A bit of context: I was playing guitar for the most part of my life and it became my job. I used to adapt and learn styles according the people i met along different projects.
I started digging more into african music 10 years ago and created a solo based on live looping.
I played it for years in the streets until i was joined by my now ex-girlfriend. The duo is still going on but as we live in different countries, it is complicated to have it evolving.
It’s been an evidence for some years now: i’d need to create a new solo. Easier to sell, no need to wait for anyone to practice/play.
I started to buy an OT several years ago, at first to upgrade from a traditional looper before realizing uts potential (and that ut’s not very practical as a looper unit).
Now I own an OT, DN, ND3p, a Boomerang looper and a Microcosm. More than enough to be overwhelmed. I am now in a trip abroad and I just took the OT, the DN and the Microcosm, hoping to get the best out of it.
I can make my way more or less with the machines but I realize i used them so far for everything but electronic music: theater, circus, instrumental music…
Now i wanna make a solo, i’m just simply overwhelmed by the possibilities of machines and can’t seem to define a gender/style/direction for the electronic part of the music. I feel stuck.
For those of you doing hybrid setup music (instrument+ electronic) how did you end up making musical choices regarding the electronic part? Did you listen a lot of electronic? Did you get inspired by other artists or did you end up with your own sound after spending time with the gear?
Not an instrumentalist but… It is pretty obvious to me you should make what you like. Do you even like any electronic music? If you do, try to make that which you would like to listen to if it was made by somebody else. That’s it.
By gender I assume you mean the bias, or the direction the musical style leans towards (maybe just mistyped the word genre), but as confusing as the wording may be I think that I understand that your goal is a solo project and you’d like to make electronic music using the tools at your disposal. In that case it is important to first identify what you enjoy, what your capabilities are as a person/musician, and how much you are willing to move past your comfort zone to achieve what you want.
The easy answer is always to do what you already know or what is within your existing capabilities, to step outside of that is to risk failure on either a personal or professional level. If you have the desire to do something new and don’t mind to undertake some learning to get there, I think first you have to identify what you like and start by emulating it. Once you’re satisfied with your “copy” of the style you want, you can easily shift that method towards more personal and creative uses.
Even if you’re skilled in a related field, you can’t expect immediate results from new endeavors. Taking the first steps in order to get to where you want to be will possibly be just as important for your growth as presenting a finished product.
I would struggle if I plan too much, or if I make decisions about what I should and shouldn’t do. I just do. I free myself from that struggle you speak of. As soon as I feel it creep up, I go, “OH HELLLL NO!” and put it in its place.
People who draw, and make painting and graphics, they doodle a lot all the time. They have a doodle book. They sit wherever and just draw away, without a thought or care about what they should draw. Eventually concrete ideas appear; personal styles develop. Do the same with music.
I would say it’s pretty simple- follow your ears and do what sounds good to you. It doesn’t really matter what anyone else has done, on this forum or anywhere else. The coolest, best music is done with no thought to how it compares to previously released music. If it sounds good to you, that’s all that matters. Is it “electronic” enough? Doesn’t really matter at all. Genres are pretty irrelevant at this point.
I would just start jamming and recording. Make 10 sketches, 3-4 minutes long each. See what instruments and sounds you naturally gravitate to. Tune the outside world out. Then, listen back to these ideas away from your studio, ideally while on a walk in nature or just somewhere your mind can be clear. See which ones you find yourself enjoying and bopping your head to. Figure out why- is it the drum patterns you wrote, the sounds you chose, the overall feel of the recording? Then, take that information back into the studio and make more songs using those same elements. Do this enough times and eventually you’ll start to develop your own style and when you get into the studio, you’ll just start working in this way naturally.
Side note: I feel like I give this advice on a weekly basis over here for some reason
I went through this exact thing since I was a pro bass player before.
Took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. The thing that helped was I put the bass down for a while and just went deeper into synths sequencers and samplers.
Playing guitar is a situation where you are in complete control of what you are playing. For electronic it really helps to learn to let go of that control.
You have to pivot from the “I’m a guitar player so I must play guitar” mentality to the “im a producer and use whatever is required for the track”.
Doing that can really help you open up and define your new sound a lot better.
I figure Gender is probably a pretty good band name.
I don’t worry about genre that much; most of the genre boundaries are historical more than anything else and only mildly relevant for what I want to do. All the more so for music without lyrics.
I’m a former guitarist/bassist and vocalist who always wanted to scratch the itch of electronic music. When I came to explore the world of electronic stuff, I was completely disinterested in faffing about with line-ins, mic placements and that sort of thing. I wanted a complete break so it felt like a new way of doing stuff. Sounds silly, but this was quite a good way of extracting myself from my old way of doing things.
