The Tyranny of Choice

I remember reading an old interview with Phil Oakey on the making of the Human League's "Dare" album.    He was discussing the band using the New England Digital Synclavier and how it ended up being a hinderance because they'd waste an entire afternoon just auditioning different bass sounds instead of moving forward with the song.  This hit home with me, because I'd been guilty of doing the same thing.  Nowadays, with synths that ship regularly with thousands of presets, and hundreds of cheap or free softsynths and effects available at the click of the mouse, many of us have way more than we need.  And, perversely, it's making us less productive.  So today, I thought I'd offer some advice to help break out of this pattern.

• Have a Spring Cleaning of Your Studio/Workspace
I try to keep my studio fairly organized, but you know how it is. Receipts and invoices pile up, cords get re-routed and mixed up, and all manner of extraneous crap can invade your workspace.  It can make it unpleasant to work in, and, some believe, that disorganization may spill over into your work.  So while this doesn't have anything to do with having too many choices, I recommend it as a good first step in being more productive.  Your mileage may vary, but I always find myself more eager to work and more productive when my studio is clean and organized.

• Schedule a Spring Cleaning of Your Computer
Once a year, I sit down and have a "spring cleaning" of my plug-ins folder.  If there's an instrument or an effect that I haven't used in the past six months, it gets backed up and pulled out of my folder.  This can be hard to do at first.  It's easy to fall into the trap of "but I might need it later", but I think you'll find 9 times out of 10 you really don't.  And if you do end up needing it?  Just pull out that back-up and install it.  The benefits here are that it'll take you less time for you to find the effect or instrument you're looking for and you'll waste less time randomly trying different effects or sounds just for the sake of doing so.

• Trust Your Instincts
This is something it took me a long time to learn and an even longer time to truly implement.  When you've got so many choices in front of you, it's all too easy to waste a lot of time worrying about whether you chose the "perfect" string/bass/kick/kazoo sound.  What if there's an even better sound you could be using?! Don't get me wrong.  It's good to experiment with different sounds and effects and you can have many a happy accident this way.  But there is a point of diminishing returns where you're just spinning your wheels without any real benefit.  The same can happen with the songwriting process.  Who among us hasn't spent hours trying to find the perfect riff to accompany a bassline, only to return to what you originally had?  So try, at least initially, to be fairly quick and efficient in your decision-making process.  Don't over-analyze and beat yourself up worrying about if there's an "even better" sound you could be using.  Push forward and once you have something approaching a finished song, you can always make tweaks, if necessary.  You will probably find, however, that the song sounds pretty bitchin'.  I think the #1 thing that leads to that folder of unfinished 4-bar riffs that everyone has, is over-analysis and losing the initial spark of inspiration in a sea of self-doubt and endless auditioning.  Need evidence of this?  Guns n' Roses last album. 'Nuff said. Try the quick approach and see if it doesn't make you more productive.

• But Don't Totally Trust Your Instincts
Good instincts take time to develop for many of us.  So always have a trusted friend who will give you honest feedback regarding your music.  You don't have to agree with their opinion, but it may help you focus on some problem areas you never noticed you had.  It's extremely difficult to be objective about your own music.  So find someone who can be and let them help.  Knowing how the average person listens to your music can help you hone in on areas for improvement more quickly and can take out a lot of the guesswork that results in so much lost time.

• Impose Restrictions on Yourself
I know what you're thinking... "Musicians have dreamed of having a fully-stocked studio with every kind of instrument and effect available to them for as long as recorded music has existed.  Now that we actually have that dream available to us, we're supposed to restrict ourselves?  Screw you, Shear!"  Trust me on this one, though.  Try to impose some limits on how you're working on your current project.  Try limiting yourself to 1 or 2 synths and using those to produce all the sounds in your song.  Give yourself a time limit in which to complete a certain part of your song.  Write something using only the black keys on your keyboard.  Not only will challenging yourself in new ways make you a more well-rounded musician, but with all those choices narrowed down for you, you can concentrate on making music and getting that song across the finish line.

What are your favorite methods of being more productive?

How Do You Know When You're Done?

A little while back, a reader wrote me requesting that I write an article on how to know when you're done with a song.  To people who aren't musicians, this might seem like a silly question.  It's done when it's done, right?

But if you've been making music for awhile, you probably can relate to that feeling of anxiety wondering if your song is fine as is, or if it needs some extra bit to gel it all together.   This is actually a very serious problem for many musicians.  It's easy to become obsessed with the song you're working on and falling into that trap of "this sounds great, but think of how much greater it would sound if there was more?"

The best advice I can give here is to play the song in question for another human being.  Not just any human being, mind you.  You need someone who will be straight with you and not worry about hurting your feelings.  Significant others are usually a bad choice.  If you're anything like me, that first listen to one of your songs when another person is in the room is completely different from when you're listening to it in the safety of your studio or headphones.  Almost every musician friend I have, when they're playing me something they're working on, has to precede playing the track with a short speech explaining all the things that will be fixed in the final version.  I do it, too, even though I know better.

But if you can play your music for another unbiased person without making excuses or suddenly hearing a million and one changes you need to make, your song is done.  That doesn't mean it's a good song, or even that another listener will consider it done, but if you are at peace with how something sounds the first time you play it for another person, bets are good, it's where it needs to be for whatever your current abilities are as a songwriter.

Better still, is the next stage, when you hear material you worked on a couple years ago and you're embarrassed by how bad it sounds to your ears.  Your standards will evolve with your skills.  And that's how you get better.

A Cool Site to Spark Song Ideas

I'm in the process of finishing up the recording of the next Assemblage 23 album and part of that entails tightening up some themes and lyrics for the songs. We all wish we were an endless font of inspiration at all times, but the fact is, sometimes you just need that initial push to get an idea rolling.

RandomWordPlus, is a cool site that will generate random words or combinations of words with user controls for what type of word or phrase and how common its usage should be. Given that it's random, don't expect everything it fires out at you to be useful, but give it a few clicks, and you may find the theme for your next hit, or even a new band name.

Cool Profile of Leonard Cohen

Slate has a nice feature on the lyrics of Leonard Cohen. If you write lyrics and haven't checked out Cohen's work, you really need to. There are few, if any, modern songwriters who can match Cohen for pure poetic wit.

