Production Stories
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Populating Sounds
One technique I use often is to create variations on a single sound that has the potential to be multiple sounds. I begin whilst browsing presets, not looking for anything in particular, just hoping to be surprised. Searching for sounds outside of the context of making music can be dreary work: ninety percent of the Continue reading
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Notes On Structure And Sound Design
One production/compositional strategy that I find perpetually useful is to keep different components of my workflow distinct. For example, rather than create a unique sound first and then play something using that sound, I play using a generic sound (e.g. a piano) and then later change the sound into something more interesting (or not). In Continue reading
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Production Knowing: How Do You Know When It’s Something Musically New?
How do we know when the music we’re making is actually new? What signs might indicate this newness? Are the signs in the sounds or in our our changing attention to them? • It feels like nothing is happening because musically speaking, nothing is happening. I’m clicking through sounds, looking at the screen, waiting. I Continue reading
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Production Workflows: Working With Call And Response
A technique which has served me well in composing, when I’m layering one part upon another, is to think in terms of call and response. In most situations, a new part takes shape as I listen to what I already have and try to figure out how to complement that. Keeping in mind the possibility Continue reading
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Production Stories: Working On Minutiae
Composing is often a labor of working on minutiae that or may not ever be noticed, but certainly felt. When listeners listen to music, they notice everything, even if they don’t realize they’re noticing it and instead just feel it. Listeners take in tempo, instrumentation, grooves and repetition, themes and variations, singing and lyrics, stasis Continue reading
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Production Mindsets: Volume
“Can I have everything louder than everything else?”— Ritchie Blackmore Trying to get just the right volume for every element in the mix is frustrating, because there are so many factors contributing to how we perceive a sound. There is the timbre of the sound, the register it’s playing in, the part it’s playing, as well Continue reading
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Being In It: Thoughts Whilst Editing Music To Make It Better
Let me open up the first piece again. (Double click.) Okay I’ll listen from the top. Oh, I was going to EQ the piano. (Search for EQ, click and drag.) I had a preset I saved. (Piano is playing. Load EQ.) It sounds a little boxy on this piece though. (Move the EQ bump to Continue reading
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Production Stories: Sharing A Process Of Making (Electronic) Music
A friend of mine recently passed along my Singing Bowl Music II to a friend of his, Charlotte, who is a yoga teacher. A few weeks later, Charlotte got in touch with me via email to say how much she and her students had been enjoying their practice with my music as background sound that Continue reading
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