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

[Brent Busby]

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009, Ken Restivo wrote:

> 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).

Sometimes I do like to turn off the bars/beats/ticks ruler in Ardour, 
forget about quantizing (or throw sequencing out the window entirely), 
and just record, and let the quarter note pulse come from me.  Then I 
can just record layers over it.  It's almost as free as 4-track 
cassette...but *much* better audio quality...

-- 
+ Brent A. Busby	 + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ UNIX Systems Admin	 +  banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago	 +  eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ Physical Sciences Div. +  Shakespeare.  Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ James Franck Institute +  we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky