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Forums - The lounge
Subject: music phases
Viewing all 17 messages - View by pages of 10: 1 2
Original Message 1/17 09-Nov-09 @ 04:42 AM - music phases
looking back on the dance tracks i wrote i can clearly define three phases:
1) My tracks suck
2) My tracks still suck
3) Will my tracks ever stop sucking?
How are your musical phases going?
Message 2/17 09-Nov-09 @ 12:33 PM - RE: music phases
___________________________________
I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!
Message 3/17 09-Nov-09 @ 01:04 PM - RE: music phases
NastyM
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Message 4/17 09-Nov-09 @ 01:17 PM - RE: music phases
NastyM
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For some bizarre reason though, when i'm working on a track there is also some part of me that is convinced that they are actually superb (at least some sections of them).
They`re a little like personal thoughts; they seem absolutely brilliant, witty, intelligent even to the point of being worthy of sparring with Oscar (on the inside), however as soon as they are released from the confinement of my skull, into the open, they degenerate into limp, vapid, meaningless drivel... so much for the current self esteem.
Not to be beaten down my own analysis, i will forever persist until i eventually produce something of merit or i get bullied into stopping...(and my God has wife tried to do this!)
Message 5/17 09-Nov-09 @ 01:19 PM - RE: music phases
NastyM
Posts: 294
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Message 6/17 11-Nov-09 @ 06:45 AM - RE: music phases
kind of understandable that they'd prefer fingers
Message 7/17 11-Nov-09 @ 03:33 PM - RE: music phases
i'm going to turn into a bad ripoff of danny gatton when i get some time
as for musical phases .. i'm definately in 'i've given up and i'm doing something else but when i get a spare moment i might start doing something completely different to what i used to do before.'
i think that's phase number 47
Message 8/17 12-Nov-09 @ 04:56 AM - RE: music phases
to everyone....i have to say that after playing piano, guitar, singing, percussion and of course sitar,
the most personally rewarding were synthesizers. in spite of the fact that what i did with them was
largely lacking they offered an incredible mixture of mathematics and music. i didn't grow up with
electronic dance music and struggled to understand, largely on my own, what makes it work...and
all the genres took me until pretty much after i stopped to understand and recognize. the
differences between house and trance now seem obvious but they didn't before. the difference
between breakbeat and drum & base. the difference between jungle and jungle influenced techno. i
know that seems idiotic to you guys but to someone who grew up on beethoven and mozart the
genres and sounds of electronic dance seemed like magic. i never realized how important delays
are to electronic music. many sounds that used delays to make them spacial i assumed was
reverb. the first times i tried to emulate delays i thought one did it by repeating the note manually on
the midi staff giving each note a lower velocity. a lot of things have sinked in and if i picked it up
again i think i could actually write some decent tracks. initially the reason i bought a Roland XP-80
and Cakewalk was to start writing film music. after i told him i bought a synthesizer, a British
colleague turned me on to techno and i was sold. as most of you know it was Orbital and the CD
was Snivilization. suddenly i was trying to write techno using Cakewalk, which I'm sure would have
been possible for anyone who knew the art but as i look back Cakewalk would have been a huge
obstacle for anyone. i eventually bought Logic but it crashed about every 10 measures on my PC.
thank goodness Sonar finally came out but i still didn't know a thing about writing dance tracks.
i'm saying this for myself but also for you guys who think your tracks are not good even though
beautiful ideas are there. it takes time to sink in, even if you grew up listening to dance music i
imagine.
i'm going to say something here that i don't think i've said at DT. without going through the whole
story my tenth grade high school geometry teacher looked back at my records because of what i
did in her class. she asked to meet with my parents. she proceeded to tell them that my iq dwarfed
that of einstein and she wanted to put me into a special program. the next year my math teacher
had me teach the class. i was the first student in his career to whom he gave a final grade of 100
and he told me if he could have he would have given me a higher grade. the same happened in
college. i was in the all-county, all-state, and all nation choirs. the all nation choir was picked from
the best two singers from each state in the U.S. we performed in 5 countries in Europe. that was
my first time in Europe. i made the personal decision to study sitar, a difficult instrument to play but
the music itself is so highly developed that it is almost impossible to get your head around if you
are an outsider. to get a real master as a teacher is virtually impossible if you grow up in India or
Pakistan and yet i managed to do so to the point where i was considered a member of the family
and i was handed the family's musical gems. i went on to perform at such places as Lincoln
Center.
