Jamming some tunes till I realized, "OMG, I love this music. I want to write something along this theme."
Then I'm sitting at the piano and hit a chord and we can say, C major is the starting point. Pretty simple, till I think about the 31 flavors of Baskin Robin chord structures I could create simple with this one chord. Okay, Cadd9 is the vibe I'm feeling for today. (This is going to change probably as I progress).
Now I'm looking in my music journal and skimming through any notes I've jotted down on my own experience of writing music which could be a good jumping point. D chord seems like a likely candidate. Thus, I begin again with a Baskin Robin chord structure hunt to help me relate this new chord with the previous. D5 and Dsus2 sound like options. Vastly different, but also similar.
I continue this theme of logic till I build myself a large group of chords and then the real writing begins for me.
Okay, lets say I've composed the song via paper. Want to know the "magic" of production? It's seriously me programing and engineering instruments to the notation I spent hours/days on. Then I split some instruments, i.e. piano into different areas of the speaker system. This gives a more 'round' structure or 'surround' cheap trick. Bass is usually on the left. My logic behind this, bass notes are played on the left hand, left ear is going to hear those notes play first before the right ear picks up. Same can be said for the Treble. Those sounds I split intentionally. Meanwhile other sounds like Bass and Drum will be front and center. Unless it's a fun Drum cycle which can be shifted around so not one sound is heard the same space twice. However, the blend of these sounds not being so harsh in one particular area is allowing "Tremolo" to blend out the rest of these tones and blend the Treble with the Bass in moment or another. Another hint is using Treble Remover on Bass Notes and Bass Remover on Treble Notes. So much space is heard when limiting these parameters. Specifically when you're working with a Bass instruments, most of the time there's an unheard 8th or 13th heard. We don't "need" this.... Get rid of it if you only want the one note heard. (I can go on about how one note is actually up to 20+ notes heard in a single tone, but I digress, this is why we remove Bass and Treble sometimes)
Finally, I dress up and or strip down instruments and arrange as I notated. And if there's any moment when something is just not happening. I flip an Oblique Strategy and see if it helps. Okay, okay... Sometimes I flip two Oblique Strategies to give myself an option.
Otherwise, I go back to the drawing board and mic-up live instruments to play. Guitar, Voice, Synth, Violin, Flute, Theremin. The usual suspects of instruments you can't simply midi in. This gives the track the "organic" feeling. Which is always fun to have. Especially if I can get someone from outside the thinking box to weigh in on how a song sounds to them. Usually, 95% of the time. This sends a song to me in a whole new direction and inspires me to write even more or arrange to them rather arrange to myself.
Otherwise, it all starts back to jamming to music and feeling the vibe to craft my own art. It wasn't always like this and it used to be smashing different loop samples together into a 'song' which made some kind of sense. So, the execution between 2000 me producing music is vastly different than how I go about it now. Sometimes I find myself reaching back and looking forward too.
Voice Acting is fun because you never know what script is going to be there to read from. Or, how to go about a 'project.' My dream Voice Acting job (if I ever got picked up) is reading books with background music involved in someway or form. I used to 'read' for tryouts because I knew I was never going to get a roll per-se. Though, physically acting isn't really my thing, I have done some voice acting work.
Then I'm sitting at the piano and hit a chord and we can say, C major is the starting point. Pretty simple, till I think about the 31 flavors of Baskin Robin chord structures I could create simple with this one chord. Okay, Cadd9 is the vibe I'm feeling for today. (This is going to change probably as I progress).
Now I'm looking in my music journal and skimming through any notes I've jotted down on my own experience of writing music which could be a good jumping point. D chord seems like a likely candidate. Thus, I begin again with a Baskin Robin chord structure hunt to help me relate this new chord with the previous. D5 and Dsus2 sound like options. Vastly different, but also similar.
I continue this theme of logic till I build myself a large group of chords and then the real writing begins for me.
Okay, lets say I've composed the song via paper. Want to know the "magic" of production? It's seriously me programing and engineering instruments to the notation I spent hours/days on. Then I split some instruments, i.e. piano into different areas of the speaker system. This gives a more 'round' structure or 'surround' cheap trick. Bass is usually on the left. My logic behind this, bass notes are played on the left hand, left ear is going to hear those notes play first before the right ear picks up. Same can be said for the Treble. Those sounds I split intentionally. Meanwhile other sounds like Bass and Drum will be front and center. Unless it's a fun Drum cycle which can be shifted around so not one sound is heard the same space twice. However, the blend of these sounds not being so harsh in one particular area is allowing "Tremolo" to blend out the rest of these tones and blend the Treble with the Bass in moment or another. Another hint is using Treble Remover on Bass Notes and Bass Remover on Treble Notes. So much space is heard when limiting these parameters. Specifically when you're working with a Bass instruments, most of the time there's an unheard 8th or 13th heard. We don't "need" this.... Get rid of it if you only want the one note heard. (I can go on about how one note is actually up to 20+ notes heard in a single tone, but I digress, this is why we remove Bass and Treble sometimes)
Finally, I dress up and or strip down instruments and arrange as I notated. And if there's any moment when something is just not happening. I flip an Oblique Strategy and see if it helps. Okay, okay... Sometimes I flip two Oblique Strategies to give myself an option.
Otherwise, I go back to the drawing board and mic-up live instruments to play. Guitar, Voice, Synth, Violin, Flute, Theremin. The usual suspects of instruments you can't simply midi in. This gives the track the "organic" feeling. Which is always fun to have. Especially if I can get someone from outside the thinking box to weigh in on how a song sounds to them. Usually, 95% of the time. This sends a song to me in a whole new direction and inspires me to write even more or arrange to them rather arrange to myself.
Otherwise, it all starts back to jamming to music and feeling the vibe to craft my own art. It wasn't always like this and it used to be smashing different loop samples together into a 'song' which made some kind of sense. So, the execution between 2000 me producing music is vastly different than how I go about it now. Sometimes I find myself reaching back and looking forward too.
Voice Acting is fun because you never know what script is going to be there to read from. Or, how to go about a 'project.' My dream Voice Acting job (if I ever got picked up) is reading books with background music involved in someway or form. I used to 'read' for tryouts because I knew I was never going to get a roll per-se. Though, physically acting isn't really my thing, I have done some voice acting work.
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