Raising the Dead

I'm getting ready to leave for a short European tour a week from now, and as a result, I'm trying to get as many loose ends tied up as possible. One of those loose ends is to finish up the production of a track for SD6, a band on my label.

We had discussed recording a new song from scratch originally, but as both Brandon (the band's lead singer and songwriter) and my schedule began to fill up, he suggested to me that we resurrect an old song we had abandoned many years ago when we started the recording of their debut album. 7 years, to be exact. I remember really liking the song back then, but Brandon wasn't happy with the vocal, so we left it off. So I thought I'd share a bit of the process and what can be learned (hopefully) from it.

TOTAL RECALL

I'm fairly anal about backing things up (*pause for laughter*). Like most people who are fairly anal about backing things up, I came that way by learning the hard way. So generally, speaking, if it's a project I worked on, I have it backed up somewhere. Seven years can be getting into sketchy territory for some CD-Rs. For better or for worse, when it comes to backing stuff up to CD-R, I generally spring for more "premium" media. I wouldn't be surprised if these were as much of a scam as high end audio cables, but they haven't failed me yet, so for now, I'll stick with what I know. So, my first step was to find the back-up and attempt to bring it back onto my Mac. Fortunately, that turned out to be as simple as dragging the files to my hard drive.

RESTORATION

The files copied without any problems, but that didn't mean I'd necessarily be able to open the files. While these were Logic files, and I still work in Logic, they were from Version 5 - many, many revisions ago. Logic is designed to be backward compatible and for the most part, the project came back without too much trouble. The two biggest issues here were: 1.) these were recorded back when I had an old Emagic AudioWerk 2 soundcard, so I needed to re-assign the outputs on my channel to my new soundcard, and 2.) there were a bunch of out-dated plug-ins. This brings up a good thing to remember - if you have a track that is dependent on an unusual plug-in or softsynth, bounce down a copy of the track to audio. This way, if the effect is impossible to replicate with a newer plug-in, you still have a copy of the audio effected as you want it. I did encounter a handful of technical gremlins, mostly weird graphic glitches - but nothing that would keep me from the job at hand.

REMEMBRANCE

Another good thing to do when you're backing up a project is to bounce down a full mix as a "demo". This can be especially helpful if the person doing the mixing and production is different from the one who recorded it. So, I gave a listen to the original demo. As I remembered, it was a kinetic, syncopated track with a good groove to it. And it still was. The problem was, it wasn't really a song in the state we had it - more like 5 minutes of a good groove. So this would be an area I would need to concentrate on... adding more of a sense of structure to the song so the listener doesn't get bored with it. The vocals were fine on the original, but we decided if we were going to start this from the ground up, we should apply that to everything and we ended up re-recording the vocals. Another problem was the arrangement. The track was originally sequenced on some older Korg workstation and some of the sounds were a bit uninspiring, while others were clearly muddying up the mix. So I would need to replace some of the recordings with better sounding synths.

RECREATION

One hitch I encountered here was that the band had recorded the instrumental tracks at someone else's studio. This person just recorded straight from the Korg's sequencer, so there were no MIDI tracks at all. So any part I wanted to put in a different octave, change the sound of, or layer, I'd have to play over from scratch. Fortunately, the elements of the song were relatively simple, so learning and re-programming the parts was not a big issue. It's well worth working on playing things by ear if you have the motivation to. It can take awhile to learn, but the time it can save you down the road is immeasurable.

REARRANGEMENT

As I mentioned, the original track was one that sort of starts and keeps doing what it's doing until it stops. There wasn't a lot of tension in the way it built and even though there were separate verse, chorus, and bridge parts, there was little to differentiate them. The original rhythm was built around a pair of stuttering, syncopated drum loops. I liked these a lot, but discovered these loops were not very tightly timed, so when I tried to program new drum parts on top of them, the new parts sounded out of time. So I decided to replace the drum loops with some new loops, and to use the introduction and removal of these loops to help build and lull the energy level to keep the feel of the song evolving.

The original stuttering loop was great, and I recreated it for the intro of the song, but we want this to be a song the DJs would like to add to their set, so I felt we couldn't keep this feel for the length of the track. Therefore, I began the track with just the spare, stuttering loop, gradually entering a hi-hat part, and a couple of additional "top" loops. Then, after the first chorus, the loops all slow down and a steady 4 on the floor beat comes in. I decide that the bridge portion of the song would be the perfect place for a breakdown, so I stripped out most of the drums in this part, gradually re-introducing them until the whole thing kicks in again.

As I mentioned, the sounds used in the original were making the arrangement sort of ho-hum, so I went through and replaced sounds for something more interesting. One of the main parts of the song is a propulsive, Moroder-like sequence that runs throughout almost everything. This not only came across as a bit monotonous in the original, but the Virus sound I originally used was distorted and a total frequency hog. My solution was to replace the sound with 3 additional sounds. The first two would be arps I programmed in Vanguard. These used LFO modulation to change the sound as it played, and to add a bit more unpredictability, I set the LFO speeds on both to different random values, so the two sequences would modulate against one another in a constantly shifting, more interesting way. I also added the same riff an octave down with a tight, analog-sounding bass I made in Omnisphere that would kick in when the 4 on the floor beat did.

RERECORDING

With most of the music in place, we re-recorded the vocals. Originally, we thought this might not be necessary, we discovered that the old vocals, which had been recorded to the original, slightly-off-time drum loops and no longer matched up with the new material. So we took the opportunity to record everything from scratch and to add some new harmony parts sung by Brandon's wife, Jessica. Everything here went pretty damn smoothly. The biggest obstacle was that I was recovering from a cold and had to desperately keep myself from having a coughing fit in the middle of someone's vocal. Mission accomplished.

RESULT?

That I can't share with you just yet, as I haven't finished the track, although I hope to have it done tomorrow. But I can tell you that this has been a really valuable learning experience. The new track is a huge improvement over the original we did 7 years ago. Although I disagreed with the decision to not release the track at the time, I'm now glad we waited. We ended up with something way better than we ever could've imagined all that time ago. So the next time you're ready to toss some track that isn't working into the trash, give it a second thought. You never know what it might teach you further down the road.

