Making Music
74 Creative Strategies forElectronic Music Producers
Dennis DeSantis

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natureOffice.com | DE-365-ZSGE8GY

gedrucktFor Alison and Cecilia,
who inspire everything I do.

Preface

What is this book?
For many artists, nothing inspires moreexistential terror than actually making art.
The fear that we’re not good enough or that
we don’t know enough results in untold
numbers of creative crises and potential
masterpieces that never get realized.
Electronic musicians used to be able tohide behind clunky, emerging technology
as an excuse for inaction. But musicians
today live in a golden age of tools andtechnology. A ninety-nine-cent smartphone
app can give you the functionality of amillion-dollar recording studio. A newsong can be shared with the world as soon
as it’s finished. Tutorials for every sounddesign or music production technique canbe found through a Google search. All ofthese developments have served to level
the playing field for musicians, making it
possible for a bedroom producer to create
music at a level that used to be possible
only for major-label artists.
But despite all of this, making music is still
hard. Why?
Making Music was written both to answer
this question and to offer ways to make iteasier. It presents a systematic, concrete
set of patterns that you can use when
making music in order to move forward.

Each pattern is presented in thefollowing way:
> A problem is stated. A problem is aroadblock that stops you from making
progress with a particular piece of music.
The problems in this book are real-world
situations—you’ll likely recognize many ofthem as things that have held you back in
the past. A problem might appear at the
beginning (e.g., you don’t know how tostart), in the middle (e.g., you’ve createdlots of material but don’t know how toorganize it), or near the end (e.g., you
keep making changes and can’t decide
how to finish).
> The problem is explained in more detail
via examples and (sometimes) references
to other patterns.
> A solution is provided. A solution is aconcrete instruction or small set of
instructions that will solve the statedproblem. Like the problems, the solutions
are also real; if you apply the solution,
the problem will be solved. Note that thisrequires you to actually do the solution;
in most cases, reading it won’t be enoughto move you forward. Making Music canshow you the way, but you still need to do
the work.
> The solution is explained in more detail via
examples and (sometimes) references toother patterns.

Who is this book for?
If you make original music using computers
and you’ve ever found yourself struggling
to complete your musical projects,
Making Music was written for you. While
many of the patterns discussed here canprobably be modified or directly applied
to other types of music-making (suchas composing for rock bands or string
quartets), the goal of this book is to solve
the specific problems that people havewhen working with machines, rather thanwith instruments or other people.
While no prior skills are really necessary
to make use of this book, I’ve written it
assuming you have a basic understandingof at least one digital audio workstation(DAW) or similar music production
environment. No specific tool is required,
and the problems and solutions discussed
aren’t specific to the workflow of any
particular piece of technology. A basic
understanding of the fundamentals ofmusic—chords, scales, and concepts ofrhythm—is useful but not a prerequisite.
Although it may not always be obvious,
the patterns are all general enough thatthey can be used by musicians working
with any genre of electronic music, fromcommercial dance music to the avantgarde. Although some of the explanations
used refer to actual genres or evenspecific examples of music, I encourage
you to read “around” these descriptions inorder to get at the essence of the pattern
so that you can apply it to your own work.

Who’s the author?

How this book is organized

I am a musician with a background ina variety of different worlds. I studiedclassical composition, music theory,and percussion, although these days
I primarily write electronic music in the
direction of house and techno. I grew
up just outside of Detroit, and all of theamazing music that came from andthrough that city was a big influence in
my early musical development. Although
this book aims to be as genre-neutral as
possible, it’s very much written from mypersonal perspective—the things I talkabout here are a reflection of things I
actually think about and employ in myown music.

The patterns themselves are grouped
into sections based on where in thewriting process a particular musicalproblem is likely to occur. These are:

How to use this bookThink of Making Music as something likea travel guide. There’s no explicit orderto the patterns, although things tend tobe loosely grouped by concept. You canread and experiment with the various
patterns as you need them in order tosolve particular problems as they comeup in your own work. Sometimes thepatterns will explicitly relate to others,
and I often refer to other patterns to help
clarify the current one. So while it’s notnecessary to read the whole book cover
to cover, doing so will probably help you
to find relationships between the various
patterns and to see them as a system,
rather than as isolated examples.

> Problems of beginning. These areproblems that prevent you from starting at
all. They include problems of inspiration,
problems realizing the sounds you hearin your head, etc. The solutions include
exercises to develop better active
listening and explorations of various waysof playing with sound, harmony, melody,rhythm, and musical form.
> Problems of progressing. These are
the most common roadblocks whenworking and occur once you’ve madesomething but are still a long way fromthe end. They include problems of fatigue,
problems developing and varying material,
etc. The solutions include exercises
to generate new material, shape song
structure, and stay in the creative flow.
> Problems of finishing. These problems
occur when you feel that almost (but notquite) everything is in place, but you areunable to reach a satisfactory conclusion.
The solutions include ideas for creating
convincing arrangements and for creating
powerful endings.

Why is this book needed?

Finally…

There are already many ways—books,
classes, video tutorials, software
documentation, private teachers—tolearn about music technology and music
production. I’m a strong supporter of allof this, and I encourage anyone who’sinterested in this book to also takeadvantage of these resources. But almost
all of them focus on the second half of theequation—technology or production—rather than the first half: music. Making
Music is an attempt to help people whoare comfortable with the basics of music
production at a technical level but who
still find music-making to be a difficult
process (which I suspect is all of us!).

This book will not teach you how to use
a compressor, program a synthesizer, or
make a great-sounding kick drum. Those
aspects of music-making are already wellcovered. What it will teach you is how
to make music using those tools, witha specific emphasis on solving musicalproblems, making progress, and (mostimportantly) finishing what you start.
While I hope you find Making Music
inspiring, I hope even more that what
inspires you is the music you makeusing these patterns. Making Music is
not a collection of vague aphorisms.
Instead, it combines motivational ideas
about the philosophy and psychology ofmusic-making with hands-on tools andtechniques that musicians of all kinds canuse to really get work done.

Contents

Preface
Problems of Beginning ntent
Three Ways to Start..........................................................................13
Catalog of Attributes....................................................................... 16
Avoidance List.................................................................................19
Active Listening.............................................................................. 22
Listening to Music You Hate............................................................. 26
Mise en Place................................................................................. 29
Arbitrary Constraints....................................................................... 33“Write drunk; edit sober”................................................................. 37
Choosing a Tempo............................................................................41
One Part at a Time........................................................................... 44
Different Tools.................................................................................47
Presets as Starting Points............................................................... 50
The Tyranny of the Default............................................................... 53
Simple Sounds................................................................................ 56
Extended Techniques...................................................................... 59
Goal-less Exploration...................................................................... 62
Procrastination and Timeboxing...................................................... 65
Collaboration.................................................................................. 68
Thinking Like an Amateur.................................................................71
Scraps and Sketches........................................................................74
Problem-Solving as Distraction........................................................ 76
Personal Workflow.......................................................................... 79
Originality vs. Quality...................................................................... 82
Process vs. Product........................................................................ 85
On Work.......................................................................................... 89

Problems of Progressing
Breadth Before Depth...................................................................... 92
Foreground, Middle Ground, and Background................................... 95
Fuzzy Boundaries............................................................................ 99
Creating Variation 1: Mutation of Clones..........................................104
Creating Variation 2: Mutation Over Generations............................ 106
Creating Variation 3: Note Transformations......................................108
Implied Rhythm in Short Loops.......................................................120
Asynchronous or Polyrhythmic Loops.............................................. 124
Misusing Rhythmic Tools................................................................129
3+3+2 Rhythm................................................................................133
Programming Beats 1: On Looseness..............................................138
Programming Beats 2: Linear Drumming..........................................144
Programming Beats 3: Ghost Notes.................................................149
Programming Beats 4: Top, Bottom, Left, Right................................153
Bass Lines and Kick Drums as a Single Composite...........................158
Drums to Pitches and Vice Versa....................................................163
Tuning Everything.......................................................................... 167
Silence and Noise.......................................................................... 170
Sampling the Old-Fashioned Way................................................... 173
Creating Melodies 1: Contour.......................................................... 178
Creating Melodies 2: Using Motives................................................182
Multiple Simultaneous Melodies.....................................................186
Linear Rhythm in Melodies............................................................ 190
Sound-Color Melody......................................................................195
The Rhythm of Lyrics......................................................................199
Creating Harmony 1: The Basics..................................................... 203
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads................................................. 211
Voice Leading and Inversions........................................................ 225
Parallel Harmony........................................................................... 229
Harmonic Rhythm.......................................................................... 233
Repetition and Insistence.............................................................. 236
The Rhythm of Automation............................................................ 238
Humanizing With Automation Envelopes ........................................ 241
Maximal Density............................................................................ 244
Deliberately Bad Listening..............................................................247
Randomness and Responsibility.................................................... 250
Dramatic Arc................................................................................. 254

Problems of Finishing
Arranging as a Subtractive Process................................................ 259
The Power of Erasing..................................................................... 263
Formal Skeletons.......................................................................... 266
Common Forms 1: Elements of Song Form...................................... 269
Common Forms 2: Layering as Form............................................... 272
Short Loops as Endings..................................................................275
Unique Events................................................................................277
Three Ways to End......................................................................... 280
Rendering as Commitment............................................................ 283
Getting Feedback......................................................................... 286
Diminishing Returns...................................................................... 289
Fail Better......................................................................................291

ProblemsofBeginningThree Ways to Start
Problem:
You’re staring into the void of a new empty
project in your DAW, and you have absolutely
no idea how to begin.
The blank slate might be the most intimidating place in a creativeenvironment. Once we’re in a flow, ideas tend to spawn additional
ideas. But before we have anything, all options are available, sochoosing seems impossible. One Part at a Time (page 44) iscertainly a way to move forward, but which one part comes first?
When you have nothing, even choosing one part can feel like an
impossible hurdle.
The simple-sounding answer is “It doesn’t matter how you start; justdo!” This might work well as a sports slogan, but it’s perhaps too gliband dismissive to be really practical for creative work, in which thenumber of things to potentially “just do” are limitless and the pathforward is not at all obvious. Here are three practical suggestions for
how to begin from nothing.

13

Problems of Beginning
Three Ways to Start

Solution:
1. Start with the foundation. In most genres, we can think of the“bottom” of the music as being the low-pitched or purely rhythmic
instruments, such as the bass and drums. On top of these are added
instruments that are progressively higher in pitch. By starting withthe bottom, we provide both a conceptual and musical foundation foreverything else. The drums often provide the essential timekeeping
elements, while the bass often provides the notes that define andanchor the chord progression. If you’re working in more experimental
genres that don’t use these conventional instruments, it’s still likelythat some elements can be considered foundational—perhaps adroning layer or something that approaches a repetitive rhythm.
2. Start with what you hear. Many musicians never (or rarely) get
spontaneous musical ideas—all of their music comes from active
work. If you happen to be lucky enough to hear original musical ideas
in your head, then you should absolutely use them as the basis foryour own work. For example, maybe you have a melodic idea thatyou’ve been humming, or a rhythm that you’ve tapped out on thetable. Just because these ideas came to you outside of your active
music-making context doesn’t mean you should discard them.
On the contrary, these accidental ideas are sometimes the mostinteresting ones you can have.
3. Start with what you know. If you play a “real” physical instrument,
try using it to generate your ideas. Even if you’re writing purely
electronic music and have no plans to use instrument recordings
in your work, your natural physical connection to your instrument
may help you come up with more interesting and organic musicalideas than you can get from just working with a mouse and a MIDI
controller. For example, guitarists tend to voice chords and approachharmony in a different way from keyboardists. But because keyboards
are the de facto control surface for entering music into a DAW, many
guitarists might never think to use their guitars in an electronic
music context. Drummers rarely play the kind of beats that are used

14

Problems of BeginningThree

in many types of electronic music, but sitting behind a real drum
kit might stimulate creative ideas that would feel alien on a pad
controller. The trick with this approach is being able to accuratelytranslate the acoustic idea to the electronic medium, but that’s agood problem to have; much better than having no ideas at all.

15

Catalog of Attributes
Problem:Creative musicians find inspiration in othermusic. While we seek to make music thatis uniquely our own, every other piece ofmusic we hear is automatically processedand becomes an unconscious part of ourmusical vocabulary. Taking too much istheft. Taking too little fails to acknowledge
our influences.
For musicians who aim to find and develop a unique voice, there will
always be an internal conflict to resolve when hearing music thatis inspiring. To truly be original, is it necessary to ignore all external
influence? How much can you “take” from other music before what
you’ve made no longer feels like it’s yours? What and where is theboundary between homage/inspiration and plagiarism/copying?
Unfortunately, these aren’t questions with “right” answers. Objective
legal issues aside, each artist needs to determine their own levelof comfort when borrowing from other sources. But there are somestrategies that let you infuse your own work with the “essence” of yourinspiration, while simultaneously forcing you to make something new.
One of these is to write a catalog of attributes.

16

Problems of Beginning
Catalog of Attributes

Solution:
Listen carefully—and many times—to the piece that inspires you(the “source”). Study it, element by element and layer by layer, until
you can write down a catalog of its attributes. Once the catalog feels
complete, set aside the original source, instead referring only to thecatalog as a template for your own new work (the “target”).
Consider the attributes of sound, harmony, melody, rhythm, and form.
Write something concrete about what you hear for each attribute. If
you’re comfortable with notation, feel free to use it in your catalog, but
sparingly; the goal is to capture only the framework or scaffolding of
the source, including the aspects that make it inspiring, but without
simply recreating it. You should end up with a description, not atranscription.
The catalog’s level of detail may vary depending on a variety of factors:
your own ability to translate what you hear into words, the depth andcomplexity of the source, the amount of time you choose to spend, etc.
What is important is not the actual level of specificity, but only that itgives you enough to use as a template without having to refer to theoriginal again during your own creation process.
A basic catalog of attributes might look like this:> 122 bpm
> Sound elements: drums, (808, four-on-the-floor, lots of filter motion
on closed hats), bass line (FM-ish?), electric piano (distorted butdry), female vocals (breathy verses, full-voice choruses), lead synth(big supersaw, but only after the second chorus).
> Harmony: mostly D minor alternating with A major until breakdown.
Breakdown section is in D major (sort of?). After breakdown, rest of
track is in E minor alternating with B major.
> Melody: not much. Lots of D, with occasional jumps up to A and down
to Bb.
> Rhythm: four-on-the-floor drums (basic house beat). Bass line is17Problems of Beginning
Catalog of Attributes

mostly offbeat eighth notes (trance influence?). Cool metallic hit on
the “and” of beat 2 every four bars.
> Form: additive layering; drums start, then each element enters one
by one. At breakdown, everything drops out except hi-hats and bassline, then rebuilds additively. Form is all 16- and 32-bar sections.
(Verse 16, Verse 16, Chorus 16, Breakdown 32, Chorus 16, Chorus 16)
This catalog of attributes could describe an endless number of newworks. In fact, you can probably hear music that fits these attributes
in your head already. It is complete enough to serve as a template but
not so descriptive as to allow for a recreation of any particular pieceof existing music; if two musicians read the catalog, there would bealmost no possibility that they would use it to write the same thing.
Now try to put yourself in the mindset of one of those musicians; using
only the catalog as a recipe, make something new.

18

Avoidance List
Problem:
Sometimes when we listen back to a
recently finished track, we find that it’s too
similar to something we’ve written before.
We’ve managed to develop a personal style,
but we’re so bound by it that we feel unable
to create things that really feel new.
We often discover this after listening back to a track a few days after
it’s finished. While working (or immediately after), we don’t notice thesimilarities. But when we have a bit of distance from the new work,
we’re suddenly able to hear how it compares to the rest of the music
we’ve done, and the similarities become painfully obvious. Often, it’s asimilarity in sound—the same types of samples or synth sounds keep
coming up. Sometimes, it’s a similarity in form—we rely on the samekinds of transitions or formal structures from track to track. It can feellike you’re writing the same music over and over again.
Note that, depending on the genre you’re working in, a high degree ofconsistency may be exactly what you’re going for. In commercial styles
like EDM, for example, predictability of structure and overall sound is afundamental attribute of the style. Radical sound design and unusualforms wouldn’t make sense in this music, and the interest comes fromseeing how effectively artists can work within the strict boundaries
that define the genre.
But if you’re uncomfortable with the feeling that you’re stuck on
repeat, here’s a potential solution.

19

Problems of Beginning
Avoidance List

Solution:
As soon as you realize that a new track is too similar to something
you’ve done before, start writing a list of the specific musical attributes
that make you feel this way. Carefully analyze all of the potential
categories—sound, harmony, melody, rhythm, and form—and write
down the specific technique that’s been repeated. This will form an“avoidance list” for your next track, a list of things that you’ve decided
ahead of time to not do.
If you’re feeling inspired, try to come up with some alternatives to theattributes you’ll avoid. This can serve two purposes: First, it gives you
something to actually do, which will save time when you’re working on
the track. But more importantly, it might help you identify why you’vebeen relying on a particular type of technique in the past. For example,
if you’ve forbidden yourself from using tempo-synced dub delays,
you might decide to experiment more with reverb. But perhaps theunderlying reason for your use of delays in the first place is that you’re
uncomfortable with the idea of space and silence in your music. Maybe
this problem can be solved by adding additional layers of musicalmaterial. Or maybe there isn’t really a problem to solve, and your next
track could make interesting use of silence that you would normally
have simply filled in by force of habit.
You can think of the avoidance list as a kind of negative version of theCatalog of Attributes (page 16). The goal here is to find patterns
in existing music that should be avoided, rather than emulated. The
difference, of course, is that you’re analyzing attributes in your own
work rather than that of another artist.
An avoidance list might look like this:> stay away from 123-127 bpm; try faster (or maybe slower?)> no 808 samples; (try FM drums or processed acoustic samples)> no “wood” sounds; (find different percussion elements—white noiseor metal?)

20

Problems of Beginning
Avoidance List

> no (or less) filter cutoff/resonance sweeps; (try FM fortimbral changes)> no (or less) sidechaining; (write a bass pattern that avoids
the kick, rather than relying on ducking)> stop using only two chords; (spend time really working out
a more comprehensive progression)> no auto-tuned/chopped vocals (another organic source?
non-pitched spoken word samples?)> no drum-less breakdown; (find another way to create formal
tension and release)
Now as you start a new track, you’re forced to find new strategies
rather than relying on techniques that you already know you’re tiredof hearing. You may find it difficult to work without these reliable
elements of your vocabulary in place. But looking for alternatives will
help you expand that vocabulary, while simultaneously ensuring that
this track won’t simply be a clone of the last one.
~ A note of caution: As with Arbitrary Constraints (page 33) andProcess vs. Product (page 85), you should feel free to abandon
your pre-planned restrictions at any point in the writing process. If you
find that you’ve eliminated techniques that really would sound betterin the context of the music you’re working on, you should absolutely
allow yourself to use them. Restrictions, plans, and structure can beimportant learning tools and can help you to get out of ruts. But inevery case, the most important thing is the song, and you should do
whatever will make the best song possible, including deviating fromthe plan if necessary.

21

Active Listening
Problem:
Although you listen to a lot of music, you
don’t really have a sense that you’re learningfrom what you listen to. You know what you
like, but you don’t really understand why
you like it or how to extract compositional or
technical ideas from what you hear so thatyou can reuse them in your own music.
For most people, listening to music is a passive experience. We turnmusic on but then engage in another primary activity. The music is
playing, and we’re loosely aware of it, but it’s serving a decorative orsoundtrack-like purpose for whatever else we’re doing. Although this iscertainly better than not listening to music at all, you can learn more if
you spend at least some time engaged in active listening.

22

Problems of Beginning
Active Listening

Solution:
Active listening simply means listening as the primary activity,and it’s an important skill to develop. Rather than using music as
the background for another activity, try listening without doing
anything else. This requires time, quiet, and focus, which are skills
you need for your own production work anyway. A good way to startis by just putting on some music and then turning your attention
to it entirely. If you’re listening at your computer, close any open
applications (and, ideally, your eyes as well). At this point, you’re nottrying to listen with a particular focus, but rather a general one. If you
can concentrate and avoid distraction, you’ll be amazed by how much
more you hear than in a passive listening state.
The next step in active listening is to start trying to deconstructwhat’s happening in the music you’re listening to. Here are some tips
for doing this:

Listen in Layers
A great way to actively listen is to listen to the same piece multiple
times and force yourself to focus on a different specific parametereach time. For example, spend one pass listening only for:Sound: What are the timbral characteristics of this music? What
instruments are used? What is the texture (dense vs. sparse)? Are
there some specific production techniques that you recognize (either
from your own or other music)? What kind of acoustic “space” issuggested by the music (dry vs. reverberant, near vs. far, etc.)?
Harmony: What key (if any) is the song in? What chords are used? Is
there a chord progression that happens throughout, or does it change
from section to section? If there are no overt chords (as in someminimal or experimental music), is harmony implied in another way?
Melody: What’s happening in the melody? Does it have a wide or
narrow range? What is its general contour: Angular, with lots ofleaps? Stepwise, with motion mostly by one or two semitones? What23

Problems of Beginning
Active Listening

instrument or voice has the melody? Does this ever change? If there isno overt melody (as in some minimal or experimental music), is melody
implied in another way?
Rhythm: How are events distributed within short time ranges likea bar or phrase? Are there patterns that repeat, or do rhythmic gestures
happen only once? Are rhythms and tempo overtly identifiable, or is themusic free and largely arrhythmic? What instruments have the mostimpact on the rhythm? What do the less rhythmic instruments do?
Form: How does the song evolve over time? Are there clear sectional
divisions or are there Fuzzy Boundaries (page 99) between regions?
What defines one section versus another? Do certain instruments
play only in some sections or is the instrumentation the same in every
section?
Additionally, if there are specific instrumental or vocal parts that you’d
like to understand better, try spending an entire listening pass focusing
entirely on only one part. For example, the best way to learn how thebass line works in a particular song is to tune out everything else andfocus just on the bass line.

Listen in Chunks
By isolating and looping short durations of music, you can more easily
focus on the specific parameters or instruments discussed earlier.
The best tool for this is your DAW. Try loading the song you want tolisten to into your DAW’s timeline, adjust the project tempo to matchthe song, and then set the loop to a short region—one or two bars or,at most, a single musical phrase. Listen to this loop as many times asnecessary in order to really hear what’s happening in the parameter
you’re listening for. Then advance to the next chunk and repeat. When
you’re done, go back to the beginning and gradually expand the loop
length so that you’re covering a larger amount of time in a single
listening pass. Listening in chunks like this is also a great way to learn
or memorize a particular part by ear.

24

Problems of Beginning
Active Listening

Listen Subjectively
In addition to helping you learn how a particular piece of music“works,” active listening can also help you understand your subjective
responses to music. For example, are there particular aspects of thesong that sound familiar, nostalgic, emotional, etc.? Can you explain
why (perhaps with reference to the parameters discussed earlier)?
When listening passively, it’s common to have some kind of emotional
response. But via active listening, you have a chance to understandwhat it is, specifically, that causes that response. And once you
understand a technique or musical gesture, you’ll be able to adapt it for
use in your own music.

25

Listening to Music You Hate
Problem:
Although you listen to a lot of music, you
tend to listen within a specific set of genres.
And you pretty much exclusively listen
to music that you like, or at least musicthat you expect you’ll like based on yourprevious experience, recommendations, etc.
Even if you write exclusively in a single genre, you owe it to yourself
to spend some time listening to a wide variety of music. Here are sometips for how (and why) to listen to music that you may not enjoy.

26

Problems of Beginning
Listening to Music You Hate

Solution:
Most people listen to music for entertainment. But producers andcomposers owe it to themselves to also listen in order to learnsomething. Inevitably, this will mean spending at least some time
listening outside of your comfort zone, to music that you don’t like.
This is more than just listening to genres that are closely related
to what you normally listen to. For example, if you consider yourself
primarily a techno producer, don’t be too proud of yourself if you
occasionally listen to house music. It’s critical that you expand yourrange of listening to genres that you would never normally listen tofor pleasure.
Why is this important? As you listen, consider the following questions:

Are there musical techniques you can use?
If you write in only one genre (and especially if you listen to only one
genre), perhaps you’ve developed a set of working techniques that’s
fairly consistent and “appropriate” for the kind of music you make. This
may work for you, but it also exposes you to the risk of writing the same
music over and over. Other types of music may be made in entirely
different ways, and perhaps there are techniques from those worldsthat you can appropriate for your own use.
As an example, consider opera (a genre that many electronic producers
probably don’t spend a lot of time listening to). A single opera may lastfor hours—a time scale that’s closer to an entire DJ set than a single
track. How does tension and release work over this amount of time?
How does form work? What about harmony? Rhythm? Melody? Overallsound?

Are there production techniques you can use?
In addition to musical techniques, there is also a huge amount you canlearn about production when listening to other genres.

27

Problems of Beginning
Listening to Music You Hate

Consider country music, for example. Whatever you might think of thismusic as entertainment, there is no doubt that contemporary country
music is generally extremely well-produced and borrows a lot of mixing
and production concepts from contemporary pop music. But there aresome significant differences. For example, vocals in country music areoften much louder than vocals in pop music (or in electronic genreswith vocals). Also, pop music (and many electronic genres) tends to bequite bass-heavy, while country tends to emphasize guitars and othermid-range instruments.
Whether or not those production characteristics are useful in your own
music depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. But simply being
aware of what’s happening in a wide variety of styles might inspire
your creativity or shake you out of your own stylistic ruts.

Why do people like this?
No matter what you’re listening to, and no matter how terrible you
think it is, someone out there loves it. And unless you’re writing musicexclusively for yourself, it’s a useful intellectual exercise to try tounderstand why people like what they do. There are, of course, socialpressures; people like things because they’re popular, or because theirfriends like them, or because they represent a recognized signifier fora particular subculture. But there are also genuine musical preferences
which vary widely (and wildly) between people. Even if you have nointention of writing music for the opera or country music fan, thinking
about how other music works, and why disparate groups of people likewhat they do, can help you become a more well-rounded musician,which can only improve your music.

28

Mise en Place
Problem:
Getting into a creative mindset is hardenough, but once you’re in it, somethinginevitably goes wrong. DAWs crash, plugins need to be updated, you’re missing
samples you absolutely need, you’re outof coffee, the dog needs to be walked, etc.
And once you’ve fixed all of the problems,huge amounts of time have gone by andyour creative impulse is gone.
There are many things that can impede progress in the studio.
Some of these things are legitimate issues (like equipment thatsuddenly fails), while others are distractions that we’re able toconvince ourselves are important enough to get in our way (likea new email).
But because the creative impulse is so fleeting, it’s vital that we’reable to actually get music made when ideas come. This means
making sure that everything we’ll need to work is set up and readyto go beforehand, so that we can focus when we need to. Here aresome ideas.

29

Problems of Beginning
Mise en Place

Solution:
The term mise en place (roughly translated from French as “putin place”) comes from the culinary world and refers to the careful
preparation that goes into setting the physical (and mental) spaceprior to the actual work of cooking. This means making sure thatthe tools and ingredients you’ll need are easily at hand, the kitchen
is clean and safe for use, and you’ve thought ahead to the end of
the recipe to ensure that nothing unexpected will stop you once
you’ve started.
There are clear parallels between work in the kitchen and work in thestudio, and employing mise en place as part of your music-making
process can help you stay focused when inspiration strikes.

Prepare Your Ingredients
Are your DAWs and plug-ins up to date? Do you have the samples you
need? Are they named and organized in such a way that you can findthem without needing to go on a time-consuming (and inspirationdestroying) search through all of your hard drives? Just as importantly,
are the samples you don’t need out of your way and easy to avoid? Are
your controllers, audio interface, headphones, and speakers connected
and working? Does any hardware need drivers? If you’re using external
instruments like synthesizers or effects, are they patched in and turnedon? If you’re using acoustic instruments like drums, are the mics set up
and working?

Prepare Your Workspace
Is your chair comfortable? Is your desk uncluttered? Can you physicallyaccess any necessary hardware? If you’re collaborating with otherpeople, are they plugged in and ready to make noise? Are they
comfortable and also in a creative mindset?

30

Problems of Beginning
Mise en Place

Prepare Yourself
Are you hungry or thirsty? How about any animals or children you’re
responsible for? Is there a critical phone call you need to make oremail you need to send? Are your neighbors or roommates going to bebothered by the sound you make?
Nothing kills the creative flow more than having to stop and solve a
non-creative problem. Making sure that these factors are dealt withahead of time means that you’re able to fully embrace the musicmaking process, with less risk of distraction.
In addition to employing mise en place prior to starting work, there aresome additional kinds of preparation and organization actions you cantake that will help you be ready when inspiration strikes:

Make Templates
If you find that there are particular combinations of instruments orsounds that you’re using often, save empty template projects withthose instruments already loaded so that you can be ready to startcreating as soon as you have an idea. For example, if you switch
between your own solo work and working with other musicians, save atemplate for each scenario rather than rebuilding these environmentsfrom your DAW’s default project over and over again. The goal is to getfrom idea to actual creation as quickly and effortlessly as possible.

Organize as You Go
Even a well-prepared environment can quickly fall into chaos during theheat of the creative moment. As you’re working, try to stay as organized
as you can (but without falling out of music-making). For example, nametracks before you record onto them, both so you can see at a glance
what you’re working on, and also so newly created clips on those tracks“inherit” useful names. If your DAW allows it, use color to create visual
associations between related clips or tracks. And throw away anything31

Problems of Beginning
Mise en Place

that you’ve definitely decided not to use. Removing clutter from yourproject helps you to focus on the important things that remain (and may
also reduce your CPU load or memory usage).

Always Be Ready to Capture
Great ideas might come to you when you’re outside of the studio.
Ideally, you’re always prepared with a field recorder or a smartphone
app to quickly capture interesting sounds, or even melodic or rhythmic
ideas that you can hum or sing before you forget them. You can evenuse a notebook to capture ideas—in musical notation or in text,
pictures, or any other system that will allow you to remember it. The
important thing is that you have these capturing tools with you at all
times.
Although mise en place can be a huge productivity boost, make surethat you find time for this preparation work that is not the same as
your creative time. Don’t start getting organized when you’re actuallyinspired to make music. If you feel like making music, that should
always take priority. It’s much harder to find the energy to be creative
than it is to find energy for mise en place, which you can make yourself
do anytime. And it’s much better to act quickly on a creative impulse—
even if you’re completely unprepared—than it is to postpone it, try to
get organized, and then find you’ve lost your motivation. Use the time
when you’re not inspired to take care of mise en place.

