I, Process

This post is long overdue, so apologies to the lovely @Deonvozov for my taking an age to answer her original tumblr post, musing on why so many online producers are willing to talk gear and setup and tech, and are generally far less forthcoming about process, craft and art. So, belatedly, apologetically, here are my personal thoughts on the subject…

I’m a home producer, by which I mean, I currently work primarily from home, producing music. I don’t think of myself as a producer first and foremost, though. First and foremost, I’m a musician; a guitarist. I’ve played since I was very small, and I’m still playing now I’m very large, so that’s logically a very long time. I’m not just a bedroom guitarist, either - I’ve been playing on stage for many years, in various states of sobriety, and in many different contexts: I’ve been a country bassist, an accompanist, a songwriter and an open-mic sucker, playing for nothing like the rest of my generation.

You don’t hear much about this part of my musical life these days, and there’s a good reason for this. A couple of years ago, I dropped out of the live music scene to concentrate on making tracks. I decided to learn more producing skills, and began studying composition, melody, harmony, and removing myself from the acoustic performer mentality, which I’d long felt was starting to stifle my creativity as a maker of sounds.

The impetus? I had looked at the tracks which I called my music, and realised they didn’t express anything very much. Good sounds seemed only to happen by accident, and I spent a lot of this time kicking my own backside over the lack of progress in my skill set and output. Importantly, I felt (and still feel, to a lesser extent) that a lot of my musical ideas weren’t developed or complex enough to carry 4 minutes of music. Zygotes, half-finished thoughts, structureless tidbits. What ideas were there, were so badly executed that the meaning was lost, or they sounded (god forbid!) amateurish. I made a decision: if I couldn’t get a grip on this, I should quit producing and concentrate on being an instrumentalist.

I’ve always been a touch of a musical loner - I think sometimes it’s hard to be a girl guitarist - and I fell into “computer music” in 2002 as a way to acquire a fuller sound when just one guitar wasn’t enough to express myself. Because I had no formal training in audio tech, though, there was always a disconnect between the music in my head, the music in my hands, and the music on the screen. I got into DAWs when the trend towards production using only software was in full effect. Hardware was prohibitively expensive, and I had no idea what most of it did in any case. Midi input meant midi keyboard, and I was flummoxed, melodically. For the longest of times, my experience of music produced on a computer was just pushing a mouse awkwardly around a screen, changing settings I didn’t understand and was a tinkering process, a part-time distraction, completely devoid of Flow and Art.

Thank god for the internet. Thank god for @clementshawes and @synoiz and the Future Producers forums. Thank god for Nosaj Thing and Tehn and all of the inspiring YouTube videos about the Monome. Without whom, without whom, without whom…

I don’t know when it was that I realised I was missing a human element in my music creation process but I think it had something to do with the Kaossilator, and how quickly I picked it up. My hands and my instinct took over, and I made this connection between synth and feel that had never been there before. From there, it was a midi guitar, a Launchpad, an MPD… I became the quintessential midi hardware addict, and unashamedly so.

You see, my epiphany was this: most of the time, my art is in my hands. When I play guitar, I’m playing some subconscious instrument in my head, and my well-trained hands translate it into something listenable.

Clever old hands. Long-suffering hands. My brain is slowly catching up. I’m still reading Schoenberg, I’m still reading about counterpoint, I’m still plugging doggedly through Improvising Jazz. But in the meantime, the greater part of my musical output and writings is driven mostly by subconscious and instinct. I think my music at this time reflects this process, too, and not always in a good light, but there it is.

So when I discuss gear and set-up, I’m really just getting excited about the newest part of my music-making tools, and perhaps I’m still a little excited that something - anything! - is allowing ideas to transition from head to world in a way that is meaningful. 

I grew up surrounded by music, and in many ways being musical is like breathing for me; something hindbrained, and absolutely vital. This part of the process I don’t talk about is - I suppose - more akin to the id, the shadow-self that until recently was too fleeting to be useful. I find it hard to talk about these concepts without being overly lyrical, and run a constant risk of pretension that scares me to my working-class roots. Perhaps that’s why other musicians are more comfortable talking about trivialities rather than the heavier Art inside of their art, exposing naked intent. 

Or perhaps it’s something as simple as being terrified of idea theft.

When I’ve found a way to communicate with my tonal id without a wrestling match, I’d like to think I might hold a decent conversation about this part of the music-making process with Ms. Vozov.

Until then, it may be gear-lust all the way.