Learning to Listen to Your Own Music

There is no doubt that as musicians, we hear things differently than non-musicians. We analyze and deconstruct every element of a track, breaking it down into its respective parts, shifting our focus to different parts quickly and easily. In one respect, this is an incredible gift that allows musicians to appreciate music on a deeper level than the average listener. On the other hand, it's a rather difficult way of listen to turn off, and especially when you're listening to your own music before deciding it's "finished" (although, of course we know nothing is EVER really finished), it can be beneficial to step back and learn to listen more like you did before you started making music. So today I want to talk about learning to listen to your own music objectively.

One of the biggest issues musicians face when trying to give a final evaluation of their songs is that by the time they're close to being finished, they've probably heard the song in question literally hundreds of times. It becomes very easy to lose your focus and misplace what's important and what isn't. So, to be able to give your own music an objective listen, the key is to lose some of that familiarity. How do you do that?

• Take a Break

It's a good idea to take frequent breaks when working on your music anyway, as your ears, especially at loud volumes, tend to get fatigued. But beyond that, when you've listened to a song over and over, you often begin to lose your ability to judge what works and what doesn't. So take a break! At the very least, get up and do something every couple hours or so. Eat lunch. Go for a walk. Run some errands. Anything that gets you out of the studio for a bit helps. Ideally, if you can go a few days without listening to the song, you'll find you're much more able to come back and listen to it with fresh ears.

• Turn Your Monitor Off

It's amazing how much the visual feedback in your DAW can impact how you hear things. Try turning off your computer monitor and just listening to the music without the visual stimuli. Hell, just close your eyes and listen. You'll be amazed how much more focused your listening abilities become.

• Listen Outside Your Studio

By now, you're probably very used to your studio as a listening environment. And that's good! The more you know the sound of your studio, the better you'll be able to mix. But if you want to shake things up and listen to your music from a new perspective, burn it to a CD (remember those?) and go listen to your music outside of the studio environment. You should do this anyway to ensure that your music will sound good on a wide variety of sound systems, but hearing your songs outside the studio can be very helpful in letting you hear them in a different way and can help you pinpoint potential issues.

• The "Behind Closed Doors" Listen

This is a somewhat unconventional technique that I've found useful in honing a mix. Simply step outside your studio, close the door, and listen to it in the next room. It needn't be blasting, just loud enough for you to hear it. For me, this helps me hear the track as a whole instead of picking it apart into each little part. It's really the only way I can get back to listening to music the way I did before I was a musician. Big problems that might not be obvious after getting used to a mix usually stick out to me more when I use this trick. Instruments that are too loud or quite often sound more obvious from the next room. Your mileage may vary, but I've had good results from this.

• Get a Listening Buddy

If you're a musician, especially in this day and age, chances are you know other musicians. Find someone whose production and ears you trust and become listening buddies. Have an agreement that they'll listen to a track whenever you need them to and return the favor. Agree that you'll both be brutally honest and that no one's feelings are going to be hurt if the feedback is negative. It's much better to find out about those problems now than when you release your album to the public. With the ease of sending files over the Internet, there's really no excuse NOT to do this. And if you're a bit of a lone wolf? There are tons of forums online where you can post your works in progress and get feedback. This isn't quite as ideal since you don't know the backgrounds of the people listening, but as a last resort, it can still be valuable in honing in on your weak spots.

Covering Your Bases

Just yesterday I finished a cover song for an upcoming compilation. I hadn't done one in ages (about 15 years, to be exact!) and it reminded me what a valuable experience it can be for amateur and veteran musicians alike.

I've always recommended covering a favorite song or two to beginners as an incredibly informative way of learning how songs are constructed and arranged. But even for experienced song writers, analyzing how another artist's songs are constructed can be incredibly illuminating. Especially if you try covering something outside the genre you normally work in. Do you make electronic dance music? Try covering a rock song. Or vice versa. Find something outside your comfort zone and try to reproduce it as closely as you can. You'll learn an amazing amount and it'll broaden your musical vocabulary immensely.

Many musicians are quick to "poo-poo" genres they don't like or listen to in their spare time, but this is a huge mistake. You can learn something from every genre if you allow yourself to, and even if the practical application in your own music isn't immediately obvious, you'll soon realize you have a lot more directions to experiment with that you might have before, and ultimately, that's what helps artists develop their own unique style. Maybe that intricate prog rock drum fill you learned to program would sound killer in an industrial song. Maybe producing a hip-hop song using the sounds and production techniques of drum n' bass would yield something interesting. Maybe that jazz chord you learned would help give a bit of spice to that guitar riff you're working on (it worked for the Police's Andy Summers).

The important thing is you are almost guaranteed to learn something, and at the end of the day, that's what growing as a musician is all about.

On Being Brutal

There is something to be said for the virtually limitless possibilities that modern recording software affords.  Now, anyone can have access to a recording studio with hundreds of tracks and dozens of synths and effects at their disposal for less than the cost of an hour in the recording studios of old.  On the other hand, this sort of freedom also opens the door to what I call the "Just Because I Can" syndrome.  It's easy to get to the point where you almost feel compelled to make use of all of those resources to the max.  

Who among us hasn't been at that point in the songwriting process where the song sounds good, but wouldn't it sound even better if we added just 1 or 2 more parts?  Sometimes this is justified, but many times it just leads to overly busy, cluttered arrangements.  One lesson many electronic songwriters (self included) sometimes take awhile to learn is that putting together a good track is every bit as much about what you remove from the song as it is what you add to the song.

It can take time, but it pays to learn to look at your arrangement with an objective eye.  Does the part you're adding serve a purpose other than taking up space?  Does it really improve the song, or just make it more complex for complexity's sake?  How does adding the new part effect the other parts in the song?  Does it mask them or make them muddled?  Does it ironically make your arrangement sound "smaller" because there is no room for the reverbs and delays to breathe and do their job? 

Learn to be brutal about cutting parts out of your song in progress.  Don't get sentimental about it - really think about what role a new part would fill and if it is really needed.  Take that same approach to the parts already in your song.  Experiment with muting different tracks to see the effect their absence would have on the arrangement as a whole.  Roll up your sleeves and hack and slash that fat away.  If you really hate tossing a cool riff or melody away, cut and paste it into another file and save it for future use in another track.  Sure, finding the balance between complexity and simplicity is a bit of an art form, but it's one you can develop with a bit of practice and one that will drastically improve not only the clarity of your mixes, but the effectiveness of your songs in general.

