brettworks

(photo: Paul Skorupskas)

“If you really want to separate your work from everyone else’s,
every time you come to a Y in the road, don’t think about which way to go;
automatically take the toughest route. Everybody else is taking the easiest one.”

– Richard Serra in Leonard Koren’s What Artists Do (2018)

I sometimes wonder, Why I don’t have my DAW set up in a way that reflects how I work? I’ve made templates, but then don’t use them because while I like the idea of focusing on certain sounds, my intentions always dissolve once I get a project going. My attention is hijacked by something unexpected, like a single interesting sound or two, upon which I start making music. At some point I notice the rest of my unused template and think, What do I do with all of this?

What I’ve found is that my process oscillates, moment by moment, between fumbling around and moments of clarity as to what to do. And since this blog is about sharing the thinking behind music production, consider my far-from-unique experiences as a ground for broader discussions about crafting sound in the DAW. From me to you: surely every producer can learn something by considering the question, How do I like to work?

If you wish to keep your options open in music production, there’s no set way of working: a piece can begin and develop by any means. But if you examine your go-to workflows, some generate more interesting results than others. A technique I often return to is setting up juxtapositions of one unrelated part against another whose sound is unpredictable and surprising. For example, I’ll dissect vocal samples into short phrases and sustained single pitches. I pick only the evocative bits–the held dissonances, unfolding cadences, and perfect unisons–that sound good on their own, or that suggest an unsounded musical accompaniment. It’s like making a sample pack whose musical purpose isn’t yet clear. The producer Richard Dust of The Black Dog describes a similar process of assembling a bespoke sample bank:

“When we start, we create simple banks of samples to try and get some very basic loops and tones going, just to try and set the tone and style that we want to start with. That usually gets completely thrown out the window by the end of the project, but because it’s a start point, it helps us all to focus on a certain idea.”

Next I bring the vocal samples together with an unrelated chord sequence/beat I’ve prepared to hear what happens. Sometimes there are problems I didn’t foresee–maybe the singing is three semitones out of key and 34 cents out of tune (who knew a few cents conveys so much sense?), or the tempo’s all wrong. But once I retune and find a better speed I’m often surprised by the voices-against-chords/beat juxtaposition. It often sounds startlingly more than the sum of its parts–like something I could never compose had I tried to accompany the vocals. The freshness of this sound reminds me how rarely I achieve compelling results by playing along with samples–in fact, trying to fit my playing to a sample sort of diminishes the playing. The producer Four Tet (Kieren Hebden) similarly describes how manipulating samples of his own playing is the most compelling kind of performance:

“I started to find that the most original sounds I was making and the ones that were giving me sort of a signature style was when I was manipulating these samples to fit with each other. The artifacts and weirdness that would come out of what was proving to me more interesting than me picking up an instrument to play. A classic example for me is I play guitar: all the interesting guitar parts I was coming up with was me messing with a sample of myself playing guitar.”

Bringing together samples with unrelated chord sequences/beats is just one workflow I find useful. There are, of course, countless techniques producers use to put music together, hundreds of which are documented in this database. But even if you have no set way of producing, it’s worthwhile to understand your typical workflow and whether your musical system supports and enhances it or gets in the way. Production ergonomics is this psychic/aesthetic fit between the configuration of your system and the idiosyncrasies of your workflow. Once you know how you like to work (for now at least), adjust and refine your musical system so that it feels inspiring, organized, easy to use, and yours alone.