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Not knowing how to make music. (pg. 4)
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| DJ RANN |
For a lot of composers, orchestrators and sound designers it is exactly the same as office work. You have to do a certain amount of work by the end of the day. You just have to be creative under pressure. It's often what makes their reputation and the ones that do well are often the ones who are damn good at delivering.
Sometimes you get lucky (if you can call it that), sometimes it can take ages to get a track just right.
Pete Heller's "Big Love" was started and finished in 4 hours. That sold something like 100,000+ copies and was signed to a ton of compilations and TV adverts. |
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| cryophonik |
Personally, I don't really see the point in referencing the amount of time it takes to complete a song, but it seems that too many people (not referring to RANN) see it as some sort of music production dick-measuring tournament. First of all, for every masterpiece that was done in a few hours, there are far more utter pieces of garbage that were completed during that same amount of time (I've personally created 356 POS tracks in <4 hours), and the same thing may be true at the other end of the bell-shaped curve - not every track that took years to complete is a magnificent opus. Second, I have a hard time believing that, when someone says [insert dancefloor hit here] was made in 2 hours, that they mean it went from a completely blank slate to a mastered product in that time. Most likely there's much more to the story. The idea was probably already floating around in the artist's head for awhile, maybe they tinkered with some ideas, etc. But, then they took a few hours to put it all together, and got a decent mix going. I'm not saying that it's not possible, I'm just suggesting that the story is not always as black and white as people want to make it seem.
More importantly, I don't think that it's very important and, judging by the number of "how long does it take you to complete a track?" threads I've seen over the years, I wonder if it doesn't make a lot of people equate production speed with quality/professionalism. |
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| Kysora |
| quote: | Originally posted by cryophonik
I wonder if it doesn't make a lot of people equate production speed with quality/professionalism. |
I think it just equates to effort, which really isn't all that inaccurate. 99% of the time, if you put more time towards a track, it'll be better off for it (assuming the artist knows what they're doing)
When someone says they pounded out a track in 4 hours, even if it's good I find it hard to believe they couldn't have improved on it just by sitting on the idea for longer. But then again if I finish a song in under a month from blank slate to finished product, I'm surprised, so I could be biased. |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by Kysora
But then again if I finish a song in under a month from blank slate to finished product, I'm surprised, so I could be biased. |
Repetition is the mother of mastery. I'm currently working on finishing up a song I started on the tail end of last week. The real work on it, however, didn't start until the beginning of this week because the ideas I had last week never really gelled into something I wanted to work with. The weird thing about it is that I'll take what I think is an inordinate amount of time listening to everything I've got down - even soloing each individual track - before moving on to another task.
After a while, I think I started developing more of an intuition about what's going to work and what won't. In the past, I could easily spend a month or more and maybe not even have a track at the end of that time to show for it. I would spend a lot of effort and time and achieve usually less than a desired outcome. |
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| Kysora |
| quote: | Originally posted by EddieZilker
After a while, I think I started developing more of an intuition about what's going to work and what won't. In the past, I could easily spend a month or more and maybe not even have a track at the end of that time to show for it. I would spend a lot of effort and time and achieve usually less than a desired outcome. |
Yeah thankfully I learned enough theory lately to more or less get rid of that habit.
Most of my time is working on coming up with a decent melody/progression, from there it's just filling up the breakdown and whatnot with countermelodic riffs and whatnot. That comes pretty easily to me thankfully. But never so easy that I'd feel confident in anything I spent less than a few weeks working on. |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by Kysora
Yeah thankfully I learned enough theory lately to more or less get rid of that habit.
Most of my time is working on coming up with a decent melody/progression, from there it's just filling up the breakdown and whatnot with countermelodic riffs and whatnot. That comes pretty easily to me thankfully. But never so easy that I'd feel confident in anything I spent less than a few weeks working on. |
Having heard your stuff, I can honestly say that the time you take pays dividends. You have a meticulous attention to detail that I think a lot of producers would do well to attain; and that's something I also try and strive for.
I love working with counter-point melodies. There's something about a good counter-point that really opens up a song. It's part of that "space between the notes" that quote by Claude Debussy seems to be speaking to - for me, at least. |
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| Mad for Brad |
counterpoint would reduce space. You don't have the range that you do with classical music so your secondary melody line will be rather close in terms of range. It tends to work if your main melody is repetitive so the addiction of another idea will not be as intrusive.
here is an example of a track I did long time ago, The main melody stays the same so it kinda becomes background once the second melody is there. You can still hear it but it doesn't interrupt the counter melody, The main melody is basically an anchor once the counter melody arrives.
http://www.zshare.net/audio/76314226d53f4e2a/ |
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| Beatflux |
| quote: | Originally posted by Rodri Santos
Well Armin van Buuren says that his hits where the tracks that less effort supposed for him, i believe this because his music it's pure commercial crap and keeping things simple and generic is what make a track successful on this kind of tracks.