32

Arbitrary Constraints“My freedom thus consists in my moving about within
the narrow frame that I have assigned to myself for eachone of my undertakings. I shall go even further: my freedom
will be so much the greater and more meaningful the morenarrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surroundmyself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint
diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, themore one frees oneself of the claims that shackle the spirit.”— Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music

Problem:Music production with a computer offersa limitless field of possibilities. Any soundcan be made, manipulated, re-recorded,
re-manipulated, etc. But while an infinite
range of options might sound appealing,it also means that decision making is hard.
The more options you see, the more youneed to make active choices about which
ones to pursue and which ones to ignore.
Limiting the field of possibilities isn’t just about making it easier towork. It’s also about making it possible to begin at all. If every possible
starting direction is equally appealing, how could you ever choose one?

33

Problems of Beginning
Arbitrary Constraints

Solution:
Apply arbitrary constraints before starting to work. Create a “narrowframe” of possibilities, and then act entirely within that frame. Applying
arbitrary constraints helps to limit your field of options, allowing you tomove forward.
It’s important to note that these constraints really are arbitrary; you’re
attempting to eliminate perfectly valid options rather than bad ones.
Bad options are easy to deal with; your own musical sensibilities will
reject them automatically. But valid options need special care because
their validity requires you to make active choices about whether topursue or reject them. Eliminating them arbitrarily helps you avoid
decision paralysis. Also, the fact that the constraints are arbitrarymeans that it doesn’t really matter if you’re wrong. If you realize during
the course of your work that you’ve constrained yourself too much, orin the wrong direction, you can simply choose to remove the constraint.
Here are a number of ideas for arbitrary constraints, both related to themusic itself and also to working method:Musical Constraints> Make every sound from one sample. An extreme restriction on
available sound sources forces you to really think about thecharacter and possibilities of the sounds you choose. Can you makea kick drum sample into a lush pad? How about a hi-hat? What kindsof processing could you use for these transformations?
> Completely avoid an instrument that would be expected in thegenre. For example, the untitled Peter Gabriel album commonly
called Melt has no cymbals. Prince’s classic song “When Doves Cry”
has no bass line. These kinds of restrictions force your decision
making process into new directions. If an entire functional role ismissing, how do you fill the gap? In the case of Melt, Gabriel had tofind ways to propel time forward without relying on mainstays likehi-hats or ride cymbals. His solution was a range of unconventional

34

Problems of Beginning
Arbitrary Constraints

percussion instruments. In the case of “When Doves Cry,” Princechooses to leave the sonic space unfilled. Consider both options inyour own work.

Constraints on Time> Give yourself a deadline. Nothing motivates like a due date.
Since work always expands to fill the available time, it’s necessary
to actually put a limit on that time. If you find self-imposed deadlines
to be too “soft,” try having someone else assign the deadline foryou, with the requirement that you show them the work at the end toensure accountability. Or engage in a collective challenge, such as
February Album Writing Month.*> Schedule tasks as if they were appointments with yourself. Try using
a calendar to restrict specific types of work to specific times. For
example:Sound design: 7-8pm
Form/song structure: 8-9pm
Mixing: 9-10pm
Timeboxing (page 65) specific tasks serves two purposes: It
forces you to narrow your focus while simultaneously eliminating
the risk of non-musical distractions (Facebook, etc.). You wouldn’t
check your email in the middle of a business meeting, so treat these“appointments” with the same kind of care.

35* http://fawm.org/

Problems of Beginning
Arbitrary Constraints

Constraints on Space> Change your venue. If you’re used to making music in a particularplace, try moving to a different one. Simply moving from your bedroom
studio to the local coffee shop forces your hand in a number of ways.
First of all, you’re limited by what you can take with you—no racks ofexternal hardware, for example. Secondly, you’re in an environmentthat is at least somewhat unfamiliar, so you’re unable to fully relax(and thus become distracted). Many musicians avoid having a homestudio altogether, instead choosing to rent studio space so that they
can separate their working mindset from their living mindset.
Although you may not realize it at first, you’re most likely alreadyapplying certain constraints to your work. For example, simply making
the choice to work within a specific genre already eliminates a huge
range of musical possibilities. To say that you’re working on a “housetrack” as opposed to a “Balkan folktronica track” implies that you
understand certain general characteristics (the instrumentation,rhythms, and harmonic language that identify a given piece of music
as being “in” a particular genre) that describe one music as opposed
to another.

36

“Write drunk; edit sober”
Problem:
Sometimes during music-making, we findmoments of amazing creativity and flow.
But because we have in mind the ultimate
end goal of “a great track,” we sometimes
stop mid-flow to edit, correct, or otherwise
disrupt the creation process. And once wedo, it can be difficult to get back into the flow.
Creativity is an intrinsically messy and uninhibited process. Editing,on the other hand, is about refinement and order. “Write drunk; edit
sober”—a quote often attributed (most likely incorrectly) to author
Ernest Hemingway—uses drunkenness versus sobriety as a metaphor
about levels of self-control and the importance of working both withand without restraint. Both modes of working are necessary to create
something good, but problems can arise when we don’t keep a clear
division between the two. Allowing them to overlap runs the risk of
breaking our creative flow.

37

Problems of Beginning“Write drunk; edit sober”

Solution:
Force yourself to compartmentalize your work into two discrete phases.
During the creation phase, your goal should be to capture as muchmaterial as possible. Only move forward in time. Delete nothing. Onceyou’ve recorded something, consider it finished. Better yet, forget about
it entirely and move on to the next thing. Aim for speed and quantity,
judge nothing, and be prepared to make lots of mistakes.
Once you’ve captured a lot of material (maybe after a set amount oftime, or simply once you get bored) switch to the editing phase. Now,
your goal is to carefully refine the material that you generated during
the creation phase. Resist the urge to generate anything new during
this process, and instead ruthlessly delete, trim, reorder, or otherwise
curate the material you made earlier. It’s likely that you’ll throw away the
majority of what you made, and this is healthy. Most of what we make ina truly judgment-free creation mindset is likely to be terrible.
A side benefit of working so freely during the creation phase is that you
may find things during the editing phase that are actually amazing but
are unusable within the context of the project you’re currently working
on. When that happens, just save the material that’s worth saving (butis wrong for the current song) into a “scraps” folder (see Scraps andSketches (page 74)). Then the next time you’re beginning a new
track but aren’t in the mood to start from scratch, simply pull somethinginteresting out of your scraps folder. Depending on how developed yourscraps are, you might be able to pick one up and move directly into a
new editing phase.
A good technical approach to working during the creation phase is toalways be recording. Even if you’re just improvising at the keyboard
and have no plan or direction, be sure to capture every note you play. A
common working method for electronic musicians is to use the DAW as
the recording device but use hardware or other sources outside of thecomputer to generate sound. A collection of synthesizers generating
MIDI and/or audio lets you get your hands on something that doesn’t

38

Problems of Beginning“Write drunk; edit sober”

feel like an editing environment, allowing you to step away from theDAW (and its inherent bias towards editing). Press record, then play
and tweak knobs, capturing everything you do as a kind of free-formjam. While jamming, try to forget that you’re recording. Don’t try to
make something perfect. Simply indulge in the uninhibited freedom of
exploring sound. Follow your instincts—if something is working, let thatlead you in a direction. If something isn’t working, abandon it, but doso without stopping the recording. The trick is to stay out of judgmentmode as much as possible. Simply capture as much as you can,following your instinctive sense of what’s right. Don’t worry about hard
drive space. If you really need to reclaim the space, you can do that later
during the editing phase.
Even if you work entirely in the computer, try to find some working
methods that are somehow analogous to this physical division between
instruments and editors. For example, maybe use one DAW as yourcreation space and another as your editing space. By treating these as
distinct virtual environments, it may be easier to switch between thetwo modes of working. Alternatively, find a collection of instruments andeffects that allow you to create lots of material in an evolving, organic,
connected way. For example, modular synthesizers and arpeggiators,
even virtual ones, can be great sources of material during the creation
phase. Start your recording even before you’ve started building a
modular patch, so that you can catch any happy accidents that occur on
the way.
If your DAW allows for comprehensive routing options between tracks,
try capturing both MIDI and audio simultaneously during the creation
phase. This will give you more ways to edit later and provide more
raw fodder for refinement. It will also save time in the editing process
because you don’t have to listen to everything twice—the MIDI andaudio will contain analogous information, so you can listen through asingle pass and then decide whether to rework the MIDI, the audio,or both.

39

Problems of Beginning“Write drunk; edit sober”

The balance between play (creation) and work (editing) is necessary
to generate good results. Like Subtractive Arranging (page 259),
this approach works because it allows you to remove rather thancreate, and it’s much easier to decide that something is bad once itexists than it is to make something good from nothing. It saves you
from having to make the “right” thing the first time, when you may be
struggling to simply make anything at all.
~ Note: I wrote the first draft of this chapter in a text editor with an
option called “Hemingway Mode,” which disables the Delete key.
At the end of the creation phase, it was nearly 2000 words long.
After editing, it’s about half that, and the paragraphs are almost
completely reordered.

40

Choosing a Tempo
Problem:
You’re often not sure how to choose theright tempo for a track in progress. Does
it really make a difference if your track is
at 124 bpm rather than 125, for example?
And why do some ranges of tempos seemto allow for much more musical flexibility
than others?
The choice of tempo depends on a variety of factors, including
intended genre, intended audience, and (above all) personal
preference. Here are some thoughts about tempo.

41

Problems of Beginning
Choosing a Tempo

Solution:
If you already have a clear intention to write in a specific, wellestablished genre, then the range of “acceptable” tempos is probably
already decided for you; tempo is one of the defining characteristics
of genre. Here is a list of common tempo ranges for a number ofelectronic genres:> Dub: 60-90 bpm> Hip-hop: 60-100 bpm> Downtempo: 90-120 bpm> House: 115-130 bpm> Techno/trance: 120-140 bpm> Dubstep: 135-145 bpm> Drum and bass: 160-180 bpm
Note that anything genre-related is not an exact science, and for eachof these genres there are likely to be many exceptions and outliers.
But as a general rule, if you’re deliberately working in one of thesegenres, choosing a tempo within these ranges should work.
So how do you decide on a more specific tempo? This is largely
dependent on personal preference and musical context. Start withsomething in the middle of the range, but then try occasionallychanging the tempo while working on the track and see if something
just feels “right.” You can also try some of the techniques suggested
in Deliberately Bad Listening (page 247) to see how the tempo feelsin unusual monitoring contexts. Sometimes, a tempo will feel decidedly
too fast or too slow when you listen from a different room, for example.
And although the difference between, say, 124 and 125 bpm may be
subtle, you may find that one is clearly preferable to the other for aparticular context. If you don’t get that sense, however, then don’t
spend more time than necessary worrying about it. Simply choose
one and move on.

42Problems of Beginning
Choosing a Tempo

One interesting phenomenon that’s been happening in some recent
dubstep and drum and bass is a sense of continuous or fluid shift
between half-time and double-time. Because the range of tempos
in these genres is relatively fast, music at half speed may soundappropriate when layered with music at the “actual” tempo. A drum
and bass track that is predominantly at 170 bpm, for example, mightwork perfectly well with a sampled breakbeat at 85 bpm. This slow/fastdichotomy allows for a lot of creative flexibility when working in thesegenres.
And of course, there are no rules when choosing tempo: The correct
tempo is the one that makes the song work the best, and this is acreative decision only you can make.

43

One Part at a Time“Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write
now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest
sentence that you know.”— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Problem:
From the perspective of a blank slate, theidea of “a great song” seems overwhelming
and very far away. How can you possibly
get from nothing to a complete package—a finished song at the level of the music thatinspires you?
You know that songs are made up of lots of parts, and the interplayof those parts is what makes music interesting. But how can you get
an interesting interplay of multiple parts when you currently havenothing at all?

44

Problems of Beginning
One Part at a Time

Solution:
The expression “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single
step” is clichéd but also totally applicable here. Thinking about afinished song from the perspective of a blank project is terrifying,and it’s a recipe for paralysis.
So instead, forget about the song for now, and begin writing just one
part. Of course, this is obvious: To begin, you have to begin! But treat
this one part with the same kind of respect that you would a finishedsong. Instead of treating it like a building block, a task to accomplish,
or a means to an end, try to focus on it as the goal itself. Before you
even begin to think about adding more elements, make that one
part amazing.
For example, imagine you’ll begin with drums (as many producers do).
Instead of quickly sketching a pattern with stock sounds and sloppy
timing before moving on to a bass line (also quickly sketched), spend
the time necessary to completely finish the drums before adding anyother elements.
If you’ve read other music-making tips (including the Breadth
Before Depth (page 92) chapter in this book), this may seemcounterintuitive. We’re commonly told to write by sketching quickly andbroadly—many parts, but in little detail—and then treat refinement andediting as something that is done in passes over all of this material.
One Part at a Time proposes the opposite approach; instead of working
broadly, work deeply on one element—and only one element—until it’sto a level that you would consider release-ready.
This way of working can be valuable for a number of reasons:> It helps you to develop the skill of focus. A single part can bethought of as a tiny version of a complete song. To be successful,both have to satisfy the same basic criteria: They should be sonically(technically) proficient, they should flow well over time, they should

45

Problems of Beginning
One Part at a Timeremain interesting upon repeated listening, etc. Meeting thesecriteria over the course of minutes and with multiple tracks/parts is
our ultimate goal, but if we can’t make this happen over the courseof seconds and with a single part, we’re probably doomed. Making
yourself finish something small helps you to learn what finishingfeels like and helps you to internalize the steps necessary to getthere. From there, finishing something larger is just an expanded
version of the same process.
> One great part can reveal more great parts. Although what’s being
suggested here is to follow one idea to its end, another positive side
effect of this working method is that one idea (especially one greatsounding, inspiring, and completed idea) can lead to others. Hearing
a great drum part, with great sounding samples, perfectly placednotes, and attention to every detail, might make you start to imagine
complementary bass lines, chords, or melodies.
Of course, it’s important to remember not to be too strict in yourthinking. (This is true for everything in this book!) If you find thatyou’re getting bored with working on drums and are inspired towork on a bass line instead, follow your inspiration and work on thebass line. But if you’re bored with working on one part and aren’t
inspired to work on another one, try applying this technique as an
exercise in discipline alone. And if this still isn’t working, consider the
possibility that the part is unsalvageable—sometimes the best solution
is to start over.

46

Different Tools
Problem:Your studio tools are like a second home.
You’ve become so comfortable with aparticular set of possibilities and workflowsthat you’re able to easily get music made.
But you’re not really happy with the results. Your work tends to follow
predictable formulas, and you never seem to be able to expand yourcreative reach. You’re pretty sure that your next track will really just bea variation of your last one. And although you’re getting songs made,you don’t feel like you’re really making creative progress.
Gaining a comprehensive understanding of a focused and limited setof tools can be a real creative benefit. Many highly organized electronic
musicians are good at resisting gear lust and instead learn a particular
DAW inside and out. These same producers are usually equally goodat limiting their acquisition of plug-ins and virtual instruments, andinstead use either the native devices in their DAW or select plug-ins
and/or a small collection of boutique hardware.
This strategy is powerful. It discourages activities like gear
experimentation, which feel like music-making but which yield noresults. And at the same time, it encourages deep understanding of thetools, which can help eliminate the need to reach for a tutorial in the
middle of the creative process.
But these self-imposed limitations can come with a hidden cost—limiting yourself to a concise set of tools may allow you to fall into themindset of how those tools “think.” You may subconsciously begin to
make the music suggested by your equipment rather than making themusic you really want to make.

47

Problems of Beginning
Different Tools

Solution:
Even if you’re a seasoned veteran with years of experience andcarefully thought-out reasons for choosing your studio tools, trymaking a track using a completely different set of tools. Try changing
everything, from your DAW to your plug-ins to your hardware
instruments. This is essentially the opposite approach to Mise en Place(page 29)—rather than carefully building a working environment,
you’re deliberately discarding one you’ve already built.
The goal here is to break yourself from routines you may not evenrealize you have. For example, if you’ve built templates or default
presets in your DAW, no matter how much you change them in thecourse of writing a new track, you’re still beginning from the same fixedstarting point every time. By completely changing your tools, you’re
forced to work without these safe havens.
Additionally, you’re forced to understand the mindset of these newtools. If you enter an unfamiliar creative space, your response to thislack of familiarity might manifest itself as a new creative direction.
For example, if you’re a software-only producer, try making a trackusing hardware synthesizers. Although software instruments canhave a strong and unique sonic character, our interaction with them isfundamentally the same from instrument to instrument—we navigate
each parameter using the same “controller”: a mouse or, at best, ageneric hardware controller which is designed to be versatile rather
than being focused.
Hardware, on the other hand, offers a physical connection that hasa unique physical identity which, in the best cases, is designed intandem with the sonic identity of the instrument. A synthesizer fromone manufacturer uses controls that feel different from those foundon a synthesizer from another manufacturer. At some level, this tactile
difference must influence the way we approach each instrument.

48

Problems of Beginning
Different Tools

Furthermore, every tool offers not only its own unique set of
possibilities but also its own unique set of limitations and constraints.
If you’re already comfortable with a particular set of tools, thoselimitations are well known to you, and you’ve probably stopped
thinking about how they affect your daily work. But by exploring a newenvironment and following its constraints where they lead you, you’ll
be forced to make a new set of creative compromises—and, in turn,open a new set of creative possibilities.

49

Presets as Starting Points
Problem:
You can quickly make music using presets,loop libraries, sample packs, etc. But you’re
not necessarily comfortable with thisapproach and are unsure about whether or
not it’s “cheating.”
There is a lot of disagreement and strong opinion about whether or
not you can really take credit for your original music if you’re not also
programming your own sounds. Some electronic musicians are also
highly skilled synthesizer programmers and/or sample manipulators,
and they talk with pride about how the first thing they do when
they get a new piece of equipment is erase all of the presets. Often,
the underlying philosophy behind this approach to compositionemphasizes sound as the principal parameter of the music. Manymusicians who focus intensely on sound design also work with afairly restricted harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic palette. For them,
it is timbre choices that largely define their artistic signature. This iscommon in, for example, minimal techno and some experimental styles.
On the other end of the spectrum are electronic musicians who haveno interest in sound design and instead create their music entirely
by assembling existing loops and samples. For these musicians, thefocus is generally more on harmony, melody, and rhythm, and less on
timbre. This is not to suggest that the sounds are arbitrarily chosen orused without care, but rather that there may be a range of acceptablesounds for a particular song part, and that the notes are given morecompositional attention than the sounds. This is common in, forexample, trance and some house music. In an abstract sense, this isalso common in more conventional genres such as classical music orrock. In these genres, the available selection of instruments (and thus
the essential palette of sounds) is generally a defining characteristicof the genre, and the composition is then largely about using those
instruments in the service of melody, harmony, rhythm, and form.

50

Problems of Beginning
Presets as Starting Points

Solution:
Which approach is the right one? Perhaps neither. Consider, instead,a middle ground between the two that can maximize musicalproductivity while minimizing the feeling that you’re not taking enoughownership of your music.

51

Problems of Beginning
Presets as Starting Points

Solution:
Instead of approaching sound design as an all-or-nothing endeavor,
use presets, samples, and loops as the point of departure for eachsong part, but with the implicit understanding that you will devote
some part of your music-making time to fine-tuning the sounds tosuit your particular taste and needs. Purists may always start from asynthesizer’s default preset, but this feels like an unnecessary andtime-consuming restriction. It means starting from the same state ofcontrols, regardless of intended musical context, and then graduallytuning the sound “outwards” to gain distance from the default. Instead,consider beginning the writing process by using a preset that is atleast in the same family as the instrument you’re writing for. If you’re
working on a bass line, for example, explore your synthesizer’s bass
presets—guilt free. Once you’ve found one that’s as close as possible
to the sound you imagine in your head, work on the other parametersof the part: the melody, rhythm, etc. Then, after you have some music
underway, come back to the sound again and begin tweaking it so thatit takes on your own unique signature.
For musicians with absolutely no sound design experience, this may
sound like an intimidating process. But once you learn just the very
basics of synthesizer theory, you’ll find that this knowledge can beapplied to almost any synthesizer. For example, filters and basic ADSR
envelope controls can be found on almost any hardware or software
synth or sampler. And by using nothing more than these parameters—
this is usually no more than six total controls—you can come up with ahuge range of variations from a given preset.
Commit at least enough of your music-making time to sound design sothat you can be proud of the sounds you use. For the truly discerning
electronic musician, it’s unlikely that any preset will ever be the perfectchoice for their particular musical context. But it might be close. From
there, you may need only a few tweaks before you’ve found somethingthat is uniquely your own.

52

The Tyranny of the Default
Problem:Every time you’re inspired to start a newsong, you open your DAW and are immediately
terrified by the blank project. Maybe you havea simple melody, bass line, or drum part in yourhead. But in order to hear it, you first haveto load the appropriate instruments, set thetempo, maybe connect a MIDI controller, etc.
By the time you’ve gotten your DAW to a state
where you can actually record, you’ve either
lost the motivation or you’ve forgotten youroriginal musical idea.
Because DAWs have to cater to a wide range of users, they are often
designed to work out of the box with a collection of default options
and a basic screen layout that will be offensive to no one but probably
also not optimal for anyone. This inevitably leads to a phenomenon thatsoftware developers call “the tyranny of the default”: Since most users
will never change their default software options, the seemingly small
decisions made by developers may have a profound effect on the way
users will experience the software every day.
Here’s how to overcome the tyranny of the default in your own studio.

53

Problems of Beginning
The Tyranny of the Default

Solution:
Rather than allowing your DAW to dictate the environment in which
you’ll start each track, take the time to build your own default or
template project. People often think of templates as blank slates
containing a bare minimum of elements, and most default templates
provided by DAWs are exactly that; maybe one or two empty tracks,
perhaps a return track containing a single effect. But if you regularly
start work in a similar way (and even if you don’t), building a templatethat’s unique to your musical preferences and working style can saveyou lots of time when you start a new song, allowing you to more
quickly capture an initial musical idea from your head into your DAW.
For example, many DAWs set a default tempo of 120 bpm for
new projects. If you tend to work in a genre that is generally in adifferent range of tempos (see Choosing a Tempo (page 41)),save yourself time by saving your template with a more appropriate
tempo. Additionally, your DAW’s default project likely makes a lot ofassumptions about how many output channels you’ll be using (usuallytwo), as well as more esoteric settings like sample rate, bit depth, andeven the interface’s color scheme. If you prefer different settings, don’tchange them every time you start a new song. Instead, make thesechanges once and save them in your own template.
Additionally, if you regularly use a particular collection of instruments
and/or effects, try pre-loading them into tracks in your DAW andsaving them into your template. If you have a go-to sound that you
use for sketching out ideas (maybe a sampled piano or a particularpreset), preload that preset in your template and even arm the track forrecording. This way you can be ready to play and record as soon as the
project is loaded.
Some DAWs even allow you to create templates for different typesof tracks. For example, if you regularly use a particular combinationof effects on each track (such as a compressor and EQ), you could
preload these devices—and even customize their parameters—into

54

Problems of Beginning
The Tyranny of the Default

your default tracks. Then each time you create a new track in any
project, you’ll have these effects in place without needing to searchthrough your library of devices.
If you regularly work in a variety of genres, you should consider making
multiple templates, each one customized for the different sounds andworking methods you prefer. Even if your DAW doesn’t natively support
multiple templates, you can still create your own collection; you’ll justneed to remember to Save As as soon as you load one, so you don’t
accidentally overwrite it.
Some producers, recognizing the value of a highly customized
template project, have even started selling templates containing nearly(or even completely) finished songs, with the stated goal that newer
producers can use these to learn the production techniques of thepros. If that’s really how you intend to use them, then these area potentially valuable learning resource. But be careful to avoid
just using these as “construction kits” for your own music. This ispotentially worse than working from an empty default and is a grayarea between original music and paint-by-numbers copying (or worse,
outright plagiarism).

55

Simple Sounds
Problem:
You have a melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic
idea in your head. But when you sit down
at your DAW to try to capture it, you usually
begin by trying to find or create the rightsounds to match the idea. And somewhere
along the way, the idea itself gets lost.
As electronic producers, often our first instinct when starting a newsong is to collect a palette of sounds before beginning work on theactual notes and rhythms. And modern synthesizer presets are often
designed to sound like entire productions just when playing a single
note, with huge layers of effects, embedded rhythmic activity, or both.
But sometimes, this can be a distraction from your real goal, which is tocreate your own compelling musical ideas.

56

Problems of Beginning
Simple Sounds

Solution:
Instead of starting by trying to find the perfect sounds, try startingwith the simplest sounds you can find. General MIDI or other “generic”
presets are good for this exercise.
Now, without taking time to tweak the sounds or add effects, just startworking on notes and rhythms. It’s likely that everything will sounduninspiring at first, and this is OK. The hope is that by working this way
for a while, you’ll come across musical ideas that are strong enoughto transcend or overcome the sounds that play them. These ideas
will have to be really good, since they won’t be able to hide behind
impressive synth patches or layers of effects. But really good ideas arewhat we’re after—musical materials that are so strong that they inspire
you on their own merits. Consider that whole symphonies have been
written by composers who work entirely at the piano.
Once you have a great collection of self-sufficient musical ideas, then
you can start the process of finding great sounds to play them. As youwere doing the hard part of the job—writing the music—you may havealready had ideas about what kinds of sounds would be appropriate.
This will make finding or creating the appropriate sounds even fasterand more rewarding, because you’ll know that they fit your own
musical ideas, rather than suggesting musical ideas that may be morea function of the inherent sonic properties of the sound.
Although generic electronic sounds work well for this, an even better
solution is to write using an acoustic instrument like a guitar or piano(if you play one). Acoustic instruments serve dual purposes here. As
with General MIDI sounds, they help to get you out of sound-design
thinking so you can focus on the music. But they also help you get out
of DAW thinking entirely. By removing the computer from the picture fora while, we’re more likely to avoid distraction and really force ourselvesto write with our ears instead of our eyes.

57

Problems of Beginning
Simple Sounds

Of course one challenge of working acoustically is that it makes it alittle bit harder to capture great moments of inspiration that would
otherwise automatically land in your DAW. In this case, it might help to
set up a mic in the room and record everything you play as audio. Yes, it
might take a bit more work to then sort out what you played later, but atleast the ideas won’t be lost.
This technique isn’t for every producer. If your music is fundamentally
about sound design, then it’s possible that notes and rhythms aren’tmuch of a factor in your work at all. In such cases, these techniques
will probably just waste time. But if you’re a producer working in a lessexperimental genre, starting with simple sounds might help you get tobetter music.

58Extended Techniques
Problem:
You’re generally bored with the sounds thatyou’ve been using. Your real-world samples
all sound too real, and your electronic sounds
all sound too conventionally electronic.
You’re looking for something that bridges
the gap between the rawness of acoustic
sounds and the flexibility of synthesis. You’ve
tried using effects to process your sounds
but this just feels like adding a fresh coat ofpaint. You need something really new.
Sampling from the acoustic world brings a layer of “realness” toelectronic music productions that is difficult to achieve using synthesis
alone. And although samplers and effects can help to turn real-world
sources into something radically different, here are some lo-tech ways
to get entirely new sounds from acoustic sources.

59

Problems of Beginning
Extended Techniques

Solution:
Although it’s always possible to use samplers and effects to modify
source sounds into something completely different, it can also be
inspiring to work with a sound that’s already unusual on its own. Field
recordings, found sounds, and other types of non-instrumental source
material have long been used as fodder for samplers, but there is also aworld of new sound possibilities available from instruments you alreadyknow.
The term “extended techniques” refers to unconventional approaches
to sound production using conventional instruments. Probably the mostfamiliar extended technique is the “prepared piano” made famous byJohn Cage (among others). Cage’s scores for prepared piano call for
objects such as bolts and rubber erasers to be placed on or between the
piano strings, or on the hammers or dampers. The resultant sound varies
widely depending on the particular type of preparation used, but often
sounds like a diverse collection of metallic percussion instruments.
Another extended technique that can yield great results is the useof stringed instrument bows on other objects. A lot of contemporary
percussion music, for example, calls for bowed vibraphone bars,
cymbals, gongs, and other metal objects. In fact, almost any piece ofresonant metal can be activated via bowing. If you have access to abow, try bowing pots and pans, metal furniture, etc. And if you don’t haveaccess to a real bow, you can create makeshift bows out of fishing line.
There are a variety of possible extended techniques for woodwind andbrass instruments. If you have access to these instruments (as wellas adventurous people who can play them), try playing them without
their reeds or mouthpieces, playing only the reed or mouthpiece, oreven using the mouthpiece from one instrument on another “wrong”
instrument. In some cases, this will produce no sound at all, but you cansometimes get very interesting timbres by resonating these instruments
in new ways.

60

Problems of Beginning
Extended Techniques

Woodwind and brass instruments are also capable of producing
multiple simultaneous pitches, which are known as multiphonics.
For woodwinds, multiphonics are produced by using certain
unconventional fingerings, while on brass instruments they can beproduced by humming additional pitches while playing normally.
In recent years, the concept of extended techniques has moved
beyond the world of acoustic instruments and into the electronic
domain as well. The practice known as circuit bending is the physicalmodification of electronic sound-making devices with the goal of
creating sounds those devices were never intended to make. Common
circuit bending targets are cheap electronic instruments, children’s
toys, etc. Circuit bent instruments can be a great source of new
timbres, particularly because they often produce very unusual sounds
while still retaining the lo-fi character of the original device.

61

Goal-less Exploration
Problem:
You’re sitting in front of your DAW, but you’re
uninspired. You’ve opened the DAW out of
habit, or because you know you should, or
because you have the abstract feeling ofwanting to make music, but you have noreal sense that you actually want to makeanything in particular. This feels frustrating,and like wasted time. Maybe you should justclose the DAW and try again another day.
Many of us are happy once a song is finished, but often we findthe process of actually making the song to be painful, boring, orunrewarding. Sometimes we might reach a point where we see thatthe end of the song is in sight, and then we’re inspired by the prospectof having something to show for our work. But until that point, it really
does feel like work. How can you generate inspiration? Just opening a
new project sometimes isn’t enough.

