anybody want to start a topic about music production feels or philosophy rather than tech

Never learned how to live mix and beat match. Seems ridiculously impossible to my mind.

I think it's one of those things like riding a bicycle - you can think as hard as you want about how to do it, but once you hop on the thing, all the reflexes built into the human body over all these thousands of years kick in and you just learn to keep the balance. It's not like in EQing is impossible either because you don't see the dB/Hz values when you turn the knob.

Besides, Mixxx has a pretty good beatmatching algorithm and often it's enough just to click "sync" and viola....

  On 6/16/2018 at 2:07 AM, sheathe said:

Never learned how to live mix and beat match. Seems ridiculously impossible to my mind.

it just takes a bit of time, i learned on belt drives, they'd wander here n there with the pitch so you'd really have to be delicate with the turntable platters & ride the pitch out

digi isnt gonna go away, but 2 techics, 2 cdj's & a decent mixer + all your favourite rekkids never gets old, plus you can always start around 90bpm & work yer way up, acapella drops & a M@W or MK dub gets heavy, beatmatching can get stale if you dont work around things a bit

give it a bash, your material would really suit a 1hr mixed array

  On 6/16/2018 at 5:15 AM, thawkins said:

I think it's one of those things like riding a bicycle - you can think as hard as you want about how to do it, but once you hop on the thing, all the reflexes built into the human body over all these thousands of years kick in and you just learn to keep the balance. It's not like in EQing is impossible either because you don't see the dB/Hz values when you turn the knob.

 

Besides, Mixxx has a pretty good beatmatching algorithm and often it's enough just to click "sync" and viola....

once that muscle & ear memory gets built in, you never really lose it, its one medium of performance where when its good you can achieve a collective group lift off thats such a natural high when all the elements come together fully, you dont need drugs if the music is on point

sounds cheesy but its delicious getting out in the hills once in a while with a chunky rig chugging out tunes under the stars, life would be fkn dull w/out it thats for sure

  On 6/17/2018 at 5:42 AM, cwmbrancity said:

 

 

 

  On 6/16/2018 at 5:15 AM, thawkins said:

I think it's one of those things like riding a bicycle - you can think as hard as you want about how to do it, but once you hop on the thing, all the reflexes built into the human body over all these thousands of years kick in and you just learn to keep the balance. It's not like in EQing is impossible either because you don't see the dB/Hz values when you turn the knob.

 

Besides, Mixxx has a pretty good beatmatching algorithm and often it's enough just to click "sync" and viola....

 

 

once that muscle & ear memory gets built in, you never really lose it, its one medium of performance where when its good you can achieve a collective group lift off thats such a natural high when all the elements come together fully, you dont need drugs if the music is on point

 

sounds cheesy but its delicious getting out in the hills once in a while with a chunky rig chugging out tunes under the stars, life would be fkn dull w/out it thats for sure

 

I assume you're talking about setting a sound system up somewhere out in the woods. I have had the pleasure of doing it a couple times in my life, and I really agree it's something really special. One of the things I really miss here in the megacity is just that - at the moment I don't really know anyone who would be into lugging a bunch of speakers to the middle of nowhere.

I should really schedule an evening per week to just do a DJ set & learn to beatmatch.

dont really know what/where digi platforms are at these days, but maybe try with lower bpm's for a bit - there's more time between actual beats so you'll learn/react more quickly than if you were playing something faster (like d&b)

fucking up a transition happens to everyone, but finding a flow & working things so that their respective keys blend (sometimes by chance, hopefully mostly by design) evens out & smooths the pace of any mix considerably, after that its really down to knowing your records & their individual structures so you dont get caught trying to blend one vocal piece into another (they'll always clash, trust me) or when beats disappear into an acapella

