Last year marked my 20th year releasing electronic music as an artist.
I started dabbling with electronic music and made my first tracks already back in 1996. But I started releasing music to the public in the following year. Back then I was using tracker software to make music and I ran a tracker scene label called Rebound. We released more than 100 tracks as free downloads within a timespan of about 4 years.
There’s a request I keep getting regularly. It comes in different shapes and forms but the gist is always the same. Here’s an example of an email I received:
“I began with the program Logic pro X. But i have a problem: I want to get some plug ins for this program, i’d like to get it for free, because buying it is too expensive for me at the moment,
so i like to download it, but it’s so hard to find it…
I need the following plug ins:
[followed by a list of paid plugins]”
Now, ethics aside, there is something quite big at play here that I want to address. Something that is especially difficult to understand when you’re first starting out in music. (more…)
The fourth installment of the iconic Platinum Breakz album series on Metalheadz is out now. I’m happy and proud to be a part of it and wanted to celebrate the release by doing something a little bit special. I wanted to bring you guys some knowledge straight from the trenches.
So I took to it and spoke to many of the artists featured on the album. I asked them to share advice on things they find useful in their music creation process. It goes without saying these guys are all at the top of their game so I was as interested as anyone else about picking some brains! In this article I will also expand and share some further thoughts of my own on each topic. Let’s see what they’re saying…
This is a guest post by Kim Lajoie. I recently came across his blog and felt very much connected to his way of thinking. So I invited him to write a little something for me and here we go! I’ll let Kim take it from here. Why should breaking workflow become a part of your workflow?
You probably get stuck sometimes.
I know the feeling. I’ll be looking at a half-finished song and my brain is fixated on the next step. But the solution isn’t coming to me.
As you probably know, I tend to be pretty organised in my workflow. Step 1 is followed by Step 2, which is then followed by Step 3. Kick and snare and hats. Then background percussion. Then bass. Then chords or arps. Then melody. Then repeat for B-section. Then arrangement. Then automation. And on and on it goes.
‘Organised’, however, can sometimes look like ‘rigid’. And when it’s time to write a melody but no melody is coming to me, ‘rigid’ tends to look more like ‘uncooperative’. Sometimes the solution is to take a break and let it stew in my subconscious for a day or two. Sometimes the solution is to take inspiration from something outside the genre I’m working in. Sometimes the solution is to start with something exceedingly simple and build on it.
But sometimes the solution is to break workflow.
Maybe I can’t solve the bassline because it can’t be solved yet – it needs the chords and the melody before it will emerge. Maybe I can’t solve the background percussion because it’s can’t be solved yet – the drums are already too full or complex.
Sometimes it makes sense to do things in a different order. Route around the problem.
More broadly, I worked on a collaboration a few years ago where the singer had recorded scratch vocals but was having difficulty scheduling time to record the final vocals. Rather than stall the project, I actually went ahead with the mix using the scratch vocals, knowing we could record the final vocals later and it wouldn’t be much work to fit them in.
If you’re getting stuck, it’s probably because you’re trying to solve the wrong problem. Rather than beating yourself up and/or slowing things down, sometimes it makes sense to move on. Tackle things slightly out of order.
The great thing about plans is that you can always change them.
Kim Lajoie is a Melbourne music producer specialising in composition, project management and digital audio technology.