62

Problems of Beginning
Goal-less Exploration

Solution:
If you’ve already taken the step to open your DAW, you should
congratulate yourself; this is farther than many musicians got today.
Our computers (and even the real world) offer endless distractions
that can prevent us from even beginning work. And although ourunderlying goal is to get music made, sometimes this is too much ofa responsibility to bear. Even though you don’t feel like working, once
the DAW is open, there are a number of things you can do to seize themoment, even if it’s a brief one.
Goal-less exploration is the process of simply finding a corner of yourworking space and letting yourself see what evolves from there. For
example, maybe there’s a particular instrument or effect in your DAW
that you’ve never taken the time to learn or that you’ve tried to use
but never could find a place for in your music. Since the DAW is open
anyway, try loading these devices and just experimenting with them.
Without the pressure of trying to use them to make music, just spendsome time learning what sorts of sounds they can make.
Another type of goal-less exploration can come from taking some timeand going through your loop and sample library. If you’re like mostproducers, you’ve probably collected far more samples than you’ve
ever had time to really listen to. If you don’t feel like working on music,
explore those folders of samples and see what you actually have.
Working in this kind of free, non-directed way can sometimes unlock
creative directions that you never would have found in your normal
working process, when you might be tempted to use templates or
known tools in order to get going more quickly. If goal-less exploration
actually manages to turn into real, finished work, then all the better.
But you’re also not under any obligation to turn your explorations intoa finished song, or even the beginning of one. Maybe you’ll work fora long time and find that you’ve created nothing worth saving. This is
OK. The point here is that you’re doing something that is at least in therealm of music-making; this is already closer to where you want to bethan, for example, Facebook.

63

Problems of Beginning
Goal-less Exploration

There are so many things you can do in a DAW that aren’t directly
focused on the creation and completion of a song. If your DAW is open,
but your normal creative inspiration isn’t there, try simply exploring and
see where it leads.

64Procrastination
and Timeboxing
Problem:In the abstract, you know that you want tomake music. But the actual process of doing
it sometimes feels like torture.
You know that working on music can bring moments of bliss: When
the work is going well, the music sounds great, and you’re in a state offlow. But there seem to be as many or more moments of agony. Despite
our best intentions, there are lots of reasons why we sometimes
procrastinate, including fear of failure, fear of success, and simple
laziness.
In the chapter called On Work (page 89), we discuss the inevitablereality that working is the only way to actually make progress. But here
is a tip for actually getting to work.

65

Problems of Beginning
Procrastination and Timeboxing

Solution:
If you’re a chronic procrastinator, you’re not alone. Many creative (andnon-creative) people suffer from task aversion and can find any excuse
to avoid getting done the work that really needs to get done. One
strategy for overcoming procrastination that’s commonly used in thesoftware development world is known as timeboxing.
Timeboxing simply means setting a fixed amount of time for a particulartask. The amount of time you choose is up to you, but it should be shortenough so that it’s easily manageable by even the most determined
procrastinators. For example, you might decide to spend 20 minutes onsound design. Next, set a timer, work only on sound design, and stop
when the timer goes off. Finally, take a short break (five minutes or so).
Then repeat the process, perhaps with another unrelated type of task(e.g., drum programming, arranging, etc.). After four or five stretches ofthis timed work/break combo, you might want to take a longer break.
Short timeboxes work because they break apart intimidating, openended tasks into easily manageable chunks; no matter how painful
creative work is, anyone can do it for 20 minutes. It’s important thatyou really work during those 20 minutes—intensely and without
interruption. But it’s equally important that you stop at the end. No
matter how productive you are or how close you feel to entering a real
flow state, stick to the timebox. This may seem counterintuitive; after
all, if you’ve finally managed to trick yourself into enjoying the process,doesn’t it make sense to run with that as far as your attention span willallow? But the reason this is dangerous (at least at first) is because itruns the risk of setting you up for a long work session that eventually
becomes frustrating or disappointing. When this happens, your memoryof the session will be that it was both bad and long-lasting, which may
further reinforce your procrastination tendencies. On the other hand,
if you stop even while it’s fun, you’re more likely to be energized andready to move forward again once the break is over.

66

Problems of Beginning
Procrastination and Timeboxing

After you spend a few days sticking to a systematic timeboxingroutine, you may find that your latent procrastination starts to feel lessoverbearing, and you feel the urge to just do uninterrupted work. At thispoint, you might first try using longer and longer timeboxes. Eventually,
you may find yourself able to focus without assistance at all and canthen consider your procrastination cured. And if you find yourself
slipping back to your old work-avoidance habits later, simply try using
the timer again.

67Collaboration
Problem:
You’re considering the possibility ofworking with other musicians but aren’t
sure how to proceed. What do you lookfor in a collaborator? What should theirrole be in the creative process?
Musical collaboration can be a hugely rewarding catalyst for creativity,in which the resulting music is more than the sum of the individuals
who made it. But establishing the right collaboration is critical; working
with the wrong partner can be more painful than working alone. Hereare some tips for finding great musical partners.

68Problems of Beginning
Collaboration

Solution:
When deciding on a partner for musical collaboration, the mostimportant consideration is simply whether or not the partnershipwill result in better and/or more music. It’s tempting to imagine thatyour best friend will also be your ideal musical partner, but personal
compatibility and professional compatibility aren’t necessarily
related. Sure, the process will likely be more fun if you’re working withsomeone with whom you have a good social connection. But many
personal relationships have been destroyed by attempting to extend
them into professional relationships; if the professional one fails, thepersonal one might as well. If your best friend happens to also havea strong work ethic and great musical and technical skills, then thepartnership might make sense. But if not, consider partnering withsomeone else. Of course, even the most talented musician isn’t going
to work out in the long run if they’re a horrible person. But when in
doubt, aim for professional compatibility first and social compatibility
second.
Whenever possible, try to work with people who can counterbalance
your strengths and weaknesses. The most obvious example is theclassic “producer plus vocalist” partnership. The producer deals
with all of the musical and technical aspects of the song, while thevocalist brings a particular talent that the producer simply doesn’thave. Beyond this obvious example, try to find partners who are goodat a particular aspect of the production process that you’re bad at orthat you dislike. For example, if you have trouble with arrangements,
try to find a partner who excels at them. If you’re good at sound designand synth programming, don’t worry too much about finding a partner
who also has these skills (although two completely well-roundedcollaborators might be the ideal package).

69

Problems of Beginning
Collaboration

Although the traditional model of collaboration involves multiple
musicians in the same studio, recent technological advancements also
make it possible to collaborate with people remotely, and possibly evenanonymously. For example, the classic model of the studio musician
has changed in recent years, and many session musicians who used toshow up for recording studio dates are now tracking parts for a variety
of projects from their home studios, sometimes without ever meetingthe artists for whom they’re recording. This type of workflow is eveneasier for electronic musicians, because there’s no need for acoustic
treatment, microphone setups, etc. For example, perhaps you have an
idea for a synth part that’s beyond your ability to play. Using remotecollaboration tools, you might find someone to record the part you
need and deliver it back to you, entirely online.
Once you’ve found a good collaborative situation, it’s importantthat everyone involved understands exactly how things likeworkload, money, ownership, and creative rights are to be divided.
Misunderstandings can result in a lot of misery for all parties, so it’sbest to have clear conversations and real, mutual understanding as
early as possible.

70Thinking Like an Amateur
Problem:Ever since you started getting “serious”
about your music-making, you’ve secretly
started having less fun with it. You (vaguely)
remember a time when you didn’t feel thisway; when you had no aspirations to bea professional, making music was always
a great way for you to relax. But now thatyou’ve become concerned with “success,”your sense of childlike joy at just making
sounds has disappeared and has been
overtaken by your desire to finish songs—
or even scarier: get famous.
Although this book is mostly about finding ways to get music done,
sometimes there are benefits to forgetting about that way of thinking
entirely and instead just enjoying the process of making music as agoal in itself.

71

Problems of Beginning
Thinking Like an Amateur

Solution:
When someone is referred to as an amateur, this is usually meant toimply that they’re less qualified or less talented than a professional in
the same field. An amateur, it’s assumed, is someone who would have
liked to be a professional but who was unable to reach that level. But
despite these negative connotations, the word “amateur” actually justmeans “lover of,” and there are many amateurs in all fields who are
working at a very high level. And there are still many more who aren’t
necessarily great at what they do but are having a great time.
Think about something you consider a hobby, something (besides
music) that you do with your free time. Maybe you run marathons, orbrew beer, or take wildlife photographs. Whatever it is, have you evereven considered doing it professionally? Probably not. And most likely
this isn’t because you’re not good enough (and whether you are or not
is probably irrelevant to your decision), but rather because the very
fact that it’s a hobby means that it’s something you do that isn’t work.
Instead, it’s a chance to spend time on something fun and fulfillingthat doesn’t saddle you with any outside pressure to succeed, earn aliving, etc.
Electronic musicians, more so than musicians working in other genres,seem to have a more difficult time simply engaging with music asa hobby. Perhaps this is because tools like DAWs are fundamentallydesigned around a recording mentality. Think about people you’ve met
who own an acoustic guitar. Just pulling it out and playing it for a few
minutes while sitting on the couch may be the extent of their musicalaspirations. And they don’t see this as failure. They’re not lamenting
their inability to get gigs or write more music or get record deals.
They’re having exactly the relationship with music that they want. In
fact, they’re usually not even recording what they play; once it’s in theair, it’s gone.

72

Problems of Beginning
Thinking Like an Amateur

By definition, being a professional means having to spend at least
some amount of time thinking about the marketplace. Is there an
audience for the music you’re making? If not, you’re guaranteed to fail.
Amateurs, on the other hand, never have to think about this questionat all. This frees them to make music entirely for themselves, on theirown terms.
One easy way to do this is to put yourself into a musical context inwhich you actually are an amateur—by experimenting with a genre
in which you have no prior experience. Are you a committed hip-hop
producer? Try making a house track. Your expectations are bound to belower, simply because you have no prior successes or failures against
which to gauge your current work. Even if you hate the results, it’s likelythat you’ll learn something from the experience.
Even if you do aspire to make a living out of creating original music, it
might be helpful to think like an amateur in order to lower your stressand bring the fun back to your music-making time. Amateurs often havea genuinely more pleasurable experience than professionals working
in the same field, and this is almost certainly because they’re free fromoutside pressure. If you can instill this mindset into your own work,
you’ll probably have both better results and a better time.

73

Scraps and Sketches
Problem:Your hard drive is filled with unfinishedsongs, and you know that most of themaren’t worth finishing. Whenever you lookat these songs, you’re frustrated because
you feel like you’ve failed and that you havenothing to show for all of the work and timeyou’ve spent on them.
We abandon music for a lot of reasons. Sometimes we realize that
we’re not happy with the direction the song is taking. Sometimes wejust get bored, go do something else, and then never come back to thework in progress. While I’m a strong advocate of finishing bad songs
anyway (see Fail Better (page 291)), the reality is that most producers
either have folders full of abandoned projects that will never be opened
again, or they throw away work in progress if it stops being interesting.
Here’s an idea for making use of that unfinished material.

74

Problems of Beginning
Scraps and Sketches

Solution:
Rather than considering your folder of unfinished projects as trash or
wasted effort, consider it as a collection of scraps or sketches, readyfor reuse in other musical contexts. This way, you can start a new songby extracting elements of abandoned or unfinished songs from thepast, rather than facing the intimidating blank slate of a completely
empty project. Forget entirely that these were once supposed tobe “songs,” and instead treat them as collections of musical ideasthat are ready to be used again: your own custom—and completely
unique—sound and loop library.
You may already be keeping a folder of scraps and sketches, either
as a result of Goal-less Exploration (page 62) or perhaps bycollecting rejected audio files created by Rendering as Commitment(page 283). The only difference here is that you’re rehabilitating
and recycling material that you once intended to be used in an actual,
active composition. This can be incredibly liberating mentally, because
it allows you to reject the idea that an unfinished song is a failure andinstead embrace it as a collection of ammunition for the next song.
So throw away as little as you can. Even if you’re bored after a single
two-bar drum loop or bass line, save this work into your sketches folder.
It’s possible that it will become the basis of your next great song.

75

Problem-Solving as Distraction
Problem:Every time you go to make music, you realizethat there’s something wrong with yoursetup; a plug-in you need isn’t authorized,or you forgot to download a sample packthat you purchased, or your chair isn’t
comfortable. You dream of the day when
you can hire a studio assistant to take careof all of the busy work that seems to be inyour way every time you want to make music.
But until then, you’re not sure how to getanything done when all of these problems
keep coming up. How do other people do it?
Technical problems in the studio can really kill the creative flow.
Similarly, realizing that you don’t fully understand a particular
production process or how to use a particular piece of gear can be
frustrating—particularly when you had planned to use those thingsin the course of your current song. When faced with these situations,
here’s how to get work done anyway.

76Problems of Beginning
Problem-Solving as Distraction

Solution:
Ignore these problems. They’re not as important as you think.
Steven Pressfield, in his classic book The War of Art, talks about a force
that manifests in the life of creative people in order to keep them fromgetting work done. He calls this force Resistance. These problems
you’re finding in your studio are a manifestation of Resistance. It’s a
trap! Your mind is playing tricks on you to try to keep you from working.
None of these problems are serious enough to take time away fromyour creative efforts. If they were, you would have solved them already,during your non-productive time. The only reason you notice themwhen you sit down to work is that part of you doesn’t want to sit down
to work.
Technical problem solving, education, motivational reading (including
this book), and other forms of work-related activities will never write
music for you. They’re important, but as discussed in On Work (page89), they’re nowhere near as important as actually doing the work.
Your creative time is essential; you should treat it with care andrecognize when you’re subconsciously trying to avoid it. If you
suddenly realize that a plug-in you need isn’t authorized, then use
another one. You don’t need it right now. You’ve made music without
it before, and you can make music without it now. If you forgot todownload a sample pack you purchased, use some samples you
already have. If your chair isn’t comfortable, work anyway. You can fix
your chair on your next break or when the song’s done (whichevercomes first).
Nothing seems to stimulate the need to learn production techniques
like sitting down to work. Do you really need to learn more about EQ
or compression right now? Watch tutorial videos later; now is the time
to work.

77

Problems of Beginning
Problem-Solving as Distraction

This is not to suggest that learning and problem solving aren’t
important. It’s just that they belong to a different type of working time.
The chapter Mise en Place (page 29) discusses the importance ofsetting up your environment to be maximally conducive to getting work
done. But as important as this is, it’s even more important that it bedone at the right time. And the right time is never when you’re in thecreative mindset.
Music-making time is sacred. Don’t stop to learn and don’t stop to fix
something unless it’s absolutely critical. Use what you have and know,
right now, to keep going forward.

78

Personal Workflow
Problem:
The more you read about music production
techniques, the more you get the sensethat you’re doing everything wrong. For
example, some tutorials advocate working
on sound design, composition, arranging,and mixing in that order and as entirely
separate processes. Others recommend
doing them all at the same time and working
each section of the song to completion in
all aspects before moving to a different partof the song. But none of these solutions
feels quite right, and now you’re more
confused and discouraged than you were
before you read anything. What is really the
optimum workflow?
Reading multiple tutorials or books about music production can makeyou feel suspicious that it’s all just subjective. There seems to be
so much disagreement from one source to the next that it all feels
somewhat arbitrary. Who has the right answers?

79Problems of Beginning
Personal Workflow

Solution:
When it comes to optimal workflow, there is no objective right answer.
The only way you can find a workflow that’s optimal for you is by tryingout various methods, keeping the parts that work, rejecting the parts
that don’t, and synthesizing your own solution out of what remains.
When you’re reading a tutorial, you’re really reading about a workflowthat has worked for that particular writer. A different writer may have
had an entirely different experience, and so will have advocated an
entirely different approach.
If you have trouble getting music done, it’s worth looking at theworkflows that other people advocate and giving them a try. But don’t
expect that any one person’s approach will yield better results for yourparticular case than an approach that you develop yourself. It’s truethat when trying out another method you may see a dramatic shift inyour productivity (either positively or negatively). If things are better,then it’s likely you’ve found a direction that’s better than the one youwere on before. If things are worse, you should probably abandon
this direction and try something else. But in the end, even the best
third-party workflow will benefit from your own personal tweaks andmodifications.
Once you have the sense that you’re going in the right direction,
the key to optimizing your personal workflow is to practice it until it
becomes a habit. Practice the steps just as you would practice aninstrument, refining and adjusting as you go. Eventually, the workflow
will stop being work and just become flow—the things you do
unconsciously while creating.
This all sounds quite abstract, but there really aren’t so many possible
things to consider. At a fundamental level, music production workflows
all involve answers to the following questions:> What are the things I need to do?
> Is there an order I should do them in? If so, what is it?

80Problems of Beginning
Personal Workflow> When should I move on to the next thing?
> When do I know I’m completely done?
Once you understand how to answer these questions—for yourself,
not as absolutes—you will have developed your personal workflow. All
that’s left to do is make music with it.

81Originality vs. Quality
Problem:
You’re happy with the music you make, andother people are as well. But deep down,
you don’t believe it’s truly original, and you
feel that you should be working harder tofind a sound that is uniquely your own.
Particularly among music critics, journalists, and bloggers, originality
is regularly cited as a necessary component of good music. Pejorative
terms like “derivative” or “formulaic” are often used to deride musicthat sounds like something else. But what critics write is not always
what listeners hear, and there may be different ways of weighingmusical value.

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Problems of Beginning
Originality vs. Quality

Solution:
What does originality actually mean in a musical context? As a
descriptor, all it tells you is that something sounds unique, or that its
influences are not obvious. But what the word doesn’t convey is any
information about quality, which is a far more valuable characteristic.
“Original” and “good” are not mutually exclusive, but they are also notcorrelated. There is plenty of terrible music that sounds like nothingelse, and in many cases the very characteristics that make it original
are also what make it bad. Consider that what one artist thinks is
original may simply be something that other artists have already triedand discarded.
Instead of aiming for an abstract goal like originality, aim instead for theconcrete goal of quality. This is not to suggest that you should actively
try to make your music sound like something else, but rather that you
should try to find and strengthen your own voice through a processof constant, varied listening, experimentation, synthesis of disparate
influences, and—above all—hard work. If you only listen to a small
variety of music, there are really only two conceivable outcomes foryour own creations: Either you’ll make things that reflect your limited
exposure or you’ll make things that you believe are original but are
more than likely simply outside of your experience.
Even if you really only want to make music within a particular, narrow
genre, you should still aim for a wide range of listening experiences.
For example, imagine you only want to make old-school house tracks.
Since a characteristic of that style is sampled phrases from jazz, soul,and R&B records, wouldn’t an understanding of those genres be avaluable tool in your creative arsenal? Wouldn’t understanding how
jazz drummers and bass players approach rhythm and harmony help
your own rhythm and harmony? And if you end up making old-school
house music that fits perfectly into the confines of the genre, no one
can claim that you’re original. But if the music is good, that’s all thatmatters.

83

Problems of Beginning
Originality vs. Quality

In the end, the music that’s remembered is not necessarily the music
that’s the most radically avant-garde. Instead, it’s the music that’sgood. If you can achieve both quality and originality, then you’re a rarity.
But the primary goal should always be quality first.

84

Process vs. ProductProblem:Often we read interviews with interestingmusicians in which they talk about themonumental effort that goes into theircreative work. Similarly, they may talk about
how their music is rigorously structured oradheres to particular types of architecturalprocesses that are carefully and painstakingly
planned and then require immense work
to carry out. When we then go to work on
our own music, it may feel like we’re “underthinking” or not investing enough effort. We
may begin work but then stop and secondguess what we’ve made if we don’t feel like
we’ve done enough preparation to allow us
to really begin “properly.”
The idea of “process” in music refers to the development of a systemor set of rules that allows some or all of the elements of the music
to be generated or derived without requiring the composer to makepurely intuitive creative decisions at every possible moment. There isa belief in our culture, often reinforced by interviews with celebrities,
that there is a necessary and direct correlation between process andquality. For musicians who work intuitively, or via improvisation andexperiment, this narrative can be intimidating. How can it be possible
to create great work if we don’t have a grand scheme and/or longhours of struggle?

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Problems of Beginning
Process vs. Product

Solution:First, take every interview with a grain of salt. Interviews allow artists
to share insights into their working methods, but interviews can also
serve a valuable self-promotional function. There is nothing wrong
with this—artists should take advantage of opportunities to present
themselves. But readers should not expect an interview to reveal
absolute truths, and stories about struggles, hard work, and rigorous
planning might simply serve to help an artist create and publicly
project a romantic or idealized self-image.
Second, effort, rigor, pre-planning, and structure are not prerequisites
for quality results. They may help you get there, but they are neither
necessary to begin work nor, in themselves, evidence for quality. It’s
tempting to believe that things we’ve spent a lot of time and energy
on are worth it, but in the case of music, only the results matter.
Some listeners may indeed actively listen for musical structure, andthe intricacy, depth, or cohesiveness of that structure may be what
determines for them whether or not the music is “good.” Likewise,some listeners may enjoy music because it sounds “difficult.” Consider,for example, certain types of virtuosic metal or progressive rock, inwhich technical ability is a prerequisite. But there is no universal
relationship between artistic effort and artistic quality. Many listeners
take in music on a much more immediate and visceral level and enjoy
particular music for reasons which may be more difficult to quantify.
Think of the process of creation as something like the scaffolding
on a building. It’s placed there to help the builders navigate theunsteadiness of a fragile work in progress. But once the building
is completed, the scaffolding is removed and promptly forgotten. It
is not, in itself, the thing being made. It may have curiosity value toother builders, who may have an abstract interest in the artifacts ofconstruction. But good scaffolding cannot guarantee a good building
any more than a good working process can guarantee a good song.

86Problems of Beginning
Process vs. Product

Furthermore, there is the danger that too much time invested inplanning how you’ll work will both prevent you from actually working
and cause you to accept results that sound bad just because they
fit the plan. For example, imagine you’ve spent hours crafting a fourminute song in which the second two minutes are a literal mirror
image of the first two. This is an interesting idea in the abstract. It
provides a path forward: Once you’ve finished two minutes of music,
you now have a system for how to finish two more through the simple
application of a formula. But is it a good idea? Only the results candetermine this. At the end, the product—not the process—is what
you’re left with, and the product needs to be strong enough to survive
on its own.
This is not to suggest that you shouldn’t experiment with employing
processes in your music. Maybe a song with a mirrored form really will
end up being amazing. And even if it isn’t, you may end up learning
something about how mirroring works as a musical process that canbe applied in different ways in future works. What’s important is thatyou don’t fall so in love with the idea of what your music should be(or the work that you’ve put into it) that you fail to honestly judge iton the basis of how it really sounds when you’ve finished. Better yet:
Listen critically at every stage of the process, and be willing to abandon
conceptual directions if they are leading to bad musical results.
There is a rich history of brilliant music made by musicians who started
without a grand scheme and simply followed where their experiments
or improvisations led them. Furthermore, there is an equally richtradition of brilliant music that was made very quickly and withseemingly little effort. Again, the important thing is the song—the final
result of the work. What’s unimportant (or, more accurately, what’s nota reliable predictor of quality) is everything leading up to that point:
the sketches and careful planning diagrams, the months spent in thestudio, etc.

87Problems of Beginning
Process vs. Product

If those things really are the way that you get to a great result, thenyou should absolutely do them. But do not convince yourself that those
things will guarantee a great result.

88

On Work“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine
percent perspiration.”— Thomas Edison“Inspiration is for amateurs—the rest of us just show up
and get to work.”— Chuck Close

Problem:
Sometimes, there are moments during thecreative process when you get into a stateof flow, music seems to come out naturally,and everything feels effortless. But this isextremely rare. Most of the time, working on
music feels like a thankless chore.
How is it that some musicians seem to be able to produce endlessamounts of music in minimal time, while you feel like every note is a
struggle? What’s the secret to finding the mythical “flow” state thatwill enable you to create music effortlessly?

89Problems of Beginning
On Work

Solution:
The reality is that there are no shortcuts. The process of creating art
is, fundamentally, a process of work. For most of us, every note reallyis a struggle, and this is simply the nature of the process. We havea romantic image of the artistic genius, who is able to spin endlessamounts of material out of nothing, but these types of artists are
extremely rare.
Rather than aspiring to this mysterious (and unrealistic) notion of what
the process should be, try instead to embrace what it really is: hard
work. There will be many points along the creative path when you’ll
wish you were doing almost anything else. You will be plagued withdoubt, fear, boredom, and disappointment. Learn to be OK with being
miserable, because this will be a regular part of your existence as acreative musician.
By all means, if you do happen to find moments of inspiration and real
flow, you should embrace them and let them take you as far as theycan. But even in these rare cases, it’s usually only after a lot of painful
effort that effortlessness takes over. Even the most fortunate, flowprone artists don’t just get there immediately. As painful as it is, every
project, for everyone, requires real work.

90

ProblemsofProgressing

Breadth Before Depth
Problem:
Whenever you start making progress on a
track, you suddenly become overwhelmedby the desire to get some particular aspectcompletely perfect. For example, maybe
you’re preoccupied with getting the soundof your kick drum just right. Lots of time
can be spent in this phase, and it often
becomes frustrating, sapping your will tocontinue working on the track as a whole.
Since you know that you’ll eventually have to refine every aspectanyway, can there be a downside to doing at least some of thatrefinement as you go?

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Problems of Progressing
Breadth Before Depth

Solution:
Especially in the early and middle stages of your work on a track,
when the ideas themselves may not exist yet, it can be detrimental to
go into too much depth in any one particular area. Yes, you’ll need to
do detail work eventually. But the idea-generation phase is vital andvery, very fragile. By definition, it’s messy and doesn’t hold up wellwhen confronted with outside pressures. Idea generation requires
experimentation, risk-taking, unbounded thinking, etc. Detail work, on
the other hand, is an entirely different kind of working process andrequires an entirely different mindset. Detail work requires narrow,focused thinking. It’s often more about applying known processes than
it is about exploring radical new directions.
When you’re in idea-generation mode, it can be useful to work
broadly—getting ideas out of your head and into the sequencer as
quickly as possible—before working deeply on a single part. This way
of working can be valuable for a number of reasons:> It helps you to learn how to listen for potential rather than for
perfection. During broad idea generation, parts might sound badfor a variety of reasons. Maybe you have a terrible mix balance, orthe wrong sounds, or even some wrong notes. But you’ve drawn
inspiration from music that has none of these problems—finished,mastered tracks have a professional sheen that’s miles ahead ofwhere your particular track is right now. This can be discouraging,
because even though we know that we can add polish at the end,
we want to hear it right now. If your music doesn’t compare to yourinspiration at this moment, how can you be sure that you’re going in
the right direction? The key here is to practice learning to listen past
the imperfections: Instead of thinking “this bass line isn’t powerfulenough,” think “this bass line can be powerful enough after somesound design work and mixing. But how are the notes?” By hearing
past the immediate lack of impact, you become a better judge ofwhether or not a particular part (or the whole track) is going in theright direction.

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Problems of Progressing
Breadth Before Depth> Creative time is short, and you have to move fast. As mentioned
previously, the idea-generation phase is fragile. It’s the one part ofthe music creation process that you can’t “force” to happen. Thismeans that when it actually is happening, you need to squeeze
out every idea that you can, working as quickly as possible andgenerating as much material as possible before your mind moves outof this phase. Once you’ve captured the ideas, the work of actuallyrefining them can sometimes require much less truly creative energy.
This suggestion runs directly counter to the chapter called One Partat a Time (page 44). The reality is that there is no one way to work;
different types of creative blocks may be solved in fundamentallydifferent, and even opposing, ways.

94

Foreground, Middle Ground,and Background
Problem:Your music has a feeling of “flatness”
or two-dimensionality that is somewhat
difficult to explain. The music that inspires
you definitely doesn’t suffer from this,although you find it equally difficult to
express what it is, specifically, that’s moresatisfying about those inspiring songs.
Typically, we think of different instruments and/or voices in a song as
having different levels of prominence. And we probably have someinstinctive ideas about how to reinforce these levels of prominence
when working on a mix. For example, important sounds are typically
mixed louder than less important ones.
But creating a sense of varied “depth” in music is more complicatedthan just applying basic mixing rules. By thinking about depth evenduring the composition phase, we can complement our mixing
decisions and create an even stronger sense that each element isfulfilling a specific functional role.

95

Problems of Progressing
Foreground, Middle Ground, and Background

Solution:
The notion of foreground, middle ground, and background are wellknown to anyone who works in the visual arts: film, photography,
painting, etc. In visual art, these layers refer to objects at different
physical distances from the viewer’s eye.
backgroundmiddle groundforegroundTypically, the objects in the foreground are the ones with the mostprominence. In a photograph, for example, foreground objects arecommonly the “subject” of the composition. They’re often in focus,
and we can see the complexity and fine detail. The background, on theother hand, contains objects in the far distance. We recognize them,but they might be blurry or otherwise less rich in detail. The middle
ground contains everything else—objects which are generally not the
primary focus of our attention but which are closer (and thus more
prominent) than those in the background.

96

Problems of Progressing
Foreground, Middle Ground, and BackgroundAt a technical or production level, this concept can also be applied toan audio recording, and this is what mix engineers refer to when theytalk about the “depth” of a mix. For example, sounds can be madeto seem closer to the listener by making them louder, “brighter” (anincrease in high-frequency content in comparison to other sounds),
and/or “dryer” (an increase in the amount of original, unprocessedsignal in comparison to the amount of reverb applied to that signal).
Likewise, sounds can be placed in the background by making themquieter, darker, or more reverberant.
But even before the mixing stage, we can think of our musical elements
themselves as being divided into foreground, middle ground, andbackground. For example, in a track with a singer, we usually want
the voice to be the most important element. We can try to force thisto happen when mixing, but we can also make musical decisions toenhance the effect. For example, imagine a scenario in which the vocal
melody is doubled note for note by a synth line that plays an octave
higher. Our ears are naturally drawn to the highest sound in a mix, so
we might subconsciously hear the synth line as the dominant voice.
In an even more extreme example, imagine that our accompanying
synth didn’t double the voice but instead played a line that was more
complicated, with faster rhythms, jagged jumps from note to note, etc.
We would probably hear this as still more prominent.
We tend to hear things as being in the foreground if they’re high, loud,fast, or subject to a rapid rate of change. For example, the drum grooveof a song is often quite loud in comparison to the rest of the mix. But
because it’s also generally consistent and unvarying in relation tothe other voices, we’re able to place it in its appropriate place in the
texture: the middle ground or background. When a drum fill happens,however, the sudden change in textural density and complexity causes
us to switch our focus to the drums; they temporarily jump to theforeground.

