shut down out of paralysis. I don’t know what to do next, which means I can’t do anything next. I don’t know why, but it’s not good and it’s part of why I’m less productive than I could be. quote:i'm definitely interested to hear how other people approach making an album. i have a tendency to take forever since i (and everyone i work with) just do it during free time, but i can imagine blocking out a week or two to just work on an album would go a long way. Oh for sure. I honestly wish I could just leave my day job behind and spend my time writing music/albums/soundtracks/whatever (maybe even go back to school for composition), but I need the money, so… CaptainViolence posted:one takeaway i've had during the process so far is that writing the story out in prose was wildly helpful with organizing the thoughts and themes in a way that makes it easy to compare how well any given peiece of the puzzle is contributing. i really want to try scaling it down to work on an individual song, because it seems like it could be a good way to establish a metric to compare the actual songwriting to and guide the songwriting/arranging Oh boy. I’ve only written a little bit before, mostly when I was in K-12, and I know things like the hero’s journey and stuff - but I’m no writer Maybe I should flesh that plot out more…
Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Jan 17, 2023 |
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Jan 17, 2023 16:58
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Pollyanna posted:Completely independently? That’s surprising, I figured lyrics and music came one from another, if not developed together. Is there a reason they were written separately? Just to split the work up? What went into adding and modifying the instrumentals and/or lyrics? quote:Okay, that addresses my previous question. haha, yeah, the entire project started because i had an EP's worth of music, but i am terrible with lyrics. when i have something particular to write about, i can do it and usually end up with something i'm relatively happy with (or at least don't hate), but i struggle to come up with anything i find particularly interesting if i just sit down to write. my cousin, on the other hand, tosses out lyrics like they're nothing. he rarely spends time to develop them, but he can toss out a first draft seemingly effortlessly. over the EP and first album, that turned into me writing/recording some music, him writing a bunch of lyrics, and then me going through the lyrics to add or subtract stanzas/lines/syllables from each line to make it fit the song. i would occasionally write extra lines that continued the thought of what he already had, but usually i was chopping stuff out rather than adding. it worked, but it took some effort and i wasn't always happy with the way i revised the lyrics. quote:Interesting. The work I have in mind - probably better to just call it a story told via music - follows a general story beat, and I don’t really know what the energy should be at each point. How did you assemble based on energy levels? Was there a particular pattern you followed? for your project, it sounds like it might be useful to do what my mentor called a sound design score. basically, you draw a simple two axis graph with time on the bottom and intensity on the side. maybe that intensity comes from loudness, maybe from emotional content (likely both). then you just draw a line graph as you imagine how things go. it might make more sense to do one for something you're already familiar with, but basically it helps visualize how things are going to flow into one another. do you want smooth transitions, do you want a spot where it kicks you in the face out of nowhere, do you want a big sudden ending or a smooth denouement? once you have your overall journey, you can break it down and do them for individual instruments. you don't have to be super precise with anything, it's just a way of figuring out where in general you want to be at any point to give you a starting point. i don't do it as much as i should, but i've found it helpful when i'm stuck. quote:Why that tuning in particular? And what made you choose a specific tuning as the throughline for the entire album? What did you do to ensure that throughline was present in the entire work? quote:As far as I can tell, there is infinite choice in putting a bunch of phrases, rhythms, harmonies, melodies, and voices together. That doesn’t make me feel free - that makes me shut down out of paralysis. I don’t know what to do next, which means I can’t do anything next. I don’t know why, but it’s not good and it’s part of why I’m less productive than I could be. as another point in favor of restrictions: i did a synth-based EP in 2020 where i only allowed myself to use a drum machine, a stratocaster, a korg ms-20, and a stylophone, and it's amazing how much limiting myself helped me be creative with what i had (even if i still broke the rules sometimes). i tried to do a follow up album, and just sort of stalled out (for two years now) because i gave myself full run of whatever and suddenly i couldn't figure out how to turn any of the riffs i wrote into songs i enjoyed. that's the main reason i decided to do this whole album in d drop c. quote:So the framing device for the album came afterward, instead of being the first thing about it? Did you ever feel like the framing device felt forced or inauthentic? Like whatever decisions and assumptions you make about the work were somehow wrong, even though there is no “right”? i've never been good at forcing things musically, so i feel like any time i make a good decision it's just me noticing an accident or coincidence that i like a lot and doubling down on it. that also happens a lot easier when i'm working with other people, since they're going to be bringing things i never would have thought of in a million years that probably also don't seem special to them because they're the ones who thought of it. i feel way more confident in my skills supporting a central idea than generating it in the