#8

Funny. I was just going to say Linnstrument. Just got one last week. Seems quite expressive and durable. Only time will tell if it has a long term future in my rig.

Workflow has become such a preoccupation for me that I’ve recently built my own compositional/performance system using Usine Hollyhock. The system combines a software digital mixer with VSTs, VSTIs, and Sysex controllers for some of my older external gear. It runs on a laptop with a large touch screen monitor which makes it easy to use in creative situations without engaging my left brain and breaking the flow.

Just getting version 1.0 finished but so far it’s quite inspiring. Everything is just where I want it and, if it’s not, I adjust it.

#9

reading into process art helped me out of a similar frustration. from wikipedia’s writeup for bruce nauman:

Confronted with “What to do?” in his studio soon after graduating, Nauman had the simple but profound realization that “If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.”

it had a similarly profound effect on me in that i started to love the process of making music more than the love of the resultant music object.

in short, love of process > love of objects. if you prioritise the latter you’ll always come up lacking. my $0.02

8 Likes
#10

Thanks all for the replies @Scott_Lepore . @michaelterren michael @dillo @Miskalicious @mu_lippy @Simeon

Great to get a conversation going and hear from a wide range of viewpoints.

also good to know that is a universal issue…

I think an acceptance that ‘anything’ you create will be valid is a good mental step to move from the jamming > sequencing > editing > ‘finishing’ paradigm recommended in many production guides/sites/forums.

An element of limitation also helps, you don’t use every ingredient in the kitchen for a meal, why use all your synths/plug ins/effects? Once I add in delay/reverb. I never decide its not needed and remove it, leading to a more is more state.

Finally, I am going to put away Ableton for a while and concentrate on enjoying the playing, with a record first and delete later mentality. The value judgement of whether the last 20 mins of jamming was worth turning into a ‘recorded take’ added to the pressure to get to a final complete stage. Ableton Live is great as a tool but after setting up 4 ins, MIDI recieve &sends, Aux/FX busses and monitoring, it added to a feeling of “Now go and create your masterpiece”

“Art is never finished, Only abandoned”

3 Likes
#11

Perfect articles - Thanks for the sharing!

#12

@hamildad - i’m not sure to answer to the topic ^^ but my feeling reading the question about creativity and electronic music (without the question of technique, hardware and concrete routines) is to be often or always alone with the machine(s) - we are not naturally made to work, to create, to live alone. Our environment could be an help (friends, family, musicians, city, timing,…) but often it’s not the case. Alone the path is harder as we don’t receive_feel the answers to our questions… as the reason of why we are creating_doing music is a kind of research to receive answer to our questions.
Your solution is great, the show must go on and thanks a lot for your post. The different answers are inspiring me. +1

I was wondering about the sense of art - as evolution. I ask myself what would be an evolution if the answers was already there, if the questions wasn’t? It’s life questionings, right? I often observe than in our “artistic” vision we are too much concerned by ourself. The answers are already there but we have to see it from outside_elsewhere and fortunately not in the technique, the machines. They are in our capacity to work with confidence thanks the tool that we chosen. A tool that has to give us answers about who we are. This is of course a personal reflexion as I often meet Mr"…and know what?" - - yes! the revolution starts with actions in company of humanistic values and in company…this is so hard to translate across my machines…

#13

hi Folks,

Really good question ! I often ask myself about the routine i was into : piano roll => then sound design => then layering => then structure. Or sound design => then piano roll => then layering => then structure

Then came the monome. had to scratch my head a lot to make it fit in my ableton workflow : midi sequencing => then sound design => then layering => then structure.

I did that for long then crash my hard drive… Good thing !

Now i only work with a very few plugins but with tones of modulations. Most of time i found myself starting with 4 tracks at the same time with generic sounds => then modulations using XYnome/corners/64 faders and some very beautiful midi tools like Parc, Ricochet, decisions, meadowphysics, Kolorit,… => then an other round of weird modulations and midi “accidents”.

By coupling midi notes and midi cc’s at the same time give me an other entrance on the sound design. and it works well with monomachine

3 Likes
#14

Always have recording as an option. It is great to just work on sounds and ideas and often interesting things will result. Only a fraction of those sounds might end up in a finished product, but if you aren’t set up to record those ideas as they happen they just disappear.

It really helps to have an idea of what the end product will be. A live set? A record? Without that idea its easy to get into a series of endless experiments that no one else will ever hear.

1 Like
#15

Collaborating with others can also help to avoid this rabbit hole. Got a neat patch that’s so expressive yet the very act of creating it has left you drained? Get your pal to come over and lay down a riff. And of course when collaborating one is not limited to musicians or musical artists or sound designers, experiment and find out where you end up when you work with those who work in other mediums all together.
For me the process of collaboration helps to both push a project forward and create greater interest and enjoyment in the process itself.

1 Like
#16

:loop::loop::loop::loop::loop::loop::loop::loop::loop::loop::loop::loop::loop::loop::loop::loop:
:see_no_evil: :hear_no_evil: :speak_no_evil: :alien:

5 Likes
#17

this is a powerful discussion

i refrained from commenting until now because i wanted time to consider the questions raised by @hamildad

i took time to carefully examine my own perspective in relation to the views expressed above…so thank you all for sharing your thoughts and feelings on this!

#18

I always seek to go to that which is uncomfortable. It’s all too easy to fall into routine, to get locked in default. To know rather than to learn. Learn your weak points. Observe your habits. What is it you do without thought? Then try to subvert these habits. Give yourself space to fail. If you only have a few hours a week, then perhaps re-examine what you seek from music making. If it’s only short bursts, then embrace the escape. Jam, noodle, zone out. Lose the goals and enjoy the process.

2 Likes
#19

My answer to the title of the thread? The purpose

As @CrackaAttacka astutely observed, certain aspects of making music can be compared to the interpersonal relationships we cultivate. Each of us have unique reasons for developing relationships…the initial attraction, attachment to, and continuing bond with a person stem from very different thinking which tends to change over time (even tho our core values rarely do). Regular, honest examination of these reasons can help maintain/improve friendships and, no doubt, engaging in similar evaluation of our musical approach can make us better musicians.

Most of the questions in the thread, raised in the OP and subsequent posts, indirectly reveal glimpses of each individual’s purpose. That purpose precedes and influences all of the other decisions in the process & also makes it tremendously difficult to share ideas on this topic which will prove effective for others (who, invariably, have different musical intentions).

I constantly remind myself of the core values behind my decisions because I consistently get the most enjoyment out of music when i adhere to those principles.

6 Likes
#20

Great to see a thread still evolving with differing responses and points of view.

I have recently spent some time in pursuit of the process as @michael_matos has said, even going so far as to work in very low light levels to focus on the sound than let familiar visual signifiers force me down old routes.

However I have also been working on a system to programme chord patterns into my modular with a lot of time tuning oscillators and ‘prepping’ before any artistic choices are made.

In both disparate situations I have tried to see the time spent as the unknowable period of time you must spend before your confidence in using an instrument fully becomes apparent to yourself.

In short, as long as I am putting the hours in, I am moving forward. I am not sure where I exactly want to get to, but this is progress!

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#21

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#22

This has been a good thread! I spent a lot of years getting comfortable with different instruments and technologies and slowly edging them toward each-other as I understood what they could do over time. The grid I use took me around 4 months to even have a reliable routine for mlr or flinn to show up and make some noise. It took maybe the last handful of years to find out that if I was enjoying the process, I would have a really hard time wasting effort. I go in and out of integration with these things now depending on my mood and it always seems to be too much AND not enough.

"I really want to rewire here but use a separate controller there for this and if I … "

Even now I don’t think I could do much more with 3 control surfaces than I can with two. Or environments for the sake of process vs. gear. Maybe a loop station and light percussion. Or a grid and another control surface with velo and knobs. It’s really hard to juggle both. So… I’ve learned to be happy with playing around. And showing people that process and tinkering when I can. All I really want with the new gear is the ability to make more interesting and better stuff ( to me ) and song-wise is almost equally self serving. Spend some time learning PD or re-iterating on a drum rack… or … combing recordings for live looping. If it’s fun to explore then maybe I’ll remember how to do X if I need to… SerialOSC was a big hangup for me for example. So I didn’t touch the device for a while. Even qwertyMIDI can get you somewhere…

If you have the time ( to read this, even ), enjoy it, I guess. There is nothing wrong with new kit. Or the same old tricks that get you into that groove… my experience is ; " Yeah this knife kinda sounds like a triangle… "

1 Like
#23

Really interesting thread. Self-imposed limitations seems to be the best way to go for me, since i can refocus myself on being creative with the tools i have and ENJOYING THE RIDE.

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#24

I am old but never seem to age musically. I am stuck for better or worse at a musical age of about 18. The good side of this is that I am constantly imprinted with new music. The song that gets me the most emotional is just a few years old, not something from the 80s.
But I am a perpetual beginner partially by design. But honestly would you rather be a master saxophone player, my first instrument, which I was good at, or keyboards/piano? Which I have been playing a couple of years.

