Just a rant and shout out to fellow 1 pattern mute jammers to infinity.
This is generally my workflow. Has been years ago when only working with ableton, still is now with mostly elektron. I create a pattern and jam endlessly on it, tweaking parameters and muting tracks… in the meantime adding or changing stuff, but the jam goes on forever.
Back in the days in ableton there came a time to record, lay down a structure and keep on producing to “finish” a song. But since a started making electronic music again (didn’t touch ableton for a long time, but it sparked again thanks to elektron!), I never got past the endless jamming stage.
I had thought about strategies to create song structures, and now I am finally actually working on it
My first strategy is to take a pattern, and try to create a song from start to finish within 10 minutes. I do this once a day as a practice. But I notice that it stresses me quite a bit having to think about so many tracks and layers (using 4 elektrons, 2 monosynths, and live guitar loops). It doesn’t help that I tend to make music with a lot of elements in it…
So now I tried copying the pattern, and creating a basic song structure over 6 patterns (in this first and only case for now), using trig mutes or deleting trigs altogether to creates different “scenes” of my pattern. I liked this because it frees up mind concentration to just play around with OT scenes and fills and stuff. I thought I saw the light, but listening back to a recording from before I did this, I felt the loss of freedom to take a song in any direction I want to…
Anyway, there isn’t any solution I am hoping for, I know I just need to keep on trying out and playing around. This process of creating a songstructure workflow will need some time to develop.
I just needed to rant a bit about it to take it off my mind a bit and my girlfriend is a little bit tired off listening to this very urgent and important life threatening problems of me…
Yes recently started jamming with an old friend and producer. We will start doing digi sessions now. Two digi’s, one each…
And, having just one or two boxes makes transitioning much easier than having 4 boxes…
I think I can ellaborate more on my creative identity crisis.
I did create songs and structures before, but they were always long, and evolved slowly and organically. I guess mostly because of the limitations of two hands and not trying to make a change happen on all boxes at the same time.
Now I am trying out ways of creating structures as you mentioned, but because it makes my song evolve in a different way than it did the last 3 years, it suddenly doesn’t feel like home anymore. Although it is exactly what I am trying to accomplish.
Now I think I should explore this more to find out if it really is just not what I want to do with my music, or if it is only because of the familiarity with the old way that it doesn’t feel like home…
I should just give it time.
So I decided to keep on structuring songs into different patterns, and keep The One mighty pattern on which I can just jam and do my slowly evolving 30 minute song kind of grooves
Typing it out it seems all so logical and obvious, but somehow it is a big deal for me… thanks for hearing me out
I would try to reduce the setup per song. too many machines too handle at once imo. Start with less until you’ve figured out your best way of creating structures, than add one machine/element after the other
I agree with you, but I don’t see this fitting my workflow, which should better be called playflow
The way I create and layer and jam, I wouldn’t change for anything in the world, because I love it! Now it comes to forming structured songs out of this pool of ingredients.
It would be like cooking a dish and learn it first without all the ingredients…
I also recorded some live loops into the OT, and the 2 synths are controlled from elektrons, so it actually comes down to controlling 4 boxes… AR, DN, AK and OT.
I also think it just needs time.
Here is a first attempt to structure a song in patterns and play it through. There’s a few things I would change, and I need practice, but I do think I will get there
Judging from your example I can really understand how hard it is to structure something which doesn’t lend itself at all to a traditional structure in the first place.
I’m quite in the same boat. What works for me is some kind of middle way: roughly structure it, but then jam while multitracking. Of course this isn’t a reproducible process and it may become complicated to rearrange stuff in the post processing stage. But adding some some calm parts in between while jamming, helps a lot later on.
Interesting topic and the age old problem - capturing the feel of a live jam by programming.
I would advise to keep working the way you are but to broaden your techniques, use more patterns, including using patterns rather than mutes for building structures, make use of fills and one shots, use scenes and parts in other ways. You can add lots of little interest points whilst maintaining “easy handling”. In effect what you would be doing is making sections that can be quickly changed to when you feel the moment is right.
Also when recording your takes, if you mess up just carry on, do other takes then comp together the best bits to make a “finished” track.
You really answered you own question
Practice and coming up with techniques to help you are all you need.
I’m mainly a monopatternist too. Sometimes I bring in a second part, some chord changes etc but mainly I do everything by muting/unmuting, bringing stuff in and out.
You can do plenty with 6-8 tracks by bringing different elements together at different times, you can achieve a lot of variety already.
But I’m a fan of loop based music. It doesn’t have to change all the time. I like being hypnotized by a nice main loop for quite a while
Yes indeed wasn’t a question either really, rather a rant or ventilation about what’s going on. My girlfriend has her limits with my music creation related insights and philosophies
Your advice is exactly my quest for the coming months
At this moment I’m not interested in post production. I am going for something I can play live as it is.
I do multitrack, but only because ableton live is my mixer with some plugins like trackspacer configured to shave off the lowest frequencies of everything that is not kick or bass, and only when there is a deep kick or bass.
Not too clean, just to avoid a deep mud pool. Basic configuration that serves all songs…
So whenever I records it’s always multitrack. If one day I record that perfect take, I have all I need to do some post production and really finish up something