first place. quote:For my work, I have a framing device, a very generic story (I can’t write for poo poo), a relatively dark and medieval tone, and a plan for instrumentation. These elements are individually sound, and on the surface they seem cool to put together. oh, yeah, i am usually swimming in that feeling. there's a track on this album that's supposed to be very dean martin/frank sinatra, and i am frozen as hell not knowing how to approach that. i'm just barely at the point where i think i might be able to figure it out as i go, but i'm absolutely not capable of just throwing down a demo. it's going to be a stumbling block down the line, but thankfully there is enough other stuff to do that it's not holding anything up yet. i think in your case, it might help to focus on some things that you're confident in. it sounds like you have a cool idea in mind, so whatever inches you along to that goal is good, even if you come back to revise it later. i am a firm believer in research being part of the process, so sometimes when i'm stuck feeling like i don't know enough to move forward, i'll just listen to a ton of stuff in the same general realm of what i want to do and try to pick out individual things i like and think i'm capable of stealing and integrating into my own work. or hell, just do a straight up cover, since there's no instructions more explicit than "here's a song and all the parts, recreate it but feel free to change it up." prepping for this album, i did a cover of toxic by britney spears, just to get me back into the recording process. it's not finished because i wasn't happy with a bunch of it, but there are a bunch of things i do like about it so far and it's there for me to chip away at when i have an idea for something i want to do on the album but need a playground to test it out in first. i don't think i've ever met anyone at any skill level whose imagination didn't far outstrip their technical ability, so keeping that in mind and trying to build a toolbox to draw from might be helpful to help you break through that barrier. don't just crash the gate, scope things out and sneak in through the side entrance. quote:Oh boy. I’ve only written a little bit before, mostly when I was in K-12, and I know things like the hero’s journey and stuff - but I’m no writer i think it'd be cool to hear what you have in mind for your project, if you're comfortable sharing! i know for me, typing out where i'm at, where i'm headed, and all the thoughts about that process here in this thread was very helpful for me, and even just the description of dark medieval tone is pretty intriguing to me. i'm curious to hear your plans for instrumentation and how you're planning to frame things, but also where exactly in your process you're getting cold feet or what sort of explicit instructions you've found helpful before but are currently feeling the lack thereof. so, like, a rundown of what you've done, what you want to do, and what's getting in between those, if you have any thoughts on it.
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Jan 17, 2023 21:05
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Thank you for the effort post  I’m slowly coming around to the idea that there isn’t actually anything I’m missing, and that I’m not going to find some magic piece of knowledge or insight that will make it all effortless. Hopefully that doesn’t stop me from actually doing poo poo.CaptainViolence posted:i think it'd be cool to hear what you have in mind for your project, if you're comfortable sharing! i know for me, typing out where i'm at, where i'm headed, and all the thoughts about that process here in this thread was very helpful for me, and even just the description of dark medieval tone is pretty intriguing to me. i'm curious to hear your plans for instrumentation and how you're planning to frame things, but also where exactly in your process you're getting cold feet or what sort of explicit instructions you've found helpful before but are currently feeling the lack thereof. so, like, a rundown of what you've done, what you want to do, and what's getting in between those, if you have any thoughts on it. Sure, why not. — Backstory is, I got Digitalis for Christmas. It bills itself as a “digital degradation and glitch tool”. Since I’m no stranger to corruption, that got me thinking about digital distortion as both a musical element and an effect on a video game. The obvious conclusion was to marry the two. The album, such that it is, is quote-unquote “dark electronic”. The story is about a party of adventurers in the world of a decaying, corrupted video game cartridge. The influences I bring are industrial, prog rock, breakbeat, post-punk, dungeon synth, and old video game soundtracks. The three tools I can use are Renoise, Vital, and Aberrant Digitalis. The music would start clean and end dirty. You’d begin with the straightforward clean tones of dungeon synth and and a tiny bit of chiptune, and end heavily distorted like industrial and glitch. The story is pretty straightforward. Fantasy adventurers wander a dungeon, fight monsters, and then chaos consumes the world.  Typical 3 act structure of normal fantasy world, planar corruption, and oh-poo poo-my-NES-is-broken.Influences I can think of include: Jim Kirkwood - Master of Dragons Various game soundtracks e.g. Etrian Odyssey and Megami Tensei Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero, Quake 1 Soundtrack That’s it. I have no fuckin idea what this would look like. — The first problem with the above is that it’s overscoped. That’s a lot of genres I don’t have much experience in (if any). I might generalize away from specific genres and more into one unique glitchy and one unique not-glitchy sound. Probably better not to overprescribe. The second is that this is a lot for one person to make, especially a music newbie with a day job. Right now this is just an idea, who knows if it will actually become something. Prolly better to rip the bandaid off and just make it even if it’s crap, gotta start somewhere right?
