brettworks

(Photo: Marcello Gennari)

Scaling entails all the ways to build upon, extend, and multiply a musical idea to achieve its appropriate form. Scaling is a response to the question: How can I transform this music into a dimensional space over time? Scaling techniques are many, including: repetition, multiplication of parts, call and response, counterpoint, and effects processing. In the DAW, these techniques can be achieved through automated means—from copy and paste to transpose and invert to sample and resample to mute, drag, and stretch. Techniques of scaling are also conceptual tools in that they enable the producer to trust that even the smallest idea can seed larger structures: scaling turns the 1-bar loop into the 32-bar phrase, the melody into the chord progression, the single chord into the endless sequence, the one-shot sample into the drone horizon. When you sense a musical idea-in-progress, try ways of scaling it up—to make the idea last and linger longer, as if it’s the only idea you ever had and may ever need.