Getting Unstuck

It's happened to all of us at one time or another.  You sit down to work on that new track you'd been making so much progress with and you just hit a wall.  Try as you might, you just suddenly run out of ideas and you're at a complete standstill.  Times like these can be incredibly frustrating.  The real danger, of course, is that you get so frustrated that you end up giving up and abandoning what had the potential to be a really cool song.  So today, I thought I'd share some ideas for getting yourself unstuck when you find yourself in this scenario.

1. Change the Tempo

This is such a simple thing, but it can make a really big difference in the mood and feel of a song.  Maybe that dancefloor stormer you're working on would really work better as a ballad.  Or would that slow, contemplative track benefit from the increased energy levels a higher tempo can provide?  Doubt this would make a difference?  Keep in mind that both New Order's "Blue Monday" and Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" were originally intended to be ballads.  After speeding them up, both turned out to be not only some of the biggest hits either of those bands had, but indeed some of the biggest hits in popular music period.  A tempo change can make for an interesting remix idea, too.  Front 242 did an instrumental remix of their track "Religion" on the maxi-single of the same name that was simply the track slowed way down.  You'd be surprised how different the song feels with just a simple tempo change.

2.  Frankenstein's Monster

I'm a musical packrat.  As I've mentioned before, I always have an active 'ideas' folder on my computer where I can quickly store musical ideas that I can later come back to and hopefully flesh out into songs.  Of course, a lot of these ideas end up going unused either because on second listen, they aren't that inspiring or maybe they just don't fit the sound of a certain project.  But no matter how sure I am that an idea will never make the cut with me, I always hang on to these little song snippets.  There are a lot of benefits to doing this, but one solution they can provide is a method of getting up and running again when you're stuck.  Sometimes the verse structure of a song comes out great, but you can't figure out an appropriate chorus to go with it, or vice-versa.  Having a library of unused ideas allows you to audition some of them in just this sort of scenario.  Sometimes an idea that seems "blah" on its own takes on a whole new life if inserted into a different context.

3. Shuffle Your Sounds

Many songwriters underestimate the importance of arranging when it comes to how a song sounds.  The sounds you use and where you place them make an enormous difference in how a track sounds.  If you're stuck on a song, try saving a second copy of the song and going through and changing every single synth and drum sound on the track.  You can always go back to the original if this proves fruitless.  If you have doubts about this, try tracking down some old Depeche Mode demos or the demos from Nine Inch Nail's "Pretty Hate Machine".  Some of them sound painfully lame before the right sounds and studio magic were applied.  Don't be afraid to get crazy and experiment with sounds you wouldn't normally use, either.  Sometimes the 'wrong' sound in the right context can turn out amazing.

4.  Get Lost

Although I am primarily a keyboard player, I also have a bass and an electric guitar.  I'm not a very good bass player and I am even more useless with a guitar, but I like having around a couple of instruments I am not as familiar with as the keys.  When you've been playing an instrument for a long time, I think it can be quite easy to get into a rut and have certain 'default' intervals, keys, or chord shapes that you fall into time and time again.  Having an instrument on hand that you are not as familiar with almost forces you to go in different directions than you would on your 'home instrument'.  Try some unusual stuff too, like mapping your drum pads to trigger notes on your favorite synth.  Anything to break you out of your normal way of playing can be a really valuable method for coming up with new ideas.

5. Move On

When you're stuck, probably one of the worst things you can do is to just sit there listening to your track over and over again hoping some miracle happens and a great idea pops into your hear.  You're only going to get sick of the track and feel less inspired to finish it.  So if you've tried a couple of the above ideas and it still isn't happening for you, take a break and work on something else.  Sometimes you just need a bit of a musical 'palate cleanser' to reset things.  When I'm working on an album, I usually have at least 4 or 5 songs I am working on at the same time.  That way, if I get stuck on one, I can simply move to another and still be moving forward on the album.  I realize this sounds pretty unfocused, but it's worked wonders for me and I often find that after working on another track,  I'm more eager to come back and work on the track I was stuck on in the first place - sort of a creative 'reset' button.  Remember what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder.

So what about you?  How do you get yourself unstuck when you're at a creative standstill?

Thinking Like an Orchestra

Most musicians really underestimate the importance of arrangement. Arrangement, put simply, is the art of deciding which instruments play what parts in which octaves. An orchestra is, in part, put together the way it is to aid the arrangement process. You have many instruments involved, but each has its own specific frequency range, so that, when used properly, they're never stepping on each other and muddying things up.

This may seem obvious, but it's only been in recent years that I've really even thought about the arrangement process. I guess some of it can be instinctual, as I think most musicians figure some of this out on their own, but if you pay close attention to creating your synth parts each in their own frequency range/octaves you'll find you can instantly fit more parts into a song without it sounding crowded or muddy - even without extensive EQ.

Don't just think in terms of the octave a particular part is playing in, either. Take into account the frequency content of the synth sound itself. If you've got a nice deep bassline, some drums, and a high, trebly string part, try making the next part you add a sound that is more biased towards the mid range. The key here is to get the balance right. Be conscious of what each instrument part you add brings to the party, and EQ accordingly. That high string part doesn't need any of the stray bass frequencies that it undoubtedly has a bit of. Nor does that bass need much of anything that happens in the super high frequencies. So use EQ to filter those unneeded bits out. Proper use of EQ and prior thought to the frequency range each of your parts contributes to the overall mix will tighten up your mixes like you wouldn't believe. It's not something you'll pick up overnight, but concentrate on that aspect of your mixes and I promise you they will start sounding better.*

*Not a promise.

The Process

Every musician has their own personal process for putting together a song. If you're like me, that process often evolves throughout time, sometimes almost as if it has a life all its own. I have always found it interesting to read about another artist's process, and since I happen to be in the last stages of finishing up an album as we speak, I thought maybe I'd share mine. Like I said, my process has changed with pretty much every album I've done, so this mainly applies to how the songs for this particular album came together.

THE IDEA
Even when I'm not formally working on an album, I keep an "Ideas" folder to sketch out ideas as they come to me. Inspiration strikes when it strikes, which may not always be the most opportune time to sit down and bang out a complete song, so keeping a folder where I can quickly record an interesting bassline, chord progression, melody, or rhythm ensures that when I am ready to begin work on an album, I already have a nice selection of potential "seeds" for new tracks.

