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Where is the song?
We all came from various technique origins to arrive here. I myself used a Yamaha CX5m. Years later, an SY77+Proteus+HR16b with minimal assistance from a Mac IIsi (i.e., very low end sequencer — Trax), plus Tascam 424 cassette four track (only vocals / guitar), all into DAT. Years later, I was all analogue, still hardly any involvement from the Mac (by then, MOTU FreeStyle), no real main sequencer but a collection of devices that had it — drum machines, QY20, MC-202 and CSQ-600 driving the gear (CSQ-600 was master clock) all ‘live’ via a midi-mute Tascam MM-1 mixer into DAT. Decades later, now I’m on an iPad 2 and have Logic Pro X on the Mac, and hardware is to be no longer much of a feature.
The thing is, the data. I somehow have all the CX5m data from the ’80s. The SY77 stuff, no trace, except odd parts that were sequenced on the Mac in Trax (i.e., maybe one or two instrument lines, nothing of use). Same with the all-analogue setup, no trace of data, any FreeStyle seq data I can’t even read (rarely saved out as midi). With the iPad setup over the past couple of years, I record into GarageBand, everything is wildly out of sync because I had no way of starting things when I say go. Garageband ‘collects’ what I do on the iPad, track by track, as audio. I’ve never successfully played more than one synth at the same time on an iPad. That didn’t matter, I could only twiddle the knobs or sliders on one synth at a time anyway. I’d get everything back to safety on LPX and slide it about, and that worked for me.
It occurs to me that the same trap is about to happen. Where is the song? It’s not all in one place. If I were using the Logic Pro X synths alone [1] , then everything is in a nice packaged Logic Pro X ‘file’. But with the iPad, patch data and sequence data is all over the place with different ways of accessing (I’m leaning more to LPX as the sequence ‘sender’, the iPad instrument returning resulting audio).
I realise there’s a few people here that somehow do the whole thing on their iPad. How do you perceive the question of ‘where is the song’? Surely for you it must be all over the place — an organisational, documentation and publish/backup nightmare. Where is the song?
[1] and I like them but they’re mostly quite architecturally limited, yes, even ES2. Sculpture is the exception, but I also have OS X Adults for modular twiddling, usable inside LPX.
Comments
Do you mean, where is the song conceptually when working with bits and pieces across several different apps? I'd like to know as well. For example if you are recording a bunch of loops from different synths into loopy or audio share or wherever, how are you conceptualizing the song? Are you constantly muting things and layering in their place, or recording several phrases from one synth? Is this done with the mindset of "it will be assembled later"?
@u0421793 Ah. Excellent topic. I am tempted to call Po on this one just because it is so pregnant with possibilities as regards endless angels on pinheads (of which I am fond) and I have a shitload to do today....but, still, where does the soul reside Vicar?
No, I mean physically. Where actually is it? If you had to return to it ten years later, would you have all the bits? Never mind about being able to read it, we’ll assume we can read legacy things in the future a bit better than our past record shows. I mean will you be able to pull all the assets together and do something useful with what you’ve found? Physically.
It’s the equivalent of, in the days when I was a graphic designer and typesetter, in the days of the hot wax rollers and scalpels and drop-out blue pencils and PMTs and line board, it’s the equivalent of what we used to refer to as a “job bag” (which was a physical huge cardboard envelope with everything to do with the job in there). Where is the song? Is it scattered about in so many different apps that you can’t ever hope to pull it all together and stash it away for ten years time, or is it nice and neat and contained somewhere, everything where you know it is, and no surprises?
well hopefully it would be finished and simply stored as audio somewhere. Otherwise, I'm comfortable letting unfinished ideas wash away in the sands of time. I usually like to start fresh with each one.
Reminds me of the BBC Doomsday project. It was all recorded on some kind of laser disc that worked with the BBC micro computer.
I used to have a CD-Video player, and a friend now has a Laservision player that also plays CD-Video (and has collected a few, many of which I used to have back in the late ’80s). The interesting thing that I didn’t realise at the time was that CD-Video is red book, and the video is analogue. Strictly speaking, there’s no contemporary way of truly archiving one of those without, you know, digitising it, for the first time.
