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Start From Scratch (Again)
If you’re new to this blog or haven’t noticed its themes, I often write to distill ideas relating to music production workflows. I generalize based on my own experiences and share concepts that guide the work of other musicians. I think there are insights here and there, or at least an accumulation of analytical weft… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Ian Penman’s “It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track” (2019)
“Our twenty-first-century snake oil promise of ‘more choice’ often devolves into homogenous slip, a moraine of thin and strong repetition. In the current YouTube moment, we’re told that we have a limitless look-see option on everything there ever was, laid out right before us—but at the price, perhaps, if a complete absence of critical chiaroscuro.” Continue reading
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Aiming For Perfection, Open To Correction
The other day I was working on a piece and had the idea to record the chords while muting the vocal parts. Normally I wouldn’t do this because I want to hear what I’m playing along to! But in this case there were too many unusual phrasings in the singing for me to react to… Continue reading
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Gong Lessons
Gongs are one of my favorite percussion instruments. Why? Because they’re drone machines that make unusual long tones, tones that are often of indefinite pitch and hard to decipher. Because they’re the orchestra’s ultimate Outsider instrument. Because they take a while to warm up, and even longer to quiet down. But the best thing about… Continue reading
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Three Non-Obvious Production Principles
• Your initial sound matters, but only to a point, because your sound designing upon a sound will transform it far beyond what it was. The lesson: don’t obsess over your initial sounds. • The focus you apply to a track—or your time under tension/attention—is audible in the finished result. The lesson: finesse sounds all… Continue reading
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Process, Not Outcome
Roy Lichtenstein, Landscape in Fog (1996) The saying, process, not outcome is the most actionable advice for building creative work. We can’t control the outcome of our work—such as whether it succeeds in doing what we hoped it would do, or whether others find it interesting, useful, beautiful, etc. But we can choose and commit… Continue reading
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Listening To Autechre
When it occurs to me, I listen to Autechre on my commute and every time I do I’m rewarded with a listening experience that is unlike the time I spend listening to other musicians. What, I wonder, makes listening to Autechre’s music so unique? I thought of some answers to this question as I listened… Continue reading
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