Beats and Melodies

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One aspect of using the Non-Linear Music Production technique that I want to share with you involves two simple, and easy to follow tips with big benefits – we’re going to focus on just beats or melodies – this going to upgrade your productivity in the studio and it’s extremely effective in reducing writer’s block.  

Statistics show that in February the number of people known to be stuck facing writer’s block is often on the rise. We can blame long cold winters for being partly to blame, yet there’s also a few things that can lead to this, such as:

  • Fatigue. A lack of warm sunlight and an increase of time spent indoors.
  • Overworking. If you’ve fallen into a routine of day job, followed by study, then music production at the end of a long day, or as the last part of a long day, you might fall in the trap of overdoing it, and becoming unproductive.
  • Lack of distance. Writer’s block is often a sign of creative burn out and is a clear sign you need distance from what you’re working on. If you’ve over exposed yourself to the same kind of creative work, you might need to dip into something new to get refreshed, which is what this blog post is all about.

To make your best beats and melodies, give yourself the freedom to produce in a deconstructed way. Break the mould.

Part of the problem of falling into a slump comes in believing that to make music, you need to begin writing your song in a linear way, which is starting from the very beginning, working up to the middle, and following through until the end of the track. Perhaps, before approaching your next track with that mindset, consider embracing a different way to think about your time in the studio.

Setting yourself little goals are simple and bring back the fun in making music.

One of the ways to get your track really grooving early is to work on one element of your track only. Get started making just the beat, or melody. The task of concentrating on just one element of your production will take off a big part of the pressure in trying to finish something bigger. Another benefit to working and focusing on one element at a time is that doing so lends itself to experimentation, play, and an appreciation to those sounds on their own. You can even roll back one step before  approaching this and practice on sound design alone if you feel like making beats or melodies isn’t working for you right now.

Do you often sit in front of your computer and imagine yourself putting that loop into it’s final song-form, and think abo ut everything you need to do to get there? This can often be discouraging, and prevent you from making great music.There’s some debate on what should be done first when starting a production. Some artists admit they can’t do a beat if they don’t have a melody or vice versa. My personal view on that is quite simple, if you can only make music in a certain method, it’s time for you to break that to avoid falling into dependencies, which can hurt your music making progress.

To make your next session super productive let’s do a bit of preparation – there’s so much you can outsource from these next few steps. 

  1. Make a folder with today’s date.
  2. You’ll be saving your project in there as well as anything related.
  3. Get yourself a timer. I highly suggest that you limit your time on only ONE task. Focusing on only ONE element of your track will speed up your productivity, and make sure your aren’t spending time on less important details.

Making beats. With the premise that we’re using Ableton here, there’s no good or bad way to make beats. But I invite you to explore a mixture of midi use vs simple audio assembling in the arranger.

Let’s see a few important points you can apply to make these beats:

  • Sample selection. At this moment having the perfect sample is not important. I’ve seen students of mine loosing tremendous time looking for a kick while it’s actually the last thing you should be deciding. Tip: Use a simple 808 kick to start with, and swap it later.ableton live, step sequencing, patterns, beatsStep sequencing: Change the grid going from 1/4 for the main beats to fiddle to details with a 1/32. Tip:
  • Ableton Live, duplicate loopLenght: Duplicate and double up your 1 bar loop to 4, then start removing, adding so that each bar is unique. This takes away the boredom of repetition.
  • Groove: Explore grooves as you go. Try something new as importing the groove from a track you like and apply it to one sample of your beat.

 

Making melodies. This one might be tricky especially if, like me, you have no musical background whatsoever. It could help that you read the basics about music and know at least what are chords, harmonies and scales for instance. This is useful because Ableton will give you tools that can take away your lack of knowledge to turn it into something that makes, avoiding possible awkwardness. My take on melodies is, there’s no rules here and if you can get a midi keyboard, just start tapping randomly to hear notes of the synth you picked, then see if there’s a possible, semi-logical order you can organize that randomness into.