97

Problems of Progressing
Foreground, Middle Ground, and Background

When writing music, try to think about where each element should
reside on this three-layered depth chart of foreground, middle ground,and background. Draw the elements in a box like the one in theprevious picture if it helps you to visualize. Or simpler yet, just makea list. Here’s an example of what a list of song parts for a minimal
techno track might look like if divided into foreground/middle ground/background:

Foreground> Pitch-shifted spoken text (irregular, mostly non-rhythmic)> Metal clang “interruptions” (irregular, high-pitched, loud)Middle ground> Synth bleeps (medium pitch, repeating patterns)> Synth marimba chords (medium pitch, repeating patterns)> Acid bass line (medium pitch, repeating patterns; sometimes comesto foreground via brighter filter settings, variations in the pattern)

Background> Drums (steady-state)> Sub bass (steady-state, low pitch)
Each element in the list is followed by decisions about musicalparameters which will help to reinforce the selected depth. The rateof change in the middle ground and background elements is kept toa minimum, while foreground elements are allowed more freedom of
motion.
Additionally, try to experiment with making temporary changes inthe depth at which certain voices reside, as in the drum fill example
mentioned before. By varying the depth of elements in a song, we also
draw attention to the fact that we’re using depth in the first place,which helps to reinforce the overall effect.

98

Fuzzy Boundaries
Problem:
DAWs tend to automatically structurematerial in blocks (often called “clips” or“regions”) with clearly defined beginnings
and endings. Musical structure is thencreated by moving the blocks around intime, but the sharp edges between theblocks also create a specific type of musicalabruptness which may sound stiff, formulaic,
and unrefined.
Most pieces of music divide time into sections, where each section
contains a particular type of musical material that contrasts with thatin the other sections. Additionally, these sections often exist withina hierarchy of sectional layers, with smaller contrasting subsections
chained together to form the larger sections. In the abstract, thishierarchy might look something like this:clip

phrasesong section

whole song

DAWs represent this musical structure in a very clear way; blocks oftime appear as literal blocks on the screen. But the boundaries ofthese blocks suggest boundaries in time that are not always good
representations of the musical results we want. Here are some ways tomake the boundaries between formal sections less abrupt.

99

Problems of Progressing
Fuzzy Boundaries

Solutions:
Abrupt formal boundaries look like a straight vertical line that cuts
through the material in your tracks from top to bottom:

The most straightforward way to deal with this kind of abruptness is
to simply make that line become jagged or disappear entirely by:> extending material from the previous section in one
or more (but not all) tracks.
> retracting material from the previous section in one
or more (but not all) tracks.
> deleting material on either side of the formal boundary in one
or more tracks.

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Problems of Progressing
Fuzzy Boundaries

For example, here’s how this formal division might look after applying
all of these techniques:

In this example, only the bottom two tracks have been left as they werein the original version. The top two tracks have had material extended
beyond the formal boundary, while the next two tracks transition early.
The following five tracks all use silence to blur the transition.
~ Note that this example is not a prescription for a particular set ofactions; there’s nothing inherent about this particular pattern ofchanges that will make sense in all cases. Of course, it’s necessary toadapt what you do to the specifics of the material in your song.
These kinds of “coarse-grained” changes to the length and position ofclips can be effective. But sometimes you’ll want to edit the material
within the clips themselves. Here are some “fine-grained” ways tothink about working with this material:
Anticipation - Drum fills are a common technique used to create a senseof transition from one section to another. But it’s common to hear drum
fills that lead out of one section and then end precisely on the downbeatof the next section. Here’s an example of a “typical” drum fill that ends
exactly on a downbeat. The energy peaks at the downbeat of bar 3:

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Problems of Progressing
Fuzzy Boundaries

This is often musically effective, but it can sometimes feel formulaic
and abrupt. Instead, try writing drum fills that anticipate, or end slightly
earlier than expected. Reaching the peak of a fill slightly before thedownbeat, for example, can create an interesting shift in the flow ofmusical time. This can be particularly effective if the actual downbeat
is de-emphasized somehow, perhaps by stopping the drums entirely
until the second beat of the next section, and then re-entering with a“crash” or some other moment that emphasizes the sense of a musicalending. Here’s an example of a drum fill that anticipates the sectionalboundary. The energy peaks before the downbeat, followed by silence
and a re-entrance on beat 2:

Hesitation - Conversely, try writing a drum fill that lasts longer
than expected, extending over the formal boundary between
the sections and ending after the rest of the musical material has
already changed to the new section. In these cases, it often works
well if there’s no sharp emphasis on the end of the fill, and instead thedrums of the new section simply take over as seamlessly as possible102

Problems of Progressing
Fuzzy Boundaries

after the fill. Here’s an example of a drum fill that hesitates beyond thesectional boundary. The energy continues through the downbeat andpeaks on beat 2:Note that you can also apply anticipation and hesitation processes tomusical elements besides drums. Try embellishing bass lines using
these techniques, or extending (or shortening) sustained chords.

103

Creating Variation 1:
Mutation of Clones
Problem:You’ve come up with a great-sounding
seed of a musical idea. But now that you
have it, you find that you don’t know how
to proceed. Maybe it’s a few notes or a few
bars, but it’s definitely not long enough to
be a finished piece. You keep listening to
the promising idea over and over again,
unable to see a direction that will get you
from here to a song.
There are a number of methods for generating many new ideas fromthe seed of one simple idea. Here is one recipe.

104Problems of Progressing
Creating Variation 1: Mutation of Clones

Solution:
Duplicate the initial idea a number of times (maybe eight or so) so thatyou have a number of identical copies. Edit the first duplicate until you
have made only one meaningful change. You’ll ultimately need to use
your own taste and intuition to determine what “meaningful” means in
the context of this particular idea, but the broad categories to consider
are the fundamental parameters of music:> Sound: changes to the timbre> Harmony: changes to the chords> Melody: changes to the foreground line
> Rhythm: changes to the timing of events> Form: changes to the structure or distribution of smaller-scale
components within the idea
You’ve succeeded when you can listen to the original and the edited
duplicate back-to-back and clearly hear (or at least feel) that they’resomehow different.
After making your one meaningful change to the first duplicate, moveto the second duplicate and again make one meaningful change. Thechange could be of the same type as the change you made to theprevious edit or it could be a change of an entirely different musicalparameter. Again, all that matters is that it is audibly different from theoriginal (and, in this case, also audibly different from the previously
edited version).
Repeat this process until you’ve made one meaningful change to eachof the copies.
What you have now is a collection of “siblings,” each of which is adirect descendant of the “parent” idea. Because you’ve made only one
meaningful change to each duplicate, the relationship to the original
will be clear.

105

Creating Variation 2:
Mutation Over Generations
Problem:You’ve come up with a great-sounding
seed of a musical idea. But now that you
have it, you find that you don’t know how
to proceed. Maybe it’s a few notes or a few
bars, but it’s definitely not long enough to
be a finished piece. You keep listening to
the promising idea over and over again,
unable to see a direction that will get you
from here to a song.
There are a number of methods for generating many new ideas fromthe seed of one simple idea. Here is one recipe.

106Problems of Progressing
Creating Variation 2: Mutation Over Generations

Solution:
Make a single duplicate of the initial idea. Edit this duplicate until you
have made only one meaningful change. You’ll ultimately need to use
your own taste and intuition to determine what “meaningful” means in
the context of this particular idea, but the broad categories to consider
are the fundamental parameters of music:> Sound: changes to the timbre> Harmony: changes to the chords> Melody: changes to the foreground line
> Rhythm: changes to the timing of events> Form: changes to the structure or distribution of smaller-scale
components within the idea
Once you’re satisfied with the change that you’ve made to the
duplicated idea, repeat the process. But this time, begin by creating
a duplicate of the duplicate (rather than the original). Now make one
meaningful change to this third-generation duplicate. Try not to go“backwards”; that is, don’t simply undo the change that you madein the previous generation. Continue this process a number of times(maybe eight or so), each time using the previous variation as the seed
for the next one.
What you have now is a collection of “descendant” ideas, each ofwhich is the direct offspring of the previous idea, but which can all
be traced back to the original “ancestor.” Although you’ve made only
one meaningful change to each idea, all of them have also inherited
the changes from all of the preceding generations and so may become
increasingly remote from the original ancestor.

107

Creating Variation 3:
Note Transformations
Problem:You’ve come up with a great-sounding
seed of a musical idea. But now that you
have it, you find that you don’t know how
to proceed. Maybe it’s a few notes or a few
bars, but it’s definitely not long enough to
be a finished piece. You keep listening to
the promising idea over and over again,
unable to see a direction that will get you
from here to a song.
There are a number of methods for generating many new ideas fromthe seed of one simple idea. Here are some recipes.

108

Problems of Progressing
Creating Variation 3: Note Transformations

Solution:
Most DAWs offer a range of note transformation features that allow you
to make predictable, rule-based changes to a selection of notes. The
resulting patterns will usually have a clear, organic connection to theoriginal pattern, although they can often sound quite different. Some
types of transformations include:

Transposition
Transposition means shifting an entire pattern of notes up or down
by a specific number of semitones. In a transposition operation,
the relationship between all of the notes in the pattern will remainunchanged. Many DAWs provide a quick way to transpose MIDI notes,
but you can also do this manually by simply selecting a group of notes
and dragging them vertically or horizontally to a new position on the
piano roll. Transposition can also be applied to audio samples, although
there will generally be some change to the timbre of the audio as aresult.

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Problems of Progressing
Creating Variation 3: Note Transformations

Here is a one-measure-long MIDI phrase, followed by a version of thatphrase that has been transposed up by five semitones:

110Problems of Progressing
Creating Variation 3: Note Transformations

Inversion
Inversion (in this context) is the process of flipping a collection ofnotes “upside-down” so that the lowest note becomes the highest
note and vice versa. The shape of the pattern and interval distance
between each of the notes is maintained, but in the opposite directionof the original. This process can be applied in the MIDI domain, either
via an automatic process built in to the DAW or by manually moving thenotes. For example, here is a one-measure-long phrase, followed by aversion of that phrase that has been inverted:111

Problems of Progressing
Creating Variation 3: Note Transformations

Retrograde or Reverse
Retrograde means flipping a collection of notes backwards, so thatthe last note becomes the first note and vice versa. This process canbe applied in the MIDI domain, either via an automatic process built into the DAW or by manually moving the notes. Retrograde can also be
applied in the audio domain, usually by applying a “Reverse” function
to the sample. Note, however, that reversing a sample will also reverse
the envelope contour of the audio itself, so the results will be quite
different than a comparable process applied to the same MIDI.
Here’s an example of a one-measure-long MIDI phrase, followed by aversion of that phrase that has been reversed:

Note that in this particular retrograde algorithm, the distance between
the note onsets is reversed. A true mirror image would mean that the noteends of the original became onsets in the reversed version. While literalmirroring is probably easier to understand conceptually, the results areoften not particularly musically interesting.

112

Problems of Progressing
Creating Variation 3: Note Transformations

Constraint to a Scale
A passage of MIDI notes can be selectively transposed so that theresulting pattern contains only notes that are within a particular scale.
Many DAWs provide some type of device specifically for this purpose.
These devices analyze incoming MIDI notes and remap them to anarbitrary pool of available notes before sending them out again.
Here’s an example of a one-measure-long MIDI phrase containing
a somewhat random collection of notes, followed by a version of thatphrase that has been constrained to the pitches within the C Major scale:

Although the example above shows the actual notes that result from ascale-constraint process, note that many DAWs with MIDI processing
devices apply their processing after the notes in the clip.

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Problems of Progressing
Creating Variation 3: Note Transformations

In order to get the notes you hear back into the original clip (as in theprevious example), follow these steps:
1. Create a new MIDI track and set up your DAW’s inter-trackrouting so that the new track records the output of the original track.
2. Copy the newly-recorded notes to the clipboard.
3. Paste them back into the original clip.
4. Disable or remove the scale-constraint device.

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Problems of Progressing
Creating Variation 3: Note Transformations

Time Shifting
A looped passage of material can be started at an arbitrary position
within the passage. This is effectively the same as maintaining theexact pitches and rhythms of the original pattern, but shifting thepattern right or left to a new location. Some DAWs allow you to adjust
the playback start position for a particular pattern independently of
any other patterns. In these environments, simply moving the pattern’sstart position achieves this effect. Here’s an example of our original
one-bar pattern with its start marker shifted three sixteenth notes tothe right:

115

Problems of Progressing
Creating Variation 3: Note Transformations

In other DAWs, you can manually copy the entire pattern and paste itto the new location with the desired offset. When shifting to the right,
keep in mind that material near the end of the original pattern will need
to be “wrapped around” to the beginning of the new pattern, and viceversa when shifting to the left.

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Problems of Progressing
Creating Variation 3: Note Transformations

Pitch Rotation
Pitch rotation is a process whereby the rhythm of a passage of notes
is retained but the pitches from the passage are shifted to the rightor left in time. Here’s an example of a one-measure-long MIDI phrase,followed by a version of that phrase that has been rotated to the rightby three pitches. As with time shifting, pitches near the end of thepattern will need to be “wrapped around” to the beginning of the newpattern, and vice versa when shifting to the left.

117Problems of Progressing
Creating Variation 3: Note Transformations

More Ways to Use the Transformations
Note that in all of these examples, the transformed version occurs
immediately after the original. But of course, you could also treat
the transformed version as an entirely separate, isolated pattern.
Conversely, you could also overlap the transformation with the original
to create a more complex pattern:

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Problems of Progressing
Creating Variation 3: Note Transformations

Or you could even superimpose them completely to create harmony:

119Implied Rhythm in Short Loops
Problem:
You keep making the same kinds of beats
over and over again, and you’re looking for a
way to expand your palette of rhythmic ideas.
We often develop a “vocabulary” of musical ideas that we rely on tocreate new music. Like spoken language, the richness of our musicalexpression is directly related to the depth of this vocabulary. When weknow only a few words, we can say only a few things. Likewise, when
we know only a few musical patterns, we’re limited in our ability tocreate music that’s different from the last time.
The most obvious place to get ideas for new beats is from other music,
but here’s an idea for finding rhythms in another way.

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Problems of Progressing
Implied Rhythm in Short Loops

Solution:
Find or make an audio recording of anything. You’ll get the best resultsfrom material that has at least some variation over time; a steady-statesine wave probably won’t work well for our purposes here, but almost
anything else is a viable source. It should be at least a few seconds
long, but beyond this there are no restrictions on length. Very longmaterial—minutes, hours, etc.—is fine.
Import this audio into your DAW and create a loop around an arbitrary
portion of it. Now, while listening, begin to decrease the length of theloop until it’s at most a few seconds long. One- or two-second loops
seem to work best for this exercise.
As you continue to listen carefully to this loop for a while, you’ll start tonotice rhythmic patterns emerge. These are the result of our inherent
ability to find patterns in chaos, like hearing the sound of a ringing
phone in the white noise of a shower. The phenomenon of finding
patterns in unordered stimulus is known as pareidolia. For example,
most people see a “face” in this image of a natural rock formation
on Mars.

The bits and pieces of sound that make up the perceived rhythmic
patterns may be the result of technical “errors” in your sample
playback tool, such as loop boundaries that aren’t aligned with zerocrossing points in the sample. For our purposes here, these errors areexactly what we want; don’t try to fix them by enabling features withnames like “snap to zero-crossings.”

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Problems of Progressing
Implied Rhythm in Short Loops

If your original source material already had a clearly defined rhythm or
tempo, try to loop a portion of the material that plays against this in aclearly audible way. For example, make the loop so that the repetitions
are not synchronized with the original tempo. The goal isn’t to makeuse of the overt rhythms that exist in the large-scale source material,
but rather to discover the rhythms that emerge from the repetition oftiny portions.
Good sources include:> Existing music (ideally by you or by someone from whom you’ve
secured rights, but anything can work technically). Remember,
however, that you’re not looking for the musical information fromthe original source. The goal is to find the implied rhythm heard only
when listening repeatedly to tiny fragments.
> Field recordings of any kind—urban, industrial, or nature sounds work
quite well for this.
> Recordings of speech. Rhythmic patterns emerge quite naturally
from repeated fragments of speech. In fact, melodic patterns tend to
emerge from short speech loops as well. For an interesting exampleof this in practice, listen to Steve Reich’s Different Trains for string
quartet and tape. For this piece, Reich listened for the implied
melodies in short fragments of speech and then transcribed them tobe played by the stringed instruments.
~ Bonus: In addition to audio, you can also use this technique withyour own MIDI recordings, particularly if you’ve recorded extended
improvised material without a metronome. Again, try to adjust theloop so that it plays against any rhythm or tempo that’s suggested by
the original material itself.
Once these rhythms have emerged from the loop, there are several
different ways you can proceed. The most obvious is to simply use thelooped sample as an element in your song. For an interesting example

122Problems of Progressing
Implied Rhythm in Short Loopsof this, listen to Machinedrum’s “Baby It’s U” from the album Vapor City,
which uses hydrophone recordings of dolphins and shrimp as boththe basis of the groove and as a rhythmic backdrop over which moreconventional drums are eventually added. Another solution is to apply
the emergent rhythms from the original sample to another instrument,
as in the previously mentioned string quartet Different Trains.

123Asynchronous or
Polyrhythmic Loops
Problem:Many electronic genres make extensive useof loops. When you listen to your favorite
examples of loop-based music, there’s
always some sense of motion that keeps
the music fresh and interesting, but yourown attempts to work this way usually strike
you as static and boring.
It seems like a paradox, but “simple”-sounding loop-based genres likeminimal techno can be difficult to emulate. All of the elements are on
the surface, and it’s easy to hear through the few layers of production.
But although the surface level of much of this music suggests that
there isn’t much happening, there’s a subtlety and richness of detail atwork that separates the good music from the bad.
Our typical mental model of a sequenced MIDI loop in a DAW issomething like this: An instrument is played by one looping clip witha fixed length (probably equal to one or more complete bars). At somepoint, we might stop this clip and then start another clip in its place.
So at any moment, any given instrument is either silent or is being
triggered by one clip.
Here’s a different way of thinking about looped clips that might makethings more interesting.

124Problems of Progressing
Asynchronous or Polyrhythmic Loops

Solution:
Instead of triggering an instrument with a single clip, try simultaneously
triggering it with multiple clips of different lengths. In most DAWs, thiswill require some kind of inter-track routing. For example, one track
could contain the instrument, while one or more additional tracks
contain no instruments but instead only the clips that will play the
instrument on the first track. These “silent” clips will then have their
output routed to the first track.
In this example, imagine an instrument is triggered by a simple looping
MIDI pattern consisting of four sixteenth notes:

Simultaneously, the same instrument is being triggered by another loopthat contains one sixteenth note followed by four sixteenths of silence.
This pattern loops every five sixteenths; it is one sixteenth longer than
the first pattern, so they will play out of sync with each other but intime with a shared pulse, a phenomenon known as polyrhythm.

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Problems of Progressing
Asynchronous or Polyrhythmic Loops

The simultaneous juxtaposition of these two patterns creates aninteresting auditory phenomenon. The ear can now hear threesimultaneous patterns: the two that are actually being played and theresulting composite, which finally comes back into sync every
20 sixteenth notes:

126Problems of Progressing
Asynchronous or Polyrhythmic Loops

Here are some variations on these concepts:> Try adding more loops of differing lengths. For example, adding athird loop to the earlier example that repeats every three sixteenth
notes will create a composite that is three times as long; the original
patterns will realign after 60 sixteenth notes.
> Rather than letting the composite naturally realign, you could“artificially” realign it anywhere in an arrangement by simply pasting
the clips so they begin at that point.
> Some DAWs allow automation to loop at a length that is “unlinked”
from the length of the notes in the clip. For example, you could create
an envelope that varies a synthesizer’s filter cutoff and have thisenvelope loop at yet another length from the loops containing notes.
Even if your DAW doesn’t have this functionality within clips, you
could manually create repeating automation patterns of any length
when you build your arrangement.
> Similarly, if you have some kind of modulation source that can control
parameters (like an LFO, for example), you could set this to a rate
which is again asynchronous in relation to the looping notes.
> If you’re using a plug-in instrument, try using duplicates of the
instrument with slightly altered timbres, rather than actually using
the exact same instrument. This will weaken the sense of a single
composite pattern but may be more interesting anyway. You could
even use this technique with hardware synths, provided you haveenough of them (or you’re willing to bounce to audio after recording
each pattern separately).
> When set against other instruments that are playing in more standard
loop lengths, even a single “odd” loop can create the same kind ofinteresting effects. This approach is common in a lot of early acidtracks; listen to almost anything by Hardfloor for examples.

127Problems of Progressing
Asynchronous or Polyrhythmic Loops

Layering of simultaneous asynchronous loops is a common hallmarkof the so-called “Berlin School” of electronic music from the 70s and
80s, which was largely defined by multiple modular sequencers, eachplaying a monophonic loop consisting of a different number of notes.
A similar technique can be found in ambient pieces such as Brian Eno’s
Music for Airports, which is made from multiple tape loops of different
lengths. This “analog” approach to the concept is truly asynchronous—
if played forever, uneven tape loops are unlikely to ever resynchronize.
You could achieve a similar effect in your DAW by offsetting one of yourloop lengths so that it’s not quite aligned to the metric grid. Try playing
with the amount of offset until you find relationships which soundinteresting. This can create some very unusual rhythmic effects.

128Misusing Rhythmic Tools
Problem:
You have a variety of tools in your DAW
arsenal—such as quantization, slicing, andbeat-juggling effects—that are designed tohelp you work with rhythmic material. But
you feel like there’s more potential in thesetools that you haven’t yet discovered.
Some workflows and effects are clearly designed for use with very
specific types of material. But there’s no reason why you can’t
repurpose them for other uses. Here are some ideas for how tocreatively misuse rhythmic tools to achieve unexpected results.

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Problems of Progressing
Misusing Rhythmic Tools

Solutions:
Misusing Quantization
Quantization is typically used to correct timing errors in manually
played MIDI material and, in some DAWs, audio samples. But there are
a number of ways to use quantization “incorrectly,” sometimes withsurprising results.
One interesting experiment: Try quantizing to a note value that is
substantially slower or faster than the source material. If you played
sixteenth notes, for example, try quantizing to a slower note value
like quarter notes. If you originally played a monophonic figure, you’ll
end up generating chords. You can even apply successively larger
quantization values to already quantized material to achieve the same
effect. Here’s a figure played in sixteenth notes:

And here’s the same material after quantizing to quarter notes:

130Problems of Progressing
Misusing Rhythmic Tools

Another way to generate unexpected results from quantization is tostart by playing your parts at a dramatically faster tempo than you
actually intend. Because the errors in your playing will likely be more
extreme than usual, applying quantization will then “correct” the note
placements to unusual positions. When you then slow the tempo down
to a more musically appropriate one, you may have created patterns
that you never would have played intentionally.

Misusing Slicing
Slicing is typically used to separate rhythmic events (such as drumhits) from audio material such as drum beats or bass lines. But there’s
no reason why you can’t slice any audio material, including entirely
ambient pads, field recordings, or other non-rhythmic samples.
Another idea: If your DAW allows you to create or move markers in
the original audio to determine the positions at which slices will becreated, try placing the markers in deliberately “wrong” places.
In many DAWs, slicing generates a new instrument—and potentiallya new effects chain—for each slice. This makes it easy to apply
dramatically different types of processing to individual slices, regardlessof their source. For this reason, slicing can often lead to interesting
results even when you’re slicing things in the “wrong” ways.

Misusing Beat-Juggling Effects
Effects that chop and rearrange incoming audio material in real time
are normally used for creating variations of beats. But, as with theslicing examples discussed previously, you can also create interesting
results by feeding these effects with any other material, including
things that have no clear rhythm at all.

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Problems of Progressing
Misusing Rhythmic Tools

Although these are some examples for how to misuse specificworkflows, consider applying this approach to all of your tools. Any
effect, instrument, or workflow can potentially yield interesting results
when used in unusual ways. Learn what your tools are supposed to do,but don’t be afraid to make them do something else.

1323+3+2 Rhythm
Problem:
There’s a particular off-kilter, asymmetrical,
funky rhythm that you keep hearing in musicof all kinds, from hip-hop to footwork to rockand roll. What is it, and how can you use it inyour own music?
For new producers, there’s a tendency to be overwhelmed by theperception that all music is radically unique. The reality, however, isthat there is a shared vocabulary of underlying musical patterns that
artists frequently reuse across a variety of genres. Here’s one of themost common.

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Problems of Progressing
3+3+2 Rhythm

Solution:
The tresillo, or 3+3+2 pattern, is a widely used rhythmic pattern. Its
origins are unknown, but it’s a staple of African and Latin music andwas eventually incorporated into early jazz, after which it made its way
to all of jazz’s descendants: R&B, rock, funk, and eventually modern
electronic music. In its simplest form, the 3+3+2 pattern looks like this:The “3+3+2” refers to the number of sixteenth notes between hits, andthe pattern repeats every two beats. The pattern can also be playedwith other note durations; a half-time version would be measured ineighth notes, for example, and would repeat every four beats.
As a stand-alone pattern, 3+3+2 might not be so useful, but it really
becomes interesting when overlaid against other patterns that are more
symmetrical. For example, here’s the previous example as a kick drum
pattern underlying a basic rock groove and expanded to fill a full bar:134

Problems of Progressing
3+3+2 Rhythm

If the backbeats occur at half the speed (on beat 3 rather than beats 2
and 4), this same pattern begins to resemble a simplified version of thedrum programming heard in a lot of bass music. With the addition of hihats on the offbeat eighth notes, the drum part for the track “No Think”
by Sepalcure is based off this basic pattern:

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Problems of Progressing
3+3+2 Rhythm

As you can see, there is a huge range of possibilities available just by
combining the standard 3+3+2 rhythm with various other rhythms.
Additionally, there are a number of ways to subtly vary the basic
pattern, which can yield even more possibilities.
Skipping or adding one or more notes. By leaving out certain notes ofthe pattern, you can maintain the syncopation and asymmetry but in amore subtle way. Conversely, by adding notes to the pattern, you cancreate an embellished version. The main drum pattern in Lil Jon’s “Turn
Down for What” is an example of both processes at work. This is a fourbar phrase in which the kick drum pattern consists of three different
types of 3+3+2 pattern:

The first and third phrases are identical, with the middle “3” of the
3+3+2 left unplayed. The second and fourth phrases play the whole
pattern, but the fourth also adds an additional sixteenth immediately
before the final “2.” But because the 3+3+2 pattern has already been
so strongly established, we hear this note purely as an ornament; theunderlying 3+3+2 is still dominant.

136

Problems of Progressing
3+3+2 Rhythm

Extending the “3.” The “2” portion of the 3+3+2 pattern serves toresynchronize the gesture with the metric grid. But very interesting
things can happen if you delay this resynchronization by repeating the“3” parts of the gesture additional times. An example of this can beheard in the track “Tenderly” by Disclosure. Here, the two-bar kick andclap pattern looks like this:

There are six kick drums in the first bar, which are all three sixteenths
apart, followed by a pause and then a clear “realignment” with kicks onbeats two and three in the second bar. This creates a strong contrast
between rhythmic stability and instability, tension and release.
Now that you’re familiar with the 3+3+2 rhythm, you’ll start to notice itin various forms in all sorts of different kinds of music. And it’s not justuseful for drum patterns. You can use 3+3+2 to build bass lines, chords,
and melodies as well.

137

Programming Beats 1:
On LoosenessProblem:Your programmed drum beats just don’t havethe right feel. When you play them in by hand,
they sound sloppy. But when you program
them with the mouse or by quantizing yourmanual playing, they sound too perfect.
In certain genres of electronic music (like some techno, house,
electro, and EDM) absolute quantization is completely appropriate forthe style. It’s common to hear drum parts in these styles with both
perfect timing and completely consistent and unvarying dynamics.
But for other styles (like most hip-hop), a looser, more organic feel isoften more appropriate. In much of this music, drum parts are often
directly sampled from recordings of real drummers. So in songs where
programmed drums are desired instead, it often makes sense to try
to emulate the human feel that comes naturally to actual humans.
But while humanness isn’t a characteristic that comes naturally tomachines, many beat programmers don’t have the drumming skills
to program convincing drum parts that sound like something a real
drummer would play. Here are some ideas that can help you with yourbeat programming, whether you’re a drummer or not.

138Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 1: On Looseness

Solutions:
Apply Quantization in Small Amounts
Most modern DAWs provide controls that allow you to change theintensity or amount of quantization applied, usually represented asa percentage. For example, if you’re quantizing to sixteenth notes
at 100% quantization, the selected notes will be moved forward or
backward from their current position to the nearest sixteenth note.
But quantizing to 50% will move the notes only half of the distance
between their original position and the nearest “correct” note position.
This means that human inaccuracies will be reduced rather thaneliminated. This technique is probably the best way to retain a senseof human feel while still allowing you to correct for some sloppiness inyour playing.

Apply Quantization to Only Certain Instruments
After recording a drum pattern with a MIDI controller, the typicalapproach is to apply quantization to the entire pattern, which meansthat all of the instruments in the drum kit will be shifted as a single
unit. Instead of this, try selecting and quantizing only some of the
instruments in the kit, leaving the others exactly as you played them.
For example, try quantizing only the hi-hats, leaving the kick and snare
alone. Or try the inverse, leaving the hi-hats loose but quantizing the
kick and snare so that they’re perfectly in time. Although any perfectquantization is not really a representation of how a real drummer would
play, this technique can result in much more realistic-sounding drum
patterns. You can also combine this technique with the previous one
for even more possibilities.

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Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 1: On Looseness

Find Your “Natural” Tempo
A common technique when programming drum patterns in real timeis to record at a slow tempo and then increase the tempo during
playback. While it’s true that it may be easier to play accurately
at slower tempos, there’s usually a bottom limit to this, and mostdrummers (and non-drummers) find that their rhythm is most accurate
within a particular range of tempos—not too slow, and not too fast.
This range varies from person to person however, and if you hope to
improve your beat programming, experiment to find the tempos thatwork best for you. Once you’ve found something that feels comfortable,
try programming your beats here and see if you can get the feel you
want without applying any quantization afterwards. Keep in mind thattiming errors are generally more perceptible if you play back at a slower
tempo than you recorded, and less perceptible if you play back faster.

Humanize/Randomize
In addition to adjusting how much you quantize after recording,
you can also sometimes get very musical results by applying“humanization” (subtle timing and/or velocity randomization) to yourmaterial. Even if you’ve quantized something to lock completely to
the grid, humanization provides a way to reverse this effect, placing
notes some distance away from the quantized positions according towhatever algorithm your DAW uses for this process. Note that applying
randomization to material that hasn’t been quantized will likely justexaggerate any timing inaccuracies that were already there; thisprocess usually works best with material that’s exactly on the grid.

