general fuzz

I’m having a dandy time on vacation. Gail is taking vegan deserts to the extreme (in scope and deliciousness). Stina is in her happy place – napping by the ocean.

Going outside my normal daily context with little on the agenda grants a healthy opportunity for reflection. I’m finishing up work on my fifth (!) album. For some reason, right now, I’m having a hard time getting really amped about it. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’ll be a true reflection of my musical growth and I’m really really proud of it. The thing is – I’ve now gone around the block several times with the musical releases. The final push is always a little daunting/tedious. I’ve invested so much of my emotional self into my music and at this point I’ve grown a pretty thick shell about it.

Let me lay out a couple of things I’ve learned in the past almost decade of producing free music. They would probably apply to any aspiring musician. Many of them may be obvious and intuitive, but it’s always helpful to take stock.

Lesson 1

No one cares about my music the way I do. There’s no reason for them to – for me its a primary extension of self. It’s what I pour myself into, laboring, debating, molding, and refining for a ridiculous number of hours. Then, after all this toil and triumph, I release an album, where all my pride and insecurities are balled up in an explosive state of nervous excitement. My friends and fans will support and celebrate with me, which is truly amazing, but it’s important to recognize that most people don’t care about it nor understand the effort it takes. It’s important (though almost impossible) not to have expectations of how my music will be received. What’s most important its how I feel about my music. You’ll hear this again and again when you’re an artist – it just took experience for me to internalize it.

This is so true for so many things in life. I watch a movie, and when the credits are rolling I start thinking about what to do next. Only when I start watching the “making of” on the DVD do I appreciate how amazing the process of creating the movie was. So for my last album “Cool Aberrations”, I created a page talking about how I collaborated with all the musicians. It gives a listener some insight to the creation process, which made the music more interesting to listen to.

It’s always a good idea to talk to people about the process of creating something, be it an event, a piece of art, a cake, or whatever. I’m often oblivious of the extraordinary effort it takes to accomplish a task.

Lesson 2

When I released my first two albums, I really pushed my music on my friends, family, and peers, since, well, there’s already an established relationship. What I didn’t recognize is that many people I know don’t really care about music. Then theres are those who do, don’t really dig my downtempo stylings. While of course there are exceptions, I finally recognized this isn’t really my target audience. My target audience are folks who dig donwtempo, melodic electronica, which is a certainly a niche category.

Lesson 3

Why was no one coming to my website to download my free music for the first few years? Because no one knew about it. I had to learn the art of promotion. Since I’m not trying to sell my music, the traditional channels – i.e. labels – are not available. I must contact the radio stations, magazines, websites, blogs, and forums myself. Occasionally a fan will help spread the word – and to those people I am incredibly grateful.

Successful promotion turns out to be cast a wide a net as possible, putting a lot of effort in spreading the word, sending out cds, and getting very very little back. You have to accept a lot of rejection. I’ve learned to be happy if 5% of my emails or mailings gets a response – that is, not even a positive response, but a message indicating that the party will or did check out my music. It’s not really something that I enjoy, and with each release, my net has gotten larger – so I’m about to embark on my most ambitious promotional campaign yet.

Lesson 4

Just because people know about something, doesn’t mean they’ll care. When I hand someone a business card, realistically, there’s a minuscule chance they’ll go check out my website. When I hand someone a cd, there’s maybe a 50% chance they’ll listen to it. The best time to hand someone a cd is when they’re about to go their car, and I can suggest they check it out on their journey. We now live in an era where data is free, and people collect it without using it. Humans like to have stuff. If they do end up on my website and download an album or track, it may get lost in the shuffle of other downloads. I only recently added the option to listen to my music directly off the website – this was a big omission on my part.

Lesson 5

Unless your music is simple and poppy, or incredibly accessible, most people won’t be able to make sense of it on first listen, and consequently not return for a second listen. I can not approach my own music with fresh ears – I’m intimate with every second of it. Its great to have someone who’s not a huge music head listen to my music before I release it to gauge how most people will receive it. Its helped shape the ordering of the tracks. Accessible music will always be more popular then complex music – putting “acclimate” as my first track turned out to be an excellent move. I’ve learned that it often takes many listens for people to start really enjoying my music.

My favorite story is of a co-worker who’s cd player broke with my cd in it, so they had to listen to it all day on repeat. The next day he told me never to stop writing music.

My next album will not be very accessible. At least I now know what to expect. The advantage of being totally independent is that I can choose to make musical decisions like this. I’m writing more complicated music because that’s what I want to do.

Lesson 6

This is the most important thing I’ve learned – the small percentage that do care and listen to my music, don’t think how important it is for me to get feedback from them. This is completely normal. How often to do you appreciate something and think “I should tell the artist (or whatever) how much I enjoy their art?” Not often. Since the process of acquiring my music is completely devoid of personal interaction (click on a link on a website), there’s nothing bonding the downloader to me. They download the music, and perhaps listen to it sometime down the line. Maybe they like it – maybe the don’t. I will most likely never get feedback. The thing I’ve taken away from this is to always contact artists when I enjoy their work. Its a great habit. Or if an artist is serious about soliciting feedback, both negative and positive, I try to do so. They always really appreciate it.

