Process = Product
So, part III of the Pen series is going to have to wait until I’m a little less busy. In the meantime, last week’s post reminded me of an interesting essay I read about Charles Ives some time ago. There was one anecdote from the essay that has always stuck with me. Ives was talking about writing for a section of programmatic music intended to evoke images of fireworks. He said that since, in order to make fireworks one must carefully measure ingredients and follow rigid recipes, music about fireworks should be constructed in a similar manner. He therefore made up a set of formulas and rules for his musical fireworks and composed them in a very mathematical fashion. What fascinated me about this was not only the idea that process effects product but that a composer could, perhaps should, be purposeful in choosing how to approach a piece of music.
I think for many of us process is personal. We all have our ways of doing things that have come about more through repetition and habit than through forethought and planning. There are composers who put pen to paper, those who record improvisations, those who start with the melody and work down, those who start with a groove and work up, those who work with loops, those who never work with loops, and on and on. But how many of us truly use process as a tool?
Since I was a piano player and performing musician before I started making electronic music my normal process is to play each part on the keyboard and then go back and tweak what I’ve recorded. Of course, I have my habits as a piano player but the keyboard itself also encourages and discourages certain patterns. For example, fast and complex patterns on single notes or single chords are difficult but arpeggios are easy so, music played on a keyboard tends to contain more of the latter and less of the former.
About a year ago I decided to make a song using a very different approach than my normal approach. I took an old beat up guitar, listened to a click track on headphones and spent an afternoon recording loops and rhythms. I then chopped up these recordings up in Ableton Live and made a little song out of them. The rhythms I played live on the guitar are very different than the rhythms I would have played on a keyboard and re-sequencing audio loops tends to sound different than working with midi.
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In keeping with the theme of altering methodologies, I’ve put raw loops on the download page rather than the usual Kontakt instruments. Next week, once I make some headway on my other obligations, I’ll continue with the next ball point pen installment and we’ll see how something as simple as looping can rocket us to a whole new level of sound design.