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Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 1: On Looseness

Adjusting Velocity Instead Of/In Addition to Timing
Although timing is the most important variable that determines the
feel of drum patterns, the relative volumes (velocities) of individual
notes can also have a significant effect. For example, a hi-hat patternin straight sixteenth notes sounds quite different if all of the velocities
are identical than it does if there is some variation in volume fromnote to note. Most drummers will play a pattern like this with a slightemphasis on the first and third sixteenths, while playing slightly quieter
on the second and fourth:

The image above shows a hi-hat pattern with perfect quantization
but with velocities similar to what a drummer might play. Even without
adjusting timing at all, you can often make a stiff, static groove come tolife by carefully adjusting some of the velocities.

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Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 1: On Looseness

Manually Shift Specific Elements
Both for quantized and unquantized material, the surefire way to get
the results you want is also the most time-consuming. Manually editing
individual notes to change their relationship to each other and to themetric grid can ensure that everything happens exactly where youwant it. Unfortunately, this assumes that you know what you’re looking
for, which may not be the case. Here are some ideas:> Try dragging some or all of the snare drum or hi-hat notes slightly
after their “intended” grid positions to create a heavy or “laidback” feel. You’ll often hear this “behind the beat” approach in funkdrumming. Here’s an example of hi-hats placed slightly after the beat:> Conversely, placing them early can make the music sound nervous
or “driving forward.” You’ll often hear ska or punk drummers play“ahead of the beat.” Here’s an example of hi-hats placed slightly
before the beat. Note that the “first” note has been moved to the endof the pattern, so that it plays slightly before the loop point.

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Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 1: On LoosenessHow far to move the notes is entirely up to you; there’s no formula forthis. Very small shifts tend to work well at slower tempos, while you’ll
need to make more drastic changes as the tempo increases. But ingeneral, even a little bit of distance from the grid can be very effective.
Keep in mind that if you move every instrument together, the listener
won’t hear any change. These subtle shifts are only audible if theyoccur in relation to other elements that have not been moved.

143

Programming Beats 2:
Linear Drumming
Problem:Your programmed drum beats tend to use
the available instruments in “expected”
ways: Hi-hats keep time, kick drums
emphasize the beats, snares/claps areplaced on or around the backbeats (beats
2 and 4). But in the music you admire,
you sometimes hear other, more creative
ways of working with drums. Sometimes it
almost sounds like the drums are playing
a “melody” of their own. But when you try
to create patterns like this, it just sounds
random and chaotic.
The various instruments in a drum kit have a tendency to be used ina somewhat standardized way. This is true across a variety of genres,
both acoustic and electronic. For example, here’s a very basic rock androll drum pattern:

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Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 2: Linear Drumming

The kick drum plays on every beat, the snare on the backbeats, and thehi-hats on every eighth note.
This can be converted into a very basic house pattern simply by
removing all of the hi-hat notes that appear on strong beats (leaving
only the offbeat eighth notes):

One of the hallmarks of these kinds of conventional drum patterns
is that they’re polyphonic—multiple instruments can play at thesame time. For a human drummer with four limbs, there’s a maximum
possible polyphony of four simultaneous “voices.” Of course in theelectronic realm, there’s no such limitation, although experienced
drum programmers who are working in styles that are meant to mimic
acoustic drums will generally stick with this four-voice limitation inorder to create parts that sound as realistic as possible.
A side effect of thinking about drum patterns as polyphonic textures
is that we tend to treat at least one layer as unvarying. In the grooves
discussed earlier, for example, note that each individual instrument
maintains a symmetrical pattern that never changes. In many musicalcontexts, these kinds of simple, steady patterns are completely
appropriate. But here’s another way of writing drum patterns that canyield some interesting results.

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Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 2: Linear Drumming

Solution:
Acoustic drummers (particularly in some funk, R&B, and fusion
contexts) sometimes use a type of playing called linear drumming.
This simply means monophonic—no two instruments can play at thesame time. Linear drumming is similar to the melodic technique calledhocket (see Linear Rhythm in Melodies (page 190)). An extremely
simple linear drumming pattern derived from the previous examples
might look like this:But rather than just taking a conventional pattern and removing
overlapping elements, try thinking about how to use the monophonicrequirement in creative ways. For example, treating a monophonicdrum part as a single, quasi-melodic line of notes may cause you tothink of each instrument as having the same level of importance,
rather than subconsciously assigning them to functional roles (like“timekeeping” or “accenting”). Consider the following pattern:

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Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 2: Linear Drumming

In the above pattern, sub-patterns in groups of three notes playagainst the expected flow of time, before “correcting” with a two-note
pattern at the end of the measure.

These types of unusual note groupings treat each instrument as
equally weighted, rather than using the overlaying of multiple voices
to emphasize particular beat positions. Interestingly, patterns likethis tend to be perceived very differently at different tempos. At a fast
tempo such as 170 bpm, this pattern takes on a “rolling” character,and the composite line—the perceived fusing of the separate parts—
becomes much more audible in relation to the individual notes. Linear
patterns like this are common in drum and bass grooves, for example.

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Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 2: Linear Drumming

It’s also potentially interesting to add an additional level of restriction.
You might decide, for example, that your pattern will be based entirely
on sixteenth notes, and that every sixteenth-note position on the gridmust contain a note. A complex two-measure version of such a patternmight look like this:As with the previous pattern, the linear approach here helps to“democratize” the instruments. No one voice has dominance over theothers, and the traditional roles of timekeeping elements vs. accenting
element are eliminated. Also, notice that there’s a lot of variation innote velocities in this example. Just by changing the volume of certain
notes in relation to the others, you can make a single pattern of notes
take on an entirely different character.
Linear drum patterns aren’t right for every musical context, but they canoffer a different way of thinking about beat programming that may help
you come up with new patterns and variations that you might otherwise
not have considered. And of course, as with all of the suggestions inthis book, there’s no reason to restrict yourself to strictly following themonophonic requirement. If a linear pattern would sound better withsome instances of multiple simultaneous voices, go ahead and use them.

148

Programming Beats 3:
Ghost Notes
Problem:
You’re listening to a lot of acoustic
drummers to get ideas for how to program
more realistic drum parts, and you keep
hearing very quiet sounds in between what
are the clearly important hits. These arebarely audible but still somehow soundintentional. And most importantly, they seemto make the groove work better. What arethese sounds, and how can you use them inyour own music?
In a lot of “purely” electronic music, there is often little to no variationin dynamics between notes played by a single instrument or evenbetween all of the instruments. Each kick drum, clap, snare, etc. is
generally triggered at the same volume. While this makes sense inmany genres, it’s quite different from how human drummers play, and if
you’re interested in making your drum parts sound more human, it may
help to incorporate a technique drummers call ghost notes.

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Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 3: Ghost Notes

Solution:
Ghost notes are extremely quiet notes, normally played on the snare
drum, that help to fill in the space between the prominent notes in
the pattern. Ghost notes are nearly (but not completely) silent and are
generally played as quietly as possible (although this varies in practiceand between genres). For example, here’s a basic one-bar rock drum
pattern played without ghost notes:

The hi-hat provides the regular “timekeeping” function, while thekick and snare provide accents that orient the listener to the place
within the bar. This works fine and might be perfect for many musicalsituations. But in some cases, it might sound better if there’s a bit more
activity in between the snare backbeats.

150Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 3: Ghost Notes

A drummer might play the pattern like this:The additional low-velocity snare notes on the second and third
sixteenths of beats one and three help to propel the musical time
forward.
Another nice use of ghost notes is for adding very quick gestures thatlead into or “anticipate” important structural points in the groove, suchas the downbeat. Here’s an example:

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Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 3: Ghost Notes

The blue notes are the thirty-second notes that drive towards the
downbeat and might be heard in combination with the downbeat’s kickdrum hit as a single musical gesture.
To exaggerate this effect even more, some drummers will evenplay these thirty-second notes quite a bit behind the beat (seeProgramming Beats 1: On Looseness (page 138)):

Note that when programming ghost notes in a DAW, the actual musicalresult is entirely dependent on how velocity-sensitive the instrument
is that’s being triggered. If you’re using a drum machine for example,
there may be no velocity variation at all, in which case adding ghostnotes will simply create a different pattern. Ghost notes are usuallymost effective if you’re triggering multisampled acoustic drums, inwhich there are actually low-velocity samples that will respond the way
a real drum would respond. But of course, these techniques can also
work with entirely electronic sounds as well. And although drummers
usually play their ghost notes on the snare, you can also experimentwith moving your ghost notes to an entirely different instrument.

152

Programming Beats 4:
Top, Bottom, Left, Right
Problem:
From listening to a lot of music, you have ageneral understanding of how to programbeats that sound similar to those in the musicthat inspires you. But you don’t really havea sense of how the various drums in a drum
kit relate to each other or the way human
drummers think when they sit down at thedrums and play. As a result, you’re concernedthat your programmed beats are either too
mechanical sounding or are simply the resultof your own interpretation and guesswork
about what you hear in other music.
Even if you have no intention of writing “human”-sounding drum parts,
it can be helpful to understand some of the physical implications ofplaying a real drum kit. Here are some ways that drummers approach
their instrument.

153

Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 4: Top, Bottom, Left, Right

Solution:
At a philosophical level, a drum kit can be thought of as divided into
top and bottom halves. The top half includes all of the cymbals: thehi-hat, ride, crashes, and possibly more esoteric cymbals like splashes,
Chinese cymbals, gongs, etc. These are the “top” half for two reasons:
They’re both physically higher than the drums, and they also occupy
a higher range in the frequency spectrum. In contrast, the bottom halfis the drums themselves: the kick, snare, and toms. (The snare is a
special case and can be thought of as somewhere in between the top
and the bottom in frequency. But for our purposes, let’s consider it partof the bottom group).
Drummers tend to unconsciously approach beat making from either
the “top down” or the “bottom up,” depending primarily on genre.
Jazz drumming beats, for example, are generally built from the top
down, with the ride cymbal pattern being the most important element,
followed by the hi-hat (played by the foot). In this context, the kickand snare drum serve to accent or interrupt the pattern which isestablished by the cymbals. A typical jazz drumming pattern might look
like this:154

Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 4: Top, Bottom, Left, Right

In contrast, rock, pop, or R&B drumming beats are built from the bottom
up, with the interplay between the kick and the snare comprising themost important layer and the hi-hat or ride cymbal patterns serving as asecondary element. A typical rock drumming pattern might look like this:Note that in both jazz and rock beats, the cymbals generally play
simple, repeating patterns, while the kick and snare play gesturesthat are more asymmetrical. But in jazz, those simple cymbal patterns
are fundamental signifiers of the genre. In rock, the cymbal patterns
are secondary in importance, while the asymmetrical kick and snare
gestures are what define the music.
An awareness of these drumming concepts might give you somethings to think about when writing your own electronic drum parts. Are
you thinking from the top (cymbals) down, or from the bottom (kick andsnare) up? Is the genre you’re working in defined by repeating patterns(such as the steady four-on-the-floor kick drum of house and techno)
or by asymmetrical gestures (such as the snare rolls used for buildups
in trance)?
In addition to the top/bottom dichotomy, drummers also must makedecisions along the left/right axis when determining how a particularpattern is divided between the left and right hands. On a drum kit,some of this is determined by the physical location of the instruments.

155

Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 4: Top, Bottom, Left, Right

But for an instrument like a hi-hat that can be reached by either hand,
there is often a subtle difference in sound depending on how thepattern is played. For example, consider the following beat:At slow-to-moderate tempos, most drummers would probably play
the hi-hat part with one hand, leaving the other free for the snare
drum. But once the tempo becomes too fast, it’s no longer possible
to play a continuous stream of sixteenth notes with one hand. At
this point, many drummers would switch to playing the hi-hat withalternating sticking, each stroke with the opposite hand. But thisrequires some compromises: Beats two and four require both hands
to be playing together, so the player must either move one hand very
quickly between the snare and hi-hat or play at least two consecutive
hi-hat notes with the same hand. In both cases, there will likely be aslightly different resulting sound. Even the subtle physical differences
between two drumsticks can result in a different sound versus when apattern is played with a single hand.
Of course, none of these physical restrictions apply to the electronic
domain by default. There’s no inherent physical speed limit andno need for any notion of “alternating stickings.” At any tempo,
consecutive notes can sound completely identical if that’s your intent.
But if you’d like to apply some of the sonic characteristics that comeabout as a result of these human restrictions, you can do so manually.
For example, you could try creating a very small change in velocity

156

Problems of Progressing
Programming Beats 4: Top, Bottom, Left, Rightfor every other note in a repeating pattern. Or with a bit more work,
you could actually use a slightly different sound for every other note.
Some software samplers have a feature called “round robin” that
automatically plays a different sample with each key press.
Thinking like a drummer can be a useful exercise when writing beats
for any genre—even ones that have no overt relationship to acoustic
music at all.

157

Bass Lines and Kick Drums
as a Single Composite
Problem:You’ve learned all of the engineering
tricks and technical solutions for a clean,well-defined low end. You use sidechain
compression on your bass lines and EQ
to remove unnecessary low-frequency
information on every track besides kick andbass. But somehow, you’re just not able toachieve the same clarity and definition in
the bass as the tracks you admire. You know
you’re doing everything right technically,
but things still sound muddy.
One of the most commonly discussed areas in music production is how
to deal with issues in the low end. The solutions provided are almost
always on the production side:> Use EQ to create space for the bass in the kick drum’s track,and vice versa.
> Use EQ on every other track to remove low end, which makes roomfor both kick and bass while reducing overall signal level.
> Use sidechain compression to automatically reduce the gain of thebass when the kick is sounding.
But what’s discussed much less frequently is how to solve these
problems on the musical side. Here are some compositional ideas for
improving the clarity of low end.

158

Problems of Progressing
Bass Lines and Kick Drums as a Single Composite

Solution:
Rather than thinking of your kick and bass as two separate musicallines, try to think of them as a single composite monophonic line. In
this scenario, you not only can’t have more than one bass note playing
simultaneously, you also can’t play a bass note at the same time as the
kick. This requires you to make compositional decisions; how can you
create a bass line that fits between the notes in your kick drum pattern(and vice versa)?
In some genres (such as trance and some flavors of commercial EDM),
bass notes are commonly placed only on offbeats, while the kick drum
notes occur on every downbeat. This is a simple way of creating asingle composite line and is a defining characteristic of music in thesegenres.
The image below is an example of a characteristic trance bass line (thered notes), with the kick drum pattern added below (the blue notes).

159

Problems of Progressing
Bass Lines and Kick Drums as a Single Composite

Other genres have less strict “rules” governing the relationshipbetween kick and bass drum. In techno or house, for example, thekick drum is still often placed on every beat, but bass lines might
be much more rhythmically intricate. Here’s an example of a moredetailed bass line (again shown alongside the kick drum notes) thatstill adheres to the notion of the kick and bass elements forminga monophonic composite.

Notice that, in both of the above examples, neither the beginnings nor
the endings of the bass line notes ever overlap the kick drum notes(or each other). Provided your kick and bass sounds are short, thesepatterns should create a very clean, truly monophonic composite,which should help maintain sonic clarity in the low end. But the
duration of sounds can have a big impact on the effectiveness of thistype of writing, and what you see in your patterns may not represent
the reality of what you hear. For example, 808-style kick drums often
sustain for a long time, so even though you’ve programmed short notes160

Problems of Progressing
Bass Lines and Kick Drums as a Single Composite

in your MIDI editor, the resultant sounds may still overlap, causing lowend interference. On the other hand, there may be some situations inwhich zero overlap can sound clipped and unnatural, and sustainednotes make more musical sense. In these cases, you can still achievea lot of the benefits of this composite technique by at least making
sure that the attacks of the notes never overlap. Here’s an example oflong, sustained bass notes but with the note onsets themselves still
carefully composed to stay out of the way of the kick drum line.

If, after applying these techniques, you find that you’re still having
problems with low-end clarity, you can always go back and apply
the production tips mentioned previously. And since you’ve alreadycomposed your way out of the most severe issues, techniques likesidechain compression and low-cut EQing may now have a much more
pronounced effect.

161

Problems of Progressing
Bass Lines and Kick Drums as a Single Composite~ Note: In the examples mentioned here, the kick drum pattern has
been added purely as a visual reference. But it might make sense
for you to actually do this in your own music by copying the notesof the kick drum clips, pasting them into your bass clips, and thendeactivating or muting them so they don’t make sound. This createsa clear visual relationship between the bass and kick lines, making iteasier to write as if they were a single line.

162

Drums to Pitches
and Vice Versa
Problem:
Sometimes you have great ideas for drum
patterns but aren’t able to find melodies
or harmonies that fit. Other times, you havethe opposite problem: You come up withgreat pitched ideas but can’t write drum
parts that work with them.
It’s common to write bits and pieces of songs in no particular order.
In fact, this kind of Goal-less Exploration (page 62) can be a great
way to spend creative time without the pressure of needing to finish asong. And ideas created in this way can often be saved as Scraps andSketches (page 74) to be revisited later. But sometimes, you really
do want to finish the song but only seem to be able to compose one
type of part.

163

Problems of Progressing
Drums to Pitches and Vice Versa

Solution:
One of the greatest benefits of working with MIDI is that the notes ofa musical idea are a completely different type of data than the sounds
triggered by those notes. This means that the notes can be repurposed
to play an entirely different sound. It’s common to create a bass line,
for example, and then try it out through a number of different bass
sounds before finding the one that fits the best. What’s less common,
however, is using the MIDI notes created for one instrument to trigger
a completely different category of instrument. And doing this can yieldsome really interesting results.
For example, let’s take this drum pattern, which might be appropriate
for house or related genres:

By simply copying this clip to a track containing a pitched instrument,
we end up with this:164

Problems of Progressing
Drums to Pitches and Vice Versa

The resulting notes are “mapped” from the notes that triggered theappropriate drum sounds in the original clip. These sound a bit strange
when played as they are. They’re quite low in pitch, so the resulting
chords sound somewhat thick and muddy. Also, the actual pitches
aren’t particularly harmonious (although this might be exactly what
you want, depending on the music you’re making). But the pattern isrhythmically and structurally interesting, and there are a number ofthings we can do to make the notes work better (see Creating Variation
3: Note Transformations (page 108)), including simply transposing
the whole pattern to a higher octave. Another way to get the notes towork together better is to selectively transpose some of them—either
manually, by dragging them to new pitches, or automatically, through theuse of some sort of scale-correcting MIDI effect (if your DAW has one).
Now, in just a few steps, you’ve created a melodic or harmonic patternthat’s musically related to the drum pattern (because it’s rhythmically
identical) and which might be useful as an idea in your song.
Of course, you can also follow this process in the other direction. If you
have an interesting melodic or harmonic part, try copying the clip toa track containing drums. You’ll probably end up with a lot of strange
drum choices, but you’ll likely get an interesting rhythmic pattern. Bytransposing the notes so that they play more appropriate drums, you
might end up with an interesting drum part that you never would havewritten otherwise.
Some DAWs and plug-ins allow you to analyze recordings of audio
and extract the pitch and rhythmic information into new MIDI clips.
While this functionality is normally used to extract specific types ofaudio recordings into similar types of MIDI recordings, you might getinteresting results if you use the “wrong” algorithm when converting.
For example, if you’re converting a piece of polyphonic audio, try
telling your conversion utility that the material actually consists ofdrums instead. The tool will then try to figure out the pitches implied165

Problems of Progressing
Drums to Pitches and Vice Versaby the drums, which will likely result in harmonies that are completely
unexpected (but which might be musically interesting).
What’s exciting about these possibilities isn’t just that you can createlots of new ideas from a small amount of source material, but also thatthe resulting ideas will be musically connected to their sources. Whileit might be boring to simply play the same rhythmic idea in the drums
and a pitched part simultaneously, having real musical connections
between the two allows you to alter one or the other in a way thatmakes the new part unique but still identifiable as a “descendant” ofthe original part.

166

Tuning Everything
Problem:
You’re happy with all of the parts of yoursong, and the arrangement feels right.
You’re happy with all of the sounds as well—
but only when you listen to them in isolation.
When you listen to everything together,
the energy and power that you hear in theindividual parts seems to get blurred or lost.
You’ve done all of the EQing and production
tricks to make space for the various parts inthe mix, but it still isn’t working.
Sometimes there are musical factors, rather than production ones,
that greatly affect whether or not a mix “gels” into a single, cohesive
sound. One of the most important—and most overlooked—musicalconsiderations is tuning. Here are some tips for ensuring that all of theelements in your mix are in tune with each other.

167

Problems of Progressing
Tuning Everything

Solution:
Producers are generally pretty careful about making sure thatthe overtly pitched elements in their tracks are in tune with eachother. Except in some experimental genres where unusual tuning
relationships are a fundamental part of the musical concept, things likebass lines, harmony parts, and melodic elements sound terrible when
their tunings don’t match. But producers are often less careful whenit comes to tuning elements like drums, which typically have a lessdefinite pitch. In genres that use acoustic drums, this isn’t usually an
issue; acoustic drums are generally heard as unpitched. (The exception
is toms, which often are tuned both to each other and to the key ofthe song.) But in electronic music, drum sounds are often generated
via synthesis; kick drums are often made from pure sine waves, forexample. And in these cases, drums may actually have a clearly audible
pitch that should usually be tuned to the other instruments in the song.
As mentioned earlier, electronic kick drums are the most obvious
candidates for tuning, especially if they’re made from sustained sine
waves. And as with acoustic toms, electronic toms are also often
clearly pitched. If you’re using toms in your song, you probably don’t
want them all at the same pitch, so it might make sense to tune them inintervals that spell out the song’s root chord. For example, a song in C
minor might work well with the kick tuned to a C and toms tuned to an
Eb and a G.
But even other percussion sounds with less obvious pitches canoften still be tuned. Wooden and metallic sounds, such as sampled orsynthesized woodblocks and cowbells, often have a clear pitch. Andeven cymbals, snares, claps, and other “noisy” sounds can sometimes
be tunable. You may not hear a pitch when listening to these sounds forthe first time, but over the course of a whole song, certain frequencies
within almost any sound will start to come to the forefront and will
likely be perceived as the pitch of that sound.

168

Problems of Progressing
Tuning Everything

In situations where you’re working with noisy sounds, the pitch may
be hard to identify, but you may still hear that it’s wrong. A spectrum
analyzer, in conjunction with an EQ, can be really helpful in thesecases. You can use the spectrum analyzer to find the frequencies
that are louder than the average noise level, and then use EQ toeither emphasize those frequencies (if they happen to be in tune) or
attenuate them (if they’re out of tune with respect to the harmonic andmelodic parts).
If you’ve committed to tuning your drums to the key of your song, but
you’re writing a song that changes keys part way through, you’ll needto make decisions about whether to retune the drums as well. In somecases, simply retuning the kick and toms might be enough. But you’ll
need to carefully listen and think about how the drums work in relation
to the other parts after the key change and adjust as necessary. In
many cases, it may sound odd for the drums to suddenly be repitched.
Ideally, drum tuning shouldn’t be noticeable to most listeners; drums
that are in tune with the other instruments shouldn’t sound pitched.
Instead, they should just make the whole song feel more like a single,
cohesive entity.

169

Silence and Noise
Problem:
You understand that the fundamental
components of music are sound, harmony,
melody, rhythm, and form. But you’re surethere’s something else that’s happening in
the music that inspires you, and you can’t
quite find it in your own music.
It’s common to think that the “music” is what you directly hear—thenotes that play instruments that fill up what would otherwise be empty
space. But a more interesting approach is to recognize and takeadvantage of the fact that silence and incidental noise can be madeinto fundamental parts of the musical texture. They can be as much acomponent of the sound of your music as a bass line.
Here are some ways that you can start to use silence and noise in yourown music.

170

Problems of Progressing
Silence and Noise

Solution:
Listen to other music and think about what’s happening in the spaces
between the notes. Is there ever actually complete silence? In mostmusic, you’ll probably find that at any given moment, there’s always atleast something you can hear. Even in sparse textures, there’s usuallya bit of reverb, delay, or other ambience that fills the gaps between
notes. You can usually achieve this texture pretty easily by adding
subtle spatial effects to certain elements.
But in some music, the space between the notes is truly silent. Listen,for example, to music by artists such as Atom™. Here, reverb is usedsparingly, and each musical gesture seems to enter and exit against
a backdrop of empty space. The result is an overall texture that’s
extremely clean, surgically precise, and very “digital.” To make musicthat evokes this feeling, you’ll need to be very careful with spatial
effects, as well as with the placement and duration of your sounds.
Long sustained chords might not make sense in this context, norwill sounds with slow attacks or releases. It might help to think ofeverything as a short, percussive element.
At the other end of the spectrum, some music has no silence at all,with every gap between notes filled with some kind of ambience ornoise that is so present that it’s as important to the texture as the“intentional” sounds. Dub techno, as exemplified by artists such as
Rhythm & Sound, is largely defined by this approach to space. Although
the instrumental layers are quite sparse, there is a constant layer ofnoise that suggests the use of mysterious, ancient, broken equipment.
This type of ambience might seem hard to achieve in modern, ultraclean DAW environments, but here are some ways to create it:> Record the sound of an open microphone in a quiet room (or even justa channel on your audio interface with nothing connected) and thendramatically boost the level of the recording. The inherent noise ofmics, preamps, and audio interfaces can take on a new character whenboosted enough to be heard as an intentional element in a mix.

171

Problems of Progressing
Silence and Noise> Sample the sound of a turntable’s needle in the “runout” groove at
the end of a vinyl record.
> Field recordings of almost any source can take on the character of
abstract noise, provided they’re processed in the right ways. Try
applying lots of reverb to urban, factory, or nature recordings.
> Certain plug-ins are designed specifically to create artificial noise,
although these can sometimes sound quite consistent (and thus
artificial) unless heavily processed.
> If your DAW has this functionality, try creating feedback loops bysending the output of a return track back into itself, (carefully)
adjusting the send level, and then recording the output. You cancreate very interesting types of noise with this technique—especiallywhen using effects on the return track.
Whether you’re aiming to incorporate noise as a compositional element
or are aiming for clinical, ultra-clean textures, it pays to think carefully
about what’s happening between the notes in your music and to makeconscious decisions about how to make musical use of that space.

172

Sampling the
Old-Fashioned Way
Problem:
You hear more and more music that uses
samples in ways that sound like a deliberate
under-leveraging of available technology.
With characteristics such as “chipmunk
vocals” and sampled breakbeats that soundlike they’re pitched up, a lot of contemporary
garage, footwork, and related styles use aset of techniques that sound like they’retaking advantage of the restrictions of
vintage hardware. You’d like to be able tocapture some of this nostalgic quality in yourown music, but you can’t seem to figure out
how it’s done using modern software tools.
One of the most important technical developments in samplingtechnology was the advent of time-stretching: adjusting the pitch ofa sample independently of its tempo (and vice versa). Prior to timestretching, pitch and tempo were inextricably linked; the only way
to make a sample play at a higher pitch was to play it faster. Modern
time-stretching technology is great for preserving the realism ofretuned samples and allows for considerable flexibility in reusing
rhythmic samples at a range of tempos. But some of the artifacts andquirks in the older approach imparted a lot of interesting musicalcharacter. Here’s a technique for employing old-fashioned approaches
to sampling in a creative way.

173

Problems of Progressing
Sampling the Old-Fashioned Way

Solution:
In many modern DAWs, time-stretching is enabled by default forclips, under the assumption that this is the most flexible choice formost users in most musical situations. Although there is always a
way to disable this functionality, either globally or on a per-clip basis,
this usually just causes the clips to play back at their original tempo
regardless of the tempo of the song. To really see what can happen
when time-stretching is eliminated, try playing the samples from asoftware or hardware sampler instead of placing them along yoursong’s timeline. Now, samples played at different pitches on the
keyboard will also play at different tempos. This can yield particularlyinteresting results when working with samples that have their own
inherent rhythm (such as breakbeats or whole musical phrases).
The track “Leavin” by DJ Rashad uses this technique to great effect.
The main hook in the track uses a sample of a two-note pattern:a dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth. The four-bar phrase
consists of this sample triggered every half note. For the first twobars the sample is at its root pitch (E). In bar three, it’s triggered three
semitones higher (G). In bar four, it’s triggered two semitones below
the root (D). In a sequencer, the played pattern might look like this:174

Problems of Progressing
Sampling the Old-Fashioned Way

But because this is played using old-fashioned sampling technology,
the transposed pitches play back the sample’s two-note phrase atdifferent speeds. What you hear is something closer to this:The first two bars play the dotted eighth/sixteenth pattern of theoriginal sample. But the pattern in the next bar is transposed higher
and thus plays faster—closer to the first two notes of a quarter note
triplet. Finally the samples in the fourth bar play slower—closer tostraight quarter notes.
If this sample were to have been triggered using a time-stretching
sampler, there would be no rhythmic variation when transposing. The
pitch would have changed, but the internal rhythm of the sample would
have remained at a dotted eighth + sixteenth each time the sample
was triggered. You’d hear something like this, which is much lessinteresting:175Problems of Progressing
Sampling the Old-Fashioned Way

These examples may be easier to visualize in musical notation (but
don’t worry if you don’t read music; these are simply notational
representations of the three patterns shown previously).
What is played:
q=160

& ˙

˙

˙

˙

˙

˙

˙

˙

What you hear (as a result of using old-fashioned, non-time-stretchedsampling):
q=160& œ™ œ Œ œ™ œ Œœ™ œ Œ œ™ œ Œ33

œ œ Œ œ œ Œœ œ œ œ176

Problems of Progressing
Sampling the Old-Fashioned Way

What you would hear (if a time-stretching sampler were used):q=160& œ™ œ Œ œ™ œ Œœ™ œ Œ œ™ œ Œœ™ œ Œ œ™ œ Œ

œ™ œ

Œ

œ™ œ

By deliberately using an old-fashioned approach to sampling, DJ
Rashad made use of the limitations in the technology to create a moreinteresting musical result than he could have achieved by using a more
modern approach.

177ŒCreating Melodies 1:
Contour
Problem:
When you listen to music that inspires you,the melodies are strong, memorable, andhummable. In contrast, your melodies feel
weak, aimless, and wandering.
Writing a good melody is challenging. Here are some ideas for writing
better melodies by thinking about their contour.