For me I quite like the ephemeral nature of things. I do back up my Auria projects to a Sandisk thing but there is something quite liberating about commiting to a sound or an arrangement and not having the option to over think it and go back and tweak that Peruvian nose flute solo ad infinitum.
I'm fine with that approach, too... keeping an unordered back catalog of recordings
those tracks reflect one specific moment or mood in sound
(by guitar, synth stuff, lots of post-pro on the iPad, bass, soundsnippets from the environment)
from time to time I'll open up the box and re-combine things, which works strangely well
the result reflects another acoustic scenario... as valid in that moment
but I'd consider it a 'song' only if the traditional scheme applies:
a story based on words, a melody, accompagnied by an instrument (guitar in my case)
unfortunately I'm a poet with constant writer's block
which is fortunate at the same time for my voice doesn't exactly do what I'd like it to do...
(so I keep covering simple country tunes to improve it)
I cannot even reproduce one single track precisely - which I don't mind at all
(if I hit the mood of the moment, it's ok - next moment will be different)
since I my way through the unordered box of tracks, I'm just happily collecting... or disposing
once the words appear - I know where to find the proper sound - and then it qualifies as a song...
cheers, Tom
Define song
Seriously now. Whatever tools you're using, ultimately, the song is in my head. Especially when I've finished it and go to get some milk in the supermarket all buoyant and happy only to wake up two days later to realise that it actually wasn't all that good. It's all in your head.
Oh yah this happens a lot. It is great when the opposite happens, throw something away in total disgust, load it up months later and it sounds great.
I regularly delete all my project files (both on ipad and desktop), just cuz i get sick of looking at them. History is surely much poorer for it, but I am not a reasonable God.
I threw everything away once and I've regretted it ever since, but am still quite proud of myself. Odd species.
My workplace got robbed and they took my backpack with my scribbled chronicles of love-gone-awry inside. I was twenty-two at the time and my manager assured me that in ten years time (now) that stuff would have made me sick to my stomach, which turned out about right.
All that matters is that when I die someone discovers my 8,000 page fairy saga, or whatever, and they make a nice film about it.
I just finished a recording week in Maine with shutterwax and every time we begin it looks like there will be nothing, but somehow songs come together.I'm proud of what we did this time and look forward to sharing. 3 songs complete, 1 that is kicking around from last time that still doesn't have vocals because what I wrote was too hard to sing, maybe it will get done maybe not. But 2 are totally complete and ready for mixing, 1 that just needs a little bit of spices on top, it's in the style of an old chic song so there's lots of room for the ideas on top to come in and out. So its there, just needs to be organized a little, although as it is now we have the 8 minute 12 inch version...
Anyway, the thing every year that amazes me is that on Monday we have a bunch of disjointed ideas in a Dropbox folder and by the end of the week we have finished songs that feel like they always existed. It's hard to describe but it's a neat feeling. Usually of the 30 or so ideas in Dropbox only a few make it to actual songs, with the collaboration of a few humans in one place for a week leading to new ideas that seem to come together better.
On my own? Almost nothing. I'm meant for collaboration and happy for that to be true.
I'm a longtime user of FileMaker Pro and have often thought it would be worth creating a database to manage all the snippets and categorize them for future use, but laziness has prevailed.
The song is in my heart.
I am very jealous of you here. For Maine of course, but even more so for the one plus plus equals many. I think the magic of 'nothing', a few words, a notion, a riff, becoming 'something' is one of my favorite feelings in life. You are very fortunate to have found a cadre who helps makes this happen.
+1.
The song is in the singing, not in whatever 1s and 0s you might have on disk. If I pull out a guitar and strum a tune, that's the song -- there's no permanent record, no file that I can go back to, and that's part of what makes it magic. While I certainly use a lot of electronics and files, I try not to let that be the focus. If all of my electronics disappeared tomorrow, I'd still have my songs.
I guess the songs aren't there at all (only for the instant of creation, really), but to me that's the beauty of it. When I started on iPads (with the appearance of the "2"), I happened to get into jams with guys from the "inprovisational" scene, and what I found possible with iPads when it comes to instant creation, was mindblowing to me. After long years of collecting ideas (Mac filled to the brim with Logic projects...)I finally learned to let go of the wish to have a "finalized product", it's here now, and gone again. Nowadays I just hit record, play playfully without great expectations, let it rest there for a while, and, when listening again, evaluate and put it out there. (Noone's interested in my work, anyways, so there's nothing to lose really (painter by trade, with a history of not being recognised..., which is fine in the end)). I WAS SAVED...! (YMMV of course)
Frankly, I’m shocked. Is it just me? Am I alone in this?