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Jan 19, 2023 01:57
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Pollyanna posted:Prolly better to rip the bandaid off and just make it even if it’s crap, gotta start somewhere right?
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Jan 19, 2023 10:35
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agreed that there's no better time to start than right now. the most informative experiences i've had are where i swing big and totally whiff. the more stuff i learn not to do, the closer i get to figuring out what works.Pollyanna posted:The music would start clean and end dirty. You’d begin with the straightforward clean tones of dungeon synth and and a tiny bit of chiptune, and end heavily distorted like industrial and glitch. quote:The first problem with the above is that it’s overscoped. That’s a lot of genres I don’t have much experience in (if any). I might generalize away from specific genres and more into one unique glitchy and one unique not-glitchy sound. Probably better not to overprescribe. while true, there's no rules saying you have to do it all at once or tackle the big version right away. have you ever considered doing just a 3 song ep that covers the broad strokes? a song for each act that's more of a playground for your ideas. something i've found helpful is to do lots of sketches on my rc505—i sort of stole the idea from my friends in art school who had to do a lot of figure drawing and character studies. breaking things down and working on little pieces to exercise skills in a low-pressure environment. i also hope the lack of a magic solution doesn't keep you from pursuing your ideas, i hope i get to hear this album someday!
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Jan 25, 2023 19:37
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There’s a reason I don’t do project management for fucks sake posted:Yes. There is no perfect time to start, so start now. Working on a longer project is a kind of compound-interest thing, if you work on it regularly it'll seem slow day-to-day but after some weeks or months you'll have quite a lot of material. On my last album I had about twice as many nearly-finished tracks than I ended up releasing. A pro-tip there is to leave the polishing phase (mixing, mastering) until you're sure it's going to be released. My worry is that if it becomes a long-term thing, then I’ll never finish or worse, I’ll lose interest. I have the attention span of a flea, I’ve gone whole tilt on things then set them down for months and months. I really want it to go well and in a particular fashion and that makes me nervous. Which ties into some literature I’ve been reading about the nature of disparity and of clinging/grasping/etc…this must be a case of that. I have no idea how to actually mix and master so no problems there. I just sometimes know when something sounds bad or not quite like I want.CaptainViolence posted:agreed that there's no better time to start than right now. the most informative experiences i've had are where i swing big and totally whiff. the more stuff i learn not to do, the closer i get to figuring out what works. I mean that’s partly why I haven’t committed to big, entire works yet, or anything more than like 1m30s long with a very simple (i.e. lazy) progression. It’s so much lower pressure and less stressful when you don’t have a deliverable with hard requirements. Swinging big isn’t just scary, it’s  I do hope I’m learning in some fashion - sometimes I worry that I’m just flailing wildly in a completely non-constructive manner. quote:this is a really cool idea! having the textural journey match the story is something that i feel like might sound straightforward as a concept, but having a very specific texture in mind that slowly overtakes everything is a fantastic way to go about it. It is a great way to add dynamics, if you can write in a way that makes the change over time interesting. But what are the right textures for the job? How do I know that I’ve found good ones, and how do I find them in the first place? It could be as simple as the album ramping from pure melodic tones to distorted glitchy beats, but does that actually make for good music? Or does it only work on paper? quote:while true, there's no rules saying you have to do it all at once or tackle the big version right away. have you ever considered doing just a 3 song ep that covers the broad strokes? a song for each act that's more of a playground for your ideas. Not a bad idea. Could take the MVP approach and make the smallest, simplest possible thing that does the job. Then make it bigger and better over time. But I’ve never been good at delivering on projects quote:something i've found helpful is to do lots of sketches on my rc505—i sort of stole the idea from my friends in art school who had to do a lot of figure drawing and character studies. breaking things down and working on little pieces to exercise skills in a low-pressure environment. Technically, that’s all I’ve ever done with my music! I’m like 90% sketches and one-off melodies and loops and funky samples and random crap I tinkered with for a day or two. I could in theory dredge then back up and synthesize them, but I don’t know how to do that - especially because they are all made independently. quote:i also hope the lack of a magic solution doesn't keep you from pursuing your ideas, i hope i get to hear this album someday! Yeah, there’s no magic solution. But there is a solution, and I wanna make sure I’m on the right path. I hope to hear my album too!!
