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

(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 Continue reading