Originality and My Own Post-Hipster Snobbery

Recently, on the Reaper forums, a discussion was started about the workflow of electronic music producers, and this checklist was posted, which made me think about my current (and past) process:

P.C.C.O.M.
PERSONAL CONTRACT FOR THE COMPOSITION OF MUSIC [INCORPORATING THE MANIFESTO OF MISTAKES]
This is a template for my own work and not intended to be a definitive formula for writing music, either by me or by other people.

1. The use of sounds that exist already is not allowed. Subject to article 2. In particular:
- No drum machines.
- No synthesizers.
- No presets.
2. Only sounds that are generated at the start of the compositional process or taken from the artist's own previously unused archive are available for sampling.
3. The sampling of other people's music is strictly forbidden.
4. No replication of traditional acoustic instruments is allowed where the financial and physical possibility of using the real ones exists.
5. The inclusion, development, propagation, existence, replication, acknowledgement, rights, patterns and beauty of what are commonly known as accidents, is encouraged. Furthermore, they have equal rights within the composition as deliberate, conscious, or premeditated compositional actions or decisions.
6. The mixing desk is not to be reset before the start of a new track in order to apply a random eq and fx setting across the new sounds. Once the ordering and recording of new music has begun, the desk may be used as normal.
7. All fx settings must be edited: no factory preset or pre-programmed patches are allowed.
8. Samples themselves are not to be truncated from the rear. Revealing parts of the recording are invariably stored there.
9. A notation of sounds used to be taken and made public.
10. A list of technical equipment used to be made public.
11. Optional: Remixes should be completed using only the sounds provided by the original artist.

Matthew Herbert (2005)

revisited 2011

The above checklist feels not only constricting, but is also a little too academic for my tastes, and I can't follow it to the letter. (By "no synthesizers", I'm hoping he meant "no preloaded factory synth patches".)

But it gave me some mental relief that I wasn't the only one concerned with originality in composition and sound design, trying to avoid being derivative wherever possible.

I've been using drum samples from some nice clean sample kits, but then I'm tweaking the hell out of them. And I may start with a preset synth sound, but it's usually just to get the juices flowing, and I'll either alter that until it's something unrecognizable, or restart at the bottom, from the oscillators on up. And sometimes I come across a sound that's not mine, but fits perfectly with what I'm doing, and then I may just alter it out of spite anyway.

I feel like a work is not "mine" unless it's all self-generated somehow. I assume this is a mixture of ego and some kind of hyperintellectualism about art, but it was nice to see someone spelling out a similar feeling about originality and music creation.

Simply cutting and pasting blobs from commercially available sound libraries doesn't feel like artistry to me. (Before you go off on me, I know there is an art to it, and I'm not knocking DJs and remix artists, etc. because that's a craft unto itself.) But personally, I need to know that something I create wasn't just me moving someone else's puzzle pieces around, and calling myself a "musician". There has to be more to it than that, at least there has to be for me, in order to feel like it's worth spending my time on it.

So I'm going to work on my own set of rules, which I hope will: give me enough freedom to create whatever the hell pops into my head; is constrictive enough to force me to be more creative and resourceful when I need to be; and original enough that I don't feel like a blob-pusher, mimicking the work of others.

That way, when I present something for others to listen to later, saying "Look what I can do!", I can say it with a certain amount of pride, because I know I wasn't just rearranging furniture - I made the furniture too.

Weeks of the Yeti

Since I've had experience recording from days past, and knew most of the basics, I knew I could jump right in and start recording, but I needed to pick a DAW that I would want to work with for a while.

I've never really had first-hand experience with Pro Tools, and the cost has always been prohibitive, so I was in the market for some consumer DIY recording tools.  I'd already done a previous scoring project using N-Track, which I liked - a good home-spun DAW maintained by a small team at a cheap price, and they seemed to love their product. Plus, there was a fairly active user community.

But since I was going to focus on electro, I decided to try Frooty Loops instead, which, by all accounts, is pretty good for techno and other electronica. And I did like how easy it was to program patterns at first. But beyond that... I got lost. The rest of it just wasn't intuitive to me. I don't have a lot of previous experience with sequencers (unless Cakewalk on DOS counts), so maybe that was it. But recording audio and automation in FL Studio was really giving me a headache. It's much more focused on sequencing and sampling than recording straight audio. Not the hybrid I was looking for.

And then I found Reaper, and new I'd found what I needed. A wildly configurable, affordable, "a track can be anything plugged into anything" DAW with a fairly intuitive interface; that had a bunch of in-house and community developers working on it; and a big user base, developing all kinds of music. So I dove in.

At first, I started working on a straight, 4x4 "rock/pop" song, just to get my legs. I needed to learn some drum sequencing, how to get good audio into my machine with my new setup, and to play around with a bunch of new VSTi synths I'd found.



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However, the song kind of flagged, as I really hadn't had a plan with it, or even lyrical ideas, so it stalled, and I realized I needed to pull back a little bit, and plan something out conceptually. Plus, I didn't want to do rock/psychedelia at first - I wanted to do something more physical, like dubstep. (Yes, I know. But it's fun.)