178

Problems of Progressing
Creating Melodies 1: Contour

Solution:
The term contour is used to refer to the shape of a melody over time—
whether the notes rise to higher pitches, fall to lower ones, remain at
the same pitch, or some combination of these. Additionally, we use
contour to discuss whether a melody moves by adjacent notes (known
as conjunct motion or motion by step) or by larger intervals (known as
disjunct motion or motion by leap).
A few general rules:> Good melodies have a strong sense of balance between bothaspects of contour: rise vs. fall and conjunct motion vs. disjunctmotion. For example, if a melody rises for a while, it might makesense for it to then fall by roughly the same amount.
> If a melody has moved by step for a while, a good choice might beto then proceed by leap in the opposite direction. The converse
also applies: Commonly, a melody that has moved by leap will thenmove by step in the opposite direction. One situation in which thismight not be necessary is when a melody is simply an arpeggiationof a chord in the harmony. In these cases, the leaps between chordtones may sound “complete” even without stepwise resolution in the
opposite direction.
> Good melodies often have a single peak note. That is, the highest
pitch in the melody occurs only once. Furthermore, that peak note
often (although certainly not always) occurs on a “strong” beat.
(Assuming a 4/4 meter, the first and third beats are considered“strong” or “on” beats while the second and fourth are considered“weak” or “off” beats. As you subdivide beats into shorter notevalues such as eighths and sixteenths, the same rule applies. That is,
the odd-numbered subdivisions are perceived as stronger than theeven-numbered ones.)179Problems of Progressing
Creating Melodies 1: Contour

Let’s consider an example of a melody that (mostly) follows these rules:

The melody opens with a large leap up, which is immediately followedby two notes that step down. This pattern is then repeated in thenext passage. Following this, we “break” the rules briefly to reach thepeak note: A leap up is followed by two steps up. The second half ofthe melody also strays a bit more from the rules. Bar 3 begins with adescending stepwise figure which is then followed by a leap in thesame direction. Next, we step up, and then leap down. The final gesture
breaks the rules once again: We step up and then continue upward byleap to the last note.
The general contour of the melody is a kind of arc: We start from thelowest note in the passage and climb gradually to the highest note at
roughly the halfway point of the melody, before gradually descending
again to cover roughly the same amount of space in the second half.

180

Problems of Progressing
Creating Melodies 1: Contour

As you listen to other melodies with contour in mind, you’ll findthat most (including the one discussed earlier) don’t follow theseguidelines 100 percent of the time. But in general, you’ll find that thecontour of most good melodies maintains a balance between ascentand descent and stepwise and leapwise motion.

181

Creating Melodies 2:
Using Motives
Problem:
When you listen to music that inspires you,the melodies are strong, memorable, andhummable. In contrast, your melodies feel
weak, aimless, and wandering.
Writing a good melody is challenging. Here are some ideas for writing
better melodies by using motives.

182

Problems of Progressing
Creating Melodies 2: Using Motives

Solution:
Part of the reason writing melodies is so intimidating is that it’s easy
to imagine a melody as just a long string of notes without any internal
logic. But melodies often have an inherent formal structure that is asort of small-scale version of the formal structure used to construct awhole song. The smallest recognizable fragment of a melody is called
a motive, and melodies are often constructed from just one or two
motives. Motives are simple patterns that can be combined, repeated,
and altered in various ways.
Here’s an example of a melody from Daft Punk’s “Doin’ It Right” that’s
built from variations of just a single motive:

And here is the same example in musical notation:
q=89

4& 4 #œ ™
If

&

œ œ

œ

œ œ ™ #œ

you

do

it

œ ™ #œ œ nœ
Sha -

dows

on

right

œ #œ ™ #œ
you

break

#œ ™ #œ œ

œ

œ œ™

œ

Let

go

all

night

it

#œ ™ #œ œœœ œ ™ #œ

Out

to

the

in

light

183

Problems of Progressing
Creating Melodies 2: Using Motives

In the MIDI example, the boxes outline each of the four sections of this
melody, and each is a variation of the same five-note motive. In the firsttwo bars, the first four notes are an ascending stepwise motive of two
notes, repeated twice, while the fifth note is another stepwise ascent.
In the second two bars, we again have the initial four notes built
from the repeated two-note motive, but the fifth note is now a leap
downward. The contour of the whole melody forms an arc, beginningand ending on the same note (see Creating Melodies 1: Contour (page178)). In this example, a rich, usable melody is constructed simply bycreating variations of a single five-note motive.
The melody in the chorus of Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” is a bit more
complex but still uses variations of only two alternating motives. Hereis the melody as MIDI notes:

184

Problems of Progressing
Creating Melodies 2: Using Motives

And here is the same example in musical notation:
q=95

4& 4 bœ ™
I'm& bœ ™
in& bœ ™
I'm& bœ ™

œ œ

œ

so

fan

œ œ

œ

the

fast

œ œ

œ

so

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Each bar contains one of the two motives and these alternate every
other bar. In the MIDI example, these are labeled as A and B. The A
motives are repeated identically each time they occur, while the B
motives are subject to variation. Bar four (labeled B’) is essentially justa transposed version of bar two, with a slight rhythmic embellishment.
And bar eight is just a more embellished version of bar four. Bar six is
an identical repeat of bar two. The overall melody has a descending
contour, as do each of the component motives.
As these examples show, there are many different ways to expand
just one or two simple motives into a full melody through the use ofvariation. For some ideas about the kinds of variations you can use,
see Creating Variations 3: Note Transformations (page 108). And
identifying the motives in a melody can be a useful exercise when
doing Active Listening (page 22).

185

Multiple Simultaneous
Melodies
Problem:
In some music, you hear bass lines that are
so detailed and interesting that they almost
take on the quality of a melody. But when
you try to do this in your own music, theparts collide and overlap in ways that justsound like a mess.
The combination of two or more intricate, independent, simultaneous
melodies in a composition is called counterpoint. Here are some tips for
how to use counterpoint effectively in your own work.

186

Problems of Progressing
Multiple Simultaneous Melodies

Solution:
Counterpoint is an old practice, and music with independent melodic
lines has been written and studied for hundreds of years. There arevery strict rules for writing “correct” counterpoint in ancient styles
of music, and although music today is generally less strict in all ways,
we can still take advantage of some of these rules if we want to writeinteresting counterpoint in contemporary music.
One example of counterpoint that you’ve probably come across isthe round, a type of composition in which the same melody occurs in
multiple parts but starting at different times. The children’s songs Row,
Row, Row Your Boat and Frère Jacques are examples of rounds.
Technically, any music with multiple monophonic parts (such as a
melody and a bass line) could be considered counterpoint. But inmost music, there is one clearly dominant melody while the bassline is much more rhythmically static or serves only to support theharmony (or both). We wouldn’t normally refer to this type of music ascounterpoint because the parts aren’t given equal importance. Truecounterpoint (or at least good counterpoint) assumes that any of theparts involved in the counterpoint could function as a standalone
melody even without the presence of the other parts.
An interesting example of counterpoint in electronic music is theBoards of Canada track “Roygbiv.” The bass line is so intricate that, on
first hearing, a listener might assume that it is really the track’s melody.
Only after the bass line has been repeated several times does the“real” melody finally enter. Here is a composite of the two parts:

187

Problems of Progressing
Multiple Simultaneous Melodies

And here is the same composite in musical notation:

q=84

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? 44

#œ#œ œ
œ
#œ œ™
œ

5

& œ œ #œ ˙
?

188

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#œ œ™ œœœœ œ œ œ œ #œ ˙
œ™

œ
J ˙

œ

œ#œ œ wœ œ œœœ œ œwœ œ œ#œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ #œœœ w
œ œ™ œ

œ™

œ œ™
J

œ œ™
J

œ
J

w

Problems of Progressing
Multiple Simultaneous Melodies

There are a few specific aspects to this counterpoint that make it soeffective and that can serve as good guidelines for your own work:
Make sure that each part’s rhythm is independent of the other parts.
When parts move from note to note at the same time, our ears tend tohear the result as chords. The independence of the horizontal lines islost, and we hear the vertical result instead. Successful counterpoint
does result in good chords, but this is secondary to the melodic aspect.
Notice how this is applied in the Boards of Canada example. With the
exception of certain downbeats, each voice only moves to a new notewhen the other voice is sustaining.
Use contrary motion. As a general guideline, counterpoint works bestwhen the voices mostly move in opposite directions; one voice moves
up while the other moves down. This is known as contrary motion.
Be careful when crossing voices. In this example, each part stays
within its own range of pitches, never crossing into the range ofthe other. This is straightforward here because the counterpoint is
between a high melody and a low bass line. But in some cases, you
might write two parts that could potentially cross each other. Brief
voice crossings are generally not problematic, but if the parts are
consistently winding around each other, they can lose their sense of
independence. If you do want the voices to cross while still retaining
their identity, try making the timbres of the parts highly distinct.
Not all music benefits from these techniques. In some cases, one
melody—or even none—is enough. But if you’re looking for ways togenerate more complexity in your music, counterpoint might be a niceoption.

189

Linear Rhythm in Melodies
Problem:
You can come up with the beginnings of agood melody, but you’re looking for ways togenerate more variations and complexity. In
general, your melodic ideas don’t have thedepth or richness of those you admire.
Melodies are hard. Almost by definition, they are the most importantand memorable aspect of a good piece of music. But coming up
with one that’s worth remembering feels almost as challenging as
writing the entire rest of the song. Here is a technique you can try for
generating more interest in your melodic writing.

190

Problems of Progressing
Linear Rhythm in Melodies

Solution:
Hocket is a compositional technique in which the notes of a melodic
line quickly alternate between two or more different instruments, suchthat no two instruments are playing at the same time. It is the melodic
equivalent of linear drumming (see Programming Beats 2: Linear
Drumming (page 144)) and can potentially turn bland melodies into
interesting counterpoint. Hocket usually works best at fast tempos
and when played by instruments with fast attacks and releases. It’s adifficult technique for humans to play accurately but works really well forelectronic music. As an example, let’s begin with the simple loop below:

191

Problems of Progressing
Linear Rhythm in Melodies

An easy recipe for turning this single voice into a hocketing pattern
is as follows:
1. Duplicate the track, so that you have two identical copies of thepattern playing two separate (but so far, identical) instruments.
2. Modify the instrument in the new track so that it plays a different
sound. This can be done by modifying or replacing the preset oreven by replacing the instrument with a different one. As mentioned
previously, try to find two instruments with similar volume contours.
Short sounds with fast attacks work best.
3. Edit both patterns so that the melody is divided between them,such that no note is ever played by both instruments simultaneously.
The way in which you divide the notes is entirely up to you, butreally interesting hockets tend to alternate very quickly between
the voices. The simplest example is probably literal alternation—
the instruments trade off every other note. Here’s how our original
pattern might look if it was divided in this way:

192

Problems of Progressing
Linear Rhythm in Melodies

You could also alternate by larger note groupings, such as every quarternote:

Or you could alternate by arbitrary time groupings, such as every third
sixteenth (including rests):

193

Problems of Progressing
Linear Rhythm in Melodies

Notice that in the last example, the pattern doesn’t divide evenly into
groups of three sixteenths, so the final alternation is cut short in thebottom voice.
These examples illustrate some possibilities with a two-voice hocket,
but even more possibilities become available when you use three ormore voices. In an extreme example, each note could be played by aseparate instrument. Hocket can give even the simplest melody a whole
new life by subjecting it to a rapidly changing cascade of new timbres.

194

Sound-Color Melody
Problem:
You can write a strong, memorable melody.
But especially at slow tempos, even if thenotes and rhythms are right, you regularly
get bored with the sound. You’ve tried
programming parameter automation so thatthe timbre changes over time, but you still
have the sense that the sound is too static.
Long, slow melodies are difficult to write effectively in electronic
music. By default, synthesizer sounds don’t tend to vary much fromnote to note, and even with careful use of modulation or automation tocreate a dynamic, changing sound, there can still be a sense that the
timbre of the melody isn’t “breathing” or is too artificial sounding. Hereis a technique you can use to create more timbral variation, particularly
in slow melodies.

195

Problems of Progressing
Sound-Color Melody

Solution:
The German word Klangfarbenmelodie (“sound-color melody”) refers to
the distribution of a melody (or even a single pitch) between multiple
instruments. This is a similar concept to hocket (see Linear Rhythmin Melodies (page 190)), although hocket generally refers to rapid,
rhythmic transfer of melodic notes between voices at a fast tempo,
while Klangfarbenmelodie is often slower and more subtle—one
melodic voice gradually fading out as another fades in, for example.
Klangfarbenmelodie was originally developed as a technique forcreating timbral variety in instrumental melodies, although it’s perhaps
even better suited for electronic music. For example, let’s begin withthe four-bar melody below:

196

Problems of Progressing
Sound-Color Melody

The conventional way to treat a melody like this would be to haveit play on a track that triggered a software or hardware instrument.
For a richer sound, perhaps multiple instruments could be layered or
stacked. But another approach might be to split the higher-pitchednotes from the lower-pitched ones, and route the two halves throughdifferent instruments. This particular melody is well-suited to this kindof treatment because of its “wedge-like” distribution of pitches. For
example, we might arbitrarily decide that the high voice will play E3
and above, while the low voice plays everything below E3. Many DAWs
allow for creating “split points” or “zones” within a single MIDI track,
which take care of the MIDI routing automatically. In these cases, you
can simply assign the split points as desired, load the two instruments
onto the same track, and play the clip. If your DAW doesn’t support
this functionality, you could duplicate the track, modify or replace
the second track’s instrument, and then delete notes as necessary
from each pattern so that the melody is divided between them in aninteresting and musical way.
Unlike hocketing, where abrupt, jagged timbral changes are theintended musical result, the idea with Klangfarbenmelodie is to createa smooth, seamless exchange between voices. In the example melody
discussed previously, another possibility might be to duplicate thetrack (or layer multiple instruments on a single track) but then use
instruments that have “mirrored” volume envelopes. For example,
one instrument might have a fast attack and a gradual decay, while
the second instrument might have a slow attack. In this situation, thefirst instrument would supply the initial onset of the note, while thesecond instrument would fade in as the first faded away. Obviously, thisrequires carefully tuning the respective envelopes so that they makesense in the context of both the song’s tempo and the duration of thenotes in the pattern. But when configured properly, the result can be aslow timbral shift across the duration of each note.

197

Problems of Progressing
Sound-Color Melody

These examples illustrate some possibilities with Klangfarbenmelodie
across two voices, but even more possibilities become available when
you use three or more voices.

198

The Rhythm of Lyrics
Problem:Your vocal melodies feel wrong somehow, as
if there’s a “conflict” between the rhythm of
the melody and the natural flow of the lyrics.
Writing vocal parts is a fundamentally more complicated problem
than writing instrumental music because words and sentences havetheir own implicit rhythm that needs to be consciously considered.
Here are some tips for understanding how to get your musical andtextual rhythms to work together (or to counter each other, if that’s
your intention).

199

Problems of Progressing
The Rhythm of Lyrics

Solution:
Scansion is the study of a text’s inherent rhythm and the marking ofeach syllable in the text as being either strongly or weakly stressed. We
use these stress patterns naturally and unconsciously when speaking
and, unless we’re poets, probably never need to give them muchthought outside of a musical context.
As an example: Let’s pretend this sentence is a lyric in your song.
(Note: Artistically, this is probably not a good idea.) When you read itout loud, you will naturally apply a stress or “accent” to some syllables,
while others will be spoken more softly. We’ll mark the strong syllables
with a / and the weak ones with a *. (By convention, these stressmarkings are placed over the first vowel in the syllable.):

/

* /

*

/

*

/

*

/ *

/

*

/

Let’s pretend this sentence is a lyric in your song.
Applying these markings can sometimes be subjective. For example,
it could be argued that “is” is weakly stressed (although it is probably
stressed slightly more than the “a” that follows it). But now that wehave a general sense of the inherent stress patterns of the text, we canrelate this directly to the inherent stress patterns of musical beats. A
couple of general (but by no means universal) rules:> (Assuming a 4/4 meter), the first and third beats are considered“strong” or “on” beats while the second and fourth are considered“weak” or “off” beats.
> As you subdivide beats into shorter note values such as eighths
and sixteenths, the same rule applies. That is, the odd-numberedsubdivisions are perceived as stronger than the even-numbered
ones.

200

Problems of Progressing
The Rhythm of Lyrics

Placing strong syllables on strong beats and weak syllables on weakbeats usually results in a fairly natural-sounding vocal melody, while
doing the opposite can often sound forced or stilted. Additionally, you
can reinforce these natural alignments further by making stressedsyllables louder, higher in pitch, or longer in duration.
Here’s an example of a possible melody for this lyric:It’s boring, but it “works” according to the scansion rules discussed
earlier. Natural text accents occur on strong beat positions and arefurther emphasized by occurring on notes that last longer, while weakly
stressed syllables occur on weak beats and have short durations.
To contrast, let’s take a look at a possible melody that goes against thenatural stresses of the lyric:201

Problems of Progressing
The Rhythm of Lyrics

This is nearly identical to the first melody, but with an additional note
added on beat two of the first bar in order to shift each syllable to theleft. Now we’re breaking all the rules. The weakly stressed syllables
happen almost entirely on strong beats and are sustained for longnote durations, while the strongly accented syllables are short andon weak beats. This would be both difficult to sing and uncomfortable
to listen to.
Although good vocal melodies are often significantly more nuanced
and rhythmically intricate than both of these examples, you’ll find thatmost of the time, good melodies follow the natural patterns of stressin the lyrics. Of course, there are exceptions. A lot of contemporary
hip-hop, for example, uses syncopation and unusual stress patterns
to go against the rhythm of the text. And it’s always possible to apply
more than one syllable of text to a single sustained note or, conversely,
sustain a single syllable of text across more than a single pitch. But
these are conscious and genre-specific musical decisions. If you findthat your own vocal writing tends to feel strained and unnatural, it
might be because you’re fighting against how the lyrics want to flow.

202

Creating Harmony 1:
The Basics
Problem:
You don’t know enough about how chords
really “work” to understand how to get fromone chord to another, and your attempts tocreate interesting chord progressions nevermatch up to the music that inspires you.
Harmony is a big topic, and covering the full range of how chords work
is beyond the scope of this book. But fortunately, the vast majority ofwhat’s commonly done with harmony in many types of music can belearned with just a bit of background and some basic terms. Here aresome of the fundamentals.

203

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 1: The Basics

Solution:
Most music is considered to be in a particular key. If we say that a song
is “in C,” this simply means that the note C sounds to most listeners
like the most stable “home note” for the song. Key can be establishedin a few ways: either through Repetition and Insistence (page 236)
or, more commonly, through the use of chord combinations that sound,to most listeners, like they want to resolve back to the home note. Thissense of tension and resolution is the basis of most successful chord
progressions.
If we continue to assume C is our key note (or tonic), we can thendetermine the other notes in the scale of the key. The two mostcommon qualities of scales are major and minor. These terms referto the particular pattern of note distances (or intervals) between theadjacent notes in the scale. The C Major scale contains the following
notes (shown in both a MIDI piano roll and conventional notation):

&

w

C
1

w

D
2

w

E
3

w

w

w

w

w

F
4

G
5

A
6

B
7

C
1

Although the examples in this chapter all use C as the tonic, you caneasily transpose the examples in your DAW to try them out in any otherkey. Every major scale, regardless of starting note, contains seven204Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 1: The Basics

notes (before repeating the first note again) and the same pattern ofintervals between notes. That pattern is a particular combination ofhalf steps (two immediately adjacent notes on the piano keyboard) andwhole steps (notes that are two half steps apart): Whole - Whole - Half
- Whole - Whole - Whole - Half:

The minor scale contains a slightly different pattern of half and wholesteps: Whole - Half - Whole - Whole - Half - Whole - Whole:

&

w

C
1

w

D
2

bw
Eb
3

w

w

bw

bw

w

F
4

G
5

Ab
6

Bb
7

C
1

~ Note: Most DAWs use either only sharps or only flats in the piano roll.
For our purposes here, consider D# = Eb, G# = Ab, and A# = Bb.
Now that we’ve established how major and minor scales are made, we
can build chords on each of the notes in the scale. The most common

205Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 1: The Basics

chords are triads, which are built by adding the third and fifth notes
above a starting note (or root). For example, in C Major, the triad built
on C contains C (the root), E (the third note above C), and G (the fifthnote above C). The triad built on A contains A (the root), C (the thirdnote above A) and E (the fifth note above A). Here are the seven triads
in C Major:

& w
w
w

w
w
w

w
w
w

w
w
w

w
w
w

w
w
w

w
w
w

w
w
w

We referred earlier to the terms major and minor as being the quality of
the key or scale. The triads in a particular key also have major or minor
quality and, as with scales, this is determined by the interval distances
between the notes. Major triads have four half steps between the root
and the third note, while minor triads have only three. In both major andminor triads, there are seven half steps between the root and the fifthnote. With this information, we can analyze and determine the qualityof each triad in a particular key, simply by counting semitones.

206

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 1: The Basics

Rather than using specific chord names (such as “C Major”), we canuse Roman numerals for this type of chord analysis. This helps toemphasize an important aspect of this theory: Everything discussed
here is completely transposable to any key, and all of the harmonic andscale relationships work exactly the same way regardless of which
specific note is our tonic. By convention, major triads are labeled withcapitalized Roman numerals, while minor triads are written with lower
case Roman numerals. Here are the labels for the triads in the C Major
scale:

& w
w
w
I

w
w
w
ii

w
w
w

iii

w
w
w

IV

w
w
w

w
w
w

w
w
w

w
w
w

V

vi

vii°

I

And the triads in the C minor scale:
If you actually went through and measured the intervals in each of thetriads above, you probably noticed that two of these chords don’t fit
into either the major or minor pattern. The seven chord in the major
scale and the two chord in the minor scale are of a different quality,
called diminished. Diminished triads, like minor triads, have three half

& bw
w
w
i

bw
w
w
ii°

bw
bw
w
III

bw
w
w
iv

bw
w
w

bw
bw
w

w
bw
w

bw
w
w

v

VI

VII

i

If you actually went through and measured the intervals in each of thetriads above, you probably noticed that two of these chords don’t fit
into either the major or minor pattern. The seven chord in the major

207

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 1: The Basics

scale and the two chord in the minor scale are of a different quality,
called diminished. Diminished triads, like minor triads, have three half
steps between the root and the third note. But they have only six half
steps between the root and the fifth note (as opposed to seven for theominor triad). Diminished triads are labeled with the superscript after
the Roman numeral.
It may sound surprising, but a huge amount of music, from the Classicalperiod all the way to much contemporary pop and electronic music,
uses only the seven chords that exist in a particular key (called thediatonic chords). And many songs use no more than two or three ofthese chords. But the choice and order of diatonic chords is what
determines how the chord progression really sounds. What follows area few general guidelines that can help you move from one chord to thenext (Roman numerals refer to the major scale, but the patterns are
similar for minor scales).
After a I chord, anything is possible; all chords within the key soundoequally appropriate after the tonic chord. The V or vii chords sound(to most listeners) like they “want” to resolve back to I (although V
can sometimes lead to vi). The ii and IV chords have a tendency toolead towards the V or vii (although IV also commonly leads back to I
or to its “partner” ii). The vi chord leads to the ii or IV. And finally, theiii chord has a tendency to be followed by the vi. This series of chord
resolutions can be summarized in this figure:

[iii]

[vi]

IV

vii°

ii

V

I

208

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 1: The Basics

Using just these guidelines for diatonic triads, you have access to ahuge number of usable chord progressions. For example, one of themost common progressions is I - V - vi - IV:

This is the progression in the verses of Imogen Heap’s “Hide andSeek,” the choruses of Adele’s “Someone Like You,” and many more.
In fact, there are countless well-known songs that use this exact
progression (“Four Chord Song” by Axis of Awesome is an enlightening
mashup of 36 of them).
Chord progressions that follow these guidelines are said to befunctional because each chord functions as a preparation for the next
chord in the series. There is, of course, a much wider world of harmonic
possibilities available beyond just using diatonic triads. But if you’reinterested in creating music that’s within the realm of pop music, you
can get quite far using only these seven chords.
~ Side note: A lot of the theory behind the construction of scales andtriads may seem like arbitrary, rote memorization. Why did theseparticular combinations of whole and half steps come to define
the scales that are commonly used? Why do certain chords have afeeling of “wanting” to move to other chords? Why do these scales
and chords exist at all? Detailed answers are beyond the scope of
this book but largely have to do with acoustics: The intervals of
the major scale can be derived from fairly simple whole number

209

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 1: The Basics

frequency ratios that correspond to the overtone series. But perhaps
even more importantly, much of this theory is descriptive rather thanprescriptive: The theory was developed to help explain patterns inmusic that already existed, rather than to tell composers what theyshould or should not do in the future.

210

Creating Harmony 2:
Beyond Triads
Problem:
From reading the previous chapter, youunderstand the fundamentals of triads
and diatonic harmony, as well as how to
use these tools to create usable chord
progressions. But these chords lack thecomplexity and “color” that you hear ingenres like jazz and even some housemusic. What else is possible?

211

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads

Solution:
There are many types of chords besides diatonic triads. But the basic
tools that we use to build those triads can also be used to create amuch wider range of more complex chords. Here are a number of thesechords, as well as some ideas about how to use them:Seventh Chords
We know that triads are built by choosing a starting note (or root)
and then adding the third and fifth notes above it. But we can extend
this pattern by adding the seventh note above the root. The four-note
chord that results is (conveniently) called a seventh chord. Here are thediatonic seventh chords in C Major (shown in both a MIDI piano roll andconventional notation):

& w
w
w
w
I7

w
w
w
w
ii7

w
w
w
w

iii7

w
w
w
w

IV7

w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w

V7

vi7

vii¯7

I7

212

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads

As with major, minor, and diminished triads, seventh chords also have aquality, although the situation becomes slightly more complex because
the triad that serves as the basis of the chord does not necessarily
have the same quality as the seventh itself. For example, the I and IV
triads are both major, and so are the corresponding I7 and IV7 chords.
This is because we define a major seventh as the interval distance of
11 half steps from the root to the seventh of the chord. But the V7 isvery interesting. The V triad is major, but the seventh is minor—ten half
steps between the root and the seventh. This combination of a major
triad with a minor seventh on top is called a dominant seventh chordand has a strong feeling of “wanting” to resolve to the I chord. The
viiø7 is another interesting case. Here, the triad is diminished while theseventh is minor. This is known as a half-diminished seventh chord.
With the exception of the V7, which is very commonly used to resolveback to I, seventh chords are used less frequently than triads in many
genres. But they are the fundamental harmonic building blocks used injazz and related genres. In fact, almost any “normal” functional chord
progression (as explained in Creating Harmony 1: The Basics (page203)) can be given a jazz flavor by replacing the triads with theircorresponding diatonic seventh chords. Jazz often uses sevenths in“non-functional” ways as well, and jazz progressions often consistof chains of seventh chords that lead to one another primarily bysmoothly connecting the individual voices within the chords andmaintaining common tones whenever possible (rather than by use ofpredictable functionality). For more about how to make these kindsof progressions, see the chapter about Voice Leading and Inversions(page 225).

213

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads

Further Extensions: 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths
We can extend this method of constructing triads and seventh chords
even further simply by adding additional thirds to the top. With one
additional note, we get 9th chords:

w
& w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w

214

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads

Add one more note to get 11th chords:

w
w
& w
w
w
w

215

w
w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w
w

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads

And finally, yet one more note creates 13th chords:

w
w
w
& w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w
w
w
w

216

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads

Note that I have left the Roman numeral analysis off of these chords.
This is because the quality of these chords quickly becomes very
complex, and also very ambiguous—in many cases, there is no single“correct” analysis for these large chords. It’s also because these typesof harmonies are not normally used in a functional context (with the
exception of sometimes serving as replacements for conventional
progressions of triads).
It is rare for keyboard players to play every note of these very large,
dense harmonies. This is partly because it’s difficult to quickly navigate
the keyboard while playing seven-note chords, but also because thesound of these harmonies can be implied by playing only the most“important” notes in the structure—commonly the highest notes inthe extension, plus maybe the third. The root is commonly omitted
entirely, usually because it’s filled in by the bass or another instrument.
Although it is no problem to program a DAW to play every voice of hugechords like this, you may still want to avoid doing so because you canquickly overpower a mix with such enormous blocks of harmony.

217

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads

Although diatonic 9th, 11th, and 13th chords are common in jazz, it isalso common to alter one or more of the notes in the chords to createeven more interesting colors. Altering a chord simply means replacing
one or more of the notes with a note that is one half step away. Somecommon alterations include lowering the fifth note, as in this 9th chord:

w
& bw
w
w
w

218

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads

or raising the 11th.

#w
w
& w
w
w
w
Notice that these chords are almost identical. In the first example,
we’ve lowered the fifth of the chord, while in the second we’vemaintained the fifth while adding a raised 11th on top. But the lowered
fifth (a Gb) and the raised 11th (an F#) are the same pitch. This is an
example of the kind of subtlety and ambiguity that gives these kinds ofdense chords their sophisticated flavor.
You may have also noticed an interesting characteristic of the 13th
chords—each of them contains every single note of the C Major scale,just starting in a different place. This leads to our next topic…

219

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads

Non-Triadic Chords
Since 9th, 11th, and 13th chords all include intervals larger than anoctave, we can create closely related harmonies by simply “folding” theupper extensions down so that they’re compacted into a single octave.
For example, compacting our 13th chord built on C results in this:

w
& w
w
w
w
ww
Although this contains exactly the same pitches as the original 13th,
it is voiced using adjacent notes rather than every other note. Chords
built on adjacent notes are called secundal chords or clusters.
Now that we know we can build chords from thirds or from seconds, itfollows that we can build chords from other intervals as well. Chords
built by stacking notes that are five semitones apart are known asquartal chords, while stacking notes seven semitones apart yields
quintal chords. Here are examples of five-note quartal and quintal

220

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads

chords built from C:

bbw
w
b
& w
w
w

221

w
w
w
& w
w

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads

As with the extended chords discussed previously, these very “wide”
chords can be compacted to fit within a single octave, often resulting(again) in secundal constructions. In fact, the two chords used in
the previous example form a quite nice two-chord progression whencondensed in this way:

& bbb˙˙˙˙˙ nn˙˙˙˙˙Note that these non-triadic harmonies usually aren’t considered tohave major or minor quality; in most contexts, they exist outside of the
major/minor domain. Regardless, they are commonly used in jazz andmodern classical music, again largely connected in progressions via
voice leading rather than goal-oriented functionality.
This is just a sampling of the kinds of chords that are available when
we expand our palette beyond conventional triads. But even using thisexpanded repertoire should allow you to come up with more colorful
harmony than would be possible with triads alone.

