Aphex Twin how do you acheive this workflow.

it seems like amazing music production is all about doing something difficult and time consuming to an extreme (but finding a workflow that works so that it is not so difficult after a while). For example, in aphex twin's "To Cure A Weakling Child (Contour Regard) " there is a ridiculous amount of short well placed delay effects one after another (and ring modulators and comb filters, etc.) . I have never been able to carry though with something like that throughout a song. I doubt this is done in realtime (mostly because of all of the reverses and stretches thorought, but who knows).

Anyways, how do you personally create the convenience and workflow to be able to do this with as much control and as little effort as possible? Do you put yourself in another environment (like an audio editor)? do you do it within the sequencer? Realtime/non-destructive or rendered/destructive? I've always wondered about the best way to do this kind of thing.

digital multitracker, hardware, real time control for me..... just get patterns going and layer them up and mute bits in and out in real time, also add effects and filter sweeps etc.... just keep overdubbing and that. i find that using hands on hardware is much better for this kind of workflow arrangementy type thing.

Mostly destructive.

most well done things, take hard work.

less well done things, can be done with less work.

how much effort you put into something results in how good it will be.

if it means a week of daily editing for 5 hours a day, for one little section... so be it.

or you could just download a plugin that semi-randomly does stuff for you.

guess which has the potential to be "amazing"?

I achieve this kind of workflow when I am standing up as opposed to sitting down. This is not a joke.

ive noticed the standing up thing as well

really standing up when editing music? i could see if you were performing and need to play something expressively. but otherwise standing up during electronic music composition sounds akin to an author standing up to type.

but i guess whatever puts you in the right state of mind is good

i think with an aphex song and trying to figure it out, it's easy to get lost in the total package and lose sight of the likelihood that it probably started as a simple beat and bassline combo, or a 64 step bout of sample play. and it probably wasn't until a few hours into it that he probably decided hey there's a song here, and then added 1 thing at a time, going through probably 5-10 different versions before he decided "oh! now i think i know where this is going!" and then slowly added more layers, finished, went back and did edits and flourishes to mask the repetitions which led to entirely different and original bars being added, then he worked on another track for about a month and came back to this one, deleted everything and had an inspired 4 hour session in which he wrote an entirely different song.

just leave yourself open, don't go into a song thinking you've got it all laid out and resolved. ever since i started thinking like "once i finish this song, i'll have a nice foundation to start from, so i can finish this song." i've been way happier with my output.

as far as workflow, just get as comfortable as possible!

I tend to agree with Kcinsu. Which is funny, because I love generative composition and have been spending lots and lots of time lately creating generative algorithms.

I realize though, that I'm not genius, hell I'm not even a professional musician, and I'm just doing this for fun because it's my hobby. People who really do this (make electronic dance music) for a living... spend a very large amount of their free time doing so. They aren't at their computer spending 3 hours wanking, and another 2 hours posting to boards and another 4 hours watching youtube vids. They're spending 8 hours doing nothing but music and then maybe spend an hour or so doing emails and boards and stuff before bed.

Anything that you want to get good at you need to do, constantly. My sister is a pretty good concert violinist, and she still practices the violin for about 4 hours a day (it used to be more like 6 before she had kids). I'm a pretty good systems admin, because I spend hours every day just playing around with my computers and networks and have done so for years.

Spend 5-8 hours a day, every day, for a year doing nothing but producing music and refining your workflow, and by the end of it youll have probably reached a point you thought unobtainable at the beginning.

  ten fingers ten toes said:

Spend 5-8 hours a day, every day, for a year doing nothing but producing music and refining your workflow, and by the end of it youll have probably reached a point you thought unobtainable at the beginning.

That's how I feel about my wanking.

I've always found Equation and Equation [Early Version, Edit] great examples of layering and how a simple processed beat or loop can be expanded upon into a fully bangin song with just clever editing and fx.

i laugh at people who make things difficult for themselves for no good reason.

i don't care if you process each individual bit of audio data seperately with a different modular synth signal path on a machine you built yourself from grubs and bark if your tune sucks. likewise i don't care if you only used presets from reason if your tune is awesome.

kind of like eddie van halen could do an album with nothing but daisey rock guitars and it would still probably sound better than what any of us could do with a guitar given unlimited equipment choices.

  children r r future said:

  ten fingers ten toes said:

Spend 5-8 hours a day, every day, for a year doing nothing but producing music and refining your workflow, and by the end of it youll have probably reached a point you thought unobtainable at the beginning.

That's how I feel about my wanking.

lol

  aeser said:

i laugh at people who make things difficult for themselves for no good reason.

 

i don't care if you process each individual bit of audio data seperately with a different modular synth signal path on a machine you built yourself from grubs and bark if your tune sucks. likewise i don't care if you only used presets from reason if your tune is awesome.

 

kind of like eddie van halen could do an album with nothing but daisey rock guitars and it would still probably sound better than what any of us could do with a guitar given unlimited equipment choices.

 

of course it's possible to achieve great results with little work... I wasnt trying to imply that the hardest route is always the best/more respectable.

but in general, I think people spend too little time on things. to me, music is much a craft, as it is a means of expression. there are people that lean one way or the other, but for me I hold them in equal regard. I find pleasure in hard work. I enjoy taking the time to make things perfect, and pay attention to as many subtle details as I can. Its part of my workflow and creative process. My music would sound different if I didn't.

I think in electronic music especially, there is a fine line between making things easier to achieve, and taking away the creative input. You can typicaly hear when someone just downloads a program that cuts up your beats, and throws a drum loop in. Sure there are some interesting/awesome moments, but at the end of the day, I feel like it lacks a certain something, that youd get by sitting down and painstakingly deciding every event that happens. (and one thing to consider, is that the more you do it, the faster and more second nature it becomes... people just dont like to put in the time... its like practicing an instrument really... (I once sat in on a lecture by BT, and he was showing us how he puts together drum breaks... he knew exactly what he wanted, how to do it, and obviously did it enough that it was second nature to him. We all kind sat there with our jaws open, as we watched how fast he put together a slamming beating, doing things that would have taken the average person lots of time to do... but again, its like practicing an instrument, so it was nothing to him. at that point, it was no longer "making things harder" on himself... it was mastery of a technique, that he found to be worth the effort. (and yes I dont like BTs music, but thats not the point... Im saying there is still something to be said about craft and putting in the work). Anyways... to me, aphex sounds like he takes the time to do everything by hand. Everything happens in a musically relevant way, and sounds like it is meant to be there. Im sure he does some realtime stuff, but I also think at the end of the day, what appears on his records is a result of careful consideration and placement.

Also, what TTFT was saying... I love doing little self evolving patches etc on my nord. It's fun, but I would never just hit play, and call that a serious piece of music. I DO however, find these things to be good sources of inspiration/material to work with. I like to make long evolving patches, record them, cut them up, and play the various phrases together on my own, actually making new phrases with them. I look at it like collage work, but with material derived from a system I created.

So basically, Im not saying that everything needs to be hard work, but I do think that there are some things that go beyond making the creative process simpler, and actually take away from a fundamental form of creative expression.

/imo

after i get my mix and have an idea of where i want the song to go i usuallly start by bouncing my drums 8 bars at a time then bringing them into designated "bounced channels" (0db no eq or effects)

then in programs like cubase or nuendo you can edit your keyboard macros to process audio with various plug-ins

for example if i highlight a section of audio and hit R it reverses, if i hit A it brings up mad shifta and if i hit S it Flips the stereo image

couple this with the ability to save the internal settings of any plug in for quick recall i can use thousands of effects for short bursts without sucking up much needed cpu for things like high quality compressors and reverbs.