I really like to make rhythm based music with no strong genre allegiances. This summer I finally found a workflow that clicked for this. Central to the setup was a mc909. I have sold a lot of “write mostly” sequencers. The DAW piano roll was always the least bad sequencing solution. Until the mc909. It is possible but not easy to edit midi in the 909, so I end up main,y replaying parts instead of tweaking them.

The project this summer was supposed to be to make house music of some kind. The kind that results from being played in sounds a certain way, very loose compared to drawn in beats.

All good. The very first mc909 I bought was unusably broken - pads, buttons, display. Instead of restoring it I bought another one. Try doing that with an MPC 4000 these days or a 3000 how about.

Now this one is showing signs of imminent death. I could buy another one but it is making me feel weird about relying on obsolete gear older than 20 years.

How do you deal with a certain workflow becoming indispensable or at least overpowering the musical situation? I can obviously go many different ways to replace the 909 in vague terms, but besides FL studio this is the first specific workflow item that has really effected my music. Is it weird to accept that centrality? Is it consumerist to put the acquisition of very specialized tools at the center of our art? What is the difference between a “very specialized tool” as consumer good and “musical instrument” ?

#25

If you can I’d identify what it is about the mc909 that made it so essential to you, I have little doubt folks could make suggestions for alternatives. But given the somewhat Swiss Army knife like nature of groove boxes, you’ll have to help us understand why it worked well for you.

I highly recommend centering your practice on open source technology when technology is a critical piece. But I use a large amount of commercial software. I’m comforted to know that when it goes obsolete, at least it won’t go into any landfill.

I’m excited about the possibilities represented by a Raspberry Pi device. You can recreate almost any (digital) music technology on a low cost device, using open source software that you can repair or enhance yourself, which theoretically should make obsolescence impossible. That being said, you may require the assistance of a community such as this one to complement your strengths and provide skills you don’t posses yourself.

1 Like
#26

Thanks for replying. I have been thinking about the mc909 to give you a good answer. The ergonomics are good, I am able to gradually figure it out and get good use out if it without knowing everything about it which is important. And things are arranged well.

The midi timing is basically as good as I can be, in and out.

The mute and fader setup is a great help for live tweaking. I wish all the tracks could be addressed at once but they are stacked 8 on 8.

The recording is very straightforward and the only negative is the inability to record over the running pattern and overdub, and this indeed is one of the things that make me look for other companion pieces.

This may sound weird or naive, but the sounds and drum sets are a huge asset. I think this opinion is very peculiar to me at this time. I have spent many many hours crafting sounds, and there was a period when I thought sound was superior to music. But now I love many, by no means all of the sounds. I really like having credible drum sets that have some genre and sonic identity, without having to hunt for them or make them. In most of the songs I have been working on, the beginning sounds rarely are the ones thst survive, and they are mostly replaced with sounds I make on external synths, but the ease of dialing through many different patches so easily to fit a part I played in is a huge productivity boost.
Edit - the fact that these sounds largely Hew to obsolete genre conventions is a plus. I have gigabytes of modern sounds on my ROMplers and vsts etc, but somehow the cheesiness of a lot of old sounds is reduced when their context fades away.

I like that I can visually edit patterns, though it is not as easy as the DAW.

I like the quantization options, but don’t like that they are batch based.

I like the real time parttern feature. At the right time during a jam I can play that with one hand and keyboard with another. Having fixed options at hand thst have been preselected to match the song, and indeed might be samples of the song, really helps reinforce the theme with little performative effort.

The pads are pretty good, not as finger drummy as I would like but they make up for it with their expressiveness.

I can’t articulate the final thought but somehow this creaky and increasingly obsolete groove box is the best all around quick composition tool I have found besides the DAW, with a big difference being that I can spend all my time standing up. I still use the computer, but not always, and it is not necessary since I now record to multitrack on sd card instead of to the computer, and then I suck the stems onto the pc after the fact if warranted.

2 Likes
#27

That’s quite a love affair! I’d get the nicest one you can find and then use it with great love and care. And I don’t say that lightly. All of your concerns around commercialization and obsolescence of musical instruments are still completely valid. But you’re describing the very things I don’t think I could “clone”: subtle ergonomics. A large collection of small details that add up to something greater than the sum of the parts. A personal relationship. You don’t love a certain type of sequencer or a particular drum sound or any other single thing. You love the mc909.

I guess you could look at the mc707 and think about whether it works for you, but now you really are jumping on the upgrade treadmill, potentially. If you’re going to have to change workflow and ergonomics anyway, why constrain yourself to something so commercialized?

Our relationships with our instruments are potentially some of the most intimate relationships we might ever have, certainly with an inanimate object. Who am I to say what any one of us should play?

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