Award Sounds Music, Photography and Consultancy

I've talked about tremolo as a musical feature before, this time I want to go into more detail.

First things first, let's sort out the guitarists: I don't mean using the tremolo arm/whammy bar or whatever you want to call it ("handle" as my girlfriend called it - and no she won't be picking up my guitars for a while). The whammy bar creates a vibrato feature, not a tremolo. Vibrato alters pitch.

Amplitude  read more »

13. Meet Other people

13a avoid being recluse

Composing music can be a solitary activity. For some that works, for others it can be a lonely experience. Whatever the perspective, it can quickly turn into isolation. Collaborating with others reduces the isolation.

13b friends

I've met most of my best friends through music and music-related activities. Some of the people I met as acquaintances have turned into good friends over time.  read more »

Even arranging a loan with your bank manager is a form of collaboration. Ok, it's a purchase of a product by you from them, but if responsible, then the bank should be acting in partnership with you. I'm working on a few projects where I can see finances becoming an issue in the medium term. I could also see a few of the project members funding their own areas. None could fund the whole project, but as each could fund their own area, the project could still work. It's like pooling resources but more controlled.

8. Opportunities  read more »

4a Fresh Pair of Ears

A producer should remain distant enough from the in-depth recording process to be able to bring a fresh opinion. Their view can suggest new directions or, at least, a validation of the current direction.

4b Motivation  read more »

A short series of articles on collaborating with other people to make your music better, make it heard or to help them move their music forwards.

1. Recording

1a Engineer  read more »

Take an old track and change the style of it.

I'm amazed how many tracks can be given more life by changing the style of music. I pick tracks that I've never fully finished to my satisfaction and apply a different musical style to them.

Identify the original style

What's wrong with the original track?  read more »

I said in the previous article that I'd provide details of my most common composing workflows.

Sync to video Soundtrack  read more »

Create a random part and modify it until it becomes musical. I'll describe a few options for taking a random parts and the processes I use for making them more musical.

1. Creating the randomness

I set Logic on a 4 bar cycle and hit keys at random on my keyboard. I chose a clean electric piano sound since they highlight any dissonance. It's not truly random because it's difficult to unlearn how to play, but after cycling through the 4 bars a few times it did become a mess of notes.  read more »

I wrote the bulk of this text a couple of months ago after a day of not producing as much as I'd liked to. There are no real suggestions of how to improve or learn, but I thought I'd describe my thought processes so others may learn from my experiences.

Yesterday  read more »

Order

Have you thought about how you compose? Not which chords, but the order in which you approach composing?

My experience

I use a few different workflows, depending on what I'm aiming to produce. I change my approach if there's a video to sync to or if I need to incorporate other musicians and so on. I'm not saying that any one of the approaches is the correct approach for everyone, but I do what works for me.

Write first or play first  read more »