(Photo: Namroud Gorguis) When you’re working on a piece of music that feels like it isn’t going anywhere, turn it into an art project. Get conceptual with it: embrace not going anywhere, or explore the nature of goings and destinations. Turning it into an art project changes our focus from the pressure of having to Continue reading

Closest at hand sound is the principle of using the instrument, device, sound, sample, or effect that is easiest to play or manipulate right here, right now. The closest at hand sound trades vagueness for specificity, grand plans for small actions, possibility for commitment. The principle was explained by pianist and composer Harold Budd as Continue reading

To Listen More is to understand better what’s missing from your music. To figure out how to improve it—finesse its details, make its rhythms move, its melodies conjure, its ambiances enchanting, its arrangements tight, its mixes cohesive—listen to how other musicians have approached these problems of tone, texture, time, impact, and form. Their music is Continue reading

If you make beats you work with timing on an infinitesimal scale. The timing or groove of a beat is as important as its rhythm patterns because timing conveys subtle, almost subliminal information about musicianship, directionality, intensity, and mood. Nuances of where a beat’s components hit in time–in relation to one another and in relation Continue reading

Although producing music is generally an iterative process in which you return to tracks begun yesterday, last week, or last year with an ear to gradually improving them, ideally it’s an all-at-once process that leverages time running out. In One Session is the principle of maximizing what you can improvise, record, edit, and arrange in Continue reading

(Photo: Marianne Bos) “Transition” notes Ernő Rubik, “is the very heart of inspiration and creativity”, and compelling music is always in transition on every level of its unfolding. Like a kaleidoscope in motion, music is a continuous becoming from one state to another—waveforms vibrating, chords progressing, melodies inventing, timbre-textures morphing, beats repeating, and arrangements growing—a Continue reading

The number is arbitrary, but consider keeping the number of sounds in a track to ten or less. Under ten sounds is a bulwark against music production’s abundances–a constraining line drawn around the music that says, Just these sounds are enough to do what we want to do. Under ten sounds is a point of Continue reading

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