In Conclusion

I don’t mean to sound like its a negative experience to create and release music – its not. There’s simply a lot of challenges I never imagined. I absolutely celebrate the tools, ability, and lifestyle that allows me to craft the music that I want to. I’m still in awe that there’s a distribution method that allows me to share my music at almost no cost to the entire world.

We are still very much at the beginning of the musical explosion thats about to take place. The tools that are available completely eliminate the cost barrier to create music. As this generation learns those tools, the variety and quantity of output will be staggering.

Good times ahead. And good times right now.

I would love to hear what other lessons musicians have learned, or your experiences with anything I mentioned.

A while back I wrote a blog post describing 6 lessons I learned about creating and distributing music on the internet. More then one person wrote me to say they were disappointed that the lessons didn’t touch upon the process for actually creating electronic music. So now that I’m back on vacation and had some time to ruminate, I’m going to try to jot down a few things I’ve learned about creating computer music. Please bear in mind these lessons are deeply rooted in personal opinion.

1. Pick a Tool and learn it.

All music creation software is going to have strengths and weaknesses. All the major sequencers – Live, Cubase, Sonar, Fruityloops, Reason, etc – have a huge group of loyalists and detractors. The reality, especially when you are just getting started, is that it doesn’t matter much which tool you pick. They all provide the basic functionality required to create music. What really matters is that you spend a lot of time learning the software inside out. They are all extremely powerful and versatile tools, full of innovation and nuances. It will take a lot of work to understand how to bend a sequencer to your will. Discover its limitations, and learn how to work around them. Amazing music has been created on all of them, so you know that it’s possible for you to do it too.

2. Don’t become a collector of software

I’ve discovered that I’m much more productive when I have limited resources. Don’t become a collector of sequencers and synth plugins. It’s so easy in this day and age to either download tons of freeware software or steal commercial software. Buy a sequencer, and play with the built in synths for a while. There are “lite” versions of all major software, and if you are just getting started with computer music the “lite” version will provide you with ample functionality. If you spend your hard earned cash on software, you’ll be more inclined to use it to its maximum potential.

Try not to go on a buying spree of synth plugins, because you’ll never dive deep into the potential of the plugins. It takes time to just become familiar with the presets of a synth. I’ve definitely gone on some synth buying benders, and became much less productive as a result. It’s great to have powerful tools at your disposal, but you need to be familiar enough with your tools to know when to actually use it.

3. Learn the foundations of electronic music

I think it’s extremely important to understand the basics of analog and digital synthesis. Even if you are planning on just using synth presets (as I do for the most part), you’ll want to know how to tweak a patch so it sounds just the way you want them to. I was lucky enough to attend Oberlin college where they offered advanced curriculum in electronic music. Everything essential I learned in the first semester: How to construct sounds on a analog synth, how to build patches on a sampler, how to route and modulate the sound signal, etc.

I think Reason is the perfect software to learn all these concepts on. The software is built just like a giant modular studio, where all the components and the way your tie them together mirror their real life equivalents.

4. Finish a Song

Not long after you get started, you’ll start creating little song snippets that you enjoy playing with. Eventually you’ll flush some of them out so that you have really awesome little song snippets. The real challenge is to create a full song from a song snippet. This is a daunting and often elusive task. So my advice is make a full song out of that snippet, even if it’s  crappy and super repetitive.  It just needs to have a beginning and an end.

The sooner you are confident that you can create a whole song, the sooner you’ll build the confidence that you can do it again. Otherwise you’ll be spinning your wheels indefinitely on lots of little song snippets.  Once you have a complete song, you can always improve it. So . . .

5. Improve your songs

Find a good set of critics. People who you can listen to and take criticism from. It’s important to learn how to take negative feedback. You don’t always have to agree, but an objective set of ears often has a lot of value.  Learn to differentiate from constructive criticism and mean spirited bashing. Its much easier to be a critic then a creator. All artists must learn to grow a thick skin, because almost everyone who is not you doesn’t appreciate your art.

Most listeners attention span is very short, so learn to trim the fat from your music. I’m always going back through completed tracks and finding measures which I can delete. It can be difficult to throw away some of your brilliant output, but songs are usually stronger when there’s less filler and more substance.

I personally can’t stand repetition in electronic music. I’m always looking to make variations in tracks so that it never feels like its constructed on repeated loops. I like to either create slight variations in note patterns or automate filters to keep repetitive parts interesting to my ears.

On the flip side, I’ve also learned to not over obsess over the details in a song. I self master all my own music, which is a huge, painstaking effort. I know a professional would do a much better job then I do, but the process of mastering a song usually reveals mistakes in the mix. At some undefinable point during this process the returns from tweaking a song starts diminishing. When a song sounds pretty much the way I want it to, it’s time to move on.   

