I discovered this as a viable creative strategy during the last Weeklybeats. I’m already in the habit of having a recorder rolling while I mess around with synths, so the process was to dig into this archive (which now goes back about 15 years and includes audio diaries and field recordings too) and quickly splice some layers together in arrangement view. The results are pretty loose and dreamlike. Going to explore the technique further.
Joe Zawinul was so bewildered by the Bitches Brew sessions that he didn’t recognise the finished album. “I didn’t find the recording at all exciting at the time. But a short while later I was in the Columbia offices and a secretary was playing this incredible music. And I asked her, 'Who the hell is that?”
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as everyone else has basically said, for experimental or ambient sorts of music this is totally normal but how people use it might be very different. Often I’ll record a live jam and find that I was droning on a loop for a little longer than feels correct as a listener and if you have a motif running for 2-3 minutes within a song it’s unlikely that people will notice where you chopped 30s of it, especially with the way modern DAWs make it easy to move recording sections along the grid and line edits up so that there might be nearly no phase mismatch so you don’t even need to cover up the slice job with an effect. Even for rock and pop formats, if you’re producing everything by yourself I sort of see that as a strictly practical thing to do if the alternative is to re-record everything with the right part durations, since by just editing the duration you can experiment with duration a lot in a way that would be impractical to record yourself.
Collaging segments of jams that feel connected and musical is also useful, and in metal bands I have used a lot of editing on noise and feedback tracks to be able to insert musically valuable noise/feedback to taste rather than depending on nailing the in-room dynamics on the original take. DI based recording also makes feedback nearly impossible to generate in an organic and musical way that flows with the song so you need to get that somehow. So the bassist and I would each just record us making noise and feedback with our amps dimed and lots of pedals to create variation for like an hour through close and room mics, then we have lots to work with and you can generate ambiance on demand in post rather than feeling frustrated that your recording didn’t get that live unhinged feel.
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Because of training as a drummer I started with the idea of practicing until ready to record.
Later, when introducing melodic instruments it was a struggle so Frankenstein composition at its fullest.
Now with modular, its record everything and remove the bad parts later.
With Elektron ST, if designing sound from scratch, I will build out any idea, copy a pattern to another, delete trigs, build something new and repeat until I want to go back. Then it’s a matter of stitching together and merging the ideas.
Often it’s the edited version I like best, or a sometimes an okay thing can sound much better with editing especially by replacing a basic beat that started as a time/metronome purpose.
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I’m traveling at the moment, and my only way to record my playing is iPhone video. Obviously the audio fidelity is not perfect, but you know what? It’s a great way to capture the ambience of my dad’s garage, which is maybe the most relevant dimension anyway.
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You could try GarageBand iOS, it’s actually great
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This is a really great thread, I’m loving all the suggestions and outlines of ways people work, and especially enjoying the examples of finished products! The method of recording a bunch of stuff and then chopping and rearranging it to make a new recording is something I just fundamentally can’t do unless I’ve let the recordings sit around for so long that I’ve basically forgotten them. I get too attached to the recordings and performances and ideas I initially had.
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Never really done anything like this. I’ve been meaning to make a dream like song where I use some unfinished projects as bridges that wash in and out with huge reverb swells. Might need to create some 4 bar bangers for it.
Interesting, do you have an idea or goal in mind when you start editing or just total blank canvas? How do you deal with harmonising disparate melodic bits?
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I typically create a bunch of individual components on different machines but all within the same key and bpm. That makes it possible to piece it all together after the fact. If I need to make something to bridge two melodic components so it makes sense that just makes the process easier since the over riding ideas are already there. I try to lay out some general ground rules for myself with each song and build around them.
While my sessions at time look like a nightmare visually it all comes back to the fact that I love treating each song like a puzzle.
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I turn up my nose at GB, but I have friends who’ve made way better sounding stuff using just GB and an iPad than I’ve ever made, so who am I to judge?
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Went through a period early-mid 2000s where I’d record a small amount of stuff from a groovebox (dx200), drum machine (707) and a sample or two off the tellie or a vhs tape and go to town with cutting things up and arranging on the sp808 4 track. Took alotof focus and didn’t use or even know about midi sync at the time. Or how to actually mix anything. Might be some of the best stuff I ever done but it’s lost now. Someone pinched my last copy so I suppose that could be taken as a compliment?
Around the same time, would sometimes rip a few bits off a classical cd and go to town editing, manipulating, layering fx and mixing it in with itself on a 2 track editor. Drums also came from somewhere and mixed in.
Allthis was prolly some of the more organic sounding stuff I’ve done. Since then everything’s gotten a bit too sterile sounding and even though it might be technically better, something’s missing.
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Nice! Love the idea of using a sampler as a way to edit/arrange as opposed to detailed timeline audio editing. Read a lot of interviews with 90s producers saying they used the sampler like a multitrack recorder and arranged phrases with midi. Seems like a very flexible middle ground. One reason the 1010 blackbox looks appealing
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Yah it was certainly inspiring at the time. Tried going back to that workflow a few times over the years but I’ve been a bit too spoiled by the convenience of a modern daw. Onwards and upwards I guess,
Feels familiar. It’s nice to compose on three or so machines at once, you can really interlock them and have them talk musically. I’ve been experimenting with pushing chord changes through many machines lately as well, which ive found to be a rewarding challenge.
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Wouldntchaknow
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I record everything single thing I do. Gear goes on, routed to interface, captured in Wavelab. If using an amp, same thing but mic feeds interface.
Sometimes I use bits from these sessions but other times the session are actually releasable.
Also, recording it without allowing myself to stop is about the next best thing to having a real audience and focuses the mind!
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Is everything you ‘finish’ created from these recordings in the end? Do you find sifting through all the recordings a huge new task or do you have some approach which makes it less overwhelming?
Well, there are times when a take is just good and releasble.
But I should note, that after experimenting for a while the way I practice is to pretend I’m doing a set at a gig (often I’m prepping for a gig) and the recording process, and my rule that I can’t stop even if I make a ‘mistake’, makes it more real.
By repeatedly doing this, I can often craft a set with recognisable elements while leaving room for improvisation on the night.
If I’m not sure about a take being a finished track though but think it’s good and want to review it later, I’ll save it with a new name like ‘potential’ etc.
Other times I’ll listen thru several sets and sort them by tagging them with different colours (green is good, use it, yellow possibly good some bits etc etc) and then I can drag these into a daw later and cut up/reuse as appropriate.
In the end tho, once the ‘jams’ are done, the work begins and there’s no escaping that drudgery, at least not in my experience.