Making the music organic.

[scooterjack]

I think 'organic' is a pretty descriptive word, by definition, even describing "music made with machines".

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/organic

or⋅gan⋅ic [awr-gan-ik]

–adjective

9. developing in a manner analogous to the natural growth and evolution characteristic of living organisms; arising as a natural outgrowth.
10. viewing or explaining something as having a growth and development analogous to that of living organisms: an organic theory of history.
13. Architecture. noting or pertaining to any work of architecture regarded as analogous to plant or animal forms in having a structure and a plan that fulfill perfectly the functional requirements for the building and that form in themselves an intellectually lucid, integrated whole.
14. Fine Arts. of or pertaining to the shapes or forms in a work of art that are of irregular contour and seem to resemble or suggest forms found in nature.

I would like to think that some of my tracks are "organic" in the way that the sounds evolve over time, how the arrangement evokes different emotions at different times, and how parts are unique yet meld together to form the overall picture. And i believe that the way i craft some of my sounds is quite organic, especially basses which really seem to "grow" into what they are at times instead of being "constructed".

I hear lots of really good music that isn't very organic that i thoroughly enjoy, but there is something that really draws me deeply into a tune that evolves and grows from beginning to end in one form or another, 'organically'.

.02

[phatymclefto]

I find the music Tipper makes to sound "organic" lots of blips and bleeps that make it sound earthy..? I think

[fiziks]

I think calling music organic is a total cliché.
There is no such thing as organic music, especially with an electronic genre, its all made by machines and gizmos that are far from organic. You might be able to loosen up the sounds and make it sound more 'human', but at the end of the day it just aint organic. I see it as a buzz-word like 'the war on terror' (only example i can really think of now). Bit weird I know, but its my two cent!

eh, I'd have to disagree. Early Dj Shadow and Burial for example have very organic qualities to their tunes.

Or whatever.

I should be sleeping.

[dj vision]

Btw, a shitload of psytrance is called "organic" sounding, and i think this is mostly the way the synths morph, or never really stay the same, this being said, i think Scooter has the right idea in saying that a tune can easily have organic qualities by changing structurally and emotionally throughout the song

[Sharmaji]

sorry, i left out an "a". it's <b> Budhakan </b> mindphone. and damn, that record is 10 years old! that's pre-reason, pre-recycle, pre-ableton, pre-FL, pre.... wow.

anyway, the word 'organic' implies a human feel. write/program/quanitize/unquantize/velocity-map/etc based on how somehting makes you feel, not just by what the grid tells you. go by the grid and you're just punting when you could kick a field goal...

it comes down to respect, really: every--EVERY--single bit of midi/audio/etc that you do write implies that you made a choice about every single parameter that you can make a choice about. some make a huge difference, some dont' make a difference at all. but recognize that you have that power, and that your choices affect how people feel when they hear your tunes.

so listen closely, tune into the details and make yr beats that much more bangin!!!! it doesnt mean that you have to hyper-program shit to the 128th note-- but it DOES mean that what you do or don't do has a very tangible effect.

[elbe]

oke to make it all clear to all you beatmakers...


Make something more 'organic' or others say 'human', has nothing to do with eq's, compression, fx's and stuff. IT'S ABOUT THE NUANCE OF UR SAMPLE(PLACEMENT)!!!

an unquantized 808 beat wont never sound organic or human cause the sounds itself aren't human. They're created by syntheses not by animal skin or wood.


hope you now understand why your shit wont get any more organic.

shudupayamouth.

you can make electronic sounds sound organic, I am talking about capturing and emulating that warmth of character that you get from traditional "orgainc" instruments, and if you experiment enough with eq and fx you can bring a resembelance of this to your synthesised sounds.

what you say about changing velocity is a good point, variation in tone helps too.

[slothrop]

whatever, I just feel that words like 'organic' are thrown around too often these days, and looses its meaning.

It certainly seems like a bit of a red herring. People have a bit of a tendancy to fetishize 'organic sounds' as being stuff that sounds old and crusty and traditional, and then assume that those are the things that are essentially for making good music. But sometimes it's the cheapest nastiest sounding stuff that actually makes the connection. Look at sleng teng (or most other digital dancehall) for instance - on a technical level, it's totally plastic, particularly compared to, say, a dubby techno record made with painstakingly applied vintage compression and tube overdrive through an all analogue signal path and so on and so on. But guess which one makes rooms full of happy smiley people shake their arses and party and which one makes bald blokes in rollnecks stroke their chins and frown?

Also, we seem to have a tendancy to go nuts about how 'organic' things sound even though ten years ago those things were the definition of nasty, thin, modern cheapness - first analogue synths (if you'd said in 1978 that Kraftwerk sound 'amazingly warm and organic' you'd have been locked up), and now people go on about how jungle all sounds really amazing because it was made on shit 12 bit samplers with a UI designed by satan. But maybe a lot of the time it just sounds great because it was being made by people who were too busy making records for having a good time to and writing tunes to touch people's emotions to bother fannying around with carefully distributed white noise and deciding which 40 grand anlogue EQ would give their bassline a really creamy richness?