brettworks

The basis of making music is having a relationship with a musical instrument. What does this mean? The relationship comprises touch, technique, and reciprocity. An instrument is something physical you can touch and make sound with. An instrument responds to the quality of your touch and will sound in accordance with your technique. In doing so it gives something back—it reciprocates by helping you make music. “Physical instruments” notes Jaron Lanier, “channel the unrepeatable process of interaction.”^⁠ Without an instrument to play, most musicians (besides singers, whose voices are their instruments) wouldn’t be able to do much.

Electronic music production changes this musician-instrument equation. A piece of hardware such as a synthesizer is physical, but it makes sound by electronic and/or digital circuits. This is not necessarily a bad thing–circuits can sometimes generate enchanting sounds–but the equation is different. The main difference here compared to playing an acoustic instrument is that an electronic musician’s sound isn’t fixed. Its basis can be a waveform or a sample; change a few parameters and the sound can move from one thing to another, or be a hybrid of several sources. With an electronic instrument, one’s sound is potentially never settled–it’s a moving target. Because of this, a challenge I have with electronic music production is not having a consistently meaningful relationship with the sounds available to me. This is my fault, not the sounds’ fault. Still, the only consistency is my ways of playing: if I can drum or play a part on a keyboard, I at least feel I have some control over how I approach the sounds I’m working with. The familiar geography of the keyboard is perhaps why keyboard controllers are still more popular than grid controllers: the piano is the instrument with which most musicians have some kind of history and experience playing.

There are a few ways to find a consistent and expressive sound. One way is to design a sound that you enjoy playing because it has a uniqueness about it. Sound designing takes time, has no guaranteed results, and is somewhat distinct from coming up with chords and melodies, etc. And even if you arrive at a sound you like, you need to learn how it reacts to your touch. Another method is to find a sound that is in the ballpark of what you want and then refine it with effects. I use effects to color a sound and set a mood conducive to playing something. For a recent recording of solo piano music, I began with a dry piano sound on the first few pieces then, piece by piece, added bits of delay effects to color the sound and create a sense of space. The effects changed how I played: on the pieces with effects I used fewer notes and let them sing more. Who knows, with the right effect maybe I’d only have to play a single note.

Expressive sounds sometimes appear when you take a sound you already know and like (e.g. piano, gong,) and use its audio as the basis of a new sound. For example, you could use it to make a wavetable patch in a software synthesizer like Serum or Vital. You could import the audio into a sampler and make a new instrument with it (e.g. the piano becomes a pad). Or you could use the sound as “genetic” material for a new, who-knows-what-to-call it timbre in Synplant 2, a fascinating generative synthesizer. None of these techniques promise useable sounds (and admittedly, my sound design batting average isn’t high), but trying them and following wherever they lead ensures that, at the very least, you’ll have a connection to whatever results come out of the process. Remember that your process is grounded in your affinity for the original sound upon which the possibly Frankensteinian mutations will be based.

In sum, no matter what instruments you choose and which sounds you make by whatever methods, the key to making the process work is developing a meaningful relationship with what you hear. Sounds are moving targets, but when you love a sound it stops moving for a second and agrees to collaborate, offering you a chance to make something cool with it.