what is your approach to building/composing a track?

[zazz]

I am just curious to know what is the most efficient approach ...for example some guys might use loops and bolt it together lego style while others would prefer to play out the whole song end to end track by track.

But what is the best way as a one man band to try and recreate that spontaneous dialouge that you might get with more than one musician using the daw to play out and jam pieces against each other to create that unexpected magic.

Also how would you go about restructuring when your knee deep in and you decide to say make the verse the chorus ect..

Everyone I am sure has their own special approach that suits them and i would love to see it.... for sure its a very complex thing.. you need to balance out a lot of ideas without getting bogged down in the mechanics of music production and losing the spark that made you start composing the song in the first place.

 

[guitarplayr82]

For demos I usually have many tracks for each instrument so I can kind of build the song as I go along, rather than having to play each track all the way through. It just works better for my creative process. However, for final recordings I usually try to record longer tracks so it will be easier for mixing. Going back to change part of the song I have already recorded can really be a pain sometimes. I guess one way to avoid that is to not do any mixing at all (except for maybe some track volumes) until you are completely finished recording. That way you can still easily move things around to add parts or subtract parts. You could also make an un-mixed save so you have a backup if you ever need it once you have started mixing.

 

[zazz]

For demos I usually have many tracks for each instrument so I can kind of build the song as I go along, rather than having to play each track all the way through. It just works better for my creative process. However, for final recordings I usually try to record longer tracks so it will be easier for mixing. Going back to change part of the song I have already recorded can really be a pain sometimes. I guess one way to avoid that is to not do any mixing at all (except for maybe some track volumes) until you are completely finished recording. That way you can still easily move things around to add parts or subtract parts. You could also make an un-mixed save so you have a backup if you ever need it once you have started mixing.

are you using midi based or a click tempo from the daw to help with that approach?

 

[guitarplayr82]

are you using midi based or a click tempo from the daw to help with that approach?

All of my songs use a click track. I sometimes add MIDI instruments into the recording, but they still quantize to the click track. That's why it is so easy for me to move around parts of the song because I can just line them up with a measure or beat line.

 

[zazz]

All of my songs use a click track. I sometimes add MIDI instruments into the recording, but they still quantize to the click track. That's why it is so easy for me to move around parts of the song because I can just line them up with a measure or beat line.

yeah.. i guess thats the only way these days that makes sense although this building block approach is going to give all your compositions that made on a daw feel structure wise.

 

[FunkDaddy]

yeah.. i guess thats the only way these days that makes sense although this building block approach is going to give all your compositions that made on a daw feel structure wise.

How do you know that? Some people can groove with a click track more than others.

 

[guitarplayr82]

yeah.. i guess thats the only way these days that makes sense although this building block approach is going to give all your compositions that made on a daw feel structure wise.

Yes, it sometimes can although I only do that when I'm making a demo, not a final mix recording. Demos are when I need to be able to have control of the song so I can play with it and shape it as I go along.

 

[Absolutepower]

I realized today that each track I've done has come from a single "seed" idea. So for example, I might think of, or hear a catchy melody. Like the other day I was listening to some long rambling Rush song, who I'm not crazy about, and for about 2 seconds there was this melody, just a few notes, and it immediately occurred to me that I could make a song centering around that melody. It almost completely laid itself out for me in my brain. If you have ONE idea that's strong enough, everything else will flow out of that, and build itself around it.