222

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads

A Real-World Example
The classic house track “Can You Feel It” by Mr. Fingers is a great
example of some of these types of extended harmonies. The
progression in the pad sound that occurs all through the track is only
three chords, but they’re exactly right. They also demonstrate how
analysis of this type of harmony isn’t always an exact science:

q=116

4
& 4 ww
w
w

223

w
ww
w

w
w
w
w

w
w
w
w

Problems of Progressing
Creating Harmony 2: Beyond Triads

The song is in the key of A minor. So what are these chords?
1. A minor 9: At first glance, this labeling may seem strange. Why is thisan A chord if it doesn’t contain an A? The reason is the bass line,
which consists of lots of repeated A and E notes underneath theharmony. Thus we have the bass line’s root (A), plus the third (C), thefifth (E), seventh (G), and the ninth (B).
2. F Major 7: the root (F), the third, (A, both in the chord and in the bassline), the fifth (C), and the seventh (E).
3. A minor 11: the bass line’s A, plus the fifth (E), the seventh (G), theninth (B), and the 11th (D). Interestingly, the chord contains no third(C), which gives it an unusual, unstable color. And if we ignore the
A in the bass, we could call this a simple E minor 7, which suggests
a somewhat more functional progression: v - I. So is there a “right”
analysis? Not really. The ambiguity is part of what makes the
progression interesting.

224

Voice Leading and Inversions
Problem:
When you play chords on your keyboard, youfind that the motion from one chord to thenext sounds choppy or abrupt. Furthermore,
you feel like you have to move your hands
really far to get from one chord to another.
But in the music that inspires you, the chords
always sound like they move smoothly from
one to another. What are your favorite artists
doing that makes such a difference?
Creating smooth, flowing chord progressions often has less to do withwhat the actual chords are than it does with the nature of the voice
leading from one chord to the next. Here’s some information about
how voice leading works and how to use it to create more satisfying
harmony in your own music.

225

Problems of Progressing
Voice Leading and Inversions

Solution:
Although we normally think of a chord as a vertical construction, we
can think of the motion between chords as a series of horizontal
constructions. That is, when one chord moves to another, the individual
voices within those chords can be thought of as separate melodic
lines. This relationship between the separate voices when moving
between chords is known as voice leading.
Although voice leading is a big topic, we can use just a few basic voice
leading principles to help create smoother, better-sounding chord
progressions. In general, smooth voice leading results from minimizing
the amount of motion from one note to the next within a single voice.
This means moving the smallest possible number of semitones, as wellas preserving common tones whenever possible. (Common tones arenotes that remain unchanged from one chord to the next.)
As an example, let’s imagine a two-chord progression that moves froma C minor chord to an F minor chord. The simplest way to construct
such a progression is probably something like this:226

Problems of Progressing
Voice Leading and Inversions

Both of these chords are in what’s known as root position: The “roots”
of the chords (C and F) are the lowest voices of the chords. For nonkeyboard players root position chords are usually where the hands fall
naturally. But progressions from one root position chord to anotherresult in voice leading that’s not ideal. In this example, no common
tones are retained, and each voice needs to move a considerable
distance (as shown by the black lines).
A smoother version of this progression might be something like this:Here, the C minor chord is still in root position, but we’ve changed theorder of the notes in the F minor chord to improve the voice leading.
A reordering of a chord’s notes is known as an inversion. In this case,
we’ve inverted the F minor chord by placing the C (rather than theF) in the bass. This means that we maintain a common tone (the C)
when moving between the chords while also decreasing the distancetraveled by the upper voices.

227

Problems of Progressing
Voice Leading and Inversions

We could achieve a similar effect by inverting the first chord whileleaving the second one in root position:

Here, we’ve inverted the C minor chord by placing the Eb (rather thanthe C) in the bass. This means we maintain a common tone (the C)
when moving between the chords, while again minimizing the distancethat the other two voices travel.
By carefully using chord inversions, you can create smooth voice
leading from one chord to the next, which is both easier to play and(generally) sounds better. But note that there are certain cases (asdiscussed in the chapter on Parallel Harmony (page 229)), when you
might not want to change the voicing of chords but instead move inparallel from one chord to another. The choice depends on genre andpersonal taste.

228

Parallel Harmony
Problem:
There’s a certain quality to the chord
progressions in a lot of deep house, postdubstep, and related styles that seems to
be difficult to replicate in your own music.
Harmony in house music and its variants is often a tricky thing todissect. The chord progressions are often quite repetitive but also
seem strangely alien—they sound quite different from the way
harmonic relationships work in any other music. Here is one way to
unlock some of what’s going on for use in your own music.

229

Problems of Progressing
Parallel Harmony

Solution:
A lot of house music chord progressions use a technique called
parallel harmony, which refers to a method of moving from one chord toanother in which each note moves by the same number of semitones
and in the same direction. Parallel harmony is essentially what you
would get if you copied a chord, pasted it somewhere else, and thentransposed the copy. For example, here’s a chord progression (Cm7Fm7-Gm7-Bbm7) constructed using parallel harmony:

If you try to play this on a keyboard, you’ll notice that you need to moveyour hand somewhat far to get from one chord to the next. A trained
keyboard player might instead re-voice these chords to minimize hand
movement, preserve notes that are shared between adjacent chords,
and improve the Voice Leading (page 225).

230

Problems of Progressing
Parallel Harmony

Starting with the same voicing for the first chord, a more typicalvoicing of this progression might be something like:

But while traditional music theory would probably call the second
version “better” than the first, the parallel version has a distinct
sound which has found a place in a lot of electronic music. There are
a number of technical and historical reasons for this, and you can use
these techniques in your own music as well:Sampled Chords
In house music, a common technique for creating harmony is tosample a single interesting chord from another song. As with sampled
breakbeats, the source for these single chords is often classic soul or
jazz tracks. By then playing the sampled chord at different pitches, theresulting harmony moves in parallel.

231

Problems of Progressing
Parallel Harmony

Chord Memory
A number of classic polyphonic synths from the 80s had a feature
called “chord memory,” which was essentially an automatic parallel
harmony generator. To use chord memory, the user would hold down achord and press the chord memory button. After this, playing a single
note on the keyboard would play the memorized chord, transposed asnecessary. Many modern DAWs offer chord-generating MIDI processing
tools that allow you to achieve a similar effect by automatically adding
one or more notes (at specific intervals) to whichever note is played
manually. This allows you to use any plug-in instrument to achieveparallel harmony.

232

Harmonic Rhythm
Problem:
You have a number of great-sounding
chords assembled together into a greatsounding chord progression. But you can’t
seem to find the right speed to move fromone chord to the next. You’re quite happy
with the rhythm of the music itself, but thisdoesn’t seem to offer any clues for how tocontrol the speed of the harmonic changes.
The rate at which the chords change in a piece of music is called
the harmonic rhythm. This is a separate concept from the rhythm ofindividual notes and other events, which we can refer to as the surface
rhythm. There is not necessarily any relationship between the surface
rhythm and the harmonic rhythm. For example, it’s certainly possible
to have very active, fast surface rhythms that repeat or outline a single
chord for a long time before changing to the next one.

233

Problems of Progressing
Harmonic Rhythm

Such a piece would have a slow harmonic rhythm. In the example
below, a highly active, syncopated sixteenth-note pattern creates a fastsurface rhythm. But the chords change only once per bar:

Likewise, we could have slow music but with a chord change on every
note. This would likely result in a relatively fast harmonic rhythm. In
the example below, the surface rhythm moves in quarter notes. But thechords also change once every quarter note. The result is a harmonic
rhythm that’s four times faster than the previous example but with aslower surface rhythm, resulting in a slower apparent rate of activity.

Here are some ideas for how to use harmonic rhythm in interesting
ways in your own music.

234

Problems of Progressing
Harmonic Rhythm

Solutions:
The examples discussed earlier are actually fairly common patterns
that govern the relationship between surface rhythm and harmonic
rhythm. As a general (but by no means universal) rule, music with afaster surface rhythm tends to have a slower harmonic rhythm, andvice versa. For example, if the instruments that define the harmony
are moving in fast notes (like sixteenths), you’ll generally get goodresults if the harmonic rhythm moves more slowly (perhaps one chord
per bar), while if those instruments are moving in slow notes (likequarters), you might consider a faster harmonic rhythm (like one chord
per beat or two beats).
Another interesting way to use harmonic rhythm is to vary it to create
new formal sections. For example, for your bridge or breakdown
section, you might use the same basic chord progression that you used
in a verse or chorus, but at half the speed. In this case, it might also beinteresting to slow down the surface rhythm as well, to create a senseof anticipation before returning to the original pace when returning to
the “main” sections of the track.
Conversely, you might want to think about speeding up the harmonic
rhythm as a way to end the song. For example, if your last section
repeats a four-bar chord progression, try condensing the same
progression into two bars to give a greater sense of forward motion.
(This is a variation on the ideas discussed in Short Loops as Endings(page 275).)~ Note: Harmonic rhythm is only affected by instruments that
actually contribute to the harmony. Drums and other non-pitched
instruments, for example, have no relevance here. It is certainly
possible to have fast rhythmic activity in the drums while also havingvery slow rhythmic activity in pitched instruments. In this case, youwill probably only want to consider the sonic effect of the pitched
instruments when thinking about your harmonic rhythm.

235

Repetition and Insistence
Problem:
You struggle to create bass lines, chord
progressions, and melodies that work welltogether. But some music seems to work
perfectly without any of these relationships.
The notes seem almost arbitrary, and yet
they always sound “right.” What’s happening
in this music and how can you use thesetechniques in your own work?
How is it that some music—like house or trance—depends so heavily
on harmonic relationships, while other music—like acid or minimal
techno—often seems to work without any notion of harmony at all?

236

Problems of Progressing
Repetition and Insistence

Solution:
Repetition can have a powerful and unexpected effect on the listener.
As long as it’s relatively brief, the most angular, atonal musicalpattern will eventually sound completely appropriate if it’s repeatedpersistently enough. Through regular exposure and insistence, we
can’t help but find patterns in chaos. As discussed in Implied Rhythmin Short Loops (page 120), you can use this perceptual illusion to findinteresting rhythms in any source material, but you can also use it tocreate melodic patterns and bass lines.
It’s common in acid techno, for example, for bass lines to be comprisedof notes that are essentially arbitrary. But because these patterns
are both short and endlessly repeated, they sound perfectly natural.
This doesn’t work for every genre—if you’re writing music that’s richin harmony, with long, sustained chords supported by a bass line, it’s
likely that the bass notes really matter. But you’ll note that in acid andminimal techno, there’s often no harmony at all. This allows for more
freedom in how melodies and bass lines can be constructed, anddissonance often works perfectly well in this music.
If you have access to a plug-in or instrument that can generate random
sequences, try feeding a typical 303-style monophonic bass synthand see what kind of results you get. At first listen, some patterns
might sound unusable. But allow yourself to listen to the pattern loop anumber of times and you’ll find that it will start to become musical. In
principle, this will work with almost any pattern.
Of course, your ear needs to be the final judge of the results, and you’reultimately responsible for any random processes that you apply to yourmusic (see Randomness and Responsibility (page 250)). But in manycases, you can make almost any pattern work if you’re willing to repeat
it with enough insistence.

237

The Rhythm of Automation
Problem:
You know that you can use automation
to give more motion to your music, but
you’re not sure how to use it effectively or
creatively. You end up falling back on thesame standard patterns: long, smooth filter
sweeps, slow, steady pitch rises, or simple
adjustments to mix parameters to keep
the parts in balance over the course of thearrangement. What are some ways that you
can make more creative use of automation?
Automation is perhaps most commonly used to precisely sculpt a mix
to ensure that levels will be perfectly balanced at all points of the song.
But automation can be used for so much more than just simulating anengineer’s hands on the mixer faders. Here are some ideas for using
automation to add an additional layer of rhythmic interest to your music.

238

Problems of Progressing
The Rhythm of Automation

Solution:
Most of the time, automation is recorded in real time; the producer
moves a fader or knob as the transport runs, and the motion of that
control is captured as a series of points that approximates a curvethat is generally smooth. The resulting automation envelope may looksomething like this:The overall shape here looks like something you’d imagine a humanwould make; there are occasionally somewhat “sharp” changes, butthere are no instant ones. Also, there seems to be no real relationshipbetween the automation envelope and either the underlying metricgrid or the note events. It looks like something that was created bymoving a physical control by hand.
But there’s no reason why automation envelopes can’t havefundamentally different properties. If automation is created by manuallyplacing breakpoints or envelope segments at specific metric positions,the resulting envelope will have a dramatically different character.
Contrast the previous example with this one:239

Problems of Progressing
The Rhythm of Automation

The sharp edges and instant changes look more like the waveforms
used in synthesis than they do any kind of conventional parameterenvelope. This is an envelope that is inherently rhythmic. By usingenvelopes like this, you can add an additional layer of activity thatserves as a counterpoint to the rhythm created by the note or audio
events themselves.
Rhythmic envelopes probably don’t make sense for all typesof parameter automation. For example, real-time recordings ofparameter changes will probably work best for things like the final mix
adjustments, in which you’re just trying to control the relative volume
balance of the various parts. But for any creative applications—synthparameters, filter or other effects settings, or even panning—you
might find that you get more interesting results by using automationenvelopes that are rhythmic.

240

Humanizing With
Automation Envelopes
Problem:
When live musicians play instruments, there
are subtle, constant variations in the tuning
and length of notes that help to create thesense that the music is “alive.” How canyou recreate this effect in electronic music?
On most traditional instruments, all or most of the stages of theamplitude envelope are entirely under the control of the performer.
And on some instruments (such as woodwinds, brass instruments,and stringed instruments without frets), the player also controls thetuning of each note. But most electronic instruments use an envelope
generator to determine the amplitude characteristics of the sound,and use conventional equal-tempered tuning to determine pitch.
This makes these instruments predictable and easy to play, but at
the expense of some of the subtlety and expression that gives nonelectronic music its human character. Here are some ideas about
how to use your DAW’s automation envelopes to provide somehumanization to any electronic instrument.

241Problems of Progressing
Humanizing With Automation Envelopes

Solution:
Most of the time, synthesizer programming involves setting theparameter values that define the sound and then mostly leaving themalone. Many producers will employ some automation to give the sounda sense of motion, but this is often applied to just a few controls—filter
cutoff and maybe resonance. But by applying even subtle automation
to a few more parameters, you can create much richer and moreorganic sounds.
Rather than treating amplitude envelope parameters as static values,
try employing automation to change these values over the course of aphrase or even over your whole arrangement. In particular, by varying
the attack and decay times, you can create subtle changes in theperceived duration of notes. In most cases, the actual parameter values
used won’t really matter much. This means you might also be able toachieve a similar effect by using parameter randomization tools (if yourDAW provides them) rather than needing to create long automationenvelopes. But even if you do choose to use automation, you’ll likely
find that this is substantially less work than editing the durations ofindividual MIDI notes.
Additionally, try using automation to create small variations in theoverall tuning of the synth. It’s critical that these changes be extremely
small. The goal is to simulate the kinds of human intonation “errors”
that give live instruments character, but tuning shifts of more than a
few cents in either direction are likely to simply sound out of tune. And
as with amplitude envelopes, the actual tuning values probably won’t
really matter, which means that you might be able to get the same
effect via randomization.
By applying subtle automation or randomization to envelope andpitch parameters, you can emulate a lot of the subtle characteristics
that make live instruments sound so organic. But there’s no reason tostop with only these parameters. Modern synthesizers, samplers, andeffects often have a huge number of adjustable parameters, many of242

Problems of Progressing
Humanizing With Automation Envelopes

which are either ignored outright or are set once per sound and thenforgotten. Try experimenting with subtle automation changes to any ofthese parameters as well. You may find that the results sound artificial
and strange, but it’s possible that this is exactly the character yourmusic needs.

243Maximal Density
Problem:You’ve completely finished the first sectionof a song but don’t know how to go on fromhere. Considering how much time and effort
you spent on the first part, adding a second
section feels like creating an entirely new
project. And since you know that there aremany sections to go, the end of the songfeels like it’s an impossible distance away.
Moving forward with a track that’s in progress can sometimes feel likean impossible task, especially if you’re starting from the beginning andworking your way from left to right towards the end. Here’s a method
for approaching the process “out of order” that may sometimes allow
you to work faster.

244

Problems of Progressing
Maximal Density

Solution:
Instead of proceeding linearly from left to right in time, try starting withan arbitrary section in the middle of the song that is maximally dense;that is, a section in which every possible element that could ever
happen simultaneously is actually happening simultaneously.
This song section may be purely hypothetical; by stacking every parton top of every other part you may end up with an unmusical messwhich will never actually become a part of the song. If that’s the case,begin subtracting elements one by one until you get to a level ofdensity that is still high but which makes musical sense. This can thenbecome the high point of your song.
Once you have this peak section, you can make duplicates of it andthen try out various lower-density versions of the same basic material
by muting or deleting various elements or tracks and auditioning theresult. Each time you find a combination that you like, copy and paste
it so that it becomes a new song section. The act of arranging, then, isjust a matter of organizing these sections of varying density in an orderthat makes sense with the ebb and flow that you want for the song.
Beginning with a section of maximal density is similar to Arranging as a
Subtractive Process (page 259) but is focused on the compositional
stage rather than on the arranging stage. Although both ideas requirethat you have a pool of materials to work with, Maximal Density
doesn’t require you to lay them out into a song-length arrangement,
but rather to stack the ideas vertically so that they comprise a single,
dense section. From here, you can build your arrangement by creating
variations that are texturally-reduced versions of the “master” section.
Note that this idea may only work in this very literal way if you’re
working in a genre such as minimal techno, in which there is notnecessarily the expectation that the various song sections will beradically different from one another. In other genres in which there
might be more contrast from one section to another, you may be able

245

Problems of Progressing
Maximal Density

to take the idea of Maximal Density only so far. But even here, it canstill be useful to create variations of a song part that might appear invariations throughout the song. You could even repeat the process
for each section: Create a maximally dense verse, a maximally dense
chorus, etc., each of which serves as the parent for smaller variationsof the corresponding sections.

246

Deliberately Bad Listening
Problem:
The acoustics in your studio are perfect,
or at least you know their imperfections
well enough to account for them in yourown listening. And when you listen back toyour music during production, you feel likeyou’re hearing everything there is to hear.
But sometimes, when you leave the track
playing and walk around for a moment, youfind that the music suddenly takes on an
entirely different perspective. What causes
this feeling, and is there something in itthat you can use to your creative advantage
when composing?
Room acoustics, monitoring options, and listening positions are
popular topics on the production side of electronic music-making, butthere may also be things we can use (or misuse) in these areas to help
us on the creative side.

247

Problems of Progressing
Deliberately Bad Listening

Solution:
Instead of always trying to maximize the quality of your listening
environment, try occasionally listening in a deliberately “bad” way.
Particularly during the creation phase, doing this might help you
hear things that are acoustic illusions which you might find musicallyinteresting enough to actually incorporate into your music.
For example, rather than exclusively listening from the “sweet spot”
in your studio, try regularly varying your listening position, and see
what sorts of sounds emerge. Standing in the corner of your studio, forexample, may dramatically change the way you perceive bass and otherlow-frequency components. Although you’d never want to do this whenmixing, doing it while composing might reveal unusual bass elements(such as phantom pitches) that sound great. At this point, you’ll needto take note of what these artifacts are so that you can actually create
them in your song.
A more extreme version of this idea is to listen from an entirely
different room—either through a wall or through a closed or open
doorway. Because of the way different frequencies transmit throughwalls, you are likely to hear a completely different mix when listening
from outside of the studio. Again, this is not a suggested way toapproach mixing your track, but the artifacts and imperfections
you hear as a result of this “bad” approach to listening may becompositionally useful. (Note: Obviously, if your studio is completely
soundproofed then this technique won’t work unless you leave thedoor open.)
One interesting approach when composing with headphones is to takethe headphones off and turn the volume up high enough so that you
can still hear the music. You will generally lose all of the mid and low
frequencies when listening this way, and all that will be left is the highfrequency content. But you may hear relationships between parts (oreven artifacts like phantom notes and rhythms) that are entirely absent
in the music itself.

248

Problems of Progressing
Deliberately Bad Listening

Finally, another type of “bad” listening is to turn the volume down sothat the music is just barely perceptible. This can yield similar results
to the headphones suggestion mentioned earlier but will generally
preserve a bit more low end. However, because our ears are not equallysensitive at all frequencies, you’re likely to hear certain ranges moreclearly than others at low volumes, and this too may help to reveal
phantom elements that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Remember—with all of these techniques, you’re listening for illusions:
elements of the music that aren’t really there, but which are suggestedby the strained or otherwise imperfect listening conditions. Once youfind these (and provided you like them), you’ll need to figure out how
to get them into the music itself so that they can be heard by listeners
in normal listening environments as well.

249

Randomness andResponsibility
Problem:
You have some “randomization” plug-ins
that promise to create a never-ending
supply of new ideas without much effort.
In principle, you’re excited by the potentialof making lots of music with little work. But
in practice, the results you’re getting areunsatisfying for some reason.
There are some types of music, like classic IDM, breakcore, etc., inwhich constant change is a defining characteristic of the sound.
Particularly with drum programming, music in these genres canbe extremely time-consuming to build by hand, requiring lots ofdeliberately placed samples, micro-edits to parameter automation, etc.
For this reason, there are a number of plug-ins and other tools available
that process an incoming stream of audio and reorder it rhythmicallyon the fly (these often have the word “buffer” in their names or
descriptions), apply effects to only specific time slices of the audio, or
perform some combination of both processes.
On the other end of the musical spectrum are genres like minimal or
dub techno, in which the overall rate of sonic and musical change ismuch slower. But even here, there are times when applying subtle
randomness to some aspect of the music can kick you out of yournormal patterns of production and help you find ideas that you wouldn’t
have found through your own deliberate action.

250

Problems of Progressing
Randomness and Responsibility

And when working in any genre, there may be times when you know
you want something to change, but you don’t care about the specificaspects of how it changes. For example, you may want the panningof a particular element to vary continuously throughout the track, but
drawing in a detailed automation curve may be too time-consuming. In
this case, applying some kind of randomizer to the panning may give
you what you want—a continuous state of change, without the need to
specify the details.
But sometimes the results just don’t work. Here’s a solution.

251

Problems of Progressing
Randomness and Responsibility

Solution:
Randomization tools can be powerful, but they lack the most importantelement that makes your music work—your own taste. When you’rein control of every element, you’re making conscious micro- andmacro-level decisions about each moment of the music. If you
play a wrong note (or the right note at the wrong time), you hear it
immediately and fix it. But when a tool has generated this wrong notefor you, it’s easy to miss.
To go back to the early IDM example, consider classic tracks by artists
like Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. During this era, there were noplug-ins that would accomplish the micro-editing that’s happening inthis music. What you’re hearing is a process that was done moment by
moment, by hand.
This is not to suggest that randomization tools are “cheating” orshould be avoided. There’s nothing inherently wrong with finding ways
to eliminate unnecessary work. But it’s important to keep yourself fully
invested in the process. Although the secrets behind what happens
in your studio are yours, in the end, your name will be on this music.
Even if it’s made entirely by a machine via some sort of algorithmic
composition process, it is still your job to evaluate the results that are
generated, discard the ones that don’t work, and keep the ones that
do. The less you’re involved in the creative minutiae, the more youneed to be involved in actively auditioning the results.
In terms of specific technical steps, try slowing things down, soloing
them, or bouncing the results to audio so that you can really assess
whether the randomized output has the musical effect you want. If
you’re working with randomizers that generate or alter MIDI data, try
re-recording this output to another MIDI track so that you can capture
the randomized material as “real” MIDI data, which you can then edit
later. One nice way to test the limits of your randomization processes is
to increase the amount of randomization until it’s clearly too extreme,
and then dial it back from there. The “right” amount is totally subjective

252

Problems of Progressing
Randomness and Responsibility

and depends on the genre you’re working in and, most importantly,
your personal taste.
As always, you must be willing to throw material away if it doesn’tsound right. Listen to—and take responsibility for—every moment.

253

Dramatic Arc
Problem:
You can’t seem to create an arrangementthat really feels like a convincing musicaljourney. You can put various song parts
together and move them around, but
nothing you do seems to create the feelingyou get from listening to your favorite music.
You find it very hard to create a sense ofdrama or tension and release. You don’t
understand how to structure musicaltime convincingly over the course of 4-10
minutes (and are amazed that a good DJ
can do it over the course of hours!).

254

Problems of Progressing
Dramatic Arc

Solution:
There are many different ways to organize musical materials overtime, but one of the most successful is a three-part structure called
the dramatic arc that is also commonly used in theater, film, and othernarrative or dramatic media.
The dramatic arc refers to three main sections: exposition, climax, anddénouement, which are connected by rising action at the beginningand falling action towards the end. A graphical representation of thisarc (known as Freytag’s pyramid) is below:

g

g
on
ti
Ac

Ri
si
n

in

Exposition

ll
Fa

Ac
ti
on

ClimaxDénouement

Exposition: In stories, this is the introduction of characters and thesetting of the scene. In music, the exposition is the introduction ofmusical materials (melodies, harmonic progressions, rhythmic ideas,etc.) that will appear through the piece.
Rising action: This is the section when tension builds towards theclimax. In stories, this usually means conflict between a protagonist
and adversaries. In music, it might mean variations or mutations of thematerials that were introduced in the exposition.

255

Problems of Progressing
Dramatic Arc

Climax: This is the peak of dramatic tension in the work. In a story, thisis often the “turning point” for the protagonists, the point at which
fortunes shift from bad to good or vice versa. In music, the climax isoften marked by a sudden increase in textural density (e.g., “the drop”
in dubstep or EDM).
Falling action: This is a section of relaxing tension after the climax. In
stories, this section serves to resolve outstanding conflicts from theclimax. In music, this section might mirror the activity from the risingaction section.
Dénouement: In stories, the dénouement is often a mirror of the
exposition, in which characters return to normalcy after the events
that make up the tension of the story. In music, this might mean arestatement of established musical materials (e.g., a repeated chorus)
or a gradual dissolution (e.g., a fade out into silence).
While the dramatic arc is normally thought of as a formal structure
for the piece as a whole, in music it can also be used as the structure
for smaller- or larger-scale components. On the micro level, a single
melodic idea can be structured as a dramatic arc; consider a melody
that rises to a peak before falling again to its starting pitch. (Anexample like this is quite literal, with a melodic contour (see Creating
Melodies 1: Contour (page 178)) that visually matches the shapeof Freytag’s pyramid. Of course, it’s also possible to build tension
without literally ascending to a higher pitch.) On the macro level, agood DJ set often follows something like a dramatic arc as well, withtension building to a climax over the course of an hour or more, before
resolving back to a lower energy level over a similar amount of time.
There are, of course, many types of musical forms that bear noresemblance to the conventional dramatic arc. Genres like dub or
minimal techno, for example, generally have no clear build to a climax.
In this music, dramatic tension is created in entirely different ways,
often through careful attention to sound design and subtle changes

256Problems of Progressing
Dramatic Arc

in an otherwise static texture over time. But in some situations, using
the dramatic arc as a model for musical form can work extremely well.

257

ProblemsofFinishingArranging as a
Subtractive Process
Problem:
You have more than enough ideas to makeup a finished song but don’t know how
to actually put the arrangement together.
Even the process of arranging sounds likean intimidating commitment. How can you
even begin, let alone finish?
In the context of music creation in a DAW, the arrangement refers to
the layout of the parts of your song along a timeline. You may haveassembled a rich pool of material, but the actual act of putting thatmaterial in some kind of order that unfolds over time is what will
eventually turn that material into a finished song.
Getting from “pile of stuff” to “song” is a difficult process, bothconceptually and technically. The most common way people approachcreating an arrangement is the most obvious one: Gradually fill theempty arrangement with various combinations of the material you’ve
made, moving from left (the beginning) to right (the end). In thisworkflow, the arrangement timeline is analogous to a blank canvas towhich you apply paint until a finished painting appears from what was
originally empty, white space.
This process works, of course. But facing emptiness can be scary. Even
though you’ve already put in a considerable amount of time preparing
the materials that you plan to use, you now face something that mightfeel like a reset to zero. Beginnings are hard, and a blank canvas (orempty timeline) can be a difficult mental bridge to cross.

259

Problems of Finishing
Arranging as a Subtractive Process

Solution:
If you’re finding that you’re stuck at the arranging stage, here’s
one process that might help: Start by immediately filling your entire
arrangement with material, on every track. Spend as little time as
possible thinking about this step; the goal right now isn’t to try tocreate a good arrangement. You just want to start with somethingrather than nothing. It’s OK that you don’t know how long the song
will eventually be. Just fill up an average song’s worth of time (or evenmore) in whatever way is the fastest for your particular DAW—by copy/
pasting blocks of clips over and over again, via a “duplicate” command,or (in some DAWs) by dragging the right edges of clips to extend them.
Perhaps you’ve already given some thought to how your material will
be divided. Maybe you’ve named certain clips things like “Verse” and“Chorus” so that you can better organize them when arranging. Don’t
worry about any of that for now. In fact, don’t even try to use all of thematerial you have. Just grab a pile of ideas from each track, and fill
the empty space. This process should take no more than about 20
seconds. If you’re spending more time than this, it probably means
you’re trying to make creative decisions. For example, maybe you’re
thinking “I already know that this chunk of ideas will go before thischunk of ideas, so to save time later, I’ll just lay them out in that ordernow.” Resist the temptation to organize anything in this phase, andsimply move as fast as possible.

260

Problems of Finishing
Arranging as a Subtractive Process

As an example, here’s a 6-minute arrangement timeline, filled as
quickly as possible.

Now that you’ve filled the timeline, the process of actually making
your arrangement into music becomes one of subtraction rather thanaddition. If the traditional arranging workflow is analogous to painting,the subtractive workflow is analogous to sculpting. You’re beginningwith a solid block of raw material and then gradually chipping away atit, creating space where there used to be stuff, rather than filling spacethat used to be empty.
This can be a much more productive way to work for a number ofreasons. For example, it’s often easier to hear when something is
bad than it is to imagine something good. If a particular combinationof ideas doesn’t make musical sense, you can generally feel thisright away, and the steps to fix it may be obvious: Maybe an element261

Problems of Finishing
Arranging as a Subtractive Process

is simply too loud, or the bass line clashes with the harmony. And
because you’re listening back to an actual flow of sound over time,
you’ll probably have an intuitive sense of when a song section has
been going on for too long—your own taste will tell you that it’s time fora change.
If you’re working in a genre in which textural density tends to increase
and decrease as the song progresses, you may already have your“thickest” sections of material finished at this point. You may findthat you’re actually able to work backwards from the end of the song
towards the beginning, removing more and more elements as you goback in time.
~ Bonus tip: Most DAWs provide a way to insert or delete chunksof empty time in the middle of an arrangement. When using asubtractive process, these tools can be extremely helpful. For
example, you may have finished editing work on what you originally
thought would be two adjacent sections of material, but then realizedthat something else should come in between, or that the first sectionneeds to be twice as long. Inserting time in the middle automaticallyshifts everything after this point to the right, which is much fasterand safer than trying to cut and paste many tracks’ worth of material
manually. Or maybe you’ve realized that a section you’ve been editing
is too long. If your DAW has it, use the delete time command to
remove the excess material, which will cause everything to the rightto automatically shift to the left to fill in the gap.