it sounds like i'm bragging and i guess i am a bit but here's the thing. i've performed classical
music, jazz (performing live on congas and percussion), and the classical music of north
India...something the great jazz trumpet player Don Cherry told me was too much for him to take
on...and yet at least in my mind electronic dance music holds on so many levels the most
possibilities and requires tenacity and intelligence and most importantly, heart. i'm not talking about
the formulated dance tunes but the creativeness involved in creating sounds and rhythms that chill
the spine and make the body want to move in rhythm with a magnificent universe of sound. when
you're twiddling those knobs on a synthesizer to give a sine wave punch you are god. it takes time
for it to sink in but never give up. classical music is pretty much set in its ways. classical music of
north India is as well. Jazz is open but last I've listened it's come back to a pretty standard version
of elevator music compared to the free jazz of the 70s in which the sky was the limit. but electronic
dance music...there's no end to where you can take it. it's like the quantum physics of music. so
don't give up and appreciate everything you do as if you're a mad professor. i've just offered you
my credentials and i've said it before and i'll say it again, dance music is awesome. never put
yourself down for having taken it up....or like me for having written a shite track. no track is
completely shite.
Message 9/17 12-Nov-09 @ 01:15 PM - RE: music phases
As for my musical phase i'm in "Oh my god, I'm still doing this" phase, which is cool
Message 10/17 13-Nov-09 @ 01:36 AM - RE: music phases
nutoniom wrote:
Thanks sitar, great trajectory and I love the end
;p
As for my musical phase im in Oh my god, Im still doing this phase, which is cool
You're still doing this. That's great. There's nothing more fulfilling at least to me than laying down
notes with synths. Thus far I've been a failure at it but that doesn't mean the passion isn't there.
I remember the first time I stumbled across dancetech.com. I was at work on a weekend. I read K's
revue of Ovation's Supernova and ran out and bought one the following week. I loved that synth like
no other even though I bought many others over time. What became most confusing to me was,
having no real idea about dance music, all of the varied opinions about what constituted a good track.
In the end and really from the beginning one has to find his own voice otherwise you're not really
writing your own tracks. That's where I went wrong. On the other hand I listened to the various voices
because I had to try and learn what it was all about and they were all helpful but that help was
technical. It's what is inside of you that counts.
Message 11/17 13-Nov-09 @ 01:51 AM - RE: music phases
what I'm doing and even worse, I can't actually play an instrument. But I don't care. i just love those
tiny snippets of time where i feel it souds like actual real music and it's me inputing the notes with my
fingers. Those little snippets of time are so overwhelming that they are worth all the time spent
looking at a rat's nest of leads, with that dense look on my face.
Do you still have the Supernova ?
Message 12/17 14-Nov-09 @ 05:47 AM - RE: music phases
successful at it. I no longer have the Supernova. Broke my heart in a way when I gave it to a friend
but I started using soft synths completely. They're amazing but you also need the cpu power which I
guess we all have now. Using midi to control hard synths was wonderful though. In terms of cpu
power midi is getting a big bang for your buck.
Message 13/17 17-Nov-09 @ 02:58 PM - RE: music phases
Besides I still prefer playing with my synths. I'm in the final stages of recabling the command module, i'm almost done, there has to be a least a
mile of cables in this thing .
Message 14/17 18-Nov-09 @ 01:21 AM - RE: music phases
When I had to break it all down to move I wondered how I'd put it all together in the first place. Cables
were all over the place behind my workdesk.
Message 15/17 25-Nov-09 @ 02:35 PM - RE: music phases
I'll get my coat.
Message 16/17 25-Nov-09 @ 09:17 PM - RE: music phases
___________________________________
I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!
Message 17/17 26-Nov-09 @ 12:05 PM - RE: music phases
I'm currently in the second one, tired and unmotivated.
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