Take it all away, you have silence. Minimalism at its purest. I’d live with that; hard to sell on beatport.
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elektron stuff sounds great when you turn the volume down. boutique silence. super.
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I make loads of minimal stuff. I sit there and just look at the synth. Dont even turn it on. Sometimes I dont even look it. Ultimate minimalism.
The comedy of increasing post count in a thread titled minimalism has not eluded me.
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As long as most of the posts don’t really add anything, it’s fine.
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That’s what I’m working on right now
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Nothingness
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I’ve spent more than my fair share of time mulling these sort of things over. I keep coming back to psychological concepts of familiarity, novelty and expectation. Obviously that stands for all genre’s of music but it’s especially apparent in more minimal genres as there isn’t the volume of detail to get caught up in. How much cognitive bias is there in hearing something for the first time? Similarly for when something is described as seminal?
I’ve found myself revisiting what I thought were the johnny-come-lately’s years later with fewer pre-conceptions and perhaps in the mood for something different in that style to find that I really enjoyed it.
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Great recommendation… just listening the now and the section from 11:00ish to 12:00ish is absolutely sublime.
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This is really interesting. That’s one of the things I love about Miró, if anyone’s been to that excellent museum in Barcelona - most of his work was dedicated to the deep exploration of a very small set of symbols (bird, moon, woman etc) that he gradually refined over the years.
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i think minimalsm is not a question of how much gear you have in your studio, but how much you throw at one track. you can use just two of them in one track and then two different ones in another.
for this i prefer gear that specializes in one purpose and doesnt try to be a jack of all trades. eg the lyra 8 can do great single chords and drones, but you cant play a melody on it.
so i prefer modular stuff without presets but with the ability to tweak every single aspect and parameter of a tone. this takes a lot of time, when you start completely from scratch, but when you dont have a large arrangement, every little piece counts. you cant hide behind a wall of sound.
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Actually, “Kind of Blue”, which is supposedly the peak of Cool Jazz and “Bitches Brew” which is supposedly the emergence of Fusion/Electric Jazz, were not rehearsed at all: A few aural instructions and hit record. On Bitchs Brew the multitracks were edited into the final album versions. Kind of Blue is complete takes live to tape. These are my favorite Miles Davis albums. However, one must look at the lineups of musicians on those sessions. Last time I had a jam with my mates, no Kind of Blue came out of it:face_with_raised_eyebrow:
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the approach of the artists around “raster/noton” is by far the most inspiring for me, at least when it comes to minimalism in sound, especially the work by ryōji ikeda:
olaf bender perfectly explains that philosophical approach in this short interview here:
i also try to go that route and find myself still struggling to find what i would love to work further on, but i should maybe add that “musicality” or the creation of harmonically conventional sounds were never a goal of mine, i would rather find myself in the realm of so-called “sound-art”, if categorisations are important here.
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I always thought this album was underrated:
The releases of Goem will also always hold a place in my heart. These along with Ryoji Ikeda (as per @arctor023 above), the ‘clicks and cuts’ compilations, and early Pan Sonic were my entry points into electronic music. I guess I’ve always been drawn to the less is more approach.
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Wow what a great interview! Thanks for sharing. Turned me on to something that I’d not intuited for myself.
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"The source tapes for this LP were recorded in Jamaica by Jah Lloyd (Patrick Francis) as part of a series he made for Virgin Records’ Front Line label. The original tapes were not released and were offered to me by Front Line’s Jumbo Vanrennen with the suggestion that I should ‘remix’ the music.
I accepted the project, expecting lots of time in one of Virgin’s studios to play with the music and the equipment, only to be presented with a mono master tape.”
“So I began to invent (or perhaps re-invent) techniques of editing, looping, filtering and subtraction to deal with unremixable mono material (these were the days before samplers). The subsequent work took a long time: as I thought it might be something of an indulgence I worked on it at weekends and evenings rather than let it interfere with other projects.
The techniques used here expanded my vocabulary of musical electronic (as opposed to electronic music) treatments and appear in a very different form on records made at that time. Notably ‘Fourth Wall’, my collaboration with Patti Palladin, and my production work on Michael Nyman’s records.
The original players remain unidentified. Jah Lloyd used various combinations of musicians but did not include who played on which tracks."
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I always feel like I should be adding more bleeps and blips and one-off sounds/events to my songs. Except once I get the basic structure down, adding in more bits seems superfluous and forced. I just enjoy coming up with quality sounds for verse chorus verse breakdown, etc. and dialing in the basics of a song these days. I feel I should get those elements correct rather than adding in a bunch of distractions on top. I want the song skeleton to carry the weight and resist simply putting lipstick on a pig.
In the same vein, and maybe it ties in with my music hobby, I am ridding myself of tons of material possessions. My house almost looks empty these days compared to most people I know. It’s very liberating to thin out all these things that take up our time, focus, space, and money. It can also be a bit scary as it means you might have to focus more on deeper things in life and figure out where you are going and how you are spending your very limited, non-guaranteed time on this planet. Ain’t always pleasant.
Gear-wise, I’ve sold a shit-ton (including my elektrons, sad to say). I’m down to a Boog, Nord Lead 2x, MS-20 mini, Push 2, and Launch Control XL. Doesn’t make for very impressive studio pictures but it’s all I need, for now. And with all the goodies in Ableton Live it still feels like an infinite set of possibilities and choices.
Keeping a tight set of well-chosen and custom-made samples also helps when it comes time for decisions. I don’t see how people ever get anywhere with gigs and gigs of samples. I just want to write about 100 songs I am semi-happy with in my lifetime. How many samples can actually be squeezed in there anyways?
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Dude I might as well have written that post myself! (trading out some specifics)
First paragraph, exactly the same place I’m at too. I want to song structure and bones of the track to be so solid they can carry the whole damn thing. The trick is to not let it get too repetitive. The human mind loves a good unexpected surprise, so I try to throw some things in that shake things up and leaves the listener dwelling, for just a second, on that bit while the rest carries on (I’m not any good at it yet though)
Second paragraph hits home pretty hard. I want to stay married hehe so I don’t give away all our possessions but we are still pretty minimal. It lets us give more focus to the important parts of life. The things that really matter. We have enough things in our lives to deal with that are outside of our control. Pretty much 99% of it even! That’s basically my default state is exploring these things and trying to stay present. It keeps one humble doesn’t it!?
Third paragraph. Same deal. I try to stay in the Goldilocks zone with my sample library. This is something that is always challenging and I often still get that itch when there is a great deal on a rad sound pack. I find that I -always- only use a smattering of samples from any part of a sound pack or an already existing part of my ridiculously large library.
Again though, the minimalism way is just ONE way and ONE persons perspective on all this. Even within a minimal framework there are probably hundreds of different ways that click for some people but not others. Not knocking any of the techniques or tendencies that anyone else has going on. If it works, it works! Can’t knock the results if they are good you know? I just find it is always interesting and good to get other perspectives on workflow and philosophy of creation (of any product).
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Great Record!
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The approach that seems to work best for me is to initially sketch out the bulk of a track with minimal sounds/parameters. Usually for me this is the AR with some samples loaded into it as well. Then I like to stem it out and sit with the track for a day or two. I’ll usually go back then and add in all my sound design elements and finesse the tracks, add a few more parts maybe or do some resampling and sequencing in Ableton.
That being said though some of my favourite tracks just use a few core sounds and really develop them to their fullest extent. 90s Regis production in particular comes to mind. https://youtu.be/6uYn84mseGA
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