When [you] Sat Down To Write A Project…

The Studio
1

…what were your first thoughts?

I know we probably all go through phases, where we may write just to write. Or, possibly there is an intent there. Possibly to get interested we want to focus some type of task or even try something new we noticed somewhere or that’s been eating at us.

I would love to hear from everyone, new and old. How possibly their mindset changed over their course of music writing over the years, etc. possibly how it is currently from old. In or outside the community. If a release was happening here, how they tried to juggle stuffs. This is definitely a ramble thread…

While I’m happy new members have joined and what their versions are, I’d love to see some comments from older members here as well.

I’ve honestly always felt behind the 8 ball for the majority of my music stuffs but it’s always interested me. I didn’t have avenues personally to vent or learn things outside of this community so these places where people experience physical, in person stuffs is always cool to me.

Without rambling on more and I hope to see some replies otherwise, I feel like when I first put software on my computer to crank with video or music stuff, it was just a fad for me. Just some hobby I could do to kill time in sheer boredom. That was 15+ years now. I didn’t feel like I needed a community at first but then I found this place where I found a ton of music I’d never heard before and also loved but found people creating things that I’d never even anticipated trying to make or thought existed.

From there I would say 99% of what I made was under the guise of trying to attune to what preconceptions the label had. And that lasted a long time. I did get on some releases and while that was awesome, I still never learned for myself how to make a project in full.

Even my YT dumps have been band aid’s stuffs that I just gave up on at some point and whirl winded into projects.

The tl;dr version to this, when I started pulling away from the idea that these things would be criticized to the point I wasn’t comfortable with them as a single project, I ended up being able to put projects together. While standards may not be the same, I know or noticed periods when I wrote in a certain way. Use sounds that felt that same over multiple projects. I know I’ll get hung up on different keys or chords and write repeatively, like I just learned it for the first time.

I’ve gone back in my library at point or literally just shut off writing new material to go a finish months of WIP projects. That’s been more recent than chasing IDMF releases of that past. While that was and is amazing and I’m so happy to see it’s still happening, even in a new version and name, which maybe I look at striving towards…

My new process has and will be pushing out jam sessions I can go back to and find things from to build my projects out of. I’ve always thought that nothing is always a success but instead of sitting on something and just wasting a ton of time on it, I build, move on. Eventually, I may end up with stuff but I do have to organize by month and year so I can more effectively sort out.

Let’s say the last 5 months are in monthly folders. I get to month 6 and get bored. During that month which is actually now, I start ripping/“quantifing” those projects into bits that are possible moving forward.

Again, I appreciate anyone reading this far but I’m also excited to see if anyone has any introspective info into what they’ve developed. New or old.

I will even add, when I was a young in, my thoughts were I’d just eventually make a full project. But I’ve come to terms with the idea it more or less just happens. Especially if you’re sitting without outside inspiration or influence, physically.

4 Likes
2

I can say that whenever I have sat down to “make something for IDMf” in the past it has failed. I know @RFJ can attest to that as well. It’s only when you truly remove yourself from the outside that you can pull something together that’s got your own unique stamp on it.

What’s your artist name?

3 Likes
3

Lots to unpack here, so I’ll try and distill this down as best I can from my own personal experience:

First off, when I sit down to work on a project (not a single, I usually go into writing with an album or EP concept) I normally go into it with a super rough idea only, and this idea is normally something intentionally vague (from a musical perspective). Examples of ideas from works i’ve complete and am currently working on are

  • I want to write something crazy and try new things
  • I want to explore what space and infinite regression sound like to me
  • I want to capture my fears, melancholy, dread, hopelessness and addiction
  • I want to write an album for my twin boys that shows them wonder, magic, a world of sounds and beautiful imagination
  • I want to write music that faces the traumas of mine and my sisters childhoods.
  • I want to write tracks that are dark, witchy, occult, mysterious, ritualistic and sound like film-grain and low contrast film look.

This type of thing is what i always start with, and these inspirations come from all over the place.

How I go about manifesting these is usually by giving myself a set of guidelines or rules. For instance, with the space example, to me, when i think of space, i think of pads, textures, dreamy sounds, cold sounds, etc.

Or when i think about “witchy film-grain” music, i think analog, not hyper produced or digital, saturation (or rather color from saturation such as tape, etc), warm sounds but cold mood, soundtrack, etc.

