Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Song writing (ideas, thoughts, wisdom etc)
Thought it might be worth having a place to share ideas, especially those of others perhaps.
This today from a piece in The Guardian which quotes Adam Cohen talking about his father Leonard:
He said there’s a moment when you’re blocked on a song, or on any work, and it’s only when you’re about to quit having put much, much more time than you planned into it that the work begins. That’s when you’ve crossed the threshold of being on the right track.
Comments
Another Leonard Cohen classic:
If I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often.
And one I liked from Richard Hawley the other week on Music Radar:
Basically, don’t look the genie in the eye. Ever. I have a great horror that the genie, the song fairy, if I ever look her in the eye, then she’ll disappear and leave me. So it’s about hitting the bullseye without aiming for it.
What those two quotes sum up quite well for me is that the creative process is quite mysterious. I'm a novice but even in my experience the best melodies come suddenly and unexpectedly, seemingly from nowhere: making a cup of tea, in the middle of the night, or my last song I literally closed my eyes and sat back on the sofa and 30 seconds later the chorus came into my mind. On all those occasions the words and the melody arrived together, which seems to be the best way.
I love the fact that these ideas blossom out of nowhere, from the subconscious or from the ether or whatever. That mysterious quality just makes them all the more alluring. They are unquantifiable. But they don't come for free, for some reason you have to put in a ton of work and thought into practicing and writing before those strange and miraculous moments happen.
I've discovered recently that you can grow a song out of just about any musical idea. I'll just lay down some drums and chords that sound decent, then record melodies over the chords, jamming away, then go back and forth muting and jamming over all the little bits and pieces until I get bored. there usually ends up being more material than needed. The parts always sound good woven together cause they all were born out of a common seed, in this case the chords and beat. But you can lay other foundations. You can even discard the foundations later. Or you can lay different foundations for different song sections. I find this way of working extremely liberating and simple and fun. Then after all that I can get into a pure arrangement headspace and not worry about creating any new elements.
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Or as per R. Fripp: “I’m not really interested in music,” he states quite matter-of-factly, “music is just a means of creating a magical state.”
I have a lot of strange dreams that involve music. I wish that there was some kind of app that would let me stream dreams into a recorder.
Maybe a month ago I had a dream about some website that listed the top 20 songs from some year. The year wasn’t clear and that doesn’t really matter. The interesting part of the dream is that the dream played all the top 20 songs and I hadn’t heard any of them before.
It’s hard to say if they were full songs. They were all done in dream-time, which tends to be notoriously non-compliant with the wide-awake world.
I have no idea where the songs came from. Did I write them instantly as the dream was progressing? If I did then why does it take me halfway to forever when I’m actually trying to write? If I didn’t write the songs in the dream then things get even more mysterious. Is a telepathic musically-inclined space alien trying to beam songs into me while I’m sleeping?
I realize that this post is the least helpful songwriting tip ever. I just couldn’t resist posting anyway.
I have the most success when I manage to get out of my own way, not over-think things, and just lay it down. I try to let the song be what it is with only minimal input from me.
I look at creativity like this, many find that mind altering substances help increase the juices.
I have had my fair share of ketamine creative experiments many moons ago.
The fact of the matter is that is actually through a sort of "break" or "disconnect" that I connected to higher creative self.
I now find at a much different time in my life. Strangely, during cardio, driving, and even walking my dogs that my lyrical and sometimes musical creativity are at a high water mark. My brain(speak for myself) works best while not focused on a given creative task as I now routinely find.
Also, why I can put 4 bars together on the IPHONE at a red light that are more soulful and groovy than after sitting at the piano for an hour.
That's just me. Also a very readers digest account. Many other factors at play. This is just what hit me lately.
Some things hit me out of the blue. Some things hit me when I'm trying. A lot of things hit me when I'm noodling. But I've found that to get something done in any reasonable amount of time, I then have to take that idea away from my instrument, because I get bogged down. It would take me two years to write a piece of music.
I have heard a number of folks say that you can't wait for inspiration. You can if you're a hobbyist. But people who make a living at it, they just do it. You just write stuff. And sometimes it's not great, sometimes it turns into something wonderful. But sitting around waiting for some transcendent moment of inspiration generally means you don't get a whole lot done. Better to take the small idea and work it. That's the craft part of writing.
Dude, this happens to me all the time. I once had a dream where I was leading worship and was singing this awesome song....and in my dream I said to myself dont forget this one!
