So there’s a lot on production techniques around on the web. But what about composition techniques? How do you work when trying to create a vision of sound and put it into reality with music software?
I believe there can be fundamental techniques worth developing when going for this. When going for composition, it is like any skill - you can train and develop it due to practicing and exercising it.
Some people have strong vision of sound from the beginning on, and just lack the tools to put into practice. I’m a bit like that, and have to say you have to reinvent your fantasy to make it real, but in the end you can come to the point where you started maybe…just now you can make the sounds all real.
Others make up the composition during creation, and this is the way to learn to connect to intuition I believe. This way my skills also developed…I couldn’t make the sounds in my head at first. But when I started trying, I’ve learnt to build pieces up from how they happen, step by step.
Instead of trying to make up the whole piece at once, you start with building up from simple ideas, loops or elements. Then I wait for an inspiration how it could progress, or what kind of other elements might fit for it. Going on, listening and processing over and over again…it is like sculpting, from a raw rock, slowly an intricate piece can develop.
You can also separate sounds and composition idea. I liked first playing around with sounds, making them fit in aesthetics and sound. Then, wiping all my loops and automation note data, making a completely different composition from it step by step. Even from a techno setup, making a composition like a classical piece with layers and facets and tempo and mood changes - the sounds already fit together well, and this can free the head to gain and realize a fantasy of what they might be able to express.
This is like divide and conquer. Making a frame, a set of inspirations and limitations that still leaves anything open, but pre-defines common grounds for the language of sound to develop. Then painting it bit by bit with colors previously matched to each other. Painting it layer by layer, consecutively adding details and drawing over bad parts so everything fits together.
Might seem like a tedious process to do at first, but it is the way. First the intuition, the inspiration is in the moment and the simple decisions on how to sequence things. Follow it, building up on the ideas, then you may see that you start anticipating more and more moves and planning more and more ahead - just with steps that you DO understand on how they will sound and build up on each other, not just dreaming. In the end you can know ahead what steps lead to a final result without building up on the steps, then you can learn to plan everything ahead in fantasy and then working to nail the idea down. This is probably a master’s craft, after years of practice.
Curious to hear your ideas and techniques to build up original style pieces and constructing the layers of composition from inspiration to actual sounds!