I’m curious about other people and how they come up with the music they make.
With me, I kind of realized not so long ago that I never hear melodies or patterns in my head prior to me playing them. I’m a happy accidents guy who knows that something sounds OK only when he hears it. I twist knobs, press stuff, and make it gel. I’m not a professional, I do this for fun. Maybe it’s just me being a newb?
Funny thing is, however, that I used to write for a living and, while thinking about this musical aspect, I also realized I had the same thing with writing – rarely had I “seen” the sentences in my head before writing them. I just wrote things on the fly and they clicked. And I wasn’t a newb at that.
Maybe it’s just me, the way my brain works? What’s your process? I’m especially curious about those of you who hear music in their head, or spend the day with a melody on their mind and then compose. Can you describe this a bit?
I’m totally like you. I used to play in bands and have things mapped in my head before actually playing them. But that’s not the process I follow in electronic music.
What’s interesting and fun with synths and electronic instruments is that exploring a technical feature often leads to musical ideas.
Definitely not a noob thing at all. Many artists I know do exactly this, they mess around, find something interesting then shape it. That goes for signed artists as well as hobbyists.
Without taking this into super intellectual territory, one thing that always stuck with me was when I learned about the difference between western and eastern art.
It’s a bit of a generalisation but the artistic mindset in the west can often be about creating something from zero, the blank page if you will. We tend to prize this individual achievement over all else. Your individual Everest is the most important factor here.
If you compare this with eastern art, the concept is very different. There the art already exists. The job of the artist is to chip away at the block of material rather than to create it. It’s a much less ego driven form of art.
It’s a small difference, and a general one at that. But for musicians who work in this way, it’s quite a useful reference point.
Thank you both ;). Looking at how I’m smiling right now, I think I needed to hear that I’m not alone in this ;). Or that it’s not a bad or “improper” state to be in.
Thank you for sharing that thought. It frames my thinking very nicely (I’m definitely “Western” in that topology, but funnily enough the best things I wrote were “Eastern” :)). And it also ties pretty nicely with the thoughts I had about “The Rememberence of Earth’s Past” books by Cixin Liu I recently read. Collectivism and iterating on the works of your predecessors vs. personal achievement. But I digress ;).
I do this for fun too, and am absolutely in the camp of just playing with things and sometimes sounds gel and sometimes not. If I try to plan it it starts to have goals, expectations, rules even and then it loses something for me.
I’m working with samplers at the moment, and generally following the plan of creating a few beats first and then looking for bass/melodies/vocals.
I‘m the same. Whether it’s in bands or solo, I always prefer just jamming and hammering out things that come out of my mouth or hands at the moment without any plan in advance. Imo these tend to be the best musical ideas and I think I‘m relatively good at getting something out that sounds nice real fast. It then takes a much longer time of curating and refining that stuff, and there I‘m thinking a lot more about what I‘m doing and often try to execute a plan.
Curious to hear how people handle this when it comes to lyrics. I don’t like writing lyrics and have also never really focused on lyrics in other people’s music. I tend to sing gibberish that sort of fits the vibe, rhythm and melody when jamming. Later I‘ll try to keep cadences etc, replace words here or there but also keep others. I rarely have a real concept or story to tell and just go with the flow. I think this approach works a bit worse with lyrics though, so I‘ve decided some time ago that while vocals are eventually often the focus of my music, lyrics aren’t, and I prefer to spend time on refining other things.
I do have aphantasia which means that my mind’s eye is basically blind (apart from blurry colors and extremely short flashes of some finer details). And it’s the same for music. I can’t imagine things in advance so I just play around and listen to what sounds good to me in the moment.