Once i’ve identified what i “think” a concept sounds like, i use that to set up the “rules” i talked about. It’s a mental list normally that might look something like:

  • I’m going to use my modular and analog gear for most of the sound design for pads, leads, etc.
  • I’m going to play around with sampling nature when i go on hikes to get drones
  • I want it to be slow paced, not fast paced.
  • I’m going to experiment with lots of tape saturation
  • I don’t want it to sound happy
  • I’m not going to do sharp sounding glitch stuff, or bright punchy percussion
  • I’m going to avoid quantizing my CV for tonal parts, and not tune my gear properly to get dissonant sounds. I will manually pitch the steps of my sequences.

Now that i have my rules set in place, i start to play around with writing within those boundaries. I find that limiting myself to a certain subset of gear and techniques forces me to be more creative and try new things.

I operate like this for a while, usually gathering up short sketches or ideas, very rarely doing more than a segment of a tracks worth of arrangement. I do this until i have a collection of ideas that to me fulfill what i feel like the soul of the idea is. I have started calling this my “mood-board”.

After i have honed in on this, i start expanding on the sketches, and this is where i start to relax with my rules a little bit. For instance, if there is a section of a track that just screams out for some crazy glitch, I try it and see if it works. If so, it’s in, if not, its out.

Rinse repeat until i have a project, wether that’s an album, Ep or whatever.

Single tracks are normally just spur of the moment things for me. I sit down with no real goal in mind at all and sometimes just happen to come up with something that is a stand alone.

I will say that i normally think about things in terms of “albums”. I’ve never gone out of my way to make a single intentionally.

To the question of, where did you start off: A buddy of mine pirated a copy of Fruity Loops way back in the day, and I had so much fun playing around with it that i never looked back. I got Reason 3 from another buddy and longtime member here shortly after that when we met. I started off just writing dance music, because that’s all i could reasonably do at the time, (I had also just discovered trance, DnB, ambient, IDM and just general electronic, probably in like 2005).

After a few years I got logic on my mac, and it was wayyyyyy better that Reason 3. It opened up a lot of avenue and let me try new things, like using audio in a project. (R3 was all midi unless you had… whatever the fuck it was called, I don’t remember anymore, recycle? re-vamp? re-dingle? idk)

Anyway, i got bored of trance and decided i would try making what i really liked and resonated with, dark music, dark ambient, industrial, melancholy music, that sort of thing.

When I first started lurking in IDMF (probably like 14ish years ago, back when Anodyne industries was killing it here) I would start off with very specific ideas and then would have trouble finishing projects because i would eventually find myself trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. No fun.

I tried to get my very first album released on here, sent an e-mail and never heard anything back. It wasn’t very well mixed or produced though. I was still so green that I didn’t know how to properly do any of that stuff back then. Despite that, it was disheartening because I felt I had poured so much of myself into it and put myself into a vulnerable position. I think it helped me realize that i need to get better at my engineering, which was a great thing long term.

and… the rest is history.

I still love that album, and need to release the remaster I’ve had of it for years here in the members releases.

Hope some of this was insightful or helpful/ answered your questions. I like talking process so if you’ve got follow up questions, let em’ rip.

4 Likes
4

This is an awesome thread. It’s great to see more discussions going on again like old times!

Honestly, most of the time I just consider if someone can benefit from a project of mine or not, which is not how I went about things 10-15 or even 20 years ago (dear god, why am I still doing this?).

This isn’t selfless or altruistic, either. I just sometimes pour way too much of myself into certain things (my main alias being a huge wasted effort over the past 7 years) when in reality, there’s a bunch of people who’d much rather download a sample pack or something rather than listen to my jams. So even though it’s not my natural inclination and sometimes it’s genuinely hard for me to consider other people as part of the equation (I’m like off-the-charts autistic), it’s becoming a serious part of my creative process to think about the recipient instead of doing my usual self-indulgent bullshit.

I honestly hope to learn more so that I can make cooler music that other people will enjoy, which is probably the hardest challenge of all for me. I guess it’s kind of the opposite of what everyone else is saying here, but that’s the way it goes when you’re just all around ass-backward. If I ever figure that out, I’ll feel like I’ve overcome my biggest hurdle.

4 Likes
5

I rarely sat down and ever tried to make something I thought fit the vibe of the IDMf label. I always just made what I was into.

I honestly didn’t really have much of a process for a long time.

These days I often start with some samples taken from a song and move from there. But my goal is always to make something people would want to dance to. I also think about how the track would work in a DJ set.

Usually I will have a bunch of half finished ideas, sit on them for a while, then come back and come up with one or two that I decided to finish.

