Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
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@jwmmakerofmusic : The writer Neil Gaiman said in an interview that an important lesson he learned is that he (or any creative) can't tell what is good or what isn't in their own work, that our excitement about something we've created that we love isn't connected to whether it is good ... it's idiosyncratic and its best to just do the work and let it sort itself out. He said, I know that in every book I've written there are passages that seemed inspired and magical at the time and parts that felt like drudgework that he was sure he'd be told to rewrite. And yet, his editors often praised the drudgework and had him rewrite the "inspired" parts. And he says in hindsight, if he rereads his work he can't distinguish what felt magical and what didn't.
His advice just keep doing the work.
Pick 5 keys you don’t normally favor, 5 styles, and 5 progressions and put them on flash cards. Randomly pick a key, style, and progression. Perhaps in setting some limitations you can you set your creativity free.
Imagine seeing Neil Gaiman's name in AB forum. Well, like many said, this place rocks.
Great thread - why was it dormant for so long?
I'm aware that I have a sizeable learning curve to get back to making music after a couple of decades off, but when I sit down to create something I try to make it the best I can on that day. Some days it's laughably bad, but I figure that's just the limit of what I can come up with at the time. On other days, it sounds OK, and every now and then I create something good that I'll throw onto SoundCloud for my near-zero subscribers to not listen to
I don't get to do this in my day job where I have to be "on" all the time, but creating music is my space and I choose to cut myself a ton of slack.
I've heard several times that the brain is like a muscle - you either use it or lose it. Some years back I read Paul Simon goes into his office each day (and he actually commutes to a regular office building from his presumably huge mansion with a ton of space he could turn into a home office), sits down, starts writing and doesn't stop till he knocks out a certain number of words each day. Wil Wheaton (ex Star Trek actor, now writer) takes a similar approach - he just sits down every day and bangs something out. He's said some of the time it's rubbish, but over time your quality increases just because you're doing it every day. Wil said just sticking to the routine means he gets flashes of inspiration at odd times that he can scribble down and work on the next day.
I guess the idea is that sooner or later you'll be churning "good enough" stuff pretty regularly with the occasional gem in there, just through committing your brain to the task every day. You might take 100 days to knock out 10 things you're happy with, but that's potentially 3 album's worth of content a year which would be impressive by any measure.
Thanks for bringing up the topic @jwmmakerofmusic , and for reviving it again
I'll slowly work my way through the thread, but I think I can post my top tips anyhow. It will be wonderful to continue the read to see what happened, since 2016?
It's frekking interesting that your creativity stopped seeping after doing music school, that gives me the frizzles.
-"Simplicity can be so liberating," someone said in the thread. Right on, I think my best bassline was the first I recorded, now lost. I think I channel more than play creatively, its like part of one of life's struggles to be free Great comfortable playful what have you.
As far as lyrics go, and making music in general, I've always felt it/used it as a way of kicking at NORMS, instead of worrying about making it right or fitting in I'd rather do a 'Forward escape'. There exist Thrashy versions of every genre or attitude of making music. Check out how Chuck Mosely sings on GREED, one of my favorite FNM tracks.
"over the hills, they came from THE VALLEY making innuendoes bout my lack of talent,,, O well"
That being said(for some reason) here's my toppety tips!
-Facilitating techno build-ups using faders, like a Korg nano Kontrol or whathaveyou. make the things and later fade them in. That way you can make your riffs songs. Moving them in/out of the mix might trigger you to think of other things.
-Put some effects on a drum machine;I love repetitiveness when I'm listening to music so why should I be judgemental when doing the same myself? I can make small variations setting up basic automation and effects (I love 'Heat' and adjusting decays in the AR 909 from audiokit.
-Try Using Animoog and Loopy in Audiobus! It's frekkin amazing! Set up some shortcuts of you have a small controller, set count in , practicing it makes this better, and it's quite fun. Pure quality straight from the phone/hip.
-Learn ro play a new instrument (like a flute
). It works outside. Or how about the mouth organ, mini Cylophone?)
-Get a GF or BF, or both
-Go work on a Farm and not necessarily make music but maybe. WWOOFing, volunteer farming exists in every country.
-Drink a lot of wine
What else, get stuck, get unstuck, never confine talent to your circumstance
When I get stuck musically or lyrically it’s always because I thought about what I wanted to do (sound like). My only way out is to intentionally write and record the shittiest material I can imagine: one chord & no discernible rhythm at all, words and mumblings with pitiful melody. Then I start. Usually by cleaning it up.
You need a challenge.
Pick one:
Try making the cheesiest spaghetti western themed drum&bass.
Try making a PsyTrance track, but everything must be fart sounds. Even the drums.
Here’s some inspiration
Getting to a finished piece as quickly as possible is really important. You might revise it 100 times after it's done, but there's something psychological about getting something finished.
Set aside time to work on stuff every day, and make sure you remove all barriers to getting started. You should be able to sit down and just work.
Set aside play time when you just noodle with no particular objective. Make sure those are separated in your mind from 'get shit done' time. But to try to save them for those times when you need to write a song, but you don't have any ideas...
