Making a badass song

I've been thinking about this silly idea that's been lingering...

It takes many years to get very good at making good music. You've got many elements - the writing, melody, sound design, mastering, drum arrangement and more.

If only you could bring in renowned artists and mix them altogether for their best skills, like a sort of business producing one song alone in one year. The most complex, heart wrenching, mind twisting total fucking mind fuck of a song. A whole years production working 9 to 5 for an 8 minute song. 5 seconds go by and it's cost some 50 man hours to construct.

It would be a total and utter mess probably, but also an amazing experience.

I've considered spending some 10 hours for 10 seconds of sound, just to see what I could achieve. I've yet to do that, but I'll probably get round to some time.

yes but often what makes a song great is effortlessness..."off the cuff"-ness...

the ramones are a good example.

There's two tracks floating around by some students who polled a group of people to find out what their least and most favourite elements in a song were, they produced two tracks; one with all the favourite elements and one with al the hated elements, they're both horrible but the ''best'' song is the most tiring to listen to.

joshier, i think you might be a little bit stoned tonight.

The reason I thought about it was the idea of the film making process. You get hundreds of people involved, thousands even and they all do a little bit and create a master piece.

They would either produce the greatest possible noise in existence, or they'd end up hating the song & each other after about three weeks of working nonstop on the same bar of one instrument.

I've gotta hear one before I die, I swear it could be really great. I think what needs to happen is - much like when money is low, people group together and live in the same house, share the same shower...

Hopefully this recession will bring musicians together, forcing them to work on the same songs to increase the likelihood of revenue. We might see richard work on some 20 second of scattered beats and tom jenkinson do a quick 10 second jazz guitar solo after autechres come off a 10 bar mental rhythm synced to aaron funks snare rush.

I think more so than 10 seconds of awesomeness in a song, is 10 minutes of awesomeness... Last year I really got into epic tracks, and the idea of having something evolve over that period of time is really exciting. Also, overworking tracks usually ruins them, so you'd probably start with 10 seconds of pretty good music and it'd end up not being so good by the end of it. But hey maybe I'm wrong, you should definitely still try it!

http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/05/tiny-music-makers-pt-2-microsoft-sound.html

  Quote

Ten years ago, Microsoft spent $300m launching Windows 95 (just under $3 per copy sold). A tiny slice of that money went to Brian Eno, who recorded the startup sound on a handful of ageing synths in his studio.

 

Brian loves Yamaha FM synths. In 1995 he was using: Three DX7s, one TG77 and a Prophet VS, according to this Future Music interview:

 

"The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, 'Here's a specific problem -- solve it'.

 

The thing from the agency said, 'We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,' this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said 'and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long.' (He doesn't say how he persuaded them to eventually use a piece six seconds long). I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel. In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time."

i'd love it if he released those 84 pieces as an ep or something.

i'd also love to hear the results of other artists *coughautechrecough* attempting a similar sort of thing.

ha, that's a cool quote. thanks for that.

  On 2/15/2010 at 12:26 AM, Tamas said:

I think more so than 10 seconds of awesomeness in a song, is 10 minutes of awesomeness... Last year I really got into epic tracks, and the idea of having something evolve over that period of time is really exciting. Also, overworking tracks usually ruins them, so you'd probably start with 10 seconds of pretty good music and it'd end up not being so good by the end of it. But hey maybe I'm wrong, you should definitely still try it!

I've thought of that too, you know orchestra style, or rather film score style.

It's something I'll probably attempt too.

Dream theater songs are really long, but they are usually filled with shit and it's just boring. If you're going to make a 10 minute song, cram those ideas in - not 3 minutes of ideas stretched to 10 minutes like DT

  On 2/15/2010 at 12:32 AM, joshier said:

Dream theater songs are really long, but they are usually filled with shit and it's just boring. If you're going to make a 10 minute song, cram those ideas in - not 3 minutes of ideas stretched to 10 minutes like DT

dream theater are doing it wrong:

I'd say shit, look what happened to Axel Rose

  On 2/15/2010 at 12:03 AM, joshier said:

I've been thinking about this silly idea that's been lingering...

 

It takes many years to get very good at making good music. You've got many elements - the writing, melody, sound design, mastering, drum arrangement and more.

 

If only you could bring in renowned artists and mix them altogether for their best skills, like a sort of business producing one song alone in one year. The most complex, heart wrenching, mind twisting total fucking mind fuck of a song. A whole years production working 9 to 5 for an 8 minute song. 5 seconds go by and it's cost some 50 man hours to construct.

 

It would be a total and utter mess probably, but also an amazing experience.

 

I've considered spending some 10 hours for 10 seconds of sound, just to see what I could achieve. I've yet to do that, but I'll probably get round to some time.

I've done 6 hours:1 minute ratio songs. Does that count?

this is not a new idea btw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_pan_alley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motown_Records

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stax_Records

these places were like awesome song factories.

anal cunt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJJCzlZokn0&feature=related

masters of quick music

Anal Cunt rules

  On 2/15/2010 at 12:26 AM, kaini said:

http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/05/tiny-music-makers-pt-2-microsoft-sound.html

The microsoft sound is what came to mind when i saw this thread. Anywho. joshiers idea wouldn't work because the song wouldn't be focused at all. That's why there may be hundreds of people involved in a film but only one director. Same goes for songwriting. I've actually thought about it myself, and i dont think its a bad idea, it just wouldnt work.

  On 2/15/2010 at 12:57 AM, chimera slot mom said:

Seconded.

i was once thinking of the same idea. like s group releases the best song ever, like undeniably perfect, and that is their only song ever

  On 2/15/2010 at 12:51 AM, chris moss acid said:

anal cunt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJJCzlZokn0&feature=related

masters of quick music

the song titles on that album are hilarious

  On 2/15/2010 at 12:56 AM, Rabid said:

  On 2/15/2010 at 12:26 AM, kaini said:

http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/05/tiny-music-makers-pt-2-microsoft-sound.html

 

The microsoft sound is what came to mind when i saw this thread. Anywho. joshiers idea wouldn't work because the song wouldn't be focused at all. That's why there may be hundreds of people involved in a film but only one director. Same goes for songwriting. I've actually thought about it myself, and i dont think its a bad idea, it just wouldnt work.

  On 2/15/2010 at 12:12 AM, joshier said:

The reason I thought about it was the idea of the film making process. You get hundreds of people involved, thousands even and they all do a little bit and create a master piece.

Hollywood is consistently churning out masterpieces.

And why would musicians be motivated by the recession to work together, if more revenue would be an incentiven wouldn't it make more sense to limit the people you have to share the money with?

banging idea. you need a song that goes through different phases, but all the phases are linked, or phases occasionally repeat themselves. each phase has a different time sig, lyrics/whatever, completely different style. Bohemian Rhapsody kinda does that shit, and it's like the most popular song ever or something.

really wanted to see what would happen if classically-trained musicians turned their hands to teh IDMz

  On 2/15/2010 at 1:41 PM, ezkerraldean said:

really wanted to see what would happen if classically-trained musicians turned their hands to teh IDMz

Musicians, probably not much.

Composers? Might be interesting, though I think that a lot of "contemporary classical" (at least the stuff my soundartist ex used to make me sit through) is closer in feel to IDM than you would expect. Except without the dancing bit, mind you.

I'd like to see it the other way around, and find out how dance artists would do when making 3-hour symphonies or operas (mind you, the jury is still out on the Knife?)