get stuck in asap

Kinda asked this in the sampling thread but I've been really having dilemmas on the art (or theft) of sampling. I don't mean it in a legality sense but of a moral sense. I've been reading up on this topic and learned that this isn't a new thing, as Beethoven copied aspects of Mozart and Bach into his works. Hip-hop and rap really blurred the lines for me in this respect since artists from that group don't have the money to afford a drum kit or instruments, and taking an aesthetic piece to relay your message makes sense. Furthermore, I understand there is a spectrum of what artist do with samples and what constitutes as evolution vs. upright stealing but there has been a growing discomfort with the morality and practice of it. Drum loops seem to be the fulcrum between what constitutes as ripping off another artists' ideas and the separate of the idea from the practice. Melodies and rhythms to me feel blatant, whereas individual one-hits and pieces are acceptable.

I accept that they are pretty much embedded at this point in electronic music, but it feels like we are viruses in copying a piece of someone elses' past success DNA to use it to propagate our own work.

  On 6/20/2018 at 5:01 AM, Entorwellian said:

Kinda asked this in the sampling thread but I've been really having dilemmas on the art (or theft) of sampling. I don't mean it in a legality sense but of a moral sense. I've been reading up on this topic and learned that this isn't a new thing, as Beethoven copied aspects of Mozart and Bach into his works. Hip-hop and rap really blurred the lines for me in this repsect since artists from that group don't have the money to afford a drum kit or instruments, and taking an aesthetic piece to relay your message makes sense. Furthermore, I understand there is a spectrum of what artist do with samples and what constitutes as evolution vs. upright stealing but there has been a growing discomfort with the morality and practice of it. Drum loops seem to be the fulcrum between what constitutes as ripping off another artists' ideas and the separate of the idea from the practice. Melodies and rhythms to me feel blatant, whereas individual one-hits and pieces are acceptable.

 

 

I accept that they are pretty much embedded at this point in electronic music, but it feels like we are viruses in copying a piece of someone elses' past success DNA to use it to propagate our own work.

The simplest answer to that I can think of is: when you sample, you got to make the result so good that even though people may recognize the sample, they won't care because you've done something unique with it and that makes it worth it.

It's not like you're sampling out of laziness. Got to break some eggs to make an omelette, etc.

And if you bring DNA into it, remember yours is just a sort of merged copy from your father & mother. 

Yeah thawkins. This is a side note, but I really like when sampling intentionally plays on the familiar, using the contexr and familiarity as a tool. Like, Susumu Yokota's "Symbol" and the way it reuses lots of well known snippets from orchestral pieces; that album makes my brain buzz. Like, it makes your brain jump through some interesting hoops that an entirely new composition wouldn't do.

I also super dig it when rappers do this by including bits of famous lyrics that fit the song's theme, like Danny Brown using an altered section of lyrics from Outkast's "B.O.B." in "Today" ("in the kitchen with that arm and hammer; get those pampers for baby mamma"). Or when Chance uses the line "when I reminisce over you, my god..." in "Nostalgia", which is a line both nostalgic in itself, as well as being from a song about nostalgia, which is highly nostalgic to a lot of people...

But it's easy to take this kind of referential sampling too far and make it gauche and cringy, like Girl Talk. But when its done subtly, it can just be so so right.

  On 6/20/2018 at 5:01 AM, Entorwellian said:

Kinda asked this in the sampling thread but I've been really having dilemmas on the art (or theft) of sampling. I don't mean it in a legality sense but of a moral sense. I've been reading up on this topic and learned that this isn't a new thing, as Beethoven copied aspects of Mozart and Bach into his works. Hip-hop and rap really blurred the lines for me in this repsect since artists from that group don't have the money to afford a drum kit or instruments, and taking an aesthetic piece to relay your message makes sense. Furthermore, I understand there is a spectrum of what artist do with samples and what constitutes as evolution vs. upright stealing but there has been a growing discomfort with the morality and practice of it. Drum loops seem to be the fulcrum between what constitutes as ripping off another artists' ideas and the separate of the idea from the practice. Melodies and rhythms to me feel blatant, whereas individual one-hits and pieces are acceptable.