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Jan 29, 2023 03:57
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Did something a little different: I transcribed something from one of my favorite soundtracks! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M0MF_Fjon8 It was certainly interesting, but I don't feel like I learned a whole lot as opposed to just blindly copying things in. Clearly I uncovered patterns and unique sounds and voices by doing this, but I don't know how to take full advantage of this transcription. It's also not 100% accurate, and I didn't do any mixing or mastering compared to the original music. Now that I've made this transcription, what's the best way to learn from it? EDIT: The original for comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaOJr2Dn6GQ
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Jan 29, 2023 23:47
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Didn't know this thread existed, I'm doing lots of songwriting at the moment so here are some thoughts. Basic idea of my process is "you gotta have something before you can make anything." This usually involves either writing out a melody in staff notation (usually not even knowing how it will sound: just picking a key and trying to rise / fall cohesively and use varied rhythms) or improvising something with guitar and vocals. Often my starting point is copying a specific element of a song I like: a chord progression, rhythmic idea, tempo etc. Once that's recorded I give it some time and listen back to see if there's anything good, which I'll then start to shape into something resembling a song. At this point I'll write some other parts to use as a chorus / bridge / riff. Lyrics come later and are usually done in a similar improvisatory style. Throughout, my goal is always to make progress through any means necessary. I rarely have an "end goal" beyond "finish this one song," and I'm never trying to say anything specific. I don't critique the song outside of what it's trying to be and I don't usually choose a specific genre or style I want to write in, that comes out naturally through the process. I also let the emotions and lyrical content come out this way. If I get stuck, I go into my musical toolbox and try various things: modulation, adding a riff / instrumental part, adding space, adding vocals without words, cutting out or adding a section, etc etc, stuff I've heard work in other songs and can try. A working knowledge of music theory & especially ear training makes this a lot easier, because I can both a) figure out and steal parts from people faster and b) work through ideas in my head, and understand what I'm hearing to bring it back to the instrument later.