So, I started to work on some basic rhythms. And then I was monkeying around with a synth and found a fairly good wind sound, and then the idea for a song about a yeti having a bad day sprung into my head, and it just kind of went from there.

After a while I realized I could combine a whole bunch of aspects into this song: writing, voice work, foley, sound design, and hone my skills at creating something possibly danceable. Plus, the idea was to have 4-5 separate "movements" in it, which would each have a different musical style, while keeping to the same main beat.

Current version:


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The main drum samples are from EZDrummer, which is great and has some very nice clean kits in it, but which I think I'll grow out of fairly soon. It has a bunch of nice patterns, but I've mostly sequenced my own at this point. Then I put together a nice bass line that felt "yeti-like" to me and threw it together. At this point, I needed to start telling the story.

The footsteps in the snow were just me punching and scrunching a bag of rice, and pitch-shifted down and re-EQd. The yeti's voice was pitch-shifted down, with a tiny layer of an octave up as well. I think it came out pretty well.

After introducing the "character", I needed to move on to the Temple sequence, where the yeti encounters a Buddhist temple in which monks are chanting. Lots of fun to make this transition, and to layer my chants a number of times and have it sound fairly large. Since this is mostly a cartoon, I didn't get much more complicated than "Om Mani Padme Hum", but I think it sounds good. Most of the sequences in this project are going to be more representative than authentic, and slightly cartoony, anyway.

I had originally thought I would use recorders, pennywhistles, or simple flutes to add some melody to the Temple sequence (which I have a bunch of), but none of them sounded right. I knew the Tibetans had some reed instruments, but didn't know their name. Well, they're called gyalings, and they sound like a cross between a clarinet and bagpipes. But I couldn't find a synth instrument for the gyaling, so I set out to imitate it using a crappy oboe sound I'd found on one of the synth plugins I had. Five hours later, I had a pretty good facsimile in place. Still need to fine-tune the performance itself, but I think the sound works.


To be continued...

Setting Up The Ambient Garage

I'd been using the elevated side wing of my living room as my working office, and unfortunately, as a freelancer, I've shackled myself to that desktop for ages. I finally got a laptop, and my work patterns changed. I could now work at a coffeeshop, on the couch, or on the toilet - this freed my "office" up a bit, and I could devote my desktop to multimedia.

So, I reconfigured the desk, computers, mixer and instruments a few times, and I think I've got it into a good configuration. However, as I'm right-handed, the only thing that's bothering me right now is that my MIDI keyboard is to my left. I'll figure this out later, but it's worth noting what you're going to be doing more of with your dominant hand - controlling your DAW with a mouse/tablet, or plinking the keyboard to test samples or synth sounds. Right now I'm doing a mix between the two and it feels weird - eventually I'll find the right workflow.

I even got crazy and unbolted the armrests from my desk chair, because armrests are nice for typing or napping, but terrible for holding a guitar or playing keyboards.



STUDIO SUMMARY

The Ambient Garage

Computer:
- 2.8ghz AMD Phenom, 4g RAM
- Windows XP (This should change to 7 soon.)
- M-Audio Delta 1010 A/D interface

Software:
- Reaper DAW
- Audacity
- Tons of VSTs and VSTis

Hardware:
- Mackie 1604 VLZ Pro mixer
- Behringer 502 minimixer for handling monitoring
- KRK Rokit 5s
- SM57 mic

Instruments:
- Roland A-80
- Ibanez electric with Floyd Rose
- Washburn 6-string acoustic
- Alvarez Goldfinch 12-string acoustic
- Peavey fretless bass
- Assortment of simple flutes, whistles, harmonicas, and recorders


More on my first projects later. For now, let's listen to Butch Clancy remix an old Ella Fitzgerald tune.

First! I win!

I've been journaling to myself a bit about what it feels like to be getting back into music, and I had the idea to just start a blog about it - composing, writing, recording tools, equipment, plugins, and the process in general.

So, I'll be sharing parts of my process here: tracks I'm currently working on, plugins, instruments, or effects I'm playing with, and other things I'm learning about as I go. (Note that I said "parts" of my process. The primal scream therapy, self-flagellation, and ululations to Mithras are my own goddamn beeswax.)

I don't have a big foundation in music theory - I've always been a "bang on it til it makes the right sound" kind of musician, and mostly on old 4-track units - so I'm also starting over in the sense that I'm trying to learn piano/keyboards properly, reading music and understanding musical notation, and possibly some vocal lessons in the future. Plus, I'm trying to gobble entire garbage trucks full of tips and techniques on composing and mixing electronic music, and digital recording overall, at the same time.

The title of the blog came from a drunken conversation with Jesse Dawson a long time ago, and we thought it should be a critical blog about bad pop music and the music industry, but that didn't really get anywhere. Probably because we don't give a shit enough about pop music to spend much time on it. So I've appropriated the title for my own purposes. I win.

I'll share links to sites, like Soundcloud, to hear pieces I'm working on, and possibly other music that's influencing me at the moment.

In the spirit of that (and a big thanks to Jesse for sharing this) I'd like to pass on a Nico Jaar project that's currently killing me.

KILLING. ME.