Making music on a computer sucked for me until I understood this

now imagine you're working on arranging your brilliant track idea in your favorite doll you sequence everything according to the best practices the intro the drop the different versus all is going very well as you build up the track in the middle of it you pause to listen to the full thing just to realize that it is so boring in fact it is so dull and not interesting until there is only one thing left to do to aband the track and start all over again with a new idea so this used to happen to me quite often every time I was trying to work inside of the door like completely inside of the door I would start with some Loop you know maybe eight bars of some drums or baseline or some scn progression and then what would happen if I was happy with that loop I would try to expand it and try to make a full track of it so I would use my computer keyboard and mouse and try to lay out the track and what I really couldn't understand is why the tracks that I'm making on the computer were completely lifeless they were without any energy they weren't fun to listen to I couldn't feel anything to the arrangement I just made and I didn't get it because when I was working on the loop I did feel the energy but somehow during the process throughout the process that energy kind of completely gone and what I really couldn't understand is how come when I work on a simpler gear like a piece of gear like the elect tribe or some other syn Hardware or whatever Groove box I'm getting much better result so there were not like polished sound results the track wouldn't sound like it would produced on the door but but the energy of it was much better I could really feel it and this is really what I wanted to talk about and share with you today because I think that if there is one important thing that I've realized throughout the years of making music is that simple difference between working inside of computer and working dollas and I think the different goes beyond the tectile experience I think that there is something more into that I think what really happens when you're working on a simple gear let's say on the electrip you have some sort of limitation you have some sort of constraint and because of those constraints you have less time to think on the computer on the other hand you don't really need to you know practice or perform you can just easily just drag things around and really perfectly arrange your track so for example while on the computer I can spend much more time to think about which part should come after which part in the arrangement on the elect tribe I'm just being forced to be in the moment and feel the arrangement I let my body I light my hands I light my feeling in that moment to dictate the arrangement of the track and I think that this feeling this expressiveness usually get lost when we are working with a keyboard and a mouse and we're just laying out stuff on the computer you know we take our time to perfect things to think more about the track to try to sound like that like that but when we are performing with an instrument there is a level of expressiveness that is uncomparable and think about that I think that uh whatever works for you should be the best because that's what matter eventually if you can get result with what you're doing for me what works best usually is the hybrid solution so what I do want to talk about and share today is how we can borrow some of these concept some of these ideas from working doist and apply those into working on the computer in other words just ignore and forget about the power we have when we are working inside a computer and treat it as we were working on a much simpler piece of gear so for example when working on the tribe I'm taking advantage of the mute feature so I'm bringing in and out different parts of the track and I'm arranging that through the mute and the same thing can be achieved when working for example on Ableton it's very simple with the session view but even if you don't have Ableton if you're using other door like kison logic cubis whatever what you could do is map the mute buttons from that door into maybe like a keyboard keys and then you know instead of taking your mouse and keyboard and trying to put the parts and saying this is the intro this is the verse whatever you just record the initial fundamental laying blocks of the track from start to finish you just express yourself this is the first gut feeling you're taking whatever you feel in that moment and you're putting that into the track you can come later on and perfect it as much as you want but I think you will get much better result if you just focus on the basic Arrangement and even for automation instead of using your mouse you can really get like a cheap MIDI controller and then record your movement on a knob instead of moving a mouse and I think this will have big impact on the music that you produce it will sound less robotic will sound more human cuz I think this is what music is all about is expressing our feeling and sharing those feeling between human right it's a form of communication where we exchange energy with each other and it's very hard to exchange these energies by being so surgical of course this is subjective and for some people working like that manually with a keyboard and a mouse works best for example if you look artist like Mr Bill and I've watched a lot of his video he's really a master on the keyboard and the mouse so it's depend on you and what works best for you but if you like me and you feel like that working like that on the computer doesn't give you the result that you're looking for I recommend thinking about how can you apply some of the concept and constraint as I mentioned from a dolls setop and try to put it when you're working inside of the computer another constraint that you can apply from working dollar when you're working on the computer is it's starting minimal right don't put all your vsts you know pick up everything and just throw it and and and work now with I don't know like 50 100 tracks think that you are working on Hardware now how many tracks you might have probably Max eight right how can you make a track just with eight tracks and maybe just pick one or two cents because if you were working in real life you probably wouldn't have I don't know like 20 30 vsts now laying on in your in your studio you probably would have like two main scenes maybe three four so take this concept think about how can you take that and start the track from there and force the limitation the limitation are not there the computer is very powerful but we can pretend like there are some limitation and I think that through out this limitation creativity will flourish because I think that creativity comes from limitation creativity comes from having those constraints you can worry about later how you can perfect things out you can worry about you know how can you change things add some ear candies ear and there but what I think works best at least works for me is having this fundamental the initial idea as expressive as I could possibly get so yeah that's basically what I wanted to share with you today I think this idea is may not sound like it's a big one it's very simple one but I think in that Simplicity it has the power to unlock some creativity and I think that if you suffer if you feel like when you're working on your computer you don't get the same result and you don't understand why I suggest to take some of the concept from the dollar and apply those to your workflow on the door and see the result and let me know in the comments what do you think do you agree with that you disagree do you have other ways to unlock your creativity and as always thanks for watching and if you enjoy this video don't forget to click the like button and also subscribe I try to upload regularly weekly my jam sessions some tutorials sharing my thoughts like today and I really hope to see you next time [Music]

Channel: Random Noise

Views: 132,621

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Id: 7ppqv1szhEM

Length: 7min 42sec (462 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2024