4 Likes
6

Like you say, my whole thought process about sound has changed over time. I’m sort of back where I started 35 years ago, but older and wiser - finding inspiration out in the world, in my own head and experimenting with sounds to find something evocative to build off of. In between those bookends I did all sorts of projects and groups that never really evoked the sounds I wanted but were satisfying in their own ways. I don’t regret it, but most of it isn’t anything I’d say I find interesting anymore.

Nowadays I just take long walks and listen to the world for timbres and rhythms that inspire me, along with plugging things into other things and waiting for sound to come out that makes me want to hear more of it - sort of a dual approach of natural/concrete and unnatural/experimental/electronic.

As for actual process, I find the mixing/mastering parts to be mostly straightforward, probably because of the abstract nature of what I make. Arrangement is what I really have to work at, mostly because by the time I’m there I have a pretty solid vision of what I’m after but the details of how it all fits together matter and can sometimes evolve as the project progresses. Once I learned to do my sound design with mixing in mind, it made the final parts of the process a lot easier.

That said, I probably spend the most time on sound design and sampling, just because that’s my playground for inspiration and what really drives things forward for me. I have a lot of equipment and knowledge to try outlandish things to try and eek new and interesting sounds out of speakers and that’s really the fun part for me these days (90% of which are duds, it ends up that the voltage fluctuations of different kinds of bread in a toaster aren’t at all sonically interesting - such is experimentation). I guess I don’t consider it an effort in the same way as arrangement because it’s so core to me making anything at all - like without the sound design I wouldn’t be nearly as inspired to hit record in the first place.

There’s been a period in the last decade where I’ve been very much into process, like literal process music - 12 tone, serialization, stochastic methods, Eno’s oblique strategies, and some self-wrangled extensions and synthesizations of those alongside programmatic/data-driven techniques. They’ve been really inspiring as far as arrangement goes but it’s time consuming, sort of like making a modular patch and letting it run for an hour then going through and picking out the interesting bits. But it can end up leading me in new directions when I feel stuck or being a jumping off point for other recordings.

I guess at the end of the day I’m just looking for something that tickles my ear in a new way, and most of my process is about finding fun and interesting ways to get to that. The journey is as important as the result for me.

4 Likes
7

The only time i put any effort to actually write/compose something cohesive…

Was this album

Quality is debateable but that is the only time were there was an effort on my part to make something complementary and was built around a singular unifying theme.

Everything else after that was an assortment of standalone ideas. Lol.

2 Likes
8

Thanks to everyone that responded, so far. I’m going to reply specifically to each post, at least this time. I do love this post because I know a lot of us are or were old timers at some point and have come back…Or never left. But we’re all people and all experience things diffrerently so it’s neat to see.

Yea, for sure. While I was added to some releases, which was an awesome feeling, I don’t think I ever really pushed into a way to unite one project to the next and when i did put something in full towards an EP or whatever, I wasn’t surprised it wasn’t picked up. My artist names since being here have been bx3, cyber x, and slomomkii. One was a nickname abbreviation when I was younger, the middle, a gamertag back in the day and the 3rd, something i made up but slomo(who would have guessed was used multiple times) so i “mark 2” it. My YT is slomomkii, now.

1 Like
9

Nice nice, also appreciated since you just released something. Good roots for someone that may find what you just released and see this and help them.

I will say, as far as writing out or thinking a theme, I’ve never really done that. But if I had a whiteboard or used my notepad, that’d be an interesting process. At minimum, I could see where my intent was when I started and what happened after all. I will definitely say my mood is portrayed in the notes written and at what bpm. And during my writing I defintely sit on things but I do find myself floating around ideas which are mood-related to that week or month of personal stuffs around me.

Thank you for the reply, I feel its a good reference for someone like me. Things to try, putting specifics into practice. Even finding out what intent is before process, as well.

As to writing something you think you should to what you like, or even building into other stuffs that is possibly more viable audience-wise? If it were me and I sturck a nerve in some way, I’d say explore that route but at least add flare from what people have liked. This is obviously coming from someone just making stuffs with no real audience. But it may be fun.

10

Thanks. You’re doing it because it’s an outlet. :slight_smile:

I feel much like you because I never really thought anyone would like my stuff but as long as I could put “pen to paper” i would because I never even thought it was apart of my creativity. I’ve always had an outlet growing up but I never thought I was someone that could play a keyboard, or make “beats” in general.

Make what you like. Make when you can. Use inspirations where you think they fit. :wink:

1 Like
11

I remember when I first saw on here, you were more into the sets and making that a thing. But I will say in the later years, more recent now, you made a few things that I felt were out of your norm. They were cool. Well, one wasn’t out of the norm…I feel like it was around IDMF50, you made a mix that was bomb. And then you were later featured in one of the VA comps, yea? So much fun to listen to.

