Petes electronic drone doom space (and creativity & how to make and finish anything ramblings)

Elektronauts Our Music
#1

Here I want to share my musical and internal(?) journey I started this year, figuring out what type of music I want to make, how to make it, how to finish it and the results (synthy dark doomy metal-inspired music).

This is a collection of the notes and ideas I put down during the year, I imagine ill restructure the findings into something cohesive eventually (a video perhaps).

I’ll start at the end, this is the result of the year, a 33 min piece that starts quite abstract and linear but eventually settles on repeating melodies.

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#2

This project started during jamuari this year. I started using sequencers and external gear during 2021, did lots of small tests during jamuari 2022 (1 repeating pattern usually with heavy focus on “playing it” with the octatrack, performance macros on A4 and AR). However I felt that even though it was fun to play and interesting to figure out creative ways to arrange the different ways of performing the songs - I was looking do something more composed.

So jamuari 2023 I stumbled on these two experiments and found that - hey I find this interesting enough to be able to take this sound and expand the pieces into a more long form composition.

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#3

Since I made some prototypes that I found good as a jumping off point, I took a step back and wrote down some goals with the project.

The overall goal was to finish a song that I could release during the year, that I would be happy with. I have struggled to finish music during the 20-ish years ive been composing, mostly due to fear of failure, perfectionism, unable to take decisions, the belief that something im working on could be made great as opposed to good if I only worked on it some more. Last song I finished took me 8-9 years. And that resulted in a 5 min chiptune song.

I wanted to use my more professional way of working (I work as a UX designer in the medical field) - to find answers to all questions regarding purpose. What is the goal? What is most important? How do I find out the answer if I don’t know it?

This was my document where some of these questions were answered:

The goal

  1. Create music/art that I wish existed (but doesn’t) - “What if Bell Witch, Deathspell Omega and Sunn O))) made a record together, but with analog synths and spaced out effects? Where some parts would be composed in a major key to the extent that a post rock feeling would emerge? Crescendos!”

  2. What scenes or feelings are Im trying to represent? And what are other good examples of such feelings/moments I want to find? Bell Witch Mirror Reaper - the triumphant and sad riff? Epic sadness? Sunn 0))) Pyroclasts, shrouded in distorted clouds? what does distortion mean to me? is something broken? what does a distorted chord mean? what does it mean if I add a “weird” voicing? What does a reverb mean? Is it meant to know this?

  3. The goal is not to mimic what is “great” but to calibrate the internal to identify “greatness”. “So we better can make the thousand of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work.” -Rick Rubin

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#5

Some thoughts on long form composition

  1. For finishing (especially) long projects it is good to use some sort of task management system. I use Trello. I group task in ideas, to be started, can be started, in progress and done. Then I put everything in the order I want to complete things.
  2. for composing, I found it extremely useful to have other ways of sketching out long melodic progressions and chord resolves in other places than in the elektron gear. Writing in elektron sequencer and using it as a tracker where no patterns repeat is powerful but tedious. I figure a lot of initial ideas out on guitar and then move to guitar pro and map out the part there.
  3. Not loosing the big picture: I initially made a short proof of concept with the sound i wanted fully recorded and somewhat mixed. very useful to go back and listen to since during writing a lot of stuff is missing. and constantly keeping the written parts up to date would be to time consuming with multitracking etc
  4. Completing the form/structure: I thought I was satisfied a bunch of times only to go back and continue building/removing stuff. Many parts I like most came after such “already done moments”. Also some times I did alterations and discovered what I preferred the previous iteration. So I think for me letting it grow like this was beneficial, but in the end I came to the conclusion that it is about time I just lock it down.
  5. Getting a Birds Eye view or getting the feeling of “listening to a completed part” instead of “listening to find things to improve”: I found that pairing some small segments with some videos I cut together was a way to distance myself from the music.

trello-2
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