I forgot it.
Having a dateline gives me the biggest creativity burst I can get; being it a contest or a actual job. Otherwise I never get anything finished before I get bored/i fuck everything up.
The inspiration for a melody is just that: a melody. A finished and polished song, from my point of view, is pretty far from being just a result of a inspired moment. Good things happen when the improvisational/inspirational part meet the rational one.
I have to have a specification to satisfy. I can’t stand just random noodling, and I don’t put much weight on the idea that inspiration will suddenly burst through. These days I take a much more project management approach (perhaps because PM is one of the things I used to teach) of planning the work, and knowing what “finished” should look like.
I don’t mean I do a work breakdown structure, gantt chart, costing, and risk management, I merely mean I need to be aware of the size of the work involved, the ‘blocks’ of work that will allow this to happen, and what needs to be done to make those work blocks exist. The end result song is still a mystery at the beginning (i.e., it is an emergent situation) but I must have an idea of what constitutes success in terms of satisfaction of criteria.
I strongly believe that songs, not all songs, but most of the important ones, exist to satisfy a reason. They don’t just sit around as decoration, they’re needed, by someone, sometime, for some reason — if not now, they will at some time. There are many songs that fulfil a reason to exist, or the other way round, there are many reasons or situations into which songs must fall. Being aware of that guides my song progress. As in project management, one needs to know what “finished” looks like — or you’ll never know you’ve got there.
My songs come from two main sources, some from that moment of inspiration when something bubbles up from the subconscious, as others have mentioned, and some from noodling on a particular instrument or with a particular sound and hitting upon something interesting. The ones that spring into my mind while doing something else tend to be better, in my view. Either way, they can then take a lot of work to craft them into a full track.
One little idea on lyrics - if you get a rhyming line that seems cheesy and obvious, try switching the order of the lines, and quite often it will suddenly seem better, even clever!
Of course there is a lot of grind involved in doing anything worthwhile, the work (and a lot of it) is an essential part of the process, but often those small ideas that appear from nowhere are the best ones, the ones that listeners will enjoy and remember.
In a way I think one big and important aspect of all that work is to get all the bad ideas out of the way, and make room for the good ones to come later. 99% of what I do is crap, and I will discard it without a second thought, but the few moments that were actually any good have often been those surprising and strange flashes of inspiration. YMMV.
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted — the trouble is I don’t know which half!”
(…attributed to quite a few people:John Wanamaker; Lord Leverhulme; and even Henry Ford (but then, what wasn’t?)).
When I get stuck, blocked...
Nothing new but it sometimes help, saw a vid at the tube but can't remember the link...
If you're stuck, go for a walk, I get some of my better ideas 'on the hoof'.
I think if I was being dispassionate with myself (but also compassionate
) I think the best advice would probably be: Don't be in such a damn hurry.
I'm pretty much in @u0421793's camp nowadays.
I also like to set limitations for me to have to work around, e.g. instrumentation, length, repetition avoidance. I'm currently trying to steer clear of any apps that suggest patterns.
It's going to be so different for each person depending on their style and what genre they work in.
Having done this for nearly 20 years maybe the only advice I can give is its better to have a vision first. Random noodling can lead to interesting results but I don't think it's the best approach in most circumstances. If you first have a strong vision of what you want to accomplish its just a matter of finding the right sounds to achieve your vision and putting in the work, rather than hoping the apps or instruments lead you there. Finding your vision requires exposing yourself to as many ideas as possible and zeroing in on the ones that speak to you the most.
whimsy and wanderous abandon.
I start with whatever starts me up at the time: one time it's a run of words that I try to turn into a song title ("Isoceles Horse-Twinkie"), one time it's a sound (one time I banged a little toy piano against the springs under the mattress of my old fold up bed), one time it's a game (a song where every word starts with the letter "C"). If I focus on the brain part it usually works, if I focus on the technical part the songs usually get stuck.
"In particular what is most important to me is the transformation of a sound by slowing it down, sometimes extremely, so that the inner of sound becomes a conceivable rhythm" Karlheinz Stockhausen
"Or the other process that is important is that I compress longer sections of composed music, either found or made by myself, to such an extent that the rhythm becomes a timbre, and formal subdivisions become rhythm" Karlheinz Stockhausen
To completely paraphrase Willie Nelson, totally out of the context of whatever TV interview I was watching sometime in the mid to late 90s where I heard him say it - "If you're a songwriter, you should be able to write songs all day long. I've written so many songs I can't begin to count them. Sooner or later, you get good at it and it never stops ..."