I’m glad you’re still diggin in and having fun. I think even, the last hardware discussion, you had the Roland beat machine? Do you still? Have you still been using? Probably a better question for the hardware thread/have you gone software at this point.

I would even say, since I know you messed around with records and what not, has this process still anchored in with the advent/ease of software?

12

I would definitely add that when I’m making something, those different stages of getting a loop going, and getting something that has flow, have sometimes been a detriment to my process. Like, “oh this is cool” but then I can never find a way to push it forward.

I do think sometimes I’ll add too much in the front end that it’s hard to reduce it. Or query it to parts rather than main elements. And with midi, at least for me, I’ve found that the previous written stuff shit and I’ll re-write. But it’s sometimes a crap shoot.

Like understanding a DAW is one step, a long one. Understanding how to use it sometimes when you’re trying new things is an entire new process.

I also like the idea of recording things personally, sampling out of kits or other avenues can be rough too. I definitely admire people that can find samples randomly or during periods and put them away for use. Very interesting process I’ve never gotten into fully.

13

If that’s your release project, it ended up being pretty neat. Even being spastic, everything felt like it had a home.

Uniqueness to the degree you’re playing around would be hard to repeat or even complete. It was fun to listen to back then, when it came out.

1 Like
14

Just to expand on my first post I have found these very simple concepts helpful for wirting.

  1. Don’t get stuck in the loop trap
  2. Don’t try to perfect what’s there till you have an overall structure.
  3. Export what you have and listen out of the DAW context.
  4. Don’t overcomplicate and try and do the mix during the writing process.
  5. Spend time curating and building sound libraries as a separate task so that you don’t get stuck doing it in the middle of a track.

Since I have employed these I have been able to finish more tracks.

Number 2 and 4 are a HUGE one for me. As a perfectionist, this was a big barrier for me. I would work on an 8 or 16 bar thing until it sounded just like what was in my head. Then fail to come up with anything else for the track. Now, I just try and keep the flow going and before I know it, I’ve got some structure that I can go back on and start polishing.

3 Likes
15

This is a real thing, and I’ve found myself in this situation so many times i can hardly count.

I get a 16 bar loop or so that sounds awesome, but then I don’t know how to complete it. This was the bane of my existence for so long.

That being said, I have a sort of “hack” or exercise for this situation that works for me maybe 60-70% of the time that I’ll share.

I start by making a copy of the loop (like the midi or audio tracks or whatever) and then making duplicate tracks for each instrument or channel in the loop. That way I can make changes to this new loop without affecting the original. I usually drag this to the next section in my sequencer and set my daw to loop only that new section.

Essentially, I go out of my way to change every element of the entire copied loop in some way. Like, i change patterns, notes, patching, samples, etc… until every piece of the loop is different that the original. Maybe it’s more minimal, more distorted, has a different groove, different vibe, whatever.

One could even go as far as turning the entire loop into a drone or route everything to a bus and do weird effects or something, anything that strikes your fancy. I go until i have something that I like or find interesting.

The most important part of this is to completely ignore the original loop, pretend it doesn’t even exist while you’re messing with the copy of the loop, otherwise you’re too worried about how to make it fit with the original while you’re working on it, and the goal of this exercise is just to create something new. not to write an extension of the loop (we’ll get to that).

It kinda reminds me of figure drawing and learning gesture. You fill in your basic shapes for the head, ribcage, and pelvis. The you add in the shapes (normally cylinders) for the thighs, calves, upper and lower arms, adding little scribbles for the hands and feet. But you DON’T connect them yet. Connecting them too soon makes the drawing feel stiff and removes motion and action from the pose.

Anyway, after i’ve modified the loop copy, I normally end up with something that could be another section, and sometimes the new loop is so inspiring that I can easily add to that version of the loop. I think this works for me because it can help me quickly get ideas for different segments.

A lot of the time I’ll find ways to transition from the original to the modified loop. Like, if i know what section “a” (original loop) and section c (modified loop) are, I have a better idea of what section “b” (a transition or interlude or even a whole other section) might be based on the context of the other two sections. Then you have more of an arrangement than you did before, and personally, i find it easier to come up with additions the more context i have to work with.

Not sure if that makes sense, but either way, this has worked for me pretty well in the past. Just food for thought.

2 Likes
16

If i’m understanding this right, if sounds like you’re asking how I think about:
“writing for me”
vs
“writing in a way that speaks more to the audience”.

