#65

As in musical scale or ‘key,’ like E minor? My classical training forces me to start by saying that using a key to organize material is a tale as old as time, which is one of the reasons we can feel it powerfully when someone does. Sonatas, for instance, really are all about establishing one key / scale / chord as the focus of a piece of music the length of an EP / album and then using all other keys / scales / chords that come up to develop contrasting moods or spaces.

As far as “pop” artists, I haven’t paid as much attention to it, but I do know randomly that “Within” on Random Access Memories was mostly written to provide a transition from the main key of the first three songs to the key of the next several.

So yes.

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#66

I don’t have any hard data on this… but from my own musical preferences I can tell you that a lot of 90’s indie rock and post-punk was in the key of D major more than you would expect :slight_smile:

Sonic Youth also used some unison guitar tunings on almost every song of certain albums, putting them all in similar tonal and harmonic territory. For example, a lot of Daydream Nation uses F# as the root note or as open drones.

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#67

Interesting. I know sticking to one key for a song is usually good practice (sorry, music theory beginner here) and so I guess I’m wondering if some artists will ever create using only one key.

Thanks for the info!

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#68

Pretty much all folk music sticks to its own respective couple of keys, English folk is mostly in D/G. Due to the use of a lot of open tuned instruments (banjo, slide guitar, cross tuned fiddle) or diatonic (fixed scale instruments like melodion, tin whistle or concertina), and instruments that have a lot of drone notes like bagpipes, musicians would usually have to change instrunents if they wanted to change the key, so most folk music stuff is to a couple of keys for every song.

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#69

I get this, but usually for me embracing it and trying to create my own version of that style and genre (almost a parody) can be a great exercise. I always find what I make sounds more coherent when put next to other ‘parodies’ than I expect. And I usually find a cool idea within what I’ve made to apply to a new song.

I guess try not to define yourself too much, but just make and see what comes of it. If you have to make 30 pieces of music to find 5 songs worth going on an album then that’s great! And you can come back to the remaining 25 and pick a few to build upon in the future.

I feel like if you are TOO defined in your sound you just end up repeating yourself a lot. Loads of bands with a really defined sound make two albums that could really be the same body of music then stagnate and go on hiatus!!

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#70

I was going to start a thread about this – I’m sure glad I did a search first. Thanks @andrewhuang for starting it! I’ve learned so much from reading it.

I was going to ask more about how people have gone about exploring the idea of a “signature” sound, and I think this topic covers it beautifully. I’m personally struggling with a curse of abundance; I’m inspired to do soooo much and I don’t know how it all fits together. I’ve experimented a lot and gone all the way through grad school for music, and it feels like I’ve put off making a “signature sound” in lieu of learning what I’m capable of achieving.

I’ve been studying Zen more recently, and reading people’s responses about making this a hands-off process I a koan I really love might apply here:

“The great way is not difficult; it just avoids picking and choosing.”

This comes to mind because if I try to control or search for “my sound” I end up building a sandbox. But that sandbox might be within a much larger sandbox, or there might be a different sandbox somewhere else with better sand, or more friends to play with, or more trucks and shovels and whatever. Or maybe I like going to different sandboxes at different times, or I don’t need a sandbox at all. The metaphor is falling apart. But maybe you get me.

I’m echoing a lot of the things people have already said; I guess I’m mostly posting to say that this is really helpful to me and I appreciate the community here a lot.

Also, has this changed for you in the past years, @andrewhuang (or anyone else) ? It’s been about 3 since you posted so I’m super curious where you stand now, if you’re around and care to share.

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#71

generative neo algominimalism

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#72

Well I started this thread this year on April 15, not April 2015. :slight_smile: So it’s only been about 6 months, but reflecting on this now I think I’ve come a ways. Not so much in being able to define a sound for myself, but that I’ve gone through a perceptible Letting Go of that kind of thinking. I’m not against it but it’s not for me.

One thing that cemented it for me was seeing an extreme example of a Defined Sound up close. A friend of mine had a minor hit this summer, and it was eye opening to talk with her about all the invisible things that were positioned to make that happen. Nothing new or surprising but it was the first time I’d heard it all together, candidly, from a person I trust. Shopping around for and eventually hiring a management team and a publicist. Crafting her brand with their help - sound, image, back story - all coming from authentic places but of course romanticized. A heavily co-ordinated launch for the single, and followup already planned. All this taking the better part of a year. She feels 10/10 about it and I’m very happy for her and also suuuper sure that I don’t want to do anything like that.

I’m seeing how much it works for her and how it also lines up with shrewd marketing practices. I think she’s projecting the most exciting and accessible aspects of her person to create her work, and it fulfills her. I’ve had to recognize that for me to arrive at a sound and a brand like that would be to deny some of those things that are at my core - the constant experimentation, the prolific output, the synthesis of disparate approaches to music.

So I’m no longer bothered by the thought of finding or defining a sound for myself. I’m further embracing the path I always kind of have…the winding, jittery, nebulous one that leads to Anything and Whatever.

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#73

Hmm, I do think that’s an extreme example, and it seems like less “her sound” than the sound of a brand.