SEPARATING THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF
Let's be honest, not all ideas are winners. So I further sub-divide my ideas folder into "Definite", "Maybe", and "Probably Not" folders. As time goes on, songs might migrate from one folder to another, but the important thing is that I save everything, even the stuff that I decide sounds like crap. Sometimes an idea that seems useless at first, might end up working perfectly in the context of another track, or you might be able to salvage it with a small revision that comes to you later. Regardless of the outcome, you're never going to regret hanging on to every idea you come up with, so you might as well do it, right? Once I have a good selection of potential songs for the album, I start work on transforming these raw ideas into proper songs. I like to be working on several tracks at once so that if I hit a dead end with one track, I can continue working on a different one. I don't know many musicians with extra time to spare, so anything you can do to increase your efficiency is a good thing.

BUILDING THE BASIC STRUCTURE
My ideas usually tend to come in small chunks... a chorus... a verse... maybe just a vocal melody. So the next stage is filling in the missing pieces. I usually try to build a single verse and chorus first, so that I have something that flows together well. I'm not talking about building the full arrangement at this point, I'm usually just working with a bassline and a basic drum beat or loop to play over. Once I have a verse and chorus structure that seems to be working, I arrange these into a full song-length structure, experimenting with where to have these portions repeat and change, where to put bridges or breakdowns, etc. This can take some time to work out, and can even change again later in the process (thank you, cut and paste!), but the sooner I can figure out the basic skeleton of a track, the sooner I can get down to the meat and potatoes of putting the song together.

LYRICS AND VOCALS
In the past, I always saved this part for last because, for me at least, it was the most difficult and least enjoyable part of putting a song together. This time, however, I tried to at least start this process fairly early on. There were several reasons for this. First, because I find it difficult and therefore the most like actual "work", getting it finished early on meant I would get the hard part out of the way and could approach finishing the song in a more enthusiastic and energetic way. Secondly, I wanted to concentrate more on improving my arrangements on this album. I've always liked to include lots of layers in my songs, but in the past, I feel sometimes my arrangements were a bit cluttered and muddy. By building the songs around a vocal, I was able to concentrate on getting everything to fit in its right place. Your mileage may vary, but I really found this helped me arrange the additional synth parts much more effectively. The new album is more layered than anything else I've done, but this time you can hear each part with a clarity that was missing before. Or at least I think so. I record several takes of each vocal track and once I have a few takes I am happy with, I build the composite. You can read more about that here.

BUILDING THE ARRANGEMENT
For me, this is the most fun part of making a song - fleshing out this basic drum beat, bassline, and vocal into a full, proper song. This usually involves looping sections of the song and jamming over it, trying different sounds and trying to find the melodies, chords, hooks, and riffs that will put some meat on the bones of my basic demo. At this stage I am not too concerned with finding the perfect sounds. I just want something that fills the basic role the final sound will fill. So if it's a string or pad part, I use something in that vein, if it's a lead, I use something that falls into that general category. What is most important here is that I am conscious of the frequency range each part occupies so that I don't have parts stepping on one another or competing for space in the mix. It is at this stage that I also program the drums. With the snare parts, at least, I like to play in the parts in a linear fashion, from start to finish. I think this makes the drums sound a bit more alive and natural and results in fills that fit the transitions better. On this album, I used drum pads for this purpose, which I found to be a lot more fun and spontaneous than tapping it out on a keyboard. I usually have to go back and do some edits for places where I screwed up or for fills that just don't work, but most of it is as it was played (with quantization, of course... I'm no drummer!)

CHOOSING THE SOUNDS
This is my other favorite part. Now that I have all the parts of the song recorded as MIDI, it's time to formally choose and commit to the sounds that will be used in the final song. This is also one of the most time-consuming parts. When I'm not working on songs, I'm usually sampling or programming synth sounds so that I have lots to choose from when it comes time for this stage. Even with this pre-built library of sounds, finding the right one can be really frustrating if, like me, you have a pretty large number of synths and softsynths. So try to figure out what each synth you own is best at ahead of time and you can speed up the auditioning of sounds significantly. Also ask yourself if you really need all those synths. The answer is probably "no". But, like me, you probably won't get rid of the ones you don't need either. It's a disease, I tell ya.

RECORDING THE SYNTH PARTS
At this stage, I bounce down each part to audio. I usually record everything dry to give myself the most flexibility at mixdown, so if a synth has built-in effects, I usually turn them off when recording. Chances are, I have a better-sounding dedicated effect plug-in I can use on it anyway. I did a lot of layering on the new album, so often at this stage, I'll copy MIDI tracks and assign different instruments to it to find what sounds the best to my ears. This is sort of like building an arrangement on a smaller level. You want to choose sounds that compliment each other, not step on each other. One layer might provide the low end balls, one might provide a nice, metallic bite, etc. This applies to drum sounds as well. I rarely ever use a single drum sample for a drum part anymore.

FILLING IN THE DETAILS
Once I have most of the song put together, I build any ambient effects in the intro, any edits for a breakdown, or any other 'small' special details that help bring the song up a notch.

MIXDOWN
Once I have everything pretty much where I want it, it's time to do the actual mix. I bring all my faders down and start bring them up one at a time with the kick. Then I bring in the other drum and percussion parts and get their levels sorted, compression, EQ, and other effects sounding right. Next comes the bassline, then the vocal, and then everything else. During this whole process, I get the effects set up properly, and usually go back and forth changing the volume levels until things sound right to me. The more you mix, the better your instinct gets for this sort of thing, but it never hurts to have a reference track by an artist you respect in your general style to compare your mix to.

INITIAL BOUNCE
When I have something I am reasonably happy with, I bounce the track down to a WAV. I'll burn it to disc and listen to it on my computer, my car stereo, the speakers on my television, my iPod, and whatever other playback systems are at my disposal. If you've never done this, you'll be surprised at how different the same mix can sound on different systems. You're never going to get a mix to sound perfect on every system you play it back on, so what you're listening for here are the big, obvious things you can tweak to make a better mix that "averages" to as wide a variety of systems as possible. I recommend you do at least one listen on headphones or earbuds as well, as this can often reveal mistakes or things that need tweaking that may not be as obvious on speakers.

