Drowning in a sea of possibilities

The Lounge General Discussion
#197

Interesting thought, this is …

I seem to be just the other way around. In the morning I need some time to get my brain to work. I like to do research, experimenting, try out new things, do some practising. It’s more in the afternoon or sometimes in the middle of the night - if I am not tired - that I jam with one instrument, maybe just for fun, and then creativity strikes, 15 minutes later a quite bad demo recording has been made and I start to work on that idea seriously … forgetting about time absolutely … :wink:

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#198

If you like the sound of the A4, do you a favour and don’t give it away. IMO the A4 synth engine is so complex that sampling might just not even scratch the surface of what this box can do … soundwise.

Anyway … getting O-Coast AND an Erebus, or one of those Dreadbox synths is a great idea. Do it. BTW did anybody else hear the rumor that Dreadbox is up to something new?

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#199

Oh, I don’t know if you understood me. I’m saying that naturally I was doing what you said. To me wee hours of morning was like 3 to 5 am, so for me evening/night, and my afternoon was basically morning… :slight_smile:

#201

That is indeed the case for me. I am more productive at night heading into the early morning. For me, it’s been a bit of a curse though because my musical productivity took a serious dive as my professional career became more involved and now I have a family and far less time for me. It makes little sense to stay up working until 6AM only to have to get the kid up for school followed by me getting ready to head into the office. I always find it interesting to see how people work. When I have time in the afternoon I tend to do sound design, editing or just spend time getting to learn how to better use features I’m not terribly familiar with, etc. The best writing always happens late at night though.

:thup:

#202

I know one thing regarding day moment and working. When you getup after a night your hears are perfect on the morning for mixing task. Usually true mixing the morning get the best results, you don’t want when getup to push the sound too loud so it’s very “the moment” for mixing a track. (Plus no hear fatigue leading to bad mixing decision)

It keeps neighbors relationship at its best too…

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#203

I feel this is all on topic because if you separate sound design/programming and actually playing of music it helps focus when you have a lot of options. Work with the endless options at one point, use what you figured out to play music at another time and forget about the options…

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#204

Exactly what I meant : if I feel like I’m drowning in possibilities, a sound design session is a good prescription.
Once I got the cool sounds, a few loops, all I need is playing :smiley:

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#205

My favourite part is that he is using Mission 701 passive speakers.

#206

Don’t worry about what will sound best, or is the best tool for the job. Don’t worry about production or how it sounds. Even if you grab a tape recorder and an old mic and compose the tune with your mouth, just get the idea out into the world and pushing air molecules around, that’s the most important thing. Get the overall shape and size of the thing and worry about the details later.

I have hundreds of unfinished tracks sitting on my hard disk and in various machines that will probably never be finished because I lost the impetus of the initial spark of the idea.

It’s a brief and fleeting moment, at least for me.

https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Inspiration_Particles

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#207

nice discussion,when i am getting serious g.a.s. i think about the originators of the music i am into ,if its jazz rock fusion stuff that i am into i think about the blues guys and how they were,nt spending thousands on there guitars,…but what a sound they made …if i am doing techno i think about the detroit ,chicago guys and the basic gear they where using ,but again what an awesome sound these musicians got…yes the gear in some contexts are important but ultimately its the consciousness of the person there ability to surrender and animate there feeling and mind and soul through that instrument …theres so many youtube videos of guys with wall to wall elektron gear and other gear but the track that they demo is very very often …unspectacular…we live in a fast food ,instant access ,instantly downloadable ,throw away society ,what happened to the musicians who loved there instruments that they kept and pushed to the limits for years on end not buying another until the one they had was finished ?we don’t think or feel in this way anymore,we pile up one after the next software and hardware…alot of our g.a.s…has nothing to do with being an artist or the need for sonic diversity …its lack of intelligent and inspired use of what we already have ,greed,lust for more,fear of missing out ,social pressure and social comparison all pushed on us by the internet and media advertising machinery …recent study,s and reports on happiness and choice from prominent social scientists and social psychologists bares this out …they have analysed the psychological processes involved in consumer purchases -,opportunity costs- …,adaptation,regret sensitive,high expectation …
They conclude that
1.excessive choice dose not make people happier ,in fact it makes them more miserable
2 we are happier when we give rather than when we purchase for ourselves .

anyway i thought id share some of that research if anyone wants to hear the lectures on this i can fwd them the links …

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#208

i found that the less inputs there are on the soundcard, the easier it is to work with … bonus if it is quality gear.

personally i’m back to one drum machine, one monosynth and one polysynth. couple of microphones, a few pedals.

macbook for tape recorder duties, another that is only switched on to work as a vocoder.

any plugins used are for sound design only, and are free (Saturation Knob, TDK Reel to Reel emulator, Voxengo Tube Amp)

Incredibly simple. no midi connection between instruments and computer.

