A lil Sunday tip.

[outbound]

This is a good one I was doing today, (useful if you're struggling with a bit of writers block)

Start a track with some drums and an initial idea, start to build up and then take out the main idea of the song (could be lead melody, chord structure w/e) and replace it with something new and carry on.

Keep on with this and then again replace another element in your track. This should give you something quite different than when you started and because you're final idea isn't going to be what you start with it means it doesn't really matter what you write at the beginning as long as there's something there.

Aside from the obvious (that you get something written) this also forces you to re approach an existing idea in a different context which is great for building skills like sample searching.

Sorry if this seems a little obvious but just something that helped me massively today and maybe will help someone else

[wub]

Start a track with some drums

Bad idea already IMO.

[ehbes]

Start a track with some drums

Bad idea already IMO.

elaborate

[lloydy]

Should really learn to start a track however you want,i can never see how starting a certain way will benefit you in the long run.
I start tracks with drums,sometimes with just vocals.A track i finished recently all i had was a sub bass line i had jammed out on my keyboard.

[wub]

Start a track with some drums

Bad idea already IMO.

elaborate

I've ranted on this enough, so am going to be lazy and do a copy paste of a previous rant;

This is copied from a previous thread we've had re; workflow...

Ok, I'm going to be lazy and just quote myself from a previous topic on this subject so bear with me...

Got my main template already set up with several different buses, routing etc etc. I'll usually start with messing around with something. Whatever that something is changes every time I start. Sometimes a vocal sample, a crazy ass effect I've been working on, some synth patterning with modulation, instrument loop from a dusty old 50s record I've sampled, whatever.

I'll play around with that for a bit, loop different bits, chop it up, add effects, bounce & reimport, create some basic patterns etc, find out what works and what doesn't. Once I've got a nice little pattern looping for about 16 bars or so that won't drive me crazy on listening to it hour after hour, I'll start to construct the tune around it. Place the drums where the sample dictates they should be placed, or apply the bassline so that it evolves organically around the sound.

Generally once I've got that done, will work on tidying up the drum programming a bit more, making a few variations of the patterns, spread them out over the course of the tune. Same with the bassline, add some variations, plenty of automation to give it some movement. The tune programming should be evolving organically at this point, as it becomes apparent when listening where the necessary elements should change or drop in/out of proceedings.

I'll usually add a few bells & whistles at this point, incidental sounds, echoey bits, heavily reverbed hi passed sirens, vocal snippets (nb; I mean spoken word samples in this case, not actual vocals), maybe some white noise sweeps etc etc, extra layer of ambience, stretched our snare sample over 64bars to give some background grit, working it into the arrangement to keep things interesting.

Once I've got a rough arrangement of how the overall tune is going to be, I'll bounce out a rough copy, burn onto CD then go whack it on the main system in my lounge. Get myself a cup of tea, sit down on the sofa with a notebook and listen to the track on repeat. I'll make notes as to what I like/don't like, what needs working on etc, then I'll go back to my studio machine and make the necessary changes.

Then it'll just be a case of doing a basic mastering job (not too fussed about mixdowns, these generally get done as I'm working through the tune), and jobs a good 'un.

Basically, starting with the drums is IMO boring as hell. If I start a tune with drums, the tune will be dictated by those drums and anything I add to it after the fact will be added to and around the drums. FUCK. THAT. I'd much rather get some fun stuff going on, samples/pads/synth loops/melodic bits etc, get them looping the way I like then construct the drums around them.

I never listen to a track for the drums. If I'm trying to tell someone what a tune is like, I won't bang my desk to give an idea of the drum programming. Course not, I'll hum the melody, sing a poor version of the vocal, whatever. The fun bits of the tune, basically. And it's for this reason that I'll start with those bits, as those are the bits I want my tunes to be identified for.

That way I'm changing the emphasis of the track from the drums to the more interesting bit. Like thinking of a tune as a sandwich. The drums are the bread and hey, you can't have a sandwich without bread (this isn't an excuse to correct me on sandwich preparation techniques nor is it an excuse to give examples of great sandwiches that don't involve bread so don't bother), but at the end of the day I'm not eating a sandwich for the bread, I'm eating it for the filling.

[ehbes]

fair enough

[lloydy]

I love drums as much as any other part of a tune and also find bread equally nice to the filling so call me indifferent.

[Sonika]

yeah I've seen Wub adamantly attack the method of starting a track with drums, so I started trying to start a track with other elements - I'm not sure if it's helped or hurt me tbh, but it's sort of interesting - you're building the drums around the track rather than the track around the drums. Then again, it's dance music, so a lot of it is bound to be pretty percussion-oriented anyways. I'd say try both methods and whichever works for you is the best

[wub]

My comments do come with a firm 'IMO' attached to them.

[ehbes]

yeah I've seen Wub adamantly attack the method of starting a track with drums, so I started trying to start a track with other elements - I'm not sure if it's helped or hurt me tbh, but it's sort of interesting - you're building the drums around the track rather than the track around the drums. Then again, it's dance music, so a lot of it is bound to be pretty percussion-oriented anyways. I'd say try both methods and whichever works for you is the best

im a little of both...ill find a sample i like, structure drums around it, then go from there

[hurlingdervish]

Although I do find that starting with drums can be bad depending on certain factors of what I'm going for, at the very worst if I start a song with drums and don't finish it, I can chuck those percussion stems into my library and rework them when I do start with melodic bits and need quick access to percussion elements.
Some of the best stuff I've stumbled on is from mashing up many little ideas I've had exported to loops.

[PERCEPT]

Essentially it comes down to what the focus point is in the track. As Wub says, he doesn't want the rest of his tracks to be built around, and controlled by, his drum pattern. Whereas most of the stuff i'm doing these days involves percussion as the central point so it makes sense to me to start off with that.

[gen_]

I like to start with drums. I can then build a bassline around the swing and vibe created by them. To me thats far better than building a melody around the swing created by a metronome because, in Logic at least, there is none!

I can always go back and change the drums if the melodies and lines i create necessitate a different swing.

[wub]

Essentially it comes down to what the focus point is in the track.

Got it in one...the tracks have never been about the drums for me

[mikeyp]

i'm with wub, i save drums for last. very very last. i'll make a simple beat sometime during the process just to fill in that gap but the actual drum sequencing comes after everything is written

[3za]

Was it Lee Scratch Perry that said something like, " The snare is the head of the tune, and the bass is the heart"

Ture dubstepah since day -9213

[AxeD]

Yeah if you're not that into drums.. don't start with drums.

[mikeyp]

not that i'm not into them.. i like them to be strong and powerful and be a big part of the tune but i just think things sound better when drums follow a melody rather than the other way around

[fv2k]

I can see what wub means about the beat, but fa very basic pattern can be good (3 elements max) just to set the tempo you want. Think of a rapper who hears a beat and can feel inspired to rap over it. You can go back and adjust drums later depending on where your session goes.

A congested drum beat really can rob you though, it can be hard to fit other pieces in when there's a dense drum track already. Feels constricting.

[Brothulhu]

I can see what wub means about the beat, but fa very basic pattern can be good (3 elements max) just to set the tempo you want. Think of a rapper who hears a beat and can feel inspired to rap over it. You can go back and adjust drums later depending on where your session goes.

A congested drum beat really can rob you though, it can be hard to fit other pieces in when there's a dense drum track already. Feels constricting.

This, I normally set up a quick kick snare loop with hats on the off beats then work on other elements then go and re-do the drums completely