In terms of identifying a genre, it sounds ridiculous, but I made a list, not just of the types of music to focus on, but about which bit of which genre would apply to which layer. Since most music consists of drums, a bassline, a soundbed/rhythm section, a lead and some vocals, you can kinda chop & change these and match these to genres in your head. For example; what if you took the drum sounds from 90s rock, but applied IDM patterns to them. Or how about taking clinical synth sounds and replacing them with foley. I don’t particularly care about being unique, but often the best music takes a style of music that is already known and makes one or two changes to it.
What I find interesting here is that despite using a completely different interface, instruments and production environment, some of the core things I like about music come through regardless. For example, I like to combine lots of electronic elements in my tracks, but I will often use a Native Instruments live bass, which I guess is my way of injecting the vibe of the song with a pinch of what I used to like. Chances are your personality will come through regardless of what you made.
The key thing is to stick to what you’re trying to do and you’ll figure out how as you go. If you need a masterplan, make one - and if you want to figure it out by trying stuff - go get stuck in!
I edited the title to clear any confusion (and stay on track with the topic).
I guess my point is more about how to help making decisions when you come from a piece of wood and a bunch of strings
In instrumental music i’m very picky and don’t struggle much in general to make decisions. When it comes to electronic, i feel like sky is the limit and happy/unhappy accidents are the common lot.
I’m used to craft and taylor a song for ages , polishing it before releasing it. I feel like in electronic music it’s maybe more about quantity: producing and releasing loads of tracks and eventually find your path through it.
Maybe i struggle more with integrating instruments within an electronic setup and to get something coherent rather than playing guitar on an electronic soundtrack or forcing guitar thru an electronic setup.
I originally wanted to integrate the looper to keep a live component but i find it hard to control the loops and the gear at the same time. Maybe it’s just a matter of practicing.
Also it’s hard to get rid of pressure from the need to produce in order to earn a living. I tend to always have a cheeky monkey in my head reminding me i need to produce something sellable, not too crazy, etc. I obviously did not have to deal with that kind of pressure when I started playing music.
Probably the most paralyzing thing of all is all the things related to music business such as selling the project, finding gigs, social networks, etc.
Sorry if I digress although I think it’s all related to feeling stuck.
Are you relying on making a lot of (electronic) music for a living? Or is that your eventual goal?
If it is, making a lot of danceable tracks for your own DJ set or soundtracks/music to accompany short video clips would probably be the best way. No expertise whatsoever on this, but I expect it to be hard to earn a living this way, and it might probably not be creatively fulfilling for you, the way you write about things.
If not, what’s keeping you from just finding out what it is you like about (making) electronic music and what you don’t?
I think the potential for polishing a track/song for ages into minute detail is way bigger with electronic music than most other popular genres. If that’s your thing, working with synths, drum machines and a DAW is fantastic. But of course, there’s also lots of people making a lot of danceable songs fast. So if that’s your thing, the same hardware or software can get you there as well.
Which begs the question: why do you want to make electronic music in the first place? And why do you want to make something different in this area than what you did before? If the reason is that you want to try out and learn something new, do that. If the reason is that you want to make songs in the same way you used to but with a different sound palette, do that.
Look out of your window. Do you see the birds going about their daily business? Are they worried about tomorrow? Just get something down. Anything. Just make crap music. I got here by reading to many self help books
I guess there are (at least) two possible approaches to this:
Either you let the machines and your workflow dictate the result: you just play and see what comes out of it, see if you like or not. The result might be very fresh and orginal, and also it might lack a common sound between different tracks.
Or you could do the work beforehand: define how you want your music to be for this project. Take notes, from there define your own internal rules/guidelines. From those guidelines you then get enough restrictions to not be overwhelmed anymore I guess.
A simple example of the second option, is The Hives who declared in a interview (I don’t know if it’s true or not) that “Lex Hives” is the name they gave from the very start of the band to the set of aesthetic rules they would follow. One of them would be “no use of delay” as an effect.
I like to use both approaches (in different projects), in order not be frustrated by one or the other.
I like the sonic and practical possibilities it offers.
Secondly, let’s be honest: there’s much less money for musicians and unless you play jazz or classical, you’ll struggle where i live. There used to be big bands, then power trio and now it’s all about solos. Somehow music became free on the way and unless you have a name, small scale musicians have a hard time to survive at least where i live, even more if you don’t do covers or pop based music.
Venues want people to drink, so they’re looking for danceable stuff and don’t want to pay the price for a band when they can hire a DJ. So today, being in competition with DJs, i kind of have to do electronic if i want to earn a living with music.
I like electronic stuff so it’s kind of ok. I think i’d have to start somehow/somewhere but i am stuck like never before in music. Too many options.
I guess in these modern times, i should just go with the flow and produce whatever.
I’ll try to follow one of the previous advices and identify which kind of bass/groove/synths sounds i like and mix them altogether. I like so many different stuffs though
