The new process I’m trying is jamming out a song structure with a few patterns, then using Song mode to get a more official structure.
For me song mode still retains the fun and is not as “boring” as arrangement in DAW. I think it’s because there are so fewer options so you aren’t as distracted or overwhelmed with decisions.
Basically it’s a middle-ground between having your songs fully jammed out in real-time and doing complex arrangements in a DAW. And you can still record to DAW via OB if you want to make final adjustments.
I’ve given up on song mode, I find I get bogged down and the arrangement looses all its loose feel. I’m currently trying out the ekoplekz technique which is basically a portastudio workflow. Jam out the rhythm track, drums and bass. Which is about complex enough to get right in one take. Then jam the rest on top on a second track. Just two passes but I get something that doesn’t lose the vitality of jamming whilst being more considered than just a straight stereo jam. I’m not a fan of editing a stereo as you get awkward cuts to synth tails etc. and rooting around a long take for the good bits feels a bit clunky. I’d have been interest to hear DMX krews original jam to see if it is structured in a way that helps editing.
Not hindered by any experience, if I really want to create a song instead of just tinkering with sound and making something longer than a bar, I think I’ll try and record some MIDI sequences with the Oxi to Ableton (I’m not a keyboard player sadly) either with placeholder sounds or tweaking the attached Elektron. Begin with the drum track or the pad, dunno yet. Then add MIDI cc’s for effects and shaping. Probably swap synths to record their own piece of the music, then mash it all together. Well, that’s plan v1.0. We’ll see how many revisions that needs
This is what stops me from editing a stereo file also. I use a lot of FX and I’ve always found it impossible to get smooth edits if I’m slicing, dicing, and rearranging bits of a stereo file. Maybe I’m missing some techniques or audio editing skills though?
To the latter, I would say yes and no. You may be overoptimizing for aspects that people are less likely to care about over performance, you can get clever with more time in a faster workflow, and you’ll probably get better at figuring out how to get around it if you even care after having more and more productive sessions.
Are “smooth” edits that necessary?
Can you deal with less than perfect if nobody else will really care?
Limitations in workflow do breed creativity with speed, and you’ll probably learn more in saying “fuck it” and giving it repetitive attempts even if it frustrated you to not have the option to fiddle as much.
If you’re looking to perform it, you can work it into the plan and song/pattern beforehand. You can also learn to be okay with stuff that is not core to whatever track or moment.
Well, haha, I definitely think nobody else will care about my music, but I will still care if things sound disjointed and roughly spliced together. I’m thinking mainly of ambient and dub techno which have things like long reverb tails and time based delays, etc.
In the past I’ve found it hard to edit these things together when rearranging a stereo track or splicing together different sections of a jam.
I’m sure people do it and are successful. I’m just saying I haven’t found success with it yet.
I’m sure if I tried hard enough I could find techniques and workarounds but there are other avenues and workflows that suit me better and so I’ve followed those different paths.
I think of a lot of it could be genre dependent. I’m curious if people who do ambient and dub techno routinely work with just chopping up a stereo file and splicing different bits together to make a song.
For fx heavy genres, all it really requires is being able to multtrack each aux separately (you can crossfade the fx trails of two sections, or even layer them)