TWEAKS
You may be a much more skilled mixer than I am, but I've never done this initial bounce and not heard things that needed adjustments. So, this is the time for those last minute adjustments. Once you've done them, re-bounce the parts and repeat the evaluation on different systems again to see if you got it right. If not, go back, tweak, lather, rinse, and repeat until it's right.

PUSH THAT MUTHA OUT
Once everything is as perfect as you can get it, it's time for the final bounce so you can send it off to be mastered. This is the hardest part for me, as I am always convinced there is something I've missed that will be obvious to everyone else and I'll be exposed as the fraud I am, my career will go down in flames, and I will die penny-less and insane. But, much like proud parents seeing their child off to college, at some point you just have to let go and have confidence that your song will blossom into everything you dreamed it would be once the listeners pop it in their stereo.

So there you go. That's my process. Do you follow a similar path, or do you do things a lot differently? Any tips that you've personally found useful in your own work? Let us know!

Song Structure Part Three: Bridges and Breakdowns

Thus far, we've discussed the function of verses and choruses, and what can help make a chorus work more effectively. Today, we'll talk a little about two additional, less common parts you can incorporate into your songs: the bridge, and the breakdown.

Although technically different, bridges and breakdowns both serve a similar purpose: namely, to act as a sort of musical 'palette cleanser' to keep the listener's interest and provide some variety over the verse and chorus parts in a song. Both parts achieve this end in different ways, however.

A bridge can almost be thought of as a secondary verse. With vocal music, there are usually lyrics during a bridge, often acting as a turning point in the lyrics or providing further emphasis on the theme of the song. That said, an instrumental or solo section can be a bridge as well. What's important is that the bridge differs musically from the chorus and verse sections. The aim of the bridge is simply to provide some more variety to the song and break up any potential monotony of just sticking with a simple verse/chorus structure. Bridges are nowhere near as common these days as they once were, but it is good to be familiar with their use anyway, as sometimes it really contributes to the strength of a song.

A breakdown (or drop, as it is sometimes called), on the other hand, has the same function, but achieves it by manipulating the energy level of the track instead of the melody or chord progression. It's most often heard in club-oriented electronic music, but it can be found in rock music sometimes too (think of any song by Boston where all the instruments drop out except the rhythm guitar, for example). Breakdowns usually follow a rather busy part of the song. When you remove a large number of elements at once, this causes a very noticeable change in the energy. Gradually, elements are re-introduced a bit at a time (for instance, every four bars), until the arrangement builds to a crescendo (often through building drum rolls) and at last the full arrangement kicks in again. Done correctly, it can really increase the excitement of an arrangement and work brilliantly in a live context. This is another example of 'teasing' the listener. One really effective thing to do in a breakdown is to take whatever the main hook of your song is and just have it play the first, say, three notes of the hook over and over, eventually adding more of the notes as the breakdown progresses until finally the full arrangement kicks in again with and you allow the hook to play through properly.

Because the function of both song parts is to shake things up and hold the listener's interest, you often find bridges or breakdowns before the final verse or chorus of a song. Again, you can change this up (my song "Decades", for example has a breakdown before the FIRST chorus), but there's a reason you'll find these parts near the end of a track more frequently than not: it just works best that way usually.

As with any portion of a song, it is important to pay attention to the length of a bridge or a breakdown. A bridge, in general, should be about the same length as one of your verses. A breakdown, on the other hand, actually needs more time to work properly since you are building up the track from next to nothing a little bit at a time. 16 bars would probably be a minimum in most cases, with 32 bars being more common. The key with both is not to let them overstay their welcome. If you string the listener along too long with either, they are likely to lose interest and you end up defeating the purpose of having these parts in your song at all.

What are some of your favorite examples of bridges and breakdowns?

Song Structure Part One: Overview

As both a touring musician and the owner of a small record label, you can imagine how many demos I get handed. Unsurprisingly, these run the gamut from slick and polished to "Holy crap, I think you just destroyed Music." Production cues aside, one of the most telling signs that a band is just starting out is a lack of coherent structure to their songs. So for the next couple of days, I want to talk about this topic a bit.

Music, at its most fundamental level, is about organization. Notes are organized by rhythms and pitches within bars, and those bars of music, in turn, make up verses, choruses, and bridges that make up the song as a whole. To totally suck all the romance out of it, the difference between a great song and a poor song comes about 80% down to how skillfully these elements are arranged. For the purposes of our discussion, we're going to focus on pop-oriented song structures, as they are the most common. At their most simple level, pop songs consist of two main sub-structures: the verse and the chorus. Less common (these days, at least) is the bridge. This is often replaced by a 'breakdown' section in dance music.

Before I get into this, I want to stress that there are no hard, fast rules when it comes to what defines these parts. In fact, misusing or doing something unexpected with them can often sound genius. But you need to be able to walk before you can run, so let's keep it simple for now. At the basic level, a song is an arrangement of verses and choruses assembled together in meaningful way. While verses exist mainly to propel the song (and especially the lyrics) forward, the chorus is your payoff. You're essentially 'teasing' the listener with the verse to build up to the excitement and power of the chorus.

Ideally, your verse sections and chorus sections should differ musically. One sure sign that I've been given a demo by someone just starting out is that the songs consist of the same thing musically for 5 minutes. Of course, it is possible to write fantastic songs where the verse and chorus share the same chord progressions, but the most successful songs like this get around the repetition factor that by manipulating the energy levels in between sections. (More on this tomorrow...) So when you're starting out, concentrate on coming up with at least two musically distinct parts to serve as your verse and chorus sections.

From here, it makes sense to think of the structure of the entire song. Again, there are no rules here, but what makes for a successful song is at least partly based on knowing just how long to tease the listener with the verses before letting them have the payoff of the chorus. If that time is too short, the choruses (chorii?) lose a bit of their impact, and if you wait too long, the listener may become bored and lose interest. You mainly have to trust your gut when it comes to this sort of thing, and experience will make it easier as time goes on. In most western pop music, song sections come in chunks of 16, or 32 bars (and rarely 8 bars). So use that as a starting point for getting the length of sections right.

As far as the actual organization of these sections, there are several factors that can have an influence, not the least of which is how many verses you need in order to tell your story lyrically. But again, this is largely something you need to develop an instinct for. This isn't difficult, and you should rather quickly be able to get a feel for it just by dissecting a few songs you really like. I've given this advice more than any, but I think it's worth repeating - if you want to learn about how a good song is put together, the best thing you can do is to reverse engineer it. Find a song or two by another artist that you really like and put together a cover version of it. The aim here is not to get arty and make your own, dramatically different version, but to imitate the original as closely as you can. When you see the structure of a song you like laid out in your sequencer, I guarantee song structure will start making more sense to you.