In my teens, I was into rap with my buddies. We had a crew, gave concerts, even released an EP. It was in the 90-s, no internet, no youtube, we had to burn our own CDs. Fun times. Everyone wrote their own bars – we used to sit alone and just hammer out sentences on a given theme. Say, “Friday”. And everyone turned on their party vibe and we’d just make up nonsense that – after a longer moment – made more sense, and then some more. When I felt I had something to say, an emotion, or I wanted to pick up girls on my cool lines (I’m chucking as I write this, so cringy! :)), that was more focused writing but it was still here and now, and not something I kept in my head for the entire day and just wrote down in the evening. I think the peak of that writing was when we did stunts like every word in the entire verse had to start with the same letter (and rhyme, AND make sense). Still, it was very “aphantasian” – I had to see it on paper for me to see if it works.
For me it all boils down to editing. I write a lot and nothing ever makes sense until I finish the process of narrowing everything down. I too do not ever going into anything with the melody “in my head”. It is a game of subtraction for me. I chip away at things and add the newer pieces as needed for things to start to make sense.
I do it all… samples… synths… semimodular… daw work… flip challanges… sometimes, I just make noise…
I just posted this on the share your tunes thread, but it shows a project I just did today…
to be honest, Im not the best musician, so i fight the process… and I hardly remember what all my gear does, so i am constantly relearning it… but it serves to cull bad ideas, because the strongest ones will persist… and noone is looking for my music, so it serves me…
I also put in work on the sp404, mc101, and the Maschine…
One of my bigger frustrations is the space between imagining a piece of music and then figuring out how to make it sound like the music in my head. For both rhythms and melodies, I can have something new in my head, but in the process of picking it out on an instrument, it gets warped or forgotten entirely. It’s like trying to remember a dream. As soon as I pick up the guitar or go to the keyboard, etc, the music starts to go away. So ultimately, although I often imagine melodies and try to start there when composing, in reality it rarely leads to anything 🫤 much of my music has come from jamming or happy accidents.
…nobody can claim, they never find their inspiration without stumbling over some lucky dips and happy accidents from time to time…no worries there…it’s ,with no doubt, a pretty common thing…
always stay open to such unintended sonic moments…part of all art is to embrace such things…
no matter what kind of workflow patterns u like to follow…coincidence is code…always.
but hey, that’s an official album title of mine…just to make that clear.
while my main starting point is always my voice…i just sing a few notes and sounds and beatbox elements…cut those up, edit and fx them in all kinds of ways, sequence those bits roughly and then sing some words and hookbites on top of these first sketch elements…usually by just do first impro takes, which will always give me already the final name of a track…quite often, these takes already even contain at least half of the final lyrics and/or the main concept idea of the whole thing…
then a first rough arrangement gives first impressions of that track, that’s about to show a first glimplse of it’s final sonic face and formfactor…which then leads me back again to recognize the core idea and how it all might end up as a final song/track…
but in the end and all along the way, i always stay open to surprises, where all this might take me…
I found that learning the sounds of intervals really really helps for this. I rarely have a melody “in my head,” but I often want to transcribe something I have heard. Knowing what a fifth sounds like, or a minor third etc makes it easy to do that.
This wikipedia page is great. it helps associate intervals with well-known songs. The Jaws theme is a minor 2nd, for example, and the first notes of Star Wars are a perfect fifth.
Sometimes I get stuck on a loop for a long time without success.
I leave, live my life while the melody gets stuck and other arise, then I come back with new ideas.
Hmm, i actually do it like this - i create so much stuff, that i have to chisel away so much of it, it often dosent remember the original building block. At least when i do in the DAW, for live purposes i think its better to “roll” with what you have, and build on top of it - too easy to crowd a mix. Narrowing things down to few elements can be hard, while still having a functional track. Its maybe why it takes me ages to finish something. (And i have fun creating one shots, that is also part of it.)
Actually this thread gives me an idea - i started to label my tracks differntly - instead of naming them “pitch bass” i set a name purpose now - main pitch bass → drum support to pitch bass. To have an easier to read structure, at the end.
Or use multiple sequencers, and then use LFO to switch them on /off. Invert them. Create a rack with sequencers, randomize them, then let it play you patch - remove the sequences you dont like. (chiseling …) (well currently reading this thread because Abelton crashed doing this - when i said lets render - but ok - you can resample instead of printing directly.)
Instead of whining - open up the session again - move forward.