 

 

I accept that they are pretty much embedded at this point in electronic music, but it feels like we are viruses in copying a piece of someone elses' past success DNA to use it to propagate our own work.

depends on the source material & how much you fk with it...if it sounds derivative & alludes to countless other tunes then it cant really hit home hard enough to merit making it in the first place, surely?

on the flip-side, Detroit's Mike Huckaby put out a sample kit from sounds made by the rare Waldorf Wave synth a few years ago, it got plundered to fuck & back but the more creative spectrum of the House nation spruced things up to another level, summet def worth seeking out....

some back ground on the sampling kit only cos it includes other samples accrued from Huckaby's own sample library

https://groove.de/2012/12/10/download-exclusive-mike-huckaby-sample-kit/

and the kit itself

http://deeptransportation.com/shop/mike-huckaby-down-under-kit-digital-download/

having a google round Andrew Liles + sampling is well worth your time, he's someone who uses all manner of sound sources & warps them into fresh, disturbing & unique creations, further enhancing them by placing arrangements along-side the mundane, every day audio ephemera of life on earth .......def someone who continues to push things to jedi levels of wtf

Thought had while in the woods on LSD last weekend: I want to make songs & albums (and a musical career) that feel the way building a campfire feels. IE the trax//sonic elements are initially just random bits of biomatter you're gathering from the forest - some are more immediately striking & substantial, utters don't feel like much at all. Often the quality of what you're getting is highly dependent on the environment you're working in. The collective structure you assemble them into initially seems disjointed & largely random, but through a process of sustained conscious effort you're able to generate sparks in the parts of the combined structure that happened to be most liable to hold heat. THrough continued effort & focus & maybe a few tries you're able to generate a fire (here representitive of the groove or some transcendental feeling that art may evoke) that grows to consume the entire structure & make it part of something cohesive, and the bigger it gets the more sustainable it gets

i dunno there's a lot to unpack here w/r/t to experimental approaches to compositional structure but i gotta go to work. this post is more just like a sticky note of thoughts to explore

i think i need to try lsd. never graduated past weed because tbh i find it lame and ineffectual.

  On 6/21/2018 at 11:46 PM, Cryptowen said:

Thought had while in the woods on LSD last weekend: I want to make songs & albums (and a musical career) that feel the way building a campfire feels. IE the trax//sonic elements are initially just random bits of biomatter you're gathering from the forest - some are more immediately striking & substantial, utters don't feel like much at all. Often the quality of what you're getting is highly dependent on the environment you're working in. The collective structure you assemble them into initially seems disjointed & largely random, but through a process of sustained conscious effort you're able to generate sparks in the parts of the combined structure that happened to be most liable to hold heat. THrough continued effort & focus & maybe a few tries you're able to generate a fire (here representitive of the groove or some transcendental feeling that art may evoke) that grows to consume the entire structure & make it part of something cohesive, and the bigger it gets the more sustainable it gets

 

i dunno there's a lot to unpack here w/r/t to experimental approaches to compositional structure but i gotta go to work. this post is more just like a sticky note of thoughts to explore

Maybe do some gridless musique concrète

^tbh i feel like most of what i'd consider my more substantial releases from the last few years are the ones where instead of just putting out the (mostly straightforward) first takes as-is, I'd put out the end result of trying to collage those first takes together in various ways for a couple months. To my ear this is always super intriguing bcuz the original demos weren't made with any clear idea of how they might fit together, and most of them don't really. so you kinda gotta think unconventially & things very quickly start turning into messy soundsculptures rather than tidy little tracks, and by the end of it you've gotten so deep in the process that what emerges, rather than being some conscious artistic statement, feels more like an honest snapshot of who you were as a person during the production process.

@shea: i think you might like it a lot! it makes the woods better, dancing better, music better, etc etc. All-purpose amplifier. And tbh the only mind altering substance where I've consistently felt like the experiences I had & the things I produced during the trip still had that "better than normal" feeling in the light of sober reappraisal

I feel I have got a lot of direct and less direct feedback about song lengths being a little too long.