Next time out, we will focus on the chorus and what makes a good one.

5 Ways of Jump Starting Your Creativity

Have you ever found yourself sitting in your studio with tons of great tools at your disposal, but absolutely no ideas? If you answered 'no', then you're a dirty liar. Sooner or later we all have bouts of writer's block. It's incredibly frustrating, and if you happen to be up against a formal deadline, it can be even more stressful. So how do you drag yourself out of these creative doldrums? Sometimes you just have to experiment until you find what works for you personally, but here are a few ideas you might find helpful.

1.) Change Your Environment
I absolutely hate moving. Yeah, it's bad enough to have to box up everything you own and haul it in and out, but for me it also means dismantling my studio and rewiring it somewhere else. The one really positive thing that always seems to follow this, however, is that I feel creatively recharged and eager to get to work again. Your surroundings and work environment can have a tremendous impact on how you work, so if you're feeling stuck, try taking your laptop somewhere where you normally don't make music and see if that gives you a bit of a boost. It doesn't have to be anything drastic. If you normally work downstairs in your house, try working upstairs. Nice weather? Go to a park with some headphones and see if working outside inspires you.

2. Flip it and Reverse it
If you're having trouble getting started on a new song, try taking something you already completed and reversing it, either the audio or the MIDI. It may not lead anywhere, but you may just hear an unusual melody, rhythm or progression when you listen to music this way that gives you a direction to go in.

3. Art Cross-pollination
Try creating a soundtrack for a scene in a movie you like. Better yet, get more obscure and create a 'soundtrack' for a famous painting, photograph, sculpture, or city. Concentrate on representing visuals through music. Try to communicate a specific emotion solely through use of melody or rhythm.

4. Remix One of Your Old Songs
Take a song you've already completed, and do a remix for it as if you were remixing another artist. Let yourself disconnect from your usual 'rules' and self-consciousness and go nuts. Try to put the song into an entirely different musical context from the original. Once you've completed it, try taking out the vocals and any remaining melodic elements from the original and use this remix as the start of a brand new track. Or, in a similar vein, try taking a musical loop from a song you like and building a new song around that sample. Then, remove the sample and see if what you've got might be a good start on a new track.

5. Do Anything But Music
Although it might sound odd, sometimes the best remedy for running into dead ends in the studio is to get out of the studio. Go for a walk. Clean out the garage. Exercise. Your mileage may vary, but I personally find that some of my best ideas come to me when I am away from the studio. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves when we sit down to write a new song, so take some of the pressure off by getting away from that intimidating blank sequencer screen and see what happens.

So there are some ideas to get you started. Do you have a personal method of breaking writer's block that you prefer? Tell us about it!

Improving Your Lyrics

Songwriting is a multi-faceted art. Finding just the right combination of notes or chords is only one part of the equation. There's song structure to figure out, the arrangement of instruments, and if you're writing music with vocals, there's coming up with a vocal melody, and just as importantly, the lyrics themselves.

It's unfortunate that the importance of lyrics is often overlooked, but given how widespread the sort of 'lowest common denominator' lyrics tend to be in popular music, it's perhaps not surprising. Still, just because Britney Spears doesn't have anything interesting to say, doesn't mean you shouldn't still strive to make your lyrics the best they can be. While low-brow lyrics can often add to the mainstream appeal of a song, the songs that tend to be remembered in the long-term often do so because they have well-crafted lyrics that people can relate to ("Louie, Louie" notwithstanding...)

Lyric writing isn't easy for most of us, but there is a lot you can to make it less troublesome and to improve the end result. Everyone works differently so there are no 'universal rules', but today I thought I'd share some things I've found useful over the years.

1.Read, Read, Read!
One of the best things you can do to improve any kind of writing is to read as much as you can from other writers. This is probably the easiest single thing you can do to improve your lyrics, as you tend to absorb aspects of good writing almost via osmosis as you go along. Any sort of serious reading will help, but for the purposes of lyric-writing reading poetry and well-written lyrics from other musicians can be extremely helpful. Break down and analyze lyrics you find really effective and figure out what it is specifically that makes them that way. Pay attention to the use of imagery, word choice, and rhythm. You're not looking to copy anyone, just to isolate what they're doing that makes their lyrics work so well. Then you can apply some of those broad concepts to your own work. I'll provide two suggestions to get you started:

Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen. Widely regarded as one of the best lyricists alive today, Leonard Cohen should be required reading for any lyricist. This book combines the lyrics to most of his songs, along with his poetry.

The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry edited by Alan Kaufman. Anthologies can be a great way of studying a wide variety of writers with minimal investment. This particular one is a good one to start with for people not ordinarily into poetry as it focuses more on modern poets, and especially those associated with the counterculture... so it's a bit more rock n' roll.

2. Tools of the Trade
Two things no lyric-writer should be without are a rhyming dictionary and a thesaurus. Fortunately, a quick search of Google will give you a number of both online that are absolutely free. Both of these can be invaluable in finding the right word when you're stuck. Alternately, you can check out a computer program such as Masterwriter 2, which is a suite of tools for songwriters all contained in a single program. I use the first version of this program, so I can't vouch for the current version, but the first version has definitely been helpful to me personally.

3. Get a Notebook
Personally, I prefer to compose my lyrics in a notebook. Call me old-fashioned, but I find it much more pleasant and convenient than sitting at a computer keyboard. It also allows me to organize things on a page with more flexibility than your typical word processor allows. Regardless of how you do your actual lyrical composition, a notebook is good to have as it allows you to write down ideas whenever they pop into your head (which is often not when you are in the studio). Write down everything, no matter how unsure you are about it. No one needs to see it, and even if an idea doesn't get used in its raw form, it might be the seed for something that you do use.

4. Write About What You Know
While there is nothing wrong with writing about fictional situations or events you didn't experience yourself, the best lyrics tend to be the ones that are filtered through the writer's personal experience. This is because one person's personal experience often speaks to the human experience itself, and somewhere out there, someone is going to really relate to what you're saying. There is a sense of honesty to these types of lyrics that can really elevate the emotional connection people have with your song. Don't be afraid to make yourself vulnerable or to expose parts of your psyche you may find embarrassing. If you're honest, I guarantee you there is someone out there who has been through the same thing or felt the same way.