  • Synth selection: This exercise will make sense the more you do it. If you’ve never done this before, I strongly encourage you to try every single synth presets you can have on the ones you have. A preset is a starting point, it’s not the end result so play a few notes that start noodling around the knobs to shape whatever bothers you into something else. Don’t aim at something, improvise with what you have.
  • Melody: One simple tip that has been proven extremely useful is to record every single moment of my session. So, in one channel, make sure to have a resampling to record all the madness, ugliness, mistakes and glory but also, try to record your moves with midi recording. The recording of the sounds is more important than trying to make a solid hook out of a few notes.
  • Ableton’s melody extraction: Very useful on beatless music. Try it with some ambient and see what you get. From classical music as well, it can be surprisingly inspiring.
  • Pitch down a melody to make a bass. Always surprisingly full of new sounds.

 

How to use all your new sounds?

Later on, after a few weeks, you’ll end up with folders, filled with ideas. Some will be beats, some melodies. Make sure that whenever you finish a session, you export what you had in one or multiple files. You can bounce an idea you love or you can export the entire session.

Where it gets really fun is to open a blank Ableton project and import all the renders, making a channel for beats, the other for melodies. Then you can find unusual match between one and another. Make sure everything is rightfully labeled so you can reopen certain projects to go tweak a sound if needed.

How to write melodies and beats in Ableton Live tutorial.

Creating beats and melodies tutorial with Ableton Live.

Next time you turn on your DAW try working on only a beat or a melody, experiment with your patterns and notes, and take the time to closely listen to the sounds you’re creating. Save. Render. Import. Jam.

If you’re looking for ways to produce a ton of fresh sounds and grooves in a way that is fun and efficient, try working on just one element of your track (beats or melodies). And, if you find starting your tracks from writing in the same formula, try using a non-linear technique to get your tracks moving along faster.

The takeaway is this – these two techniques will upgrade your productivity in the studio, help you make more music, and are really effective in reducing writer’s block. 

I want to hear what exciting sounds you’ve come up with focusing on just beats or melodies. Keep up to date and share your progress with me online.

JP.

SEE ALSO :  Making and breaking genres in your music 

The Art of Keeping People on Their Toes

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You know when you discover music that breaks the mould, and you can’t stop listening to it? When there’s just something special about it that keeps you playing it on repeat? There are actually certain recipes for giving music its power, and a lot of it has to do with keeping people on their toes. Here are some techniques for keeping your music fresh and innovative.

Known and new anchors

Genres are largely distinguished by a specific set of sounds, rhythms, or structural arrangements. For instance, deep dub techno has its signature rich pad sounds that you won’t really hear in, say, trance music, which is more known for the heavy use of arpeggiated synths. Some deep house uses the same pads as techno, but you can still differentiate the two because of its structure and percussion samples.

When producers want to create in a specific genre, they’ll sometimes repeat what has worked before by getting all the sounds right. If you stick to the tried and true though, you’ll need to really up your game to get noticed because you’ll be repeating the same old formula.

Introducing sounds that are less common to the genre can be a great way to shake things up. You could bring in foreign percussions that aren’t usually associated with the style, or samples that might throw people off. New anchors, or a sense of novelty, always create interest for listeners.

Technological novelty

I follow a few sites religiously to keep up with the latest news about new effects, DAWs, and the like. Keeping current lets you get ahead of the curve and stay fresh and innovative. This might sound like a silly example, but people like Cher in her hit “Believe”, or Daft Punk with “Around the World”, showed how using forward-thinking technology at the right time can help you make it huge. You might go “meh” at those songs today, but when they came out, it was a big deal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yca6UsllwYs

 

Balancing surprises

If you browse the web for information on what makes music addictive, you’ll read that the brain seeks out elements that balance predictability with a sense of surprise. If you’re kept just slightly off balance, but still feel you’re on stable ground, you can get the dramatic sense of venturing on some sort of journey while facing obstacles you can overcome. Many people experience a sense of travelling when listening to music, and it’s even been shown that music can produce some of the same hormones as ingesting drugs.

If you’re creative with them, these common production-related tips will help you generate tons of new ideas:

The 1-2 punch technique. I’ve been doing theater for years, and this popular trick is used to surprise people or make them laugh. I’ve noticed how it’s used in movies, advertisements and of course, music. The idea is simple: you produce a cool idea, trick or sound that pleases or surprises the audience. This sound or idea should be one of the main elements of your song. After a certain while, you’ll repeat it a second time, which generates a sense of satisfaction in the listener. Wait a little while longer, and on the third time, when the listener is expecting it to repeat again, you deliver either a different sound or a new variation to throw them off. This usually never fails.