What I think of as my sound came out of iterating a lot. Listening to my own work and realizing, after close to a thousand recordings, that I enjoy listening to some of it a lot more than the rest. (So I was a little slow… :grin:) Deciding that rather than shoring up those weaker styles, I’d concentrate more on the stronger ones. That focus let me refine it a bit more and find new techniques that work for it. The style drifts and evolves over time, but focus is what remains.

And that sort of happened by accident, but once I realized it was happening I made it intentional. I’m not interested in commercial success, or in doing the kind of work it would take to achieve even minor popularity (the most I could hope for in this genre range). I’ll stick with my dull but well-paying day job, during which I get to listen to the music I make while I’m at home :wink:

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#74

Where can I hear this? Do you have any releases on Apple Music?

#75

I find that music often corresponds to a shifting locus of attention or sense of self such that sometimes I am more aware of my body and other times more immersed in a thought or memory or feeling…

The idea that there is only one permanent self from which to construct a singular music voice does not make any sense in my personal experience of being a multi-faceted creature…

When I look back on nearly 45 years of music making, I detect certain threads of quasi-continuity, but I’d be hard pressed to define them in any useful way…

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#76

I am reminded somewhat of the “Society of the Spectacle” by Situationist founder Guy Debord.

The kind of marketing your friend engaged in is typically empty and deceptive as is most cultural advertising, attempting to create a sense that something important is happening when the truth is that mostly nothing is… I’m not attacking her specifically, I’m guessing that she and her team are fine people, but the system is one massive mind control device…

Ugh…

I want nothing to do with that path…

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#77

What’s tropical, always puzzles me?

#78

I agree with this, and I would say in addition to the “sound” itself, it is the creation/performance process as well that has helped me to better define my “sound”. Like reading posts on here, or listening to interviews (on lines, podular modcast, art + music + technology), going to workshops and q+a’s or watching them on youtube with other artists.

It is interesting to see how other people approach things, the limitations they set for themselves, the way they record and archive their work (or not), what they put out there (or don’t), how they promote it (or not), etc. I think that through the lens of understanding how someone else does it, I can think about what I’m doing that I like that are the same/different, things from their process I’d like to try. Sometimes just understanding the “head space” the person is in or trying to achieve can be useful rather than any tangible thing they do.

Specifically for me, I tried a handful of performances live on the modular from super improvised to playing a couple voices synced through midi and having most things prerecorded in ableton. They didn’t really feel right. Took a few months, put other sequencers aside besides the teletype to force myself to learn how to fit it into my workflow. Ended up deciding on selling the other sequencers once I started performing all modular sets with the teletype that felt “right”.

It’s sort of hard to articulate, but there was a perspective shift there that made me feel like the types of sounds I wanted to go for (and the way I wanted to form them) went from being “let me try and experiment with new things” to “this feels right, let me see if I can push it a little further/augment it/change this particular part”. For example, the new grid control mode has really changed the way I approach pitches as being a set thing to being a played thing.

Also I realize this thread is about the “sound”, and I’ve just spent a bunch of time talking about performance, but for me they are extremely linked.

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#79

G’day

There are a couple of albums using landscapes but neither are on Apple Music.

I’ve manipulated playground recordings for an album called For 100 Years and there are videos here too.

Another album is Vibrating String, which features a large-scale aeolian harp in the Australian landscape.

Thanks for your interest :slight_smile:

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#80

Hi,
I found this subject interesting so I thought a little about it. I think my sound could be seen sort of my home. A house, filled with furniture I’ve found, some bought new, some inherited. If you come to visit you can sort of see who I am. By the clothes that hang there, my book case, record collection and stuff.

Every once in a while you go on a trip, bring home a souvenir, hang something new on the wall. And sometimes you refurbish, throw the old out. And fill your house with something new.

Some people are homely. Stay home. Other’s are forever nomads.

Just an image I enjoyed playing with.

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#81

Taste. Your sound is the work that you keep.

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#82

In the same vein, I think one of the best pieces of advice I ever got was “write what you like”.

Sounds obvious but it’s easy to fall into a trap of trying to write what you think you should like, or what other people like, or trying to write something “different” to distinguish yourself, etc, etc. Just write what you like.

I come back to this constantly when I feel trapped by my own aesthetics and it’s always pretty liberating. Especially because it basically makes you toss out the inward-pointing idea of developing a voice, or a sound which is somehow a fingerprint of you and turns things back out to where they ought to be concerned imho: sounds. Everyone belongs to sounds.

(I also remember reading an interview with someone in a band I admired at the time who said they basically made music to try to fill in the gaps in their record collection. Another way of saying write what you like I guess.)

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#83

This reminds me a bit of a talk I saw where Chuck Palahniuk was talking about dissatisfaction as a creative stimulus. I remember in the same talk he was talking about people being so steeped in narrative these days and that being somewhat of a boon for constructing new narratives, and I do think this applies in music.

To the extent that the musical terrain is so easily surveyed and that whatever tracts of that terrain prove intriguing to a person may be so readily navigable, I don’t think it’s a great leap to infer something novel and reasonably satisfying based upon this exposure. This, to me, is little different from the selection and honing of tools and processes by which one aims to articulate a particular sound and warrants the same level of deliberation on the part of the artist.

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#84

I work on all different types of music so find that when I get too confused by one I can move on to another. I always find playing the piano a bit of a palette cleanser in this regard.

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