Midi clock sent from Machinedrum to Prophecy for the arpeggiator.

Upgrading the O.S. eproms to enable midi sync to external, required three and a half months, but that’s another story.

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#209

nice topic.
at the end for me the huge amount of possibilities lead to often into “trying things out” without any sense of direction. what works for me is pretty simple. during my normal working day i just make an idea on what kind of gear i use in the evening. than i go to the studio and just play with ONE sound on ONE piece of gear. i try to compose as much variations as i can get and really work with it. though the result is not always successful, this one sound arranged/played for as many days as i it need to be cool for me, really makes the result better. than it becomes a “masterplan”. things get some much better if you train and evolve them… it helps to focus and not to start a new “track” everyday or composing half finshed ideas just to have a result of the evening. mostly it makes sense to start to record an idea only after a week playing it… if the idea is strong enough to keep me going for a week, then its the right time to really produce it.
after that the rest of the gear follows “just” the purpose to let this sound shine. the best tracks i did, in my own opinion, happened like this :-))
(but for sure: sometimes just noodling around and trying out possibilities of different gear without purpose is also learning) :slight_smile:

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#210

There is much truth to your thinking … particularly your analysis, why we might follow our GAS the one or the other way.

But there is also this. How to built a chair with one screwdriver and tree only? … :wink:

One guy on a guitar can make an excellent singer song writer. But why then did Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, you name it, compose for an orchestra? Well we may not be great masters mostly, but having more then one central piece of gear or instrument can give us the opportunity to do some “orchestral” work too.

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#211

…i am sure the great masters you mentioned also suffered from g.a.s. but i,am sure they identified the instrument they can best compose on and dedicated to it …rather than hording up gear after gear ,i don’t recall learning that mozart and bach had 7 pianos and 12 violins etc ,i am sure they had one or two and composed for the whole orchestra on that …as gandhi said …"there is enough for our need but not for our greed "…i think its about identifying our need rather than being driven by the advertising machinery and fanboy gearlust …the only way we can identify our need is to better get to know ourself and what our real desire is …anyway us elektronauts are all about to face the biggest g.a.s in years because the OCTATRACK MK2 HAS JUST BEEN ANNOUNCED ,FOR RELEASE IN AUGUST…
may the lord have mercy on our tender wallets ,and g.a.s…ha ha .

#212

Again true … the great masters composed almost on few instruments, I think it was often piano like, violine, flute etc.

Well, for Bach, he had not only one “piano”, I think it has been invented during his life-time, he started with violine, and at least after becoming a renowed composer, he owned harpsichords and played organs. Organs have been the Modulars of his era, expensive, big, complex, and almost never owned by the performing musician :wink: But he used all those instruments and composed for orchestras. So he used the manyfold sound sources of his time to create great compositions.

As many have posted already. The problem seems not to be having access to gear, it’s about having to find focus. If we get more and more gear in the studio in too a short time, we tend to get lost, which is normal … but if we believe that the next new gear will push us forward to new creativity and a great track, this is definitely a kind of self-delusion.

Any decent sound source, played live or programmed can inspire us. We have only to let it happen and try not to overwhelm ourself with too many options at one time. But there is nothing to say against starting simple and grow step by step from one single voice to an orchestral arrangement … :wink:

#213

yes i like what you said …ill post some more thoughts later i gotta read the analog rhythm manual have a great day …lol

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#214

If music is good enough and has heart and soul poured into it, people will like it no matter what it was made on. It could be with just your vocal chords, an old beat up ukulele, or any drum machine and synth, whatever…
It’s not the gear that creates the music, it’s the living soul of the artist sparking life into sound.
No amount of gear is needed and you can have all the best most expensive gear in the world but if you don’t put heart, soul, time, and energy into it, folks will prefer to listen to the artist with the old broken ukulele that makes it sing with the sweet essence of life itself… Or perhaps the beats created on the old cheap drum machine because the artist was just so creative… Time, energy, heart, and soul are required to make good music, gear is not… :heart_eyes:

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#215

I think it helps alot, whatever your setup, if youre having trouble building a catalogue of work, to lower your standards of what a finished track could be…that might mean that you actually press record a few times rather than just noodling around all evening. Just lower your standards until you are knocking out tracks, and eventually a few will probably be quite good. Keep the rest for yourself though! Having a deadline or show / remix to work for is a similar tactic. Basically practise calling a track finished.

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#216

Very true … I can’t remember where I read this first, but it was the same idea: “Practise to finish tracks, even, if they are not perfect. The more you practise the better they will be in the future”.

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#217

Now I want a ukelele

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