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Sep 21, 2023 19:03
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I’ve come to the conclusion that my biggest obstacle to enjoying the act of making music is a lack of organization, structure, and workflow. Due to my executive dysfunction, anything I make tends to be either very disorganized and directionless, or gets caught in the weeds and ends in an anxiety spike and deleted project file. This square-one workflow for orchestrated music caught my attention, but writing for a full orchestra is beyond me. The general flow seems worth a shot, though, so I adapted the first few steps for my own testing: 1. Write a one-sentence summary of your desired track, plus details like genre, tempo, meter, key, mode, song/track length (in bars or minutes), technical specifics and constraints (e.g. writing for a specific audio chip), etc. Decide as much as you can up front and do not open your DAW, touch any instruments, or write down any notes. 2. Using your decisions in step 1, write a one-to-two-bar long motif that drives and represents the piece. You can touch your keys now, but you still can’t open your DAW. 3. Using your motif from step 2 and decisions in step 1, write a lead sheet for your entire piece, from intro to outro. This means plotting it out from beginning to end in a single interesting melodic line plus noted harmonic progressions as chords. Get as many details down as you can, but don’t write anything more than a main melody and chords. Follow the rules for musical form and structure to complete this step. 4. Write a four-part harmony based on your lead sheet from step 3. Now you figure out what your other harmonic voices (SATB in this case) will do. These will eventually become other parts of your track, e.g. bassline, rhythm guitar, drums, organ chords, pads, arps, countermelody, that kind of poo poo. Follow the rules for four-part harmony to complete this step. The lead sheet’s melody matches up with Alto, by the way. At this point you probably have enough voices and a long-enough rough draft to just copy it into the DAW, assign voices and instruments, and start mixing and moving poo poo around as you like. There’s more to the original plan, but it’s very tied to an orchestra and doesn’t apply to other genres like rock, jazz, house, electronic, industrial, etc., so I don’t know how to use those other steps. Personally, I’m stuck on the first part of step 1. I can’t write a sentence to describe what I want to make because I can’t think of anything so now I can’t test out my workflow.
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Dec 12, 2023 16:23
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Ha, I agree with some of the stuff on that (making a lead sheet to start is helpful) but I usually need to find another way in. It's rare that I have Something To Say and then write a song about it. I have dedicated time each day for writing and use it to create a melody, or chord progression, or a sketch of some lyrics and go from there. Worth pointing out that around 80% of what I write during this time goes nowhere, which is fine and part of the process. It's important to have the shape of the song's structure before you start loving around with DAW stuff, imo. Too easy to get bogged down. Better to start with a strong outline of something - if you have a solid chord progression and melody it will be easier to find an arrangement that works.
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Dec 12, 2023 17:08
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Yeah, the guy in the video seems to mostly do film scoring and classical orchestral work, so his suggestion might not make a lot of sense for other genres. And it definitely won’t work for everyone, especially if you mostly noodle around and fish for ideas. It’s a start, at least. Maybe I’ll learn how to make those lead sheet and four-part harmony things sometime
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Dec 12, 2023 17:22
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If you noodle and fish and get stuck in the four bar loop, try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH-zpS7gxxg Don't remember where I got the link to it from, so if it showed up in another thread sorry. But it put my head in a different gear and now instead of giving up on a four bar loop I give up on a 32 bar loop! (mostly because at that point I sleep on it and I hate my sound design in the morning)
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Dec 12, 2023 17:29
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I need to go further than a 4-bar loop (and technically even a 32-bar loop), and the DAW is immensely distracting since you’re thinking about voices and instruments and timbre and poo poo at the same time. It makes a lot of sense to focus on one piece at a time, and right now I want to focus on writing longitudinally/over time and later working on adding layers in a clear, structured manner.
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Dec 12, 2023 17:50
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Of course, but it should work on a single instrument too in the noodle sessions. Chill out with your keyboard or guitar or recorder or whatever you got and play a loop twice, then change something. We all work differently obviously but for me personally the rule of "change stuff constantly" was pretty useful.
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Dec 12, 2023 18:13
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Completely different way of working, more designed to jam and hit the flow state, but can result in songs here. I start with a high rate clock, and a couple dividers, then tune the clock, so one of the mid rate divisions is beating at what I feel would be a good pace. Patch up some drums from the dividers, maybe use grids, maybe Euclidean sequencers. Muck around with the beat and sound design on drums for a while, then shut it up. Build a bass voice in the same manner. Mute it. Lather , lead, rinse and repeat. Mute. Then play with bringing parts in and out. Ebb and flood. Melodic sequencing is just a Turing machine or twisting knobs until something feels right. Try a different scale on the quantizer most times. Maximize the opportunity for happy accidents.
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Dec 12, 2023 18:15
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Yeah at some point you do just gotta noodle hard, and eventually you figure out harmonies and progressions n such. One step at a time, though.B33rChiller posted:Completely different way of working, more designed to jam and hit the flow state, but can result in songs here. This is particularly fun when combined with sequential switches and multiple source sequences (melodic, harmonic, what have you).
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Dec 12, 2023 20:06
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