Some silly ideas to spice up music-making

[Doug1978-OLD]

record naked with the curtains/doors open.
losing inhibitions rocks!

I don't think it would be such a good idea (especially the open doors)... what if a random passer by walked in suddenly and nicked one of your synths or PCs or any other random valuables in your house?... would you run naked and barefoot through the streets after him?

The thieving bastard!
I'd have to knock him out with my ....


(sorry )

[antto]

Great thread!

Record the most silly midi sequence you can - just pressing random notes, with varying lenghts, velocity and rhythm. Do this for a while, 32 bars or so.
Now select a 2 bar loop and move the loop along the midi clip, listening closely.
More often than not, you will come up with a great riff that you would never have played in the first time.

This is especially useful for terrible keyboard players!

this is how i do lot's of good patterns on my 303-synth, i got a silly pattern randomizer, but when i set the pattern length to 8 or 4 steps, the randomizer can do great stuff, only a few touches are needed after it lays down the notes ;]
uhm, and the randomizer itself is in no way musical, just random numbers are converted to notes (no chord stuff or anything involved there)

my suggestion:
stop using presets on your synths/fx plugins ;]
and the extreme variant: restrict yourself from using many synths
use only a bunch of samples for your beats, and 1 to 3 different synths (and don't use too much instances of them)

this way your music will sound different ;] (for the most of you)

[Rock Hardbuns]

Do a mix using a reverb insert that you tune as you go.

Swap out the reverb plug in.

Everything sounds like crap, can't fix it, rage and then start over.

[hseiken]

Record noises you can make with items you find in your kitchen

Actually, I've done that several times.

Here's a few:

Play as if your life depended on it: Go on the corner and play music for money. You don't get to eat unless you make enough money.

Try adapting something bizarre you read an experimental musician do with their music into yours...example, make a snare drum by pitching up a complete song of yours so high that it wizzes by as fast and tight as an 808 snare (once done by Aphex Twin).

Make a song using nothing but non musical sounds recorded around you. Lots of things have an inherent pitch, electronic items especially...the hum of your fridge, the fan of your A/C unit, etc.

[JediMind]

Play as if your life depended on it: Go on the corner and play music for money. You don't get to eat unless you make enough money.

Tried that. Apparently, they were paying me to stop singing.

[vurt]

would you run naked and barefoot through the streets after him?

it certainly wouldnt be the first time and probably wont be the last

[robogone]

would you run naked and barefoot through the streets after him?

it certainly wouldnt be the first time and probably wont be the last

Dongle jokes anyone?

[Bonteburg]

-Apply a cospicuous effect to the Master Bus, sample it and reimport it into the tune.

-Play loops and single drumsounds like pitched instruments.

-Make a drumbeat and change the sounds to synth stabs and sampled instruments without previewing them.

-Play back some busy audio or video file (news, field recording) in your media player of choice and skip rhytmically back and forth, recording the result.

-Create three sequences with uneven looplengths and play them together.

[rlahalla]

would you run naked and barefoot through the streets after him?

it certainly wouldnt be the first time and probably wont be the last

Dongle jokes anyone?

Yes please! Er..uhh..Hmm...

Boobs.

[galwaypark]

Record a complete arrangement using only an acoustic guitar. Experiment and see how many timbres you can get out of it by playing, scraping, hitting, bowing, plucking and generally misusing it in any way you can think of. Then, import it into your DAW and finish it off with whatever processing / reshaping techniques you come up with.

You'd be surprised just how much sonic variety you can get from a simple acoustic guitar.

[galwaypark]

On a related note: try tuning your guitar several semitones down, record it and then retune it to proper pitch using pitch shifting. Rattling of the looser strings and some sustain loss, when combined with the artifacts caused by the pitch shifting, make an interesting sound.

[robogone]

On a related note: try tuning your guitar several semitones down, record it and then retune it to proper pitch using pitch shifting. Rattling of the looser strings and some sustain loss, when combined with the artifacts caused by the pitch shifting, make an interesting sound.

I say tune it down then don't pitch shift it back up - love that downtuned sound!

[deaf dunderkwac]

-Apply a cospicuous effect to the Master Bus, sample it and reimport it into the tune.

-Play loops and single drumsounds like pitched instruments.

-Make a drumbeat and change the sounds to synth stabs and sampled instruments without previewing them.

-Play back some busy audio or video file (news, field recording) in your media player of choice and skip rhytmically back and forth, recording the result.

-Create three sequences with uneven looplengths and play them together.

hey!

it's just wrong to reveal my sekrit rituals

(

[CypherOne]

Try dressing up or role play.

shit, wrong thread.

[spaceman]

I present every single note I write to a commission first who will evaluate the note written and send me a report back. They give me their verdict on the note in question -whether it is a good note and whether I should use that note as a starting note for writing the next note- and they advice me on how to make the note better by adjusting volume, velocity, etc

It's a slow process, but on the other hand, every three note sequence you write gives you a lot of satisfaction and it's nice to know they are the best three notes you could have written.

They don't do chords yet though. But I don't know any chords anyway.