I believe songwriting is a lot like stepping onto a stage to front a band ... it takes confidence. Not David Lee Roth cockiness, more Neil Young self-assured belief that you have a feeling, a message to share, and you're the one to do it, and now's the time to get it done. But not so serious that you can't grin when you find out you've been totally rocking out to your own tune for 30 seconds, probably while simultaneously thinking about the week's chores, or an upcoming visit with relatives.
I'm much more frustrated with the ones that got away – or the irreversible fact that I essentially shut the factory down for 13 years to be a "family man" – than I am with the worst song I've written. At least that has a chance at getting better over time. The ones you lost ... well, you just have to believe there will be more that you won't lose that will be even better. BTW, great advantage of mobile music making. With phone in hand, even if I'm humming into Multitrack Recorder, I can catch that lightning in a bottle almost every time.
Man, just knowing that feels so good
Also agree in spirit (always hated those $%^*& Gant charts) with @u0421793 – there has to be a practical need to be solved, a gauntlet needs to be thrown, before I usually bring forth my best efforts. I don't deal too well too far into the abstract. I'm driven by concerns I have for this world, these people, these lives – and how I'm going to respond to that as an artist. My obligation to make that response count as much as possible.
Great topic, Johnny!
My take on the subject: compose, compose, compose. As you keep making songs, you become more skilled in the subtleties that you can learn but cannot be taught to you (btw, be sure to study and research what can be taught). You become faster and able to make the inspiration come when you need, instead of needing the inspiration to come so you can work. Or, as Émile Zola once said, “One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.”
Not rushing through or forcing the creative process is the thing I learned through lots of trial and error. It seems crazy to think about for me, because it doesn't seem so long ago, but I started writing songs in 1992, at 16 years old, which is over 20 years ago. The first ones were awful, but a few of the early ones I like. Like anything musically it takes time, and songwriting isn't so much practiced but you gain experience over time that benefits future stuff.
Where songwriting is different is its much more ethereal, you can't practice writing like you can practice scales. I can't write on command, especially music, same if you said "write some lyrics about waterfalls and be done in 5 minutes." I think the "practice" comes from getting the initial inspiration and then molding it like clay till the song is done. That's the Cohen quotes point really, the absent minded strumming that turns into a cool progression or little melody that pops in your head in the shower is the seed, the inspiration. The work is shaping it into a record or structured song to perform.
That process should be fluid and when it's brick walling and not fun, moving on to something else is my advice. Come back to it. You can tell which songs are force written or born from scratching and clawing for inspiration. I have fully written chord progressions and melodies from the 2000's, hell even before, that are still in the drawer waiting for the lyrics that it needs. Neil Young did an interview where he mentioned writing a few songs that way, old bits that finally got the element it was waiting for. Whatever it takes...
For the most part, I think what's being described are two parts of the process, inspiration and then the interpretation, translation of the initial impetus. The first, inspiration, seems to require quite an unfocused state of mind, followed by a state that requires a lot more focus, the translation.
"The thing is, unfortunately, I write the best songs when I'm miserable."
Scott Weiland.
Music almost always comes first when I sit down with an instrument. I don't "noodle". I'm looking to play something cool or catchy. This playing almost always reflects the mood I'm in at the time, trying to capture an emotion. When the melody starts to come, I pay absolutely no attention to the lyrics; I only focus on melody. I record myself singing gibberish and sounds that seem to fit the music, mood, and melody, and then have a listen. Often, a phrase, word, line, or a vocal sound that resembles a phrase, word, or line will emerge, which becomes the hook, theme, or other part of the lyric. More often than not, a song will start to emerge and it's on to crafting and arranging the parts.
I've been writing songs for over thirty years and not sold one, so you may be better off trying something else. However, I'm having a lot fun doing it, and the iPhone and iPad have really helped streamline the songwriting process for me. Like @eustressor, I've lost some cool ideas over the years and stopped writing for many years to be a family man, but I don't think I've lost any since I got an iPod touch in 2010.
Great topic @JohnnyGoodyear.
I would love, I mean really, honestly, LOVE to take a look at the first page of Stochhausen's iPad and see what his goto apps would be....