Some silly ideas to spice up music-making

[Axis1~SL61]

Smoke weed.

What a splendid idea !... (why didn't I think of that before ) -- This is the best inspiration advice so far... too bad it's so hard to get weed here...

[daz.diamond]

careful where you put your drumstix then ...

[KungKrille]

I usually use Ableton's Looper for this but any setup will do. Sometimes I'm totally out of ideas and as I have become an old, tired man I want new sounds with as little effort as possible. This can ofc be done live but I program a 8 bar melody loop with a few notes only, activate Looper and record it. Then I reverse Looper, offset the programmed loop by 4 bars and record the melody again so it's layered on the reversed one. Then I might offset the programmed loop again by 2 bars, assign an insert effect like a filter or reverb, record it in Looper and continue like this. When I'm done I drop the clip from Looper on a track and either add a gate or automate the clip level to make the loop cleaner and more rythmic.

I find the method works best with only a few notes as it's easy to end up with only noise. It's the same if you want to do drum loops in this way. You could do this in your host by layering several tracks but what's so special with a looper is that your edits are permanent and you have to continue with what you got.

[Jazzyspoon]

Burn your latest unfinished track to a CD. Then lightly scratch the CD with a knife or other sharp object a couple of times. Put the CD in your CD player, press play (skipping around now and then manually) and record the results back into your DAW. Insert those result back into unfinished song or create a new version with it. I have used this for remixes, too.

[mckenic]

Use only the click track & one non-pitched sound to compose a 3 min piece.
(I had a LOT of fun trying this!)

Use as many synths as you like - no percussion, but ONLY 3 notes to compose a 4 min piece.

[spaceman]

Use only the click track & one non-pitched sound to compose a 3 min piece.
(I had a LOT of fun trying this!)

Use as many synths as you like - no percussion, but ONLY 3 notes to compose a 4 min piece.

It's called rock

[mckenic]

With guitar stuff I usually only manage 2 chords!

[yellowfever]

With guitar stuff I usually only manage 2 chords!

Are you in Status Quo?

[dark_virus]

- Try to make music on free trackers instead of conventional sequencers.

- Limit your sample set to 1 drum kit, one bass patch, etc.

[CypherOne]

just keep trying to make music even though you know deep down that you're atually a bit rubbish...

[Meffy]

Mouth music plus granular delay.

[spaceman]

Try playing famous symphonies using only a triangle and a pair of castanets

[Doug1978-OLD]

Translate song lyrics into Morse Code and play back via a theremin.


Translate lyrics into Japanese/Chinese or Shorthand, and retrace the patterns onto a drum/synth track via an X-Y controller or (midi) Etch-a-Sketch device.

[Doug1978-OLD]

Sorry to restart my old thread (but I'm always interested in any silly musical ideas for 2010!).


I would quite like a multi-lingual sarcasm generator vst that could sing its bitchy comments back as a quality control system when I'm trying out a tune.
(perhaps placed last on my master bus when my mixes are almost finished)



Any other fine silly musical ideas chaps?

[spaceman]

A far from silly one is to teach yourself perfect pitch. I'm in the process of doing just that and it makes a very big difference. I've got some way to go (not even close to identifying simple chords for instance) but I already know I will never look at (or erm hear) music in the same way again which will have a big effect on me making music.

Oh and smoke lots of weed as well.