Composing is a kind of cobbling together of disparate things to make a coherent whole, but in music production especially we want to dwell among those disparate things for as long as possible and not obsess over when and where coherence will emerge. (It always does if you stick around long enough.) The more disparate… Continue reading

(Photo: Quino Al) Digital tools promise quick magic, giving the impression that we can make musical things happen by pressing a button, turning a knob, or moving a fader. But speed distracts from quality pursuits. The producer wants to capture as much humanity as possible and the way to do this is to do as… Continue reading

(Photo: Matt Seymour) The sweet metaphor is not accidental: ear candy are little sounds added in and around a track to sweeten its listening experience, brief explosions of interestingness that bring sparkle, razzmatazz, magic affect and energetic pop to music’s edges. Ear candy are details finessed, differences that make a difference, light in praise of… Continue reading

Your soundset is a bespoke palette of sounds, toolkit of filigreed production possibilities, collection of go-to enchanting instruments and timbres, and repertoire of effects and signal processing ways, balanced just so. Having a soundset solves the problems of what template to use and how to begin, freeing your attention from which sounds to what shall… Continue reading

(Painting: Fernand Khnopff, “Listening to Schumann” [1883]) Composers who write for acoustic musicians have a good idea of the soundworld they’re scoring for: an orchestra, a wind quartet, a choir, a percussion ensemble. But this isn’t the case with music producers as they create both a palette of sounds and the virtual acoustic/synthetic spaces these… Continue reading

Why am I working on this? Sometimes your music making answers this question, but often it doesn’t. So it can be helpful to think about possibilities and paths of action before you start by devising prompts to orient yourself in directions you could go. A prompt is a phrase to guide, inspire, and energize your… Continue reading

Something in the track doesn’t sound right: a rhythm is off, it’s boring, there’s timbres clashing, too many sounds, a cliché chord, a predictable structure, the intro isn’t long enough, the mix is murky, and the fade out should be the only part. When something doesn’t sound right we know it. Our knowing is not… Continue reading

(Photo: Elijah Macleod) Your musical influences are spirit architects whose works form an invisible blueprint for your own. Influence is both a gift given and its acceptance–a call and response. It’s your echoing, recalling, and imitation of what you love in your forebears and colleagues as you try to ventriloquize them, imagining what they would… Continue reading

(Photo: Jean-Philippe Delberghe) Taste and Style are entry points into musical aesthetics. Your taste is how you understand an aesthetic to work, while your style is how you practice this understanding. One wants to have a “good sense” of musical taste and musical style, but taste and style don’t need to be pursued: they’re a… Continue reading