So, What's your strategy / working method / ...

[..LeRenard!]

Yes, share us your methods,
how do you start a song,
how does the process go from start to finish?

Could be interesting for some of us to pick up new ideas...

[Pixieguts]

I'm mainly a vocal improviser who makes samples for mixes from what comes out, process sometimes varies a bit from project to project, right now I've just spent about 12 hours assembling something I'm about to trash, lol!

Be great to hear about your processes too, Yves...

[..LeRenard!]

Yeah, I didn't type anything yet, because I had to catch up with some schoolwork,
but here we go:

1) I only (mostly) fire up my DAW when I have an idea. Because fireing it up because you just want to mess around usually gets me nowhere. Except when I want to experiment with sounds and learn techniques.
2) I used to start of with a basic beat and then add a bassline and then build on top of that. This was my working method for 2 albums, but I find myself working a bit different these days => starting off from a melody or some chords is now one of the strategies too.. I even started a song based on a vocal/lyric I sung.
3) After the basic idea is there, I capture it, play with it, save different versions and let it rest for like a month or three, then pick it up again and finish it off.. Then my other musicians come in and add their stuff, then it goes to the producer for final mixing (usually he doesn't touch the music itself, only the mixing is checked).

That's about it :)
When it comes to remixing, it's a different story..
I then usually take a vocal loop I like and play with it, add some beats, and then build from that basic idea.. Since there are a lot of deadlines with remixes, they usually get finished within a week..

[northcape]

Interesting topic.
For me the most important thing is getting my head in the right place, not always easy. I generally start from a mood or an idea that I want to convey, and sometimes even from a song title. I then mess around with sounds, keeping the idea in mind, until I come up with a melody that seems to fit. Bassline is normally next followed by beats and it goes from there. However, 80% of the time I come back to the idea later and decide its not really worth finishing... I keep wavs of all of the half-finished stuff though as sometimes I use bits of old ideas to finish a new track. My working technique is not really very efficient, I become a perfectionist and arranging and mixing in particular seem to take me a very long time- but I probably don't spend enough time on the basics like finding good samples and programming sounds. I'm trying to improve this!

[Pixieguts]

Fascinating reading!

I experienced a lot of writer's block due to perfectionism when I was making films and became interested in improvisation partly because of this. I will improvise voice to an existing instrumental track, which has usually been sent to me by a collaborator. Sometimes my voice initiates a track before there is any instrumental for it and then I will usually find (in a fairly random way) an instrumental to improvise to. After the voice has been processed and the track completed I usually don't even remember what track I sang to, the result is always extremely different from it!

With lyrics, I love it if I'm sent writing to mash up and play with, otherwise I might source my journals or do some spontaneous writing and play with that and I also like to let myself sing phrases that come out right at the moment I'm recording too. I have also worked with straight lyrics that have been sent to me, they have usually been a bit rearranged or otherwise varied in the process.

Mostly I end up with samples kits for my collaborators that have been edited, cleaned up in various ways and slightly fx-ed and I also sometimes arrange the samples into full vocal lines for the track being worked on, these often then get further rearranged by the artist/collaborator I am working with. I'm not great at singing regular songs, tend to get bored with that but willing to have a go at most things, even straight songs, lol.

I love the collaborative process and I love playfulness and surprise with what happens, and these elements are part of just about everything I've been involved with to date. I avoid conceptualising things beforehand as I feel that whatever I do in a more 'unconscious' way will ultimately reflect my conceptual inclinations in a deeper and more unique way. It's not all completely random though - I obviously have a sensibility and intuitions that guide me along the way...

[Voide]

I generally start with an idea or a theme in mind, like a concept. It can be anything from a piece of lyrics to an idea on a cool beat or something I want to try that I have been thinking of. I find inspiration in all kinds of things, like other peoples music (good source), life in general, philosophy and general geek stuff :)

Depending on the idea, I mostly start with getting the beat together and move on from there. I like to experiment making my own drum sounds in microTonic. As most of my music tends to be quite melodic that it is the next step to draft the melody of some kind. After that I add a bassline, effects, start mixing and playing with modifying the sounds to my liking.

I am a sucker for vocoders, I just can't help it but I try to hold back :)
So naturally I have quite a few tracks with this effect...

My creation process is fast, I usually have a good draft ready in say 6-12 hours. I then spend time listening to the arrangement and think of how to build up the track and improvements. Sometimes I leave a track for a month or two before continuing, if it still sounds good after that time I usually try to finish it.

Once the track is 'finished' I spend a lot of time listening to it, tweaking it further until I am satisfied. You know, fix the odd hi-hat sound here, optimize drums and finish the mix and prepare it to be sent off for mastering. When I prepare for mastering I listen to the tracks on very low volume (very useful), medium listening level and high level on studio monitors or HiFi system. I usually also burn a CD to listen to the tracks in my car (nothing reveals a poor mix better than a harsh environment like in a car imo).

I have only tried collaboarion once and we never finished the project (although I think it is pretty good) and I think I want to try it again.