Repetition and counter-rep. In the same vein, when you build the  structure of your song, you’ll need to order the sounds in a specific way to give your audio vocabulary some logic, which brings you into a conversation with the listener. Repetition lulls the listener into a comfort zone. It’s where things are smooth, predictable, even hypnotic. Now, in your repetition, it’s fun to play with timing and counter-balance. One sound will appear, then another will reply or echo the first sound, but as an offset element. Usually, the echo can be off and playful, which gives you a lot of room to build layers that add colour and intrigue to your song.

Be wild. This is a favourite of mine. To get the most out of it requires that you get inspiration from other genres that you might not listen to. In my case, I’ve sometimes listened to contemporary classical, weird jazz, or bluegrass to see what and how things are made. Then I try to apply an element or principle into my own music, either pertaining to the structure, percussions, breakdown, or intro. There’s a lot to be learned from other genres.

SEE ALSO :  Creating Timeless Music

Using and Choosing an Alias

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Artist aliases have a colourful history that goes back centuries. Long before techno, stage names and pen names were common in music and literature especially, with artists often wanting to separate their david Bowiepublic personas from their private identities. Voltaire (aka François-Marie Arouet) and Bob Dylan (born Zimmerman) both wanted to break away from their pasts. David Bowie (born David Robert Jones) wanted to avoid confusion with Davy Jones, later the lead singer of The Monkees. And many of history’s biggest musicians and authors have wanted to disguise their genders (if women) or ethnic origins. There are as many motivations as there are people and contexts.

At the beginning of techno music, virtually everyone had an alias. It was part of the culture of techno for producers to want to remain faceless, with the idea that techno was supposed to be all about the music, instead of the egos. At the risk of getting too nostalgic, it was one of the things that made techno different.
One of the beautiful things with aliases is that they allow artists to channel one musical direction into a distinct brand, which frees them to explore many different projects or genres without fear of confusing or alienating their followers.
Two of the biggest examples in electronic music are Richie Hawtin’s Plastikman moniker and Aphex Twin, each with their own identifiable sound and even logo. Some artists, like Daft Punk, will take the concept even further, donning elaborate costumes during live performances to avoid ever showing their faces.
For artists like these  — or like Bowie, who probably opened the door for these kinds of stage personas — using an alias can be a way to get around personal fears or insecurities and achieve complete creative freedom. In the 1990s, against the backdrop of Detroit’s urban decay, the city’s underground techno scene went all in on aliases, with many artists channelling superhero personas or other fictional characters to envision the future of music in a dystopic world.

So let’s say you’ve decided to use an alias. That’s likely the easy part. But how do you find the right one for you?

When it comes to techno music, there are often trends with aliases. One recent one was to remove the vowels and place all letters in caps. Another was to swap the first letters of the first and last names. But if you’re like for something more original, here are some tips for finding your own alias:

If you already have a nickname, use it. The whole idea behind an alias is that it’s something that is unique to you, and that people will quickly associate with your music. If your friends (especially those in your music circles) have given you a nickname because they think it expresses something interesting or special about you, they might just be onto something.

Use a vocal imitation of a sound (an onomatopoeia). Not many people know this, but I got my own alias by using an onomatopoeia (like swish, hiss, buzz, etc.) for a sound that I felt captured the feel of my music. There are no official spellings for sounds because everyone will hear them differently, so you can get really creative with this.

Do a random article search on Wikipedia. This might sound a bit strange, considering that I just said how important it was for an alias to be something unique to you. As a springboard to further research or new ideas though, Wikipedia can be a great resource. Just enter the first keyword that comes to mind and go from there, jumping off from article to article whenever something piques your interest.

Have fun with languages. If you’re having difficulty finding the right alias in your language, why not explore a different one? This can be especially fitting if you have a multicultural background yourself or speak different languages, or even if you just have a special bond with another culture and feel that its language speaks to you in some way.

Whether you follow one of these approaches or find your own, the important part to remember is that your alias is your brand. It should translate something essential about your music, and be striking and original enough that people will hear it and immediately think of you.

Have fun with it! The process of choosing an alias can be extremely constructive, since it invites you to explore what your music is all about.

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