Finishing stuff, even if you hate the song, is important.
Try setting up your song structure before you start so you know what content you need, and what you need to fill it with (you can always change it when you've got your first version of the song completed).
Give yourself an originality budget. E.g. if you're doing something new with rhythm and melody, hack everything else out with something unoriginal. Often that works just fine - if it doesn't, you can always fix it once you have a finished song to play within.
Set aside less creative things (such as mixing and mastering) for when you're not feeling it.
@jolico I didn't realize the basic element of psytrance is fart sounds, makes sense. I blame the stereo and all the new media types available for children. Should be like an age limit of 12-14.
Digging the challenges
Ah what I wouldn't do to be able to make Spaghetti western
The key aspect for me is always: is it fun?
If the process of making music is not its own reward then something is awry.
In my case it could be that I'm trying to be something that I'm not (conforming to rigid song structures I have never related to, for example, which I did because I thought it was expected of me).
Recognising that it isn't fun is the first step; analysing why is the second (and I guess this is where we are in terms of the OP's situation).
This may not help at all, but it might strike a chord with somebody so I'll share it on that basis:
I've always had an issue with linearity. I finally realised this when working in a left-to-right scrolling DAW for about a decade and a half made me feel as though everything I made was on rails. I hated that. I would make a loop of maybe 16 bars and then I would never take it further than that until it was time to assemble a release and them I'd make some basic structure and punt it into existence somewhere beyond the confines of my own HDD.
Getting past that - using tools such as chance and probability, as well as DAWs that don't scroll in the traditional sense (Live in clip view; AUM in AUM view etc) - made a massive difference.
But I went further than that.
Some days I don't make music, I just make noises. I sit at a synth and make sounds; I go and find things to hit or prod or simply get close to and I shove a microphone in their general vicinity.
In a sense, I eschew linearity in terms of my process, as well as my composition.
I broke down the music making process to 3 stages:
Gathering sounds is like mixing colours for a painting. In fact the whole painting process is quite analogous.
Creating elements is the little sketches that you might assemble for set pieces. Assets, in graphic design terms.
Sequencing tracks is building the finished work. The compositional process.
Elements utilise sounds; compositions utilise elements.
Sometimes you might mix your sonic colours for 3 months at a time. That's fine.
Sometimes you might make a couple of elements - or even just one - and want to start composing something straight away. Again, that's also fine.
You might start a composition and feel as though you need more elements so you go and put some things together mid-composition. And you don't have the sounds you want to so you have to hunt those colours down and...
The point is: none of it should ever be a slog. It should be fun. It should be a joyful process. Unless you're literally making the same track forever (which has proven ludicrous for some) nothing you do has been done before by you, so don't worry about it. Just enjoy making it.
Try to finish things where possible. Gaiman says: we learn more from one finished piece than we do from a hundred things we started and abandoned. But don't take that as pressure to make things perfect. It just means that you don't need the weight of all these half-formed creations hanging about you forevermore (like ghastly Will Self characters in 'How The Dead Live').
Sebastian Bach said, “if u think, u stink”. Turn it up so it thumps your chest and vibrates your teeth and just let the shit flow...pick your favorite sounds and feel it...u’ll be back in no time...and try to rhyme😎
I went into a rut for a few months and got some advice here and there. I ended up tweeting out asking if anyone wanted me to work on a remix for them, got one, worked on it, lifted my rut a bit. I think that taught me that the pressure to "create something good" that I was putting on myself was the issue. I still feel that pressure when I sit down at the iPad, but I'm trying to be more playful and less precious - if nothing is coming right away, just delete it all and make some sounds. Time will tell, it's not over yet.
Actually, now that I think about it, I think I got more creative block the better I got at producing, because the goal is always to produce something as good as or better than the last. Maybe I've just reached my own personal limits.
You should never ever try and judge your work in the moment of creation - that's a surefire recipe for writer's block.
Just create, and judge later.
The way I approach it is to make sure something new gets done every time I sit down with the iPad. A new bass line, a new melodic element, an intro, a beat - whatever. And then generally I will try and iterate, create a few variations. Then come back to it the following day and only then will I start to filter out the good from the bad. Always with hindsight, never in the moment.
That's great advice @richardyot, thanks. The annoying thing for me, and possibly one of the things causing the blocks, is that the best stuff I've done has had a moment where something clicks early on and I can get the entire thing out in a day - sudden flow. I'm going to internalise that advice though, I think that could help a lot.
Of course most creative people will recognise that feeling, but I think one of the keys to getting into a state of flow is to put all judgement aside and go with the moment.
I realized over the past year that I don’t really have a desire to write new music at this point in my life. I just enjoy playing along with something or other people, and lending my services to other tracks. It bothered me for a bit, but that’s ok with me. I’m of the belief that there is no such thing as writer’s block, just that you can’t force it. Go with the flow, maaaaaan
@jwmmakerofmusic A couple of nuggets of helpful advice I've stumbled across on the way ...
Just a couple of random thoughts