Personally I can synth things quite well nice twisted leads or heavy analogue bass. I always use my own sounds when I can but I have become scared of using pre-sets. You see comments from people on here like Preset city etc.

What�s the problem with someone who is quite knowledgeable about synthesis anyway using a good lead form nexus for example with some fx?

That got me thinking there are 2 sides to music and I have only just came to realise what those are. The technical side and the creative side. This is bugging me, how often do you sit down and think ok I have a few hours for music let�s make the start of a new track or whatever? Then spend 2-3 hours getting the kick snare and hats compressed , eq�d , creating movement etc. All of a sudden its 11:30pm on a work night and you think well that was fun and go to bed.

Is this creative too? am I wrong in thinking that getting bogged down in technical quality issues take you away from being creative? Also the technical stuff tends to follow some general rules so is following rules really being creative? If it�s not creative why do some tunes sound flat and uninteresting without all the polishing stuff?

Last night I thought fk it and wrote a basic kick snare beat with an offbeat open hi-hat Clich�? yes I know but then I wrote a simple chord sequence, simple off beat bassline and then started working on the melody. I ended up with what I think could be the best track I ever made obviously it is far from finished but the melody literally make me exited to hear it. When it plays I just want to grab a beer and party.

So what should we do be creative first and worry about the mix etc later? Risky I think as you could end up with conflicting elements and giving up. Maybe we should do the polishing as we go along just meaning tracks take weeks and run the risk of forgetting ideas etc or maybe even the technical stuff is creative and should be seen as a whole and not split. Anyone else got any thoughts.

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Processing a highly structured and complex pattern of sensory input as a unified percept of "music" is probably one of the most elaborate features of the human brain.....understanding how music is perceived and how it may elicit intense sensations is far from being understood.

It's important to differentiate "producing" and "engineering".

The way I see it, producing is a very creative activity - you're building an effective flow, making the song exciting, all of that.

Engineering is more about making things sound correct - there's definitely some overlap with production, but there's also good, sensible use of one's tools - level setting, eqing, compression. There are times when you'll want to get very creative with compression, times when you just want to compress something effectively.

It sounds to me like you're touching on the engineering aspect here - improving the sound quality of your productions, rather than creative use of effects. You could work on these at the same time you're working on songs (and most of us do, we just pick up the engineering skills as we go along), or you could set aside specific sessions for improving your engineering skills. Either try remixing one of your favourite songs and make note of what you still need to work on, or use a generic progression/melody to construct a nice set of sounds around, so you're focusing on getting a nice set of sounds together rather than trying to compose as you go.

Something you might like to try is scheduling maybe a 5 hour block of production time, and aim to have 5 quality sets of sounds together - so each hour, put together a kick, bass, pad, melody, hihat, snare/clap, and whatever else, just a 4 or 8 bar loop. Then at the end of the 5 hours, listen to the 5 loops. I've always found it quite interesting to note how some sound great, some don't really work at all. I learned how important it is to get sounds which fit well together, before any eq, compression, fx (well...a reverb on a send bus...). It makes the mixing process so much easier if the sounds work well together straight up.

Not sure if that really answered your question. I personally split my composition and production sessions. When I'm composing, I'm composing. The melody has to work as a melody, whether it's going to be played by a synth, a guitar, sung or whatever. Plenty of time later on to turn it into a song.

Creativity. Although that doesn't necassarily mean just melody.

I think everything you change to fit the mood of the song adds something. Whether its the filter cutoff, or some other synth setting or the eq on the kick or whatever. This is one of the reasons I don't like rock much, there just isn't that additional depth in addition to the melodies. Obviously if you have more knowledge knowing what settings to tweak to get what feeling is easier, however I wouldn't necessarily call that technical skills really. If by technical skills you mean overall quality of the sound and how good its mastered and etc... then who gives a shit seriously? I'd much rather listen to something from the early 90s thats pure perfection then trash.

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I think that if every producer were somehow forced to come up with all the melodies and basslines and chord progressions in a track by sitting down and working them out on an acoustic instrument before even touching his DAW or sequencer, then there would be more emotionally compelling music and less forgettable junk dressed up in a bunch of fancy effects.

When you have a sequencer in front of you, it's easy to fall into thinking of a track as a kind of "template" that you have to "fill in." Writing a melody or accompaniment starts to seem like a chore that you have to do in order to "fill in" the empty space in the sequencer, not a creative expression of emotion or an attempt to communicate something.

IMO a lot of producers (including me) could do well to spend a couple hours a day simply composing music without worrying about any sound engineering or effects.

What you have to remember here is were not making real music only digital synsethies. And we have to act in ocordence to that.The way we make our songs tecnical or otherwise is dependent on the combenation of music and tecnolgey or tring to find the two. as to sonic post when im faced with the dielemer of finding creative time and tec time i dont plan either or just simply allow for both when im putting in the studio hours,as i understand the importance of them both. ive learnt that if you can get your tecnical abilties to a point were your creative streek can be set free then im happy.

My SH-201 arrives tomorrow , and even though it has a VST plugin for DAW application (software interface , hardware dongle), i think this will totally rewrite my thinking of melodys just by using a hardware piece.As in it will be more challenging Programming the parameters and everything else.
But i will still complete my melodys first then build the track around it.
So my opinion is that you should have a creative mind that leads to creative production.

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Technical first then be creative or be creative and then be technical?

i think the answer is that you have to do both. I can't be creative when I hear that my bass line heavily collides with my kick, and if my lead is dry with no fx, when I add fx it sounds way better. I also need to EQ out the hot frequencies that are stabbing my ear.

And if you don't know how to make THAT sound that suddenly popped in your head (we've all had this experience, i'm sure) with your vsts, how exactly can you show your creativeness?

As for playing with an accoustic instrument before going to a DAW, i disagree with that. The timbre of acoustic instruments and synths are very different.

Though learning an instrument like the piano is very useful though.