6. Iteration

I’ve discovered that I work best by iterating through songs. After finishing an album, I’ll start from scratch. First I’ll create a new song. I’ll work on it a little bit. As soon as I start to become frustrated with it, I’ll create a new one. When the second song becomes less fun, I’ll go back to the first song. If no inspiration hits, I’ll return the second song. If nothing there, I’ll start a third song. And so forth. Always iterating through the songs, starting from the first one. I’m not super strict about this, but generally adhere to it.

After I have four or five songs that I’m working on, I’ll start filtering the tracks. I’ll listen to each one and put them in one of three folders – “likely”, “maybe”, “unlikely”. I’ll inevitable only work on the songs in the “likely” folder. And I’ll iterate through those tracks, creating new ones when I’m frustrated with the ones I’m working on, and when I have enough tracks I’ll filter them again. And so forth.

I used to not do this. I’d bang my head against a song until I couldn’t take it anymore, and would often be in a dark mood until I’ll could push through. I’ve learned that if I’m working on a bunch of songs simultaneously, I’m much fresher to the material when I revisit it. I know this advice seems to contradict with the “finish a song” statement – but there’s a big difference to having a whole song mapped out and from it being done. I also have the confidence that I’ll finish a song cause I’ve done it almost a hundred times. It took a long time to build that confidence.

Since it doesn’t cost anything to keep the songs from the other folders around, you don’t have to throw them away. One day they may become handy where you need a section for a song that you are working on. I often construct songs by taking two song snippets and figuring out how to seamlessly meld them together. I enjoy the challenge by taking two unrelated songs and figuring out how to blend them together. A good example of this is “starry” – the A and B sections were two unrelated song snippets. I massaged the B snippet to be in a related key to the A snippet, and eventually fused them together. Booyeah.

7. Frustration is part of the process

Great art always takes great amounts of work. I’ve now finished five albums, and what I’ve learned is that the pain and suffering you endure to create your music is what makes it so good. It’s the curse of having high standards.

I’m always working so hard to finish an album, but after it done, I become a little lost. If you are playing lots of gigs to support your music there’s lots to look forward to, but if you are mostly a composer like myself, it can be a big letdown. I’m starting to appreciate the process more then the end product. As I’ve gotten older I’m starting to grasp that life is about the journey, not the destination.  Don’t rush the process. Without frustration there would be no fulfillment.

8. Collaborate

The advantages of computer music over a band is that you are in complete control of everything. The disadvantage is that you often get so stuck inside your own head that the music never evolves. To grow as a musician, you have to play with other musicians. Computer music is often a solitary art form. I think its important to find some other people that you can collaborate on tracks with. To work with a someone who has a different perspective or skill set is always a learning opportunity. I believe if  you find the right musical partner(s), 1 + 1 = 3.  As soon as I started using Live (instead of Reason), I started working with other musicians, and it propelled my music way farther then I could have taken it alone.

9. Dissect music that inspires you

Start picking apart the songs that you love. Learn how to play their melodies. Figure out what the chords progressions are, which can often be derived from the bass lines. Count out the rhythms. Make a .wav file of the song so that you can import the song in your sequencer. Then you can loop parts, even slow them down, until you understand how they are constructed.

First focus your attention on all the sounds that are at the front of the mix. After a while, tune those sounds out and listen to all the subtle sounds in the back of the mix. You want to learn to be able to focus on song and hear individual tracks in a mix. It takes lots of practice and concentration.

When I run across music that truly inspires me, I usually go through a couple phases. Soon after the joy of discovering such amazing art wears off, I’ll get depressed, because I’ll never be that talented. This is closely followed by jealousy. Eventually, maybe a couple days later, I’ll be able to celebrate it again. Ok, so I’m moody. Be glad we’re not married.

There are always going to be people who are more talented then you are. That doesn’t mean that your art has no value. Use the people who inspire you as teachers. Or break into their house and set their couch on fire. Your choice.

My approach to composition

I’m an improviser at heart. I’ll just hit the record button and jam with myself on a piano or rhodes until I hit upon an idea that might be worth revisiting. Then I’ll play around with the idea until its time to re-record it with a metronome to determine its actual rhythm and tempo. This will be the starting point for my new song. Then I’ll start flushing out this idea a little bit. Sometimes this initial idea, which is the launching point for my new song, will be removed along the way.

The way I compose music is akin to chipping away at a block of stone to create a statue. I tend to mold rough ideas into fully fleshed out song segments. I go over parts endlessly, tweaking this and that until it achieves the sheen that I want. I don’t often know what the end goal is, but I have the confidence that a good idea will eventually blossom into it’s potential. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, but I can usually tell when an idea is worth pursuing.

In conclusion

I like pudding. One day I’d like to bathe in it. What a glorious day that will be.

I also like comments. Feel free to leave me feedback so I can learn how you resonate with my perspectives.