On one hand I am not so sure how to take this because I like plenty of stuff that clocks in at 8-12 minutes (Stars of the Lid comes to mind) just because that type of music seems to be nicer to "get into". On the other hand most commercially successful things seem to have way shorter running lengths for songs too. I think it depends very much on whether you are passively (i.e. having it play somewhere in the background when you're working) or actively listening. 

I am pretty sure I have to cut things down because listening to my old stuff I do get really bored when it takes ages for the song to get anywhere, but damn it's hard to cut a part away when it's still kind of "working" for me even though technically it's just the same melody parts just repeating.

Anyone else have this problem & if so, how do you solve this dilemma? 

I just quit making music altogether, certainly took the pressure of.

  On 8/29/2018 at 3:38 AM, thawkins said:

I feel I have got a lot of direct and less direct feedback about song lengths being a little too long.

 

On one hand I am not so sure how to take this because I like plenty of stuff that clocks in at 8-12 minutes (Stars of the Lid comes to mind) just because that type of music seems to be nicer to "get into". On the other hand most commercially successful things seem to have way shorter running lengths for songs too. I think it depends very much on whether you are passively (i.e. having it play somewhere in the background when you're working) or actively listening. 

 

I am pretty sure I have to cut things down because listening to my old stuff I do get really bored when it takes ages for the song to get anywhere, but damn it's hard to cut a part away when it's still kind of "working" for me even though technically it's just the same melody parts just repeating.

 

Anyone else have this problem & if so, how do you solve this dilemma? 

I solved it by just continuing making boring lengthy tracks nobody wants to listen too but don't care about that

  On 8/29/2018 at 3:38 AM, thawkins said:

I feel I have got a lot of direct and less direct feedback about song lengths being a little too long.

 

On one hand I am not so sure how to take this because I like plenty of stuff that clocks in at 8-12 minutes (Stars of the Lid comes to mind) just because that type of music seems to be nicer to "get into". On the other hand most commercially successful things seem to have way shorter running lengths for songs too. I think it depends very much on whether you are passively (i.e. having it play somewhere in the background when you're working) or actively listening. 

 

I am pretty sure I have to cut things down because listening to my old stuff I do get really bored when it takes ages for the song to get anywhere, but damn it's hard to cut a part away when it's still kind of "working" for me even though technically it's just the same melody parts just repeating.

 

Anyone else have this problem & if so, how do you solve this dilemma? 

do what you like cos if you don't like it how can the music be an honest representation

on the flip side, succinct track development will help other listeners.....have you got any specific examples here cos theory & practice aren't the same beasts

I think my latest weekly beat could be a good example of this: https://weeklybeats.com/thawkins/music/outtake-from-an-unnamed-soundscape

I think I have actually gotten better over time - recently I try not to make stuff that clocks in over 10 minutes. 8 or so minutes seems nice because I always want to leave a long intro/outro so the track is nice for DJing - I am a big fan of melding two songs together simply by starting the second track while the first track is starting to fade out. Check out this one weird trick invented by a grandmother, ambient DJs hate her, etc.

I think you guys are making a good point - just make music that I enjoy listening and don't think too much. After all, a lot of house or techno tracks are also long and boring and repetitive on their own, but they come alive when mixed together by a skilled DJ. The question seems to be just how to make the music interesting both when you are listening to it on it's own in the context of an album as well.

I also seem to have a problem with writing posts that are too long, I wonder if the two are related...

The Problem:

I think part of the issue here is that we put our mind in an illusion that is when making a change in the song that is not obvious seem obvious to ourselves because we are the ones who spent a good amount of time meticulously twiddling the knobs just right. Our ears then register the change every time. Months later we listen and get bored because the change is far more subtle than we thought.

The Solution:

So we either have to shorten the song by not using the subtle changes to flesh things out, or make much bigger, obvious changes. Changing the entire mood briefly in spots and let things breathe in and out in obvious contrast can fix this.

