brettworks

Max Ernst, Saint Cecilia (Invisible Piano) (1923)

For many electronic music producers, composing is characterized by a tension between what feels real and what feels virtual. I divide my time between playing parts on MIDI keyboard controllers and exploring the possibilities of the digital. Software is exciting because it does so many things. I use it as an ever-evolving collection of virtual instruments and effects, as a score, and as a mixing console. Yet I think about composing inexorably in terms of what I can play on an instrument, its sound–whether acoustic sampled or synthesized–triggered by my fingers on a controller. Call me old-fashioned, but it’s when I improvise parts that the most meaningful ideas appear. Letting my hands explore the terrain of an instrument and its sounds always leads to something.

Thinking about this tension I’ve noticed a disconnect between my past experiences and present practice. On the one hand, I trained as a musician and work as a musician. I don’t have virtuosity, but I do know how promising ideas feel when I play them. (See also my posts on the ergonomics of workflows, musical instruments, and playing.) On the other hand, my composing involves more than playing parts. I also spend time building virtual signal paths through which to shape and organize these parts. In other words, a music producer’s labor is diffused along many axes of activity and decision-making, from improvising and arranging to sound design and mixing. This omnimusicality is a topic I explore in Principles of Electronic Music Production.

I’m not unique in feeling a tension between playing music and producing music. Weary of the lack of tactility in virtual instruments and effects, many producers incorporate hardware (e.g. reissues of analog synthesizers or snazzy digital drum machines) into their workflows. The appeal of hardware is that it provides one with physical keys, buttons, knobs, and sliders to play with, thereby helping composing feel more real, and therefore, more musical. This makes sense. But for every producer seeking answers in an expensive synthesizer, there’s another musician selling their hardware so they make music entirely “in the box” of their computer. For example, Flying Lotus observes:

“It’s funny. I have all these hardware synths, but I’m getting to a place where I kind of want to sell them now. […] I realized I can do pretty much everything I need in the box. It all ends up back in the box. I’m getting back to simplicity. I don’t obsess over gear anymore.”

What’s happening here is that producers recognize that even though certain electronic musical instruments–iconic Moog synths, Elektron rhythm boxes, etc.–are both historically important and fail-safe tools for working in certain ways and making particular kinds of sounds, producing is not, in fact, gear-dependent. Rather it’s a way of thinking through—and often, despite and around—one’s gear. Skilled producers think compositionally, no matter the sounds they’re working with.

This brings us to the question, What does it mean to think compositionally? Depending on the musician and the musical context, it can mean many things, but here are a few ideas. Thinking compositionally involves

conceptualizing a whole
by devising and organizing a collection of smaller parts;

committing to a soundset;

figuring out (and stumbling upon) parameters for this soundset’s action;

discovering opportunities for expressiveness;

orchestrating multiple lines and sounds so they unfold simultaneously;

figuring out melodic/harmonic/rhythmic/textural relationships
among these lines and sounds;

designing a dimensional space for the music.

In sum, thinking compositionally clarifies the producer’s adventure and reduces the tension between the real and the virtual, the acoustic and the electronic, playing an instrument and conjuring one. Making music is never about one’s equipment. Thinking compositionally is a mindset tuned to recognizing patterns and building something beautiful with them.