262

The Power of Erasing“It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left
to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Problem:
You feel like your music lacks the “fullness”
of the music that inspires you. But yourattempts to solve the problem often end inmusic that just feels cluttered or messy.
It’s tempting to think of a song as being something like an unlimited
physical space, and that the way to fill the space involves adding
more stuff. But in reality, musical space has boundaries, like a canvas:
There is a limit to how much you can add before you’re simply coveringsomething that’s already there.

263

Problems of Finishing
The Power of Erasing

Solution:On the production side of music-making, it’s common to hear about“making space” for each element in your mix. Normally, this means
eliminating overlapping frequencies by using EQ to carve out a bandof frequencies in one instrument that you’d like to be more dominant
in another. But the same process can be applied on the compositionside as well (and may even save you from having to do EQ surgery
afterwards).
If your music feels “small” or “weak” or “lacking power,” the real
solution may be to take parts away rather than to add more. It may feelcounterintuitive, but the reality is that each part you add requires theothers to fight that much harder for your listener’s attention. Of course,
this paring-down strategy only works if the parts you have are as goodas they can be. But if you allow yourself to fill musical space by adding
parts, you run the risk of treating each part with less care than you
might otherwise, rather than really investing the time and energy into
getting a few elements to be perfect.
This is not an argument for minimalism or for any kind of specificapproach to genre. There’s plenty of “minimal” music that fits that
description because of factors other than textural density. Music with aslow rate of change, for example, is often heard as minimal, regardlessof how many elements are happening. Likewise, plenty of maximally
active and seemingly dense music (such as some commercial EDM)
can still sound clear and open because of a conscious effort to limit
the number of simultaneous parts. The important point is to add parts
as necessary, but only as necessary, and to be ruthless about removing
things that aren’t really contributing to the music.
A sense of “fullness” can usually be created by carefully balancing
just a few things. If each part is placed in its own space, both in termsof composition and production, then a song has a better chance offeeling “complete” than it does if many parts are competing for thesame space.

264

Problems of Finishing
The Power of Erasing

In addition to brute-force removal of entire parts, you can often get
good results by “thinning out” certain elements. Techniques for thisinclude reducing the number of notes played by a particular instrumentor shortening the decay time of sustained sounds so that they quickly
get out of the way of the rest of the mix.
If you employ processes such as Arranging as a Subtractive Process(page 259) or Maximal Density (page 244), you may have
inadvertently created music that suffers from problems of overlayering. In these cases, you may need to do lots of erasing in order toget back to something that makes sense for your song. This is not tosuggest that those processes don’t work, but rather that you’ll need to
be extra careful and really think about whether or not you’ve removed
enough to keep the song musical.

265Formal Skeletons
Problem:
You have all of the elements you’ll need fora great song, but it seems that no matterhow you put them together, the arrangement
feels unsatisfying. When you listen to yourfavorite tracks, you never have this feeling;
every part seems to last just the right amountof time, tension and release are balanced
perfectly, and the song just “works” exactly
as it should.
Creating successful arrangements requires having a great internalsense of proportion, an understanding of how long each song sectionneeds to be in relation to the others. Luckily, this is a skill that can belearned, and one of the best ways to learn it is by studying and copying
from great examples that already exist.

266

Problems of Finishing
Formal Skeletons

Solution:
Find a song that has a form that works and that’s somehow in the same
musical universe as the music you’re writing. Then load that song
into an empty project in your DAW, starting from the left edge (bar 1).
Carefully adjust the tempo of your project so that it perfectly matches
the tempo of the song you’ve loaded. This ensures that your DAW’sbeat grid will align perfectly with the actual beats in the song.
Once you have this set up, carefully listen to the song. When you hear aformal division (or even an interesting moment within a formal section),stop playback and place a marker at that point. Then continue listening
from that point until you reach the next formal division, at which point
you’ll stop and add another marker. Continue this process until you
reach the end of the song. If your DAW allows this, give the markers
descriptive or functional names that will help you to understand themusical significance of the marker without having to listen again. If thesong is in a genre that uses conventional song structures, you might
give these markers names like “Verse,” “Chorus,” etc. If not, you cansimply give yourself clues like “Bass starts.” Here’s how a song mightlook when you’ve finished this process:As with the above example, in most electronic genres, you’ll probably
find that these formal divisions will occur at multiples of four or eightbars. This is by no means universal, but it can be a handy reference
when working on your own arrangements—either by nature or because
it simply occurs in so much music, listeners seem to be primed to
expect formal divisions at these points.

267

Problems of Finishing
Formal Skeletons

Now you can simply delete the original audio file, leaving the markers
behind as a kind of skeletal outline of an arrangement that you know iseffective:

From here, you can arrange your song to fill in this formal outline. And
because your materials are your own, there’s little chance that you’ll
end up duplicating the song you’ve used as a reference.
~ Note: As with all of the ideas in this book, once you actually start
employing this in practice, you may find that your own musicalmaterials don’t naturally fit into the arrangement skeleton perfectly.
Maybe your breakdown section “wants” to be four bars longer, forexample. In these cases, you must absolutely trust your instincts.
The formal skeleton should be used to get you started, but you
should absolutely feel free to move parts around once you’re
actually in the flow.

268

Common Forms 1:
Elements of Song Form
Problem:
You have no problem creating musicalideas, but you find it difficult to organize
those ideas into an arrangement that makes
sense. You’ve heard terms like “verse,”“chorus,” and “bridge” to describe thesections of some songs, but you’re neverquite sure what these words really mean orwhether or not they’re relevant to your own
musical work.
Understanding the various types of commonly used song sections
can help your understanding of the music you hear, as well as provide
options for the music you write. Here’s more information about whatthese sections are, how they work, and how they relate to each other.

269

Problems of Finishing
Common Forms 1: Elements of Song Form

Solution:
Across many different genres, there are a handful of terms that arecommonly used to refer to the various sections of a song. Much music,
especially in genres that are related to pop music, is structured by
combining these standard section types in a variety of ways. The mostcommon sections are:Verse or “A” Section: A song’s verse is generally a recurring section—
usually 16 or 32 bars in length—that serves as the main body of thesong. In music with lyrics, the verse often tells the “story.”
Chorus or “B” Section: The chorus is usually also recurring, and ofcomparable length to the verse. It acts as a contrast to the materialof the verse and usually contains the “hook” of the song—a melodic
idea that is intended to stick in the listener’s head. Often, the chorus
serves as a point of musical resolution, while the verse creates musicaltension. Another important distinction between verse and chorus:
Recurring verses share the same music but they generally havedifferent lyrics, while recurring choruses most often share both music
and lyrics. Additionally, in music with lyrics, the chorus often contains
the title of the song. As a general rule, the first chorus in a song occurs
after a verse (although there are some songs that begin with a chorus).
Bridge or “C” Section: The bridge serves as a contrast to both theverse and chorus and typically occurs only once in a song. Musically,
bridges are often substantially different from the rest of the musicin the song; they may be in a different key, employ unusual chord
progressions, or have a dramatically different level of textural densityand energy. In some types of music, the bridge is used for instrumental
solos. Generally, the bridge occurs only after at least one verse and one
chorus.
The A, B, and C letter names are often used to create formal diagramsof particular songs, and this can be a useful tool in your own Active
Listening (page 22) or when writing a Catalog of Attributes (page16). For example, one common form in commercial music is ABABCB

270

Problems of Finishing
Common Forms 1: Elements of Song Formor Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus. In some songs that use
this basic form, there may be one or more additional choruses added
to the end. But otherwise, this form is used unchanged in probably the
majority of contemporary pop songs you’ll hear on the radio. “Royals”
by Lorde is an example of ABABCB form followed exactly.
Although there is a wide variety of possible song forms that can bemade just from various combinations of verse, chorus, and bridge,
these types of sectional constructions are less commonly used in more
underground or experimental music. For example, most contemporary
electronic genres without vocals tend to avoid conventional verse andchorus sections, and instead create formal contrast via addition andsubtraction of layers (see Common Forms 2: Layering as Form (page272)). But if you’re working in genres more closely related to pop
music, you can create a lot of music using only these few section types.

271

Common Forms 2:
Layering as Form
Problem:
You have no problem creating musicalideas, but you find it difficult to organize
those ideas into an arrangement that makes
sense. You’ve heard terms like “buildup,”“breakdown,” and “drop” to describe thesections of some songs, but you’re neverquite sure what these words really mean orwhether or not they’re relevant to your own
musical work.
Understanding how layering and textural density work can help yourunderstanding of the music you hear, as well as provide options for themusic you write.

272

Problems of Finishing
Common Forms 2: Layering as Form

Solution:
In contrast to the structure of song forms (see Common Forms 1:
Elements of Song Form (page 269)), many of the more “pure”
electronic genres (such as some techno, trance, dubstep, etc.) avoid
the use of sectional designs altogether. Instead, a sense of form inthese genres is often established by continuous variation of texturaldensity around a relatively small amount of material—what would
sometimes comprise only a single section in more pop-oriented genres.
For example, in modern genres such as American dubstep, a single
basic collection of material is often used from the beginning to the endof the track. Contrast, then, is created through layering: the careful
addition and subtraction of parts in order to change the density of theunderlying texture. There are a handful of terms that are commonlyused to refer to the various parts of a song constructed in this way.
These terms include:
Buildup: A track’s buildup is a section—usually 16 or 32 bars in length,
or some multiple of those—in which layers are added, increasing themusic’s textural density and perceived sense of energy. Buildups
should create a sense of drive and forward motion and should end at ahigh point.
Breakdown: The breakdown is a section of lower energy, designed
as a contrast to the buildup, and involves either a gradual or sudden
reduction in density. Breakdowns are about removing elements withthe goal of creating a sense of space. Some common breakdown
techniques include removing all of the drum elements or, conversely,
removing everything except drums. Breakdowns are often shorter thanbuildups but are commonly still in increments of 8 or 16 bars.
Drop: The drop is the climax and is generally the most texturally dense
passage of music in the track. The drop can occur after either a buildup
or a breakdown, depending on the overall energy contour you’re273

Problems of Finishing
Common Forms 2: Layering as Formtrying to achieve. There are generally no more than one or two drops
in a single track, although there are commonly more buildups andbreakdowns.
Although the musical results are radically different and significantly
more subtle than in American dubstep, similar types of layering
principles occur in a variety of other electronic genres as well.
Consider, for example, classic dub techno tracks like those released bylabels such as Chain Reaction. In most of this music, there is no senseof sectional contrast. A bass line or drum pattern that appears at the
beginning of the track is likely to appear throughout the entire track,and if new material is introduced at some point, it is an addition to thesurrounding material rather than a large-scale replacement of it.
Layering as a form-defining process doesn’t work for every kind ofmusic. If you’re working in genres that are closely related to pop music,
you will probably benefit from using the more conventional elementsof song form (see Common Forms 1: Elements of Song Form (page269)). But for many types of “classic” electronic music, using asmall amount of material subjected to ever-changing levels of texturaldensity can be enough to create a sense of structure.

274

Short Loops as Endings
Problem:
You have an arrangement that’s almost, but
not quite, finished. The form makes sense,
and the pacing, tension, and release all seemto be working. The only problem is that there
seems to be no way to actually end it. Whatcan you do to close off the final section when
it seems like it could just go on forever?
A common problem when working on the late stages of a track isfiguring out how to actually make it come to a real conclusion. A
repeating chord progression in the closing phrase of a track, forexample, may simply feel “right” if extended indefinitely. Leaving aloop playing continuously is, after all, a common way to work during
the production phase of a track, and it’s sometimes difficult to exit the
producer mindset and enter the world of the listener, who (naturally)
expects a track to end at some point. If you simply stop the music, thenthe ending feels abrupt and rushed. But if you go on too long, you risk
ruining the pacing and balance of an otherwise well-made track. Here’s
a suggestion for bringing a track to a real, and satisfying, ending.

275

Problems of Finishing
Short Loops as Endings

Solution:
One interesting way to end a track is to isolate a loop from somewherein the song (the closing phrase usually works well) that is somewhat
shorter than the phrase itself, and then repeat this loop a set numberof times as a final musical gesture. For example, if the last passage ofmaterial in your song is an eight-bar chord progression, try isolating
a one- or two-bar sub-passage within this material as a closing
statement. For the listener, this material will already sound familiar,
since it has been previously established in the closing phrase. But by
using a short snippet instead of the full passage, we can create theillusion of speeding up, or a sudden increase in forward motion thatdrives towards the ending.
Additionally, you may want to further reduce the size of the loop tocontinue this sense of acceleration into the ending. For example,
our original eight-bar loop might first become two bars. Then after
repeating this two bars for a little while, we might again reduce the twobars to one bar (or shorter). You will probably start to sense a naturalending point after repeating these shortened phrases a few times. If
you still don’t hear an obvious ending, try simply stopping the music
after a fixed, even number of shortened repetitions (say 4, 8, or 16). Via
trial and error, you can often come up with an ending that works.
To add even more drive to the ending, you could try adding some
Unique Events (page 277) to the final shortened loops. This will
increase both the apparent speed of activity as well as the texturaldensity, while also breaking up the “purity” of the loops.

276

Unique Events
Problem:You’ve finished an arrangement, and you’regenerally happy with it. It has a variety ofsections, you’ve created Fuzzy Boundaries(page 99) between them, they all seemto last for the right amount of time, andthere are contrasts and appropriate levelsof tension and release. But somehow, it
still sounds like “loop music”—repetitive.
You can’t consider it finished in this state,because it feels too predictable; it won’t
offer any surprises beyond the first listen.
Modern DAWs suggest a workflow that combines loops into larger
arrangements, and many genres of electronic music are defined byrepeating patterns. But perfectly repeated loops can become tediousafter a while. Here is one technique for creating a sense of surprisewithin an otherwise loop-based context.

277

Problems of Finishing
Unique Events

Solution:
At various points in your arrangement, insert unique events—sounds,
gestures, or variations that occur only once and are never repeated.
There are a few different types of unique events you can try:
> Single events. These are short samples or sounds that can be
strategically placed throughout your arrangement to add a layerof unpredictability. These can be almost anything—pitched or
unpitched percussion sounds, single notes or chords played on
an instrument that is otherwise never heard, etc. A good sourceof single events is the sample library you already have. Try finding
unusual samples that would otherwise be out of context for yoursong. Depending on where you place these events, the effect on thelistener can be quite varied. For example, placing single events at ornear formal boundaries can make them feel like part of a transition,
while placing them at formally insignificant moments can be quite
jarring and interruptive, especially if they’re also placed in odd
rhythmic locations that play “against” the grid of the song.
> Single musical gestures. These are short phrases or one-time
alterations to otherwise consistently repeating patterns. It’s common
to vary a musical phrase near a formal transition, but it can beespecially interesting if you also create one-time variations within
the middle of a phrase. Some DAWs offer various types of notetransformation tools, which can apply processes to a selection of
MIDI notes to change some or all of them in a way that maintains a
relationship to the original. These tools can provide an interesting
way to create one-off musical gestures.
> Single processing gestures. Consider applying dramatic, one-timechanges to the effects processing on one or more tracks. For
example, set up a chain of effects but leave them bypassed or off.
Then use automation to make them active only once before disablingthem again. Single processing gestures can be especially disruptive
if they’re quite short or if they occur in unusual places in a phrase.

278

Problems of Finishing
Unique Events

Depending on the genre you’re working in, you can be quite creativewith these unique events. Unless you’re working in a very commercial
context, you don’t generally need to worry that “weird” (i.e., out of key,out of rhythm, etc.) unique events will ruin the texture of the music. But
note that you should probably use them sparingly within a single song.
Even though each individual event occurs only once, using too many
unique events in a song can create its own sense of predictability.
Listeners will begin to expect that something jarring or unusual will
occur, which reduces the effectiveness of the technique.

279

Three Ways to End
Problem:
You’re staring at an arrangement that’s
working, but you see no way to come to aconvincing ending.
Although endings are usually easier than beginnings, they can still besources of considerable creative stress. After all, you’ve worked hardto build a strong arrangement that creates and resolves tension at theright times and in the right proportions. But all of this work could be
lost if the ending doesn’t “wrap up” the song in a satisfying way.
Here are three common ways to end songs.

280

Problems of FinishingThree Ways to End

Solutions:
1. Mirror what you did before. In many tracks, the work of creating
the arrangement consists largely of adding and subtracting layers.
Parts enter to increase the textural density and energy and then are
removed to create sections of reduced energy. One way to write asatisfying conclusion is to create a mirror image of the initial “partaccumulation” phase of your track. For example, if your track begins
with:> kick drum alone (8 bars)> add other percussion (8 bars)> add bass line (8 bars)> add harmony and melody (8 bars),
you might then mirror this process to end the track as follows:> remove harmony and melody (8 bars)> remove bass line (8 bars)> remove other percussion (8 bars)> kick drum alone (8 bars).
2. Loop and add/subtract. As discussed in Short Loops as Endings(page 275), one way to end is to find a loop from somewhere in thesong and simply repeat it. Insistence alone might be enough to drive
the track to a convincing ending, but you can also experiment withincreasing the sense of drive by adding additional layers at each loop
repeat to build density and tension. On the other hand, you can also
subtract or “thin out” parts at each loop repetition (possibly throughthe mirroring process discussed previously) in order to minimize
energy and let the song end with a whimper rather than a bang. Bothoptions work well, and the choice of which to employ depends ontaste and musical context.
3. Fade out. Fade outs have negative connotations among electronic
musicians, possibly because tracks with fades can be a bit
challenging to use in the context of a DJ mix. But there are definitely
situations in which a simple fade into silence is the right choice.

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Problems of FinishingThree Ways to End

It’s important to note the philosophical implication of the fade out:
It suggests to the listener that the song might actually never end.
With this in mind, it probably only makes sense to fade out if you’ve
settled into closing material that would really work well if left looping
indefinitely. Jagged, asymmetrical, or otherwise “harsh” passages
probably don’t make good material with which to fade out. Anotherimportant point to consider is where in the production process thefade out should be employed. If you plan to have your track mastered(or to master it yourself), it may be better to wait until the mastering
stage to do the fade. This is because the sound of a mix fading canchange dramatically depending on whether it happens before orafter final mastering compression.

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Rendering as Commitment
Problem:
You’re nearly finished with the song. The
arrangement is perfect, the mix is coming
together, and you expect that you’re justa few minor tweaks away from something
you’ll be really happy with. But then you start
thinking “what if I could make these sounds
even better?” So you go back to your synths
and start tweaking knobs. One change
leads to another, which leads to additionalsound design work on another track, andnow hours have passed and you’re no closer
to done—in fact, you feel like you’ve gonebackwards, and you’re just programmingkick drum sounds again, like you were at thevery beginning of your work on the track.
This scenario is especially common for people who work entirely insoftware. With total recall of every setting possible just by loading the
project, we’re able to easily go back and rework even the tiniest detailsof both the music and the sounds, regardless of what stage of theprocess we’re at. In fact, there isn’t even really a need to think in termsof “stages” anymore; we can seamlessly move between sound design,
composition, arranging, and mixing right until the point at which weexport the final file.
But this kind of flexibility can actually be a detriment to our real goal,
which is getting music done.

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Problems of Finishing
Rendering as Commitment

Solution:
If you find that your desire to tweak the low-level details gets in theway of your ability to finish, consider adopting a workflow that simply
takes away your ability to tweak. One way to do this is by rendering toaudio much earlier in the process than you normally would.
Although modern DAWs blur the line between editing MIDI and audio,
there is still a huge range of latent possibility (and thus distraction)
available just by having access to the source instruments. By rendering
to audio—and then removing the instruments that made it—you’re
forced to change your mode of interaction with your material. You can’tchange patches anymore, or adjust parameters. This forces at least
the “programming synthesizers” part of the sound design process tocome to an end. By closing certain doors behind you, the only way you
can move is forward—writing, arranging, and mixing the song. This isessentially an Arbitrary Constraint (page 33) self-imposed for thesole purpose of eliminating possibilities.
Additionally, if you’re collaborating with other people, rendering toaudio streamlines project portability. It’s no longer necessary for you
and your collaborators to have exactly the same plug-ins, and you
can be sure that shared files will open correctly on any machine. And
this could also allow you to more explicitly divide up the collaborative
responsibilities. For example, one of you could be entirely responsible
for sound design and idea creation while the other handles arranging
and mixing. By working only with rendered audio, the second person isforced to focus more on their specific roles and is unable to easily dip
back into the sound design mindset.
Finally, if you’re working with plug-in instruments rather than hardware
ones, an additional side benefit of rendering early is that it significantly
reduces your DAW’s processing requirements. Working with audio ismuch less resource-intensive than working with virtual instruments,
and constantly having to deal with an overloaded machine can itself bea damper on creativity, so working this way helps to solve this problem
almost by accident.

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Problems of Finishing
Rendering as Commitment

And of course, this technique applies to more than just instruments.
Including the sound of effects processing in your “early” audio
renderings can be an even more extreme level of commitment. It may
also help you to find new creative uses of effects, because you can be
more free to capture the sound of a particular moment of processing
experiments, rather than thinking of effects as locked to particular
tracks. For example, you could work with an effect for a while, render
the audio of its output, delete the effect, replace it with another one,and repeat.
If you own multiple DAWs, you could even consider switching between
them for different stages of the production process, and rendering toaudio becomes a necessary step in this case. For example, maybe you
use one DAW for sound design, because you prefer the sound of someof its native instruments or effects. But you prefer another DAW for
mixing because you like the look of its metering.
If you’re really worried that rendering is too much of a commitment, but
you still want to take advantage of the workflow benefits that rendering
provides, you could try the intermediate step of saving multiple
versions of your project, both pre- and post-rendering. This way, you
can choose to work with the audio-only version but still go back to theolder version containing the original instruments if there’s a low-levelchange that you really need to make. The risk of working this way,
however, is that any edits you make to one version will need to also bemade to the other in order to keep them in sync.

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Getting Feedback
Problem:
You recognize the value of feedback,but you’re self-conscious about asking forother people’s opinions of your music. In
addition, you don’t know when to ask for it;
should you ask people to critique your inprogress tracks or only ask when things are
finished (when you’ll be more reluctant tomake changes)? Finally, whom should you
ask? Friends and family? Other producers?
The anonymous internet?
Especially if you’re young or new to making music, it can be difficult
to have an internal sense of whether or not your work is any good. For
new producers (and even for veterans), feedback from others can be
helpful, but it’s important to get feedback at the right time and fromthe right people. Here are some tips for how to improve your process ofcollecting feedback.

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Problems of Finishing
Getting Feedback

Solution:
If you’re just asking for feedback because you’re seeking praise, then
you’re not really looking to improve. The most important factor toconsider when getting feedback on your creative work is whether or
not you’re prepared to accept criticism. And to be sure that you’ll get
criticism, you need to ask people who you can be sure will be honestwith you. Your mother is likely to be a fan of everything you do. But
unless she’s also a musician, she may not be in a position to give you
honest, usable feedback. Getting an ego boost can be valuable for yourmental health, but beyond that it probably won’t help you make bettermusic, so be sure to consider whether or not family and friends are agood source of useful feedback or if they’re instead just making you
feel better.
The best people to give you constructive—and critical—feedback areprobably going to be other people who are really invested in the kindof music you’re trying to make: either other producers or, at least, very
serious and knowledgeable fans. But even then, you need to consider
the relationship between you and your critic. A teacher, for example,
would probably give very different feedback to a student than thatstudent would give to the teacher. Be careful when asking for feedback
from people who are your subordinates or who might otherwise havea reason to stay on your good side. As with friends or relatives, theymight just be telling you what they think you want to hear.
Getting helpful feedback from the internet can also be a challenge.
Websites and forums that are made by and for music producers tend toyield feedback that is more constructive than sites that allow for truly
anonymous comments (such as YouTube).
Your most valuable and astute critics, no matter how well intentioned,
will probably find it difficult to objectively evaluate your music before
it’s finished. This is because they’ll be evaluating it in comparison to
tracks that are not only finished but also mastered. We naturally hearmusic as better even if it’s just louder, and it’s difficult to overcome

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Problems of Finishing
Getting Feedback

this biological hardwiring when trying to critique music that’s
unfinished. One idea might be to have a “quick-and-dirty” mastering
preset available that can at least get the level of an unfinished track
into the general volume range of released material. This is, of course,
not a substitute for real mastering. But if you’re interested in getting
feedback on work in progress, it will help to allow people to listen to
the music without being distracted by the low volume.
Also, when asking for feedback, be sure to ask for specifics. Asking
someone if they like the song will get you a yes or no answer, which
isn’t really of much use. But asking for details—about sounds, form, andother fine details—will likely yield much more useful feedback about
your musical decisions.
Remember that once you’ve released something into the world—whether on a label or just on your own via the internet—you’ll get
criticism no matter what. You may find it beneficial to hear some of thisfeedback ahead of time by asking for it early. Just make sure you do itat the right time and from the right people.

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Diminishing Returns“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”— Voltaire“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”— Leonardo da Vinci

Problem:
You regularly notice that your rate of progressgets slower and slower as you get closer tothe end of the song. The beginning creation
phase is very fast, and this always feels
inspiring. But endings seem to take forever.
You’re constantly going back to refine, neverquite sure that things are as good as they
can be. As a result, you get increasingly
discouraged as time goes on, and the final
stages of work on a song are the most timeconsuming and painful.
Most producers are perfectionists. We want our tracks to be better
than the ones that inspire us, and at least as good as some abstract
ideal that we have in the back of our mind for what our music shouldbe. But in reality, perfection is unattainable, and continuing to tinker
with a song in the very late stages may actually make things worse.

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Problems of Finishing
Diminishing Returns

Solution:
As difficult as it might feel in the moment, it’s important to learn torecognize the point at which the song is “good enough.” This is not
the point at which you can continue to make real improvements; if
continuing to work is really making things better, then you should
continue to work! Instead, this is the point at which continuing to work
will yield meaningless or arbitrary results. Learning where this point isin the production process is different for everyone. But if you regularlyfind yourself endlessly tweaking what is essentially a finished mix,
you’ve probably reached the point of diminishing returns.
Most of the time, this late-stage tweaking is the result of a fear ofcommitment. Once we decide that the song is finished, we might
be stricken with doubt: “If I had worked harder, would it have been
better?” But it’s important to realize that, by this stage, you’ve probably
already made all of the hard decisions that need to be made. At best,
continuing to tweak will probably just waste time that could be better
spent getting to work on the next track. In the worst case, you might
actually go backwards and make the track worse. This is because yourinitial decisions often prove to be the right ones, and the more time you
spend second-guessing yourself, the more likely you are to override
your instincts in a negative way.
Although it will take time and concentration, learn to find the point
where the track isn’t going to benefit from further work, and train
yourself to stop there. In the long run, you’ll finish more music without
sacrificing quality.

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Fail Better“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”— Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

Problem:
The closer you get to finishing the track,
the more you realize that it’s a failure. It will
be impossible to turn this into something
you’ll be proud of. Why bother finishing it
at all? Wouldn’t it make more sense to justabandon it and start over on a completely
different project?
It’s depressing to realize that you’ve made something bad. It’s evenmore depressing to realize it while you’re still working on it but after
it’s beyond any hope of salvation. But in this situation, there are stillvalid reasons to keep going and finish the track anyway.

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Problems of Finishing
Fail Better

Solution:
Most producers have started far more tracks than they’ve finished.
It’s much easier to give up in the middle of a project and move on tosomething new than it is to see a project through to the very end.
But what most producers don’t realize is that each stage of the musicmaking process is itself a thing that requires practice. We get to bebetter sound designers by designing sounds. We get to be better drum
programmers by programming drums. And we get to be better songfinishers by finishing songs. Because of this, the more songs we start
but don’t finish, the more opportunities we miss out on to practicefinishing. And as a result, we might continually improve at various
aspects of the early stages, but we’ll never improve at actually getting
things done.
If you realize very early that what you’re working on isn’t going to be
successful, you probably have time to change directions and makethings better. But if you’re very late in the process of making the track
before realizing that it’s not good, it might be too late to fix it withoutcompletely gutting it (which is essentially the same as starting over). In
these cases, forcing yourself to finish—no matter how painful—is often
better than giving up. You’ll not only get practice finishing, but you’llalso get practice failing, in itself a valuable skill to learn in a subjective
and unpredictable business like art. The better you get at finishing, andthe better you get at coping with failure, the better your chances willbe the next time you begin (and, hopefully, finish) a project.
If the track is really as bad as you think, maybe there is a naturalend point that’s earlier than where you’d stop with a track you were
happy with. For example, it might not make sense to get your new
track professionally mastered. And it might be a good idea to notshare it with the public. Maybe it just goes right back into your Scraps
and Sketches (page 74) folder, to be pulled apart for use in othertracks later. But the important thing is that you actually finish thearrangement, if for no other reason than to practice, improve, andexperience how it feels to finish.

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Credits
Edited by Mark Garvey.
Proofread by Rose Knudsen.
Book design by Maggie Tang.
Special thanks to the following people
for providing valuable feedback on earlyversions of this book: Savannah Agger,
Gerhard Behles, Noel Bush, Michael Ford,
Coleman Goughary, Ian Hobson, Alexander
Joscht, Steffen Klein, Adam Mannegren,
Takeshi Nishimoto, and Huston Singletary.

About the author
Dennis DeSantis is a composer, sounddesigner, percussionist, and the Head ofDocumentation for Ableton. His electronic
music appears on labels such as Ghostly,
Global Underground, Cocoon and Kanzleramt,
and he has performed throughout North
America, Europe, and Japan. Dennis has aDoctor of Musical Arts degree in Composition
from the Eastman School of Music, and also
has composition degrees from Yale University
and Western Michigan University.

About Ableton
Ableton makes products for music makers
to create, produce and perform music.
These include Live, a software that combines
traditional studio technologies with thefreedom of working without a timeline;
Push, a hardware instrument for hands-on
playing and composing with Live; and Link,a technology that allows multiple devices
to play in time together over a wirelessconnection.
Ableton was founded in 1999 by musicians inneed of new creative tools. The first versionof Live was released in 2001. The company
is led by its founders from its headquarters
in Berlin, and has additional offices in Los
Angeles and Tokyo. About 300 people workat Ableton across the world.