Re: [LAU] Composing fast[was] LAM annual Best of mix 2009

On Tue, Dec 08, 2009 at 08:20:09AM +0100, Atte Andr? Jensen wrote:
> Ken Restivo wrote:
>
>> Never ceases to amaze me how the stuff I dash off in 20 minutes as an
>> experiment or test, is often more well-liked and effective than the
>> stuff I furrow my brow over and scratch my head over for weeks.
>
> It's called flow :-)
>
> Seriously, you're an improvising musician, and shouldn't be surprised
> that the more you compose under the same premises (no going back, first
> idea makes it), the more it's gonna feel natural to the listener.
>
> I try to compose as fast as possible. Then I listen to the result,
> sometimes for weeks, mostly just the next day, and rework parts that for
> some reason doesn't work. I also have no problem with throwing an entire
> composition away, I'd rather do that than sit and stare at the paper.
> There's always another composition to work on.
>
> What you (and I, so I should say "we") should really wonder, is which
> piece of audio software under linux *really* supports this way of
> working. Besides freewheelin (which only works with certain types of
> music), I can't really think of any :-(
>

That's an excellent question. Freewheeling is great for "loopy" stuff. Other than that, I can't think of anything better.

The best workflow for recording that I had, back when I was doing a lot of recording, was a hack involving Seq24 and Hydrogen. I'd sync them up with JACK transport, start with a beat or bassline, using 16-bar or 32-bar "loops" (seq24 is a loopy thing too), and then put 64-bar "loops" over the top which were basically solos. I'd come up with several variations of the beats and stagger them in some order using Hydrogen. Then hit play and start turning loops on and off. Sometimes I'd mute drum tracks or mess around with Hydrogen.

But, again, that worked only for flat, jammy, unstructured, DJ-style, groove pieces, which is what I was writing. There may have been a way to use the same tools for more structured pieces, but I never explored it. Seq24's song mode didn't work on my 64-bit system (still might not; haven't checked in a while).

-ken
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Received on Sat Dec 12 00:15:02 2009