Maybe a natural extension of that second one might be:
“how do i make music that is appealing to others in an attempt to grow my fanbase and interest in my work”

Do those sound about right? If so, that’s good, because I’ve got a answer to that question.

For most of my projects I am almost never thinking about the “audience” when I write. I’m just thinking about how the music makes me feel, what i want to hear in the music, and what the music itself demands of me. It really is a selfish thing. The way i see it, I’m going to write what i want to hear, and if others like it, then that is super fucking awesome, and i’m always hyped about that shit. But I write for me.

I think this is actually a big luxury of doing this in my free time instead of trying to make my living off of it. I feel like it takes the pressure off of trying to deliver something that will sell, so i can pay my bills and eat and make sure my family is taken care of. I don’t want to have to make the choice between mine and theirs well-being and my ultimate creative and expressive freedom.

I’m actually very particular about having that control. When it comes to music, I’m most definitely a control freak. I have a love hate relationship with this quality, as it makes me feel in control, but makes things like collaboration difficult sometimes. I want to have my hand in all of it and make sure it’s just so. Hell, for Nulla Anima, I was even particular about having no logo’s or writing on the main cover because I personally don’t like having those things. @Manton kindly obliged, which I am grateful for.

I digress, back to the topic… don’t get me wrong, I want people to listen to and like my music. I would love to have thousands of followers on a platform of come kind. Hell, at this point, I’d kill for just 100 followers. But i’m not going to go out of my way to chase that if it means I don’t get to make whatever I want to make. I’m just not willing to do that, and I’ll die on that ship frankly.

I think there are people who would like my music a lot (maybe wishful thinking, but i’m hopeful), the problem is marketing it to them. I’m not good at putting myself out there and saying “Hey, check out my new shit”. I really suck at that, I think because I have always felt a bit like I am pandering or something. Which i think in some cases is true, but I think it’s the wrong way to think about it. At some point, to get an audience, you have to be vulnerable and put yourself out there and sometimes even bug people.

If you’re thinking about reaching an audience, I would say that there is nothing wrong with keeping those people in mind when you write. But you may not know who all those people are, and there may be people out there who would love to hear what comes out of YOUR brain unrestrained. They may truly resonate with it, which is a feeling that is super special and creates a real bond between fan and artist. But they may never have the chance to do that if you’re trying to write music to appeal to a particular group.

As the Genie said… Beeeeee yourself. Its no use trying to be someone else or people please. I think there is an audience out there for almost everyone. It’s just a matter of finding them.

Holy fuck… I’ve been saying so much shit in this thread. haha. Sorry for my long windedness everyone, i like to talk a lot in real life so i’d say these posts track with me pretty well. lol

1 Like
18

That is pretty much what I meant but I think I crossed that up with the ending of KVs post. Will read more when I have more time.

1 Like
19

I agree completely. I believe marketing has to be paid for to a degree or outside influences have to be pilfered in some way. But I still believe unique music that isn’t club music has a place.

Just how do you hit it………like I mnentioned before, by coming here I actually found not only the IDMF catalogue, which most of my favorites are before I stepped foot here and then I actually found through album discussions, I’d never have found outside of this place. Or if I heard them I didn’t realize what it was. It’s a double edged sword, to a degree. I needle inside a haystack that’s inside of a haystack. At least it feels that way at points. Or something similar, it’s a mood people don’t know they’re looking for when they have these other moods to fill like “lofi study” stuffs.

20

I unfortunately mess with mix stuff to a degree during. Generally saturation and compression with some degrees of eq but I fell like that helps with tucking.

My biggest stuff now if to write a lot. Bin it and come back later. Problem is the first run is “oh that has potential”. They don’t have to sound coherent at that point but by hooking them, if I then build them a second time together, it’s helped me push stuff together. Or even mostly, in my run on YT posting EP type material, having legs has allowed me to fell they belong more.

I don’t want to turn this into a video thread or Yadda Yadda but they’ve been my most coherent multi-projects since.

21

I do have a few tunes out on the label. It was when they did house and techno, I believe.

I only have a Toraiz SP-16 right now, on which I do a lot of my production work, but I use a DAW a lot too.

I still make dance music, that’s at the center of my interest in electronic music. I have messed around with vinyl at friends houses and (at least years ago) could make a mix that way. I use CDJs now. My “project” at the moment is integrating some of my own beats (maybe not full songs) into DJ sets from a sampler. Also doing live sampling/looping/remixing during a DJ set. Nothing ground breaking, but I’m just doing it for my own satisfaction.

2 Likes