Also, some tracks simply do not make it.

[northcape]

I just found this topic again, I'd actually be really interested to read about other people's working method :-)

[Reconsiderate]

For instrumentals, these are my steps, in no particular order:

--random selection of tempo to three decimal places (ie, 167.504 bpm or 138.944 bpm, etc)
--random selection of melodic key (ie, D major, F# minor, B augmented, etc)
--random selection of time signature (ie, 4/4, 5/4, 3/4, etc)
--random selection of synth and drum textures
--start with some "melody" or drum pattern (not always completely random, but often starts random)
--fiddle with knobs, notes and sequencing until things start to sound listenable

Whether the song involves vocals depends on how things develop. If it does involve vocals, I may spontaneously throw in some things that I hadn't even been thinking about until right then, or I might work with some poem or general theme/feel that I'd worked on at some previous point in time.

This method produces a lot of songs that wind up being just "technique practice" or b-sides, songs that I never put online. But, for every 4 or 5 b-sides, I usually come up with at least one that's good enough to share with others.

Truth be told, I'd like to share many of my songs with others, including the b-sides, but I've learned over time that only the people who really "get it", like close friends or highly devoted fans, get anything out of those tracks. Lol... they can be pretty crazy. :-P

Anyway, there you have it.

And now for some more.

Years ago, I used to make many songs per week... usually at least about 3 or 4. That was when I had a lot of free time-- no job, no girlfriend, etc. Nowadays, I make music a lot less frequently; it's often times down to just one per week at the most, often times less than that. If I go weeks and weeks without making music, I start to panic and worry that "I've lost it", and then I force myself to sit down at my earliest opportunity and make something new. Often times, that song will be good, or it turns out that that one was just to get me warmed up, and the one that follows it is pretty good.

What sucks the most is when I run out of inspiration half way through a song. I wind up with a song that's awesome Awesome AWESOME.... shit. Where's the rest of it? And it just doesn't come. I'm trying to think up a way to use these half-songs nonetheless, since they really do represent some potent kernels of the great style that is Reconsiderate's, but to no avail just yet. Maybe some sort of "comp mix", like Cold Cut's "More Beats & Pieces" off their "Let Us Play" CD. Or just play the song up until the point that it cops out, and then cut it off with some sort of noise that makes it sound like the record skipped or whatever.

Anyway. Hope this helps.

Thanks!

[Neformore]

It usually starts with a sandwich and a strong coffee!

Then its straight to the drum editor. Sometimes it flows, sometimes it doesn't. If I don't have a working beat in about an hour it gets canned.

After that - well I've spent many a long hour tweaking sounds for bass lines, and messing about with arpeggiators and digital effects - I like layers of sound and building up over time (used to be a club DJ, probably listened to too much house and the old 8 bar build up technique....)

I struggle with melodies. Takes me ages. A lot of my tracks simply by-pass them, but I'm trying more these days - I can hear some good hooks in my head, but getting them into reality is another thing entirely :)

I'll try and get 4-8 bars I'm happy with and build off it.

Lyrics... I used to be good at them when I was younger. As I've got older and mellowed my ability to write seems to have dropped off (probably because I'm not outraged enough these days!). I like to try and one-shot my vocals, although the number of cut out bits of swearing, involuntary laughter and mobile phone bleeps is making that increasingly difficult....

Mixing takes ages. I like to listen to tracks several times on several different sound sources (Headphones, in-car, pc speakers, large Hi-fi) because you can pick out nuances that you'd miss just listening to only one.

Mostly though, its got to be fun. If I'm not enjoying it then theres no point carrying on at all. For some reason I can't write angry, which is a pity, because there are some amazing tracks out there that were written by severly p***ed off people!

[Pixieguts]

I like to try and one-shot my vocals, although the number of cut out bits of swearing, involuntary laughter and mobile phone bleeps is making that increasingly difficult....

Lol! I like to one-shot and then savagely edit, hehe. Usually 2 or 3 shots overall, all improvised...

[northcape]

Mostly though, its got to be fun.If I'm not enjoying it then theres no point carrying on at all.

I think this explains why I normally write chilled, generally uplifting tracks. I generally want to write tracks that take me to a better mental place, not a worse one, I have enough stress in my life outside music without making tracks that make me feel stressed/ angry/ miserable...

I personally don't like working with randomness much, but its very interesting to read how reconsiderate works... I find my best tracks always come from some feeling outside music, the difficulty is successfully capturing it but I've got the feeling I've got to work at translating it and personally I find I can't do that by writing melodies completely at random.

[Alan Angus]

I'st of all pixieguts that surprises me not at all.
Cycling for me. I cycle everyday if the weather's good (once a year). I get an idea rush home as fast as my little legs will carry me and go to my studio (bedroom) (Mac logic studio: dummy keyboard) and put it down. Spend the next few weeks working on it untill it might be finished. I usually have 3 or 4, on the go so something might crop up.

[Alan Angus]

You do write chilled and uplifting tracks northcape, so it's working for you (and us)!