sporkles wrote:We all know that it's easier than ever to capture ideas - the challenge is really making them into proper musical pieces. Some, probably most, of the gazillion ideas that vanish into our ever expanding "ideas" folders could probably be discarded completely, while others seem like they truly have a potential. Personally, I feel that I had two "golden" periods where ideas - and *good* ideas - came to me all the time - I wasn't as critical of my own efforts, I finished tunes and didn't get caught up with minute EQ adjustments and stereo placement. Now the finished tunes from those periods are utter rubbish from a production perspective, but I still like the ideas.
I've always wanted to make a collection of tracks - let's call it an "album" - which would have those old ideas at its core, but with better production and mixed with new ideas. At the same time, I want to capture and develop new ideas, because it feels more rewarding to tap in some notes and chords than always returning to old material. The problem is that at some point or other when I'm working on new material, I start thinking: "what if I grab that hook from that old tune and use it here?" or "this sounds a bit boring and repetitive - maybe it needs the melody line from that old tune?"
Then I'll either just play in that melody or grab it directly from one of my old projects, spend some time blending it into the new set, and then, eventually, realise that by dropping that old stuff in there, I've effectively killed the entire set. I'm completely drained of creativity and cannot come up with anything beyond that point that will result in a finished track.
Rinse and repeat.
Does this seem familiar to anyone?
Another thing is that, back in the days, I wasn't too concerned with sounds - I'd litter my tracks with 303-style arpeggios and all kinds of melodic cheese, whereas these days, I always start out with a more rhythm-based and minimalist mindset - percussion and rhythmical hi-tech sounds. Ideally, I'd like a kind of mix of those two styles, but I never seem to pull it out. Yet another thing, of course, is that I've got a much more eclectic musical taste these days, and I want to create everything from grandiose orchestral pieces to ambient and dance music, so basically I never get anything done, because I can't even focus on one thing. But this last paragraph is kind of a digression.
a. Create Basic Master Scene (A) 'Bass | Drums | Lead | Pads', usually 8 or 16 bars
b. Mute parts for Intro Scene (B) 'Bass | Drums | Lead | Pads', will have fewer notes, lighter velocities, more emphasis on the pad' part fewer drum hits
c. Change up Master Scene (A) >> (B) 'Bass | Drums | Lead | Pads' - change effect, change octaves, double 5ths, change 1/4ths to 1/8ths change 1/8ths to 1/4ths, change acending to decending, add crescendos, add decredendos, modulate from ppp (soft) and fff (hard) dynamics and vice versa
d. Add live instruments - plug your guitar in, play roots, 5ths and base chords around that, come up with some riffs
e. Keep playing PIANO patch with groove, follow the bass and/or lead parts while playing piano patch, and you will instantly come up with dozens of melodic ideas, convert those melodic ideas into new leads or double lead instrument tracks
f. Sing parts into (A) main groove, even if you are not a singer like playing piano or guitar with the loops you will instantly come up
g. If you're a bad singer use melodyne/autotune/vocoder and layer it with bass
h. Play String Ensemble Patch with groove - strings ensemble can go with almost anything all styles
i. Study Video Game music, lots of good musical growth to be had try remixing a few Video Game songs note for note midi for example I remixed a 16 bit song into a Swing/Jazzy/Trip-Hop track
https://soundcloud.com/michae-thompson/ ... wave-remix
etc... there are dozens of ways to get reinspired to finish a track
