Multitrack View
My brain gets stimulated in a unique way when I write or remix music. I can actually feel my mood change. It is a form of creativity and labor that accesses both hemispheres of the brain. On one hand, it takes the left side of the brain to figure out panning and volume levels, as well as navigating through the several programs used like Adobe Audition and FL Studio. While the right side of the brain has a load of work to do because it determines the “Sweetness” of the sounds that are being created and it senses emotional shifts in mood due to the frequencies presented. I’ve been working on a Remix of a song that is way overdue and I only recently have had the guts and determination to open it up. The project was really daunting because the artist I’m working with created a very long and complicated song with multiple pattern changes. And I want to make sure to do real justice to the track. But all the remixes I’ve been listening to lately has given me a boost of inspiration and determination to work on the track. I really want this track to crank hard.
There is a methodological process that happens when writing and ReMixing music. Right now I am taking a song that was written in FL Studio, and exporting samples to be used in Adobe Audition. When working with FL Studio you use patterns that are usually short sequences of samples placed in time. What’s interesting is that these patterns can be converted into MIDI sequences and then imported into REASON which is a very cool program. The only problem I have with doing so is that I will lose the original sounds for the pattern. But the good thing is that I feel that REASON will do a much better job for specific sounds, specifically the drums. As for Adobe Audition I am working on the intro right now and I’m able to do manipulation of effects and panning of the samples. There is one pattern that was using a piano roll that was pretty complex. So I broke it by cloning and copying the channel and then splitting it into several single lined phrases. This way I was able to export the pattern one channel at a time into Adobe Audition. From there I was able to do some good panning techniques to make the intro much more punchy and compelling. Because in today’s music if you don’t hook the listener in the first few seconds there is a good chance he/she will skip to the next one.
One major thing that I’ve noticed from working on music is how fast time flows by. I can literally spend hours on a few patterns without noticing. It’s not like blogging. When blogging, I notice time by how many times I’ve listened to a piece of music. Isn’t that strange how we track time through music, not hours or minutes? I remember when I used to drive from Santa Barbara to Orange County all the time. I used to gauge my trip by how many albums I’ve listened to. If I had listened to an Orbital album, I was about one-third closer. If I listened to Lifeforms by Future Sound of London I was making good progress to getting to my destination.
When I wrote, “Time in Horizon” it was a very stimulating and spiritual experience. The day I wrote the music for the verses, It all flowed out in one stream. Layer after layer, everything came together. The part that solidified the experience for me was when I added the flutes to the song. That gave a dimension of fullness and depth that made playback more palatable and it inspired me to move onward with more orchestration. I remember when I went to sleep, or at least tried to, I was lying in bed with the song playing over and over again in my mind. After lying there for at least an hour I decided sleep was futile so I went back downstairs and created the chorus of the song. Then and only then, was I able to sleep. It was like there was a piece of creation that had to happen before I could rest. Certain pieces of information can’t stay in the mind. They need to exit and experience the universe themselves, without being confined in your body.
-Tyler