5. Know What You're Going to Write About Before You Begin
Most mystery authors will tell you that the first part of writing a good mystery, is to know the ending of the story before you begin writing it. Similarly, the first step in creating lyrics is to actually know what you're going to write about. What is the theme of the song? What story are you telling? What ideas are you trying to get across? Having a clear idea of what your lyrics are going to be about will keep you focused and help prevent a lot of hapless creative flailing.

6. Inspiration
So where do you get the ideas in the first place? As I previously mentioned, personal experience is one of the best sources of inspiration - things you have been through, feelings you have about a political issue, places you have been. But I'm also a strong believer in finding inspiration in other forms - a film, the title of a book, a place you've been that leaves an impression on you. All of it is legitimate fodder for song topics, word and phrase choices, or general atmosphere of a song. Just make sure you are putting your own personal spin on whatever it is that provides that initial seed.

7. Free Associate
Once you know what you want to write about, it can be valuable to free associate a bit before you begin the proper writing of lyrics. Write down descriptive words, phrases, images, etc. related to the song theme on one section of the page - sort of a 'phrase bank' you can draw upon as you are writing. As I said before, don't be self-conscious... no one needs to see what you're writing here, but it can be really helpful when you get stuck.

8. Don't Go for the Obvious Choice
Always be thinking of how to say what you want to say in a more colorful or creative way. Use things like imagery, simile, and personifcation to make what you're trying to express have more impact. Don't give into the temptation to just use the first word or phrase that pops into your head. Challenge yourself and find a more interesting, less obvious way to say it. It takes a lot more work, but the end result will be better for it. Likewise, try and think of a twist you can add to a common type of song. One of my band's popular tracks is called 30k ft.. For all intents and purposes, it's a love song, but what makes it a bit outside the norm is that it is sung into a cell phone on a plane that is about to crash. Think of ways you can do something unexpected with a conventional type of song.

9. The Importance of the Chorus
The chorus of a song is arguably the most important part. It's the part people get stuck in their heads, it's the part they sing along to at your live shows, and it serves more or less as a summary of what the song is about. It appears several times throughout the song, so take the extra time to ensure that your chorus ties everything together in a relevant way. Clever phrases or lyrical 'hooks' belong here more than anywhere else in the song generally.

10. Write More Than You Need
I'll admit that lyric-writing is probably the least enjoyable part of songwriting for me personally. But it's important. Although it leads to more work, I find one of the best ways to get a good end result is to write many more lyrics than I need. Then, go through what you have and choose only the absolute best parts to construct the song. If you're an absurdly great writer, it may be hard to pare down what's the best, but if you're like the rest of us, chances are, if you write twice the amount of lyrics you really need, about half of them will be really good.

I hope this gives you some ideas on how to hone your skills as a lyricist. Realize that no one just pops out of the womb a great, or even competent writer. Like any skill, it takes time and effort to develop and what you get out of it really depends on what you put into it. Don't get discouraged. You'll fail more often than you succeed, and you'll probably drive yourself crazy from time to time, but when you finally really nail it, it makes all the time and effort worthwhile. That said, there are exceptions to pretty much everything I've said, so don't restrict yourself creatively. Lyric writing is an intensely personal thing, and ultimately, you have to find your own methods. Feel free to share them here, too! How do you write lyrics?

5 Ways to Combat Writer's Block

If you've been writing music for any significant period of time, chances are you've encountered writer's block: that temporary inability to come up with anything musically or lyrically interesting. This can be frustrating enough if you're a hobbiest, but if you happen to make your living from music, it can be a disaster. So it's good to have some strategies in place for when it happens to you. Here are a couple to get you started:

1.) Restrict Yourself
Back when my studio set-up consisted of nothing but a single sampler, I dreamt of the days when I would be able to afford more gear. Surely that would solve all my creative blocks! What I found out was just the opposite. Sometimes, having too many options is actually counter-productive. If your studio has grown to include several hardware or software synths, you may find yourself just auditioning bass sounds all afternoon instead of committing to one and moving on. So impose some restrictions on yourself. Try making an entire song with nothing but a single synth. Make the drums and everything from scratch. Not only will you improve your sound programming abilities, but you'll likely end up with a track that sounds utterly unlike anything else you've done.

2.) Explore the Unfamiliar
Try making a track in a genre you are unfamiliar with. Track down songs that are popular within that genre and deconstruct them to find out what makes them tick. Once you have a rough idea of what makes the genre sound like it does, have a go at making your own original track in that style. Remember, no one ever needs to hear the song, this is just an exercise to get your creativity flowing. And even if you end up not being fond of the song in that particular genre, you can always adapt it back to your usual style after the fact. Or who knows? Perhaps the track could be your first steps into a brand new side project!

3.) iShuffle
If you've got an iPod or similar media player that offers a 'shuffle' function, you can use it as a way to stimulate your creativity. Fire it up and hit shuffle and listen to the first song it plays. Take some element of that song and apply it to whatever you are working on. It can be something as simple as copying the feel of a percussion line, to mimicking the structure of the entire song, to using the same types of sounds, etc.

4.) Raising the Dead
You keep every idea you sketch into your sequencer, right? RIGHT? If you don't, now is a good time to start. Keep EVERY idea you come up with, no matter how lame it may seem to you right now. What might seem kind of lackluster now, may turn out to be the perfect chorus or bridge for a song you are stuck on in the future. So if you find yourself feeling uninspired, go back and listen to some of those abandoned ideas and see if there is something you can work into an interesting song, or even just part of the current track you are working on. Context is everything, so what sounds 'bleh' on its own, may sound brilliant played against an existing riff in the song you are struggling with now.

5.) Be Productive
My motto in the studio is 'always be working on something'. You don't always have to be working on your next number one hit. If you get stuck on a track, try doing something different to clear your head, but try to make it something that might help you further down the road. Program some new sounds into your favorite synth. Sort your sample library so sounds are easier to find when you're looking for them. Make some new presets for your favorite plug-in effect. It's possible that none of these things will benefit you immediately, but they'll surely save you work further down the line, and you may just find that taking a short break from writing music recharges your creative batteries.