Hypothetical instruments are far superior
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IL, US
thats ust business as usual for me (though i used to sometimes work out leads on my cs01 if i had an idea i needed to sort out, but now if i do that, i just use the cs01 in the end anyway)
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nɐ˙ɯoɔ˙ʎǝupʎs
I compose entirely inside LSDJ. I can't take a guitar with me on a bus.
Mind you, most of my composing isn't really about melody, it's more about harmony/chords for vocal stuff.
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Ciudad de méxico, MX
is a proccess, you have to fight with your weapon of choice;for getting used to it. the first results are always what that fight gives you to work with. with practice, you can bend the conditions to your favor.
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California
I find it hard to make music with a broad sword. I prefer making music with an Nintendo entertainment device. . .
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Not only do I tend to write music in-medium, I write mine in one of two places: my room, or on the toilet dropping a massive deuce. My better songs aren't written in my room.
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Brisbane, Australia
Yes but I've started experimenting with integrating other bits of gear, although everything gets written "in medium" on those as well with the exception of some sound modules.
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Westfield, NJ
All the time. Especially with the DS10.
... but you can hardly call what I do "composition."
Last edited by Decktonic (Aug 9, 2011 1:43 pm)
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Montclair, NJ
Personally, I have to admit that I know absolutely nothing about music theory, so basically when i pick up my gameboy to use LSDJ, I just compose with a guess and check method. If I find myself with a keyboard than I may brainstorm a couple leads but thaT doesnt happen all that often.
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lolusa
The only songs I like are from songs I wrote on my keyboard. Composing entirely within a tracker/daw feels so robotic, and it's difficult for robots to feel sad.
Last edited by ovenrake (Aug 9, 2011 5:28 pm)
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Brunswick, GA USA
99% of the time (since 2007 anyway) I start composing from the tracker. The other 1% might be times when I had a melody done on another tracker that I couldn't flesh out, a melody I sung into the voice recorder when there was nothing else around, or an idea that was played on an alternate instrument. When so-called "real" instruments end up in my stuff, I usually played them after the module was made, with a click prepared and with certain chords and rhythm in mind.
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Unlike a lot of people I know who compose music alone in their rooms on Friday nights, I don't really enjoy "jamming". The process of smacking keys or listening to loops while altering them until I find something I want to keep doesn't seem like an ideal process to me. I have to sort of conceptualize what I'm doing before I even touch the keys (of my computer keyboard, I'm no pianist). This means that I do everything in-tracker. Sometimes I record chords off of my DW-8000 and build stuff around that, but that's fairly rare.
Sometimes I draw/write descriptions of what I want songs to sound like. Sometimes I hear songs in dreams and transcribe them. Sometimes when I'm feeling uninspired I go back to my vaults and combine/revamp four or five old sketches.
All of this makes working with other musicians close to impossible.
Last edited by PlainFlavored (Aug 9, 2011 10:32 pm)
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Melbourne
Most of my pure electronic stuff is composed entirely 'in-medium'. 90% of my leads are programmed in Buzz, I'm confident that I'm at a point now where my programmed leads are almost more expressive and dynamic than the ones I play on guitar. That said though I'm working on getting my guitar synth chops up again to the point where I can play my leads entirely live, with the same amount of expression as on recordings.
As for chord progressions though, most of my best ones were composed through trial and error in Buzz. My guitar chord progressions are mostly pretty standard sounding. Piano on the other hand - I can come up with some interesting stuff that way, but I don't have access to a piano anymore, which is a shame! Well, unless you count a Portasound, but the small keys annoy me.
I also just discovered sunvox, I really want to start composing with it almost exclusively. With the exception of live guitar leads, of course. My aim is to play an entire set from an iphone/ipad with guitar synth. I know it's not very chip but sunvox can generate some very nice chippy sounds!
Last edited by pselodux (Aug 24, 2011 2:56 am)
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California
Well I am no musician. Hell I am still learning basic theory (Got a decent book on it). So when I make it I do it entirely in medium. However since I do not have a solid understanding of the basics I tend to have a lot of trash or "almosts" or "could have been awesomes" that never get recorded. I have not touched anything musical in so long but I am getting back into it..... My usual process is basically put 4 or 5 notes evenly across a loop/pattern/phrase/whathaveyou. keep looping it and altering it until I feel like the note combo is giving me the right "feel" this takes me about 5 minutes. At that point I then just start trying to create a melody. This whole process ofc makes making music for me extremely time consuming. Which is why I am reading about theory whenever I get a free moment.