A trick to use:

We all have good sized libraries of finished and unfinished songs we've made. Go back and listen to them, looking for something that compliments the song you're currently working on. (Plop them into a sampler and listen in different keys if desparate). Then meld them together into 1 song in a verse/chorus style, or whatever fancy way comes to mind.

Or do both "LP" and "single" versions of your tracks, with a 3-4 minute version for the casuals and the full 10 minute one for the people who can appreciate that.

  On 8/31/2018 at 4:08 PM, 747Music said:

The Problem:

I think part of the issue here is that we put our mind in an illusion that is when making a change in the song that is not obvious seem obvious to ourselves because we are the ones who spent a good amount of time meticulously twiddling the knobs just right. Our ears then register the change every time. Months later we listen and get bored because the change is far more subtle than we thought.

 

The Solution:

So we either have to shorten the song by not using the subtle changes to flesh things out, or make much bigger, obvious changes. Changing the entire mood briefly in spots and let things breathe in and out in obvious contrast can fix this.

 

A trick to use:

We all have good sized libraries of finished and unfinished songs we've made. Go back and listen to them, looking for something that compliments the song you're currently working on. (Plop them into a sampler and listen in different keys if desparate). Then meld them together into 1 song in a verse/chorus style, or whatever fancy way comes to mind.

I see what you mean, thanks for the ideas. I sort of already to the bit where I scavenge old projects for melodies or ideas. Usually it's just going around in the raw jam session of a given project and seeing if there are any parts to re-use or mess around with.

  On 9/2/2018 at 5:24 PM, RSP said:

Or do both "LP" and "single" versions of your tracks, with a 3-4 minute version for the casuals and the full 10 minute one for the people who can appreciate that.

I have tried to do something like that with creating a seamless mixtape from a finished album, but I think making short & extended edits from tracks could be interesting (if I have the time to work on two versions).

  On 6/21/2018 at 11:46 PM, Cryptowen said:

Thought had while in the woods on LSD last weekend: I want to make songs & albums (and a musical career) that feel the way building a campfire feels. IE the trax//sonic elements are initially just random bits of biomatter you're gathering from the forest - some are more immediately striking & substantial, utters don't feel like much at all. Often the quality of what you're getting is highly dependent on the environment you're working in. The collective structure you assemble them into initially seems disjointed & largely random, but through a process of sustained conscious effort you're able to generate sparks in the parts of the combined structure that happened to be most liable to hold heat. THrough continued effort & focus & maybe a few tries you're able to generate a fire (here representitive of the groove or some transcendental feeling that art may evoke) that grows to consume the entire structure & make it part of something cohesive, and the bigger it gets the more sustainable it gets

 

i dunno there's a lot to unpack here w/r/t to experimental approaches to compositional structure but i gotta go to work. this post is more just like a sticky note of thoughts to explore

Cool idea, reminds me of this https://www.discogs.com/Sectorchestra-Fault-n-Roll-EP/release/213091

Okay here is some pro tip for you:

If your track is 10 minutes and you feel it's to long just pitch shift it by -50% so it becomes 5 minutes

Glad I could help

  On 9/5/2018 at 12:54 AM, darreichungsform said:

Okay here is some pro tip for you:

If your track is 10 minutes and you feel it's to long just pitch shift it by -50% so it becomes 5 minutes

Glad I could help

QFT. Support the opposite to the paulstretch-any-song-into-an-ambient-masterpiece technique.

  On 9/5/2018 at 9:33 PM, 747Music said:

 

  On 9/5/2018 at 12:54 AM, darreichungsform said:

Okay here is some pro tip for you:

If your track is 10 minutes and you feel it's to long just pitch shift it by -50% so it becomes 5 minutes

Glad I could help

 

QFT. Support the opposite to the paulstretch-any-song-into-an-ambient-masterpiece technique.

 

Alternatively you can just loop the entire track