Delivering my Work in Layers

Recently, I’ve gained a lot of success in taking a ‘high impact’ approach to my music composition workflow. I wanted to share a bit of this strategy with you.

I’ve been making music for well over a decade and starting taking it much more seriously a couple of years ago. Naturally, there’s been some changes to my approach as I’ve figured out what works best for me.

The Discovery Phase

I watched a TV program ages ago about a bunch of painters. There was a critic who talked about his approach to paintings. He said he used broad strokes to fill up the canvas quickly. He did this so he could get an idea sketched out quickly. Then he could focus on embellishing his ideas later.

I’d suspected for a long time that I’d been making music in a contrary was to how this guy was doing amazing paintings. So I starting thinking “how can I fill up the canvas quickly in my songs?”

The Context for Change
I need to add at this stage that I had so many 16 bar loops on my hard drive that sounded great, but I’d spend hours upon hours at some of these individual projects trying to make them sound cool. The world hadn’t heard any of these songs.

So, I felt like listening to this art critic was a catalyst for change, or at least for some experimentation without judgement. I didn’t want my own basement (hard drive) full of half-painted portraits that I couldn’t share with anyone.

Workflow — What I Did

I spent less time worrying about sound design and more about framing a concept as quickly as possible. The key difference here as well was one simple thing: I can literally rub out parts of my painting that I don’t want to keep!

I’d get ideas down quickly, before they vanished from my head. If the sounds didn’t match the intention of where I wanted it to end up, that was fine. I could still keep a sense of what that sound was by choosing a really basic midi instrument.

It seemed weird at first because these songs didn’t reflect the style I wanted to achieve. So, I did have to overcome my own reservations to see if working in this way would produce a different end result. However, templating some more signature sounds helped me to at least be little bit closer sonically to the end goal.

My Actual Methodology

If I needed to paint, I needed to throw colours at the canvas. What I started to do with any new compositions was to deliberately fill that canvas, and quickly. I’d try and get a 3–4 minute composition down quickly, generally recording in chord progressions to get a sense of where I could go next.

I’d then record multiple melodies over the top of these arrangements. Next, I’d record counter melodies that worked well over the top of those melodies.

Finally, I’d throw in some background noises to give the whole thing texture.

I’d then shut the laptop. I’d created the equivalent of land, sky and sea at a quick pace that my imagination could handle, even if it sounded quite bad at this point.

When I opened the laptop with a fresh head, I had a whole bunch of ideas where I could start to draw ideas from in order to make a fully rounded composition.

I could transpose some counter melodies to become basslines, and I could look out for moments that I felt could be hooks, or signatures of the song.

After spending all that time arranging, I could then concentrate on the fun part — making my music sound good. I decided to concentrate on adding drums to my compositions at the end. This was because I wanted a track to stand up on it’s own without drums, meaning that it already strength.

The Benefits

I now operate in this way as a rule. I jam ideas out and try to record scenes with a view to full compositions. By concentrating on the extra 10% as the last 10%, I feel like I’m always creating concrete ideas that end up seeing the light of day, instead of a basement full of half-baked paintings.