You’re mostly all saying that it’s all in the performance? That ephemeral transient occurrence in which ‘you had to be there’? The song itself gets thought of, crafted, then implemented, but you’re all saying that you only need the end product, not the ‘making of’? What about proper record-keeping, for posterity? What about recreating a new version decades later? What about the anally retentive striving for accurate documentation, the full costings, project specification, gantt charts, risk management of quality issues at each control phase? What about the mess, otherwise? Surely you can’t be saying to just get on with it, make a bit of music, record it and don’t worry about the paperwork? Am I alone in being shocked at this?
I just remember the entire process from start to finish. If I happen to forget anything, I just make it up. The narrative is more interesting than the details anyway.
Blimey! Well, we’ll thank the gods you weren’t around in biblical times.
How do you know I wasn't?
some classic title like 'Pancho and Lefty' on YT will present you with dozens of live versions performed by various artists colaborating 'on the fly'
often minor flaws here and there, but they get along - and I really like that spontaneous kind of style
as far as I'm concerned I know the lyrics and cord sequence and apply whatever picking or strumming pattern comes to mind, it's 'automated' anyway (... just my vocals s*ck)
managing 'projects':
in fact I even considered to write a custom database handling for archived files...
if only the format of my DAW was documented (I asked, but the developer prefered to not disclose)
the stuff doesn't look complicated, but to figure out hierarchy would be too much effort atm
so I usually keep source files around and in some cases stems from individual tracks
a disk file played from an arbitrary position seems to trigger some subconscious memory about content
so if an idea about a specific sound comes to mind, I usually find it quickly
cheers, Tom
I'm with you, though sometimes I wish I weren't. Maybe if you titled the thread "Where are my song files?" you would have gathered a different demo of like minds. As designer as well, I'm also accustomed to archiving, annotating and redundantly backing up seemingly inconsequential things.
My music is built more from happy accidents than musicianship, so there's little chance of my being able to recreate songs from scratch for live use, or jamming in general. The hours I should have perhaps spent learning music theory and scales I now spend poring over midi blips and layering just the right sounds and samples into some sort of cohesive whole. As a result, my songs are the mess you speak of, and the only way to make sense of it later is by record keeping.
For this and several other reasons, I don't make complete songs on my devices. It's a sketchbook, a sound source and a very useful addition to my desktop DAW. The iPad's erratic changes through each update, as well as the apps that are subject to those updates, makes me uneasy leaving anything too precious in there. I tend to pull what I want out in the form of midi or audio, label the files and tracks in my DAW with the app/patch/bpm/effect etc. used. the best I can, then trash what is no longer needed or can't be reused on the iPad to save space.
Thanks to all the different ways you can route audio/midi in iOS now, at some point you do have to just flatten some layers and go. If I know I'll never bother to recreate some convoluted routing setup, then it's time to bounce and move on.
I guess that makes my song that last old hunk of wedding cake in the back of the freezer. There if I want it, but not quite the same no matter how much parchment paper I wrapped it in.
And here I thought I could get through one lousy comment without a lame metaphor.
The title of this post seems to make things seem more mysterious or controversial than they need to be.
Where is the song?
Which song? Some are written down in manuscript form, some are recorded on cassette tape, some live on an iPad, some exist in some solipsistic space inside my consciousness. You'd have to go through each particular song one by one, in which case, each would have a very mundane answer. Here it is.
Or is this a discussion about the evolution of music technology, obsolete platforms, how to best future-proof your work? In that case, the best answer is to create the best performance you can, your best final mixdown, and that's it. That's as close to the "definitive" version you can get. Move on to the next project. Don't worry about going back and remixing in the future. But if you are worried about that, print all of your VIs and effects, and store individual audio tracks or stems in the most universal format possible. That would probably be broadcast WAV at this particular moment.
Or is this a general existential question? Is there some perfect and eternal Platonic form (eidos) of the song out there and all these particular instances are inferior and transitory emanations? I'll leave those questions to the Gnostics, Neo-Platonists, and Phenomenologists.