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His music puts bodies on the dancefloor. What does your music do, give you a boner at night? |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mad for Brad
counterpoint would reduce space. You don't have the range that you do with classical music so your secondary melody line will be rather close in terms of range. It tends to work if your main melody is repetitive so the addiction of another idea will not be as intrusive.
here is an example of a track I did long time ago, The main melody stays the same so it kinda becomes background once the second melody is there. You can still hear it but it doesn't interrupt the counter melody, The main melody is basically an anchor once the counter melody arrives.
http://www.zshare.net/audio/76314226d53f4e2a/ |
I think your talking to the other side of the same coin. My understanding is the Debussy quote was taken from a book he wrote on numbers. I can't be entirely sure but my interpretation of it is that he is speaking to a distance between any two notes and subsequently the spaces shared between the lot of them, from beginning to end - in terms of a time-line - and up and down - in terms of melodic intervals, chord phrasing, counter-point melodies, et al.
Here's are examples of what I'd point to as counter-point, which I pulled from my latest album, Music for the Mugwumps - but please feel free to correct my delusions about it.
http://soundcloud.com/deepeddiezilk...re-twilight-320
The counter-point melody doesn't come in until fairly late as a kind of high ping sound. Each note of the counter-point rests above the melodies articulating underneath them and therefore creates dimension. Note that the melodies, while somewhat complex, remain static loops juxtaposed against the single note, above.
You may want to turn your speakers down on this one - the trumpets are a little shrill, IMO.
http://soundcloud.com/deepeddiezilk...pider-house-320
Here the counter-points are realized in the three-part harmonies that the trumpets play out, eventually against the music bed.
Don't feel like you're hurting my feelings if you rip into these or tell me why I'm an idiot for believing either of these two have one iota of counter-point between them (or do, but that's between you and your therapist who will retire once too many counter-transference issues occur between the two of you ;) ). I freely admit to a certain dilettante familiarity which could use correction. |
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| Beatflux |
| quote: | Originally posted by cryophonik
Personally, I don't really see the point in referencing the amount of time it takes to complete a song, but it seems that too many people (not referring to RANN) see it as some sort of music production dick-measuring tournament. First of all, for every masterpiece that was done in a few hours, there are far more utter pieces of garbage that were completed during that same amount of time (I've personally created 356 POS tracks in <4 hours), and the same thing may be true at the other end of the bell-shaped curve - not every track that took years to complete is a magnificent opus. Second, I have a hard time believing that, when someone says [insert dancefloor hit here] was made in 2 hours, that they mean it went from a completely blank slate to a mastered product in that time. Most likely there's much more to the story. The idea was probably already floating around in the artist's head for awhile, maybe they tinkered with some ideas, etc. But, then they took a few hours to put it all together, and got a decent mix going. I'm not saying that it's not possible, I'm just suggesting that the story is not always as black and white as people want to make it seem.
More importantly, I don't think that it's very important and, judging by the number of "how long does it take you to complete a track?" threads I've seen over the years, I wonder if it doesn't make a lot of people equate production speed with quality/professionalism. |
On Sunday, I'm going to an ill.Gates seminar here in Denver, and part of it is all about speeding up your workflow which I'm terribly interested in. He did have a video where he goes through setting up Ableton drumracks so you can pick out your sounds 50 times faster than sifting through the damn browser. Then once you have your racks setup, you save them to the library for future use. So you might just drum rack up all of the hihats from Vengenace, or whatever you want, save it then use it whenever you want instead of running to the browser every time. One thing he said is that you do not want to spend more than 20-30 hours on a song.
I'm starting to think that going with a speed workflow might be better for me, because I won't be able to analyze and try to break down the situation. The decision making will be more like, "Keep, or trash?" |
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| cryophonik |
| quote: | Originally posted by Beatflux
On Sunday, I'm going to an ill.Gates seminar here in Denver, and part of it is all about speeding up your workflow which I'm terribly interested in....
I'm starting to think that going with a speed workflow might be better for me, because I won't be able to analyze and try to break down the situation. The decision making will be more like, "Keep, or trash?" |
Sounds like an interesting seminar. I'm all for improving workflow and efficiency, minimizing the trash and inefficiencies, etc. I'd love to hear any good tidbits that you get from that seminar. |
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| Mad for Brad |
| quote: | Originally posted by EddieZilker
I think your talking to the other side of the same coin. My understanding is the Debussy quote was taken from a book he wrote on numbers. I can't be entirely sure but my interpretation of it is that he is speaking to a distance between any two notes and subsequently the spaces shared between the lot of them, from beginning to end - in terms of a time-line - and up and down - in terms of melodic intervals, chord phrasing, counter-point melodies, et al.
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Doubt that was Debussy. He used quartal harmony and whole tone scales along with late romantic tonal harmony but never touched upon 20th century serialism and the subsequent focus on numbers and intervals. I can see him talking about space though in a general sense as the harmony in his music is quite open with stacked 4ths or 5ths and little dominant resolution. The resulting harmony is less guided by tonal forces and can as you say float where it is and not have to be resolved in any one manner.
The first example, I did not really hear any counter melodies that stood out and played against the main melody. That is why it is called counter point, it counters. The second example, albeit counterpoint is a rather clumsy. Your voicing is very unusual. Having the melodies so close together with the same timbre and unorthodox voice movement and similar rhythm scheme does not enhance but rather makes it sound muddy. You definitely reduced space with the addition of the counter line. |
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