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<a name="planetz-file"></a><a href="http://www.planetz.com/Pulsar/files/mus ... .mp3"><img src="/forums/images/listen_icon.gif" border="0" alt=" Song"> Song</a><BR> <a name="planetz-tag"></a>Genre: Lounge<BR> <a name="planetz-tag"></a>Uses: Logic my guitar and some loops<BR> SOCAN © 2005 Paul R.Martin<BR> _____________________________________<BR><BR> I am in the worse creative rut ever.
You can call the style of this track trance-lounge. Kinda dull loops mixed together to make a somewhat homogeneous sound but I just don't have the inspiration to take it further.

I could always leave it that way and hope some DJ can insert it in the middle of a set or something...

What do you guys think?

is that the erhu in there? sounds pretty catchy. Phrase may be a bit over repetitious, half the density would still be okay. I guess it's not the most explodingly creative track, but it's balanced, put together right, everything you'd usually do I think.

Where's the creative slow down comming from? Are you sick of harmony? Sick of the whole thing with form and having to be judged by it? Or things like that? Dunno, just trying some buttons here. Sometimes things start to suck when they become too symbolized, and it's necessary to break that system of symbols so you can rebuild it again. Not sure how it's done tho..

Recently I've started doing this thing with pads and other sustained harmonies where I'd throw in dissonances in the lower registers, and keep the higher notes very harmonic. The harmony may sound strange on its own, but in a mix, it does a strangely nice job to add a strange new dimension to a certain chord. Could be standard procedure, but I found it interesting because the effect was rather easy to achieve. (just hit random notes) I used it alot in the past 2 tunes, which you may have already heard. (here on Z) So, that's an idea that you may want to tackle.

Dunno, I had a really bad creative mood swing recently, and I really haven't been composing at all since. It's been about a month now. All I do is go diving and work on my piano chops. I recently started to think that I don't have to be writing all the time to improve. Sometimes I just have to work on, like my spiritual side or something. Feel the sun, go find some hermit crabs on the beach, save some stray dogs, that kinda thing. Not that I'm never going to write, but you gotta be in balance, ya know.

Well, maybe that's not exactly why you're inner artist's taking a break, who knows. Hang in there man.

On 2005-10-12 23:04, kensuguro wrote:
... Sometimes things start to suck when they become too symbolized, and it's necessary to break that system of symbols so you can rebuild it again. Not sure how it's done tho..

The spirutal balance Ken described is very important. But sometimes you´re just tired to continue your music. You ask yourself what to do next, even your head is full of ideas, you are just tired, maybe exhausted.
You need a fresh wind in your head, something completely new has to come, so that you can relax from your usual music and switch out your head with all ideas in it. Just a break from the normal.

When those moments hit me, I do something else than music, it´s time to build a new modular or check out the market for new toys that can wake up your interests (camel audio cameleon5000, Cronox3?), uhh I have a girlfriend....

Mostly I go back to my early stages of music in that times, just one sound, that keeps moving for ever in time, set up a sample atmo enviroment(quad dex or Reaktor thingies) birds surround me, a light wind blows, somewhere a river ripples with strange reso on the highs, a echo here an there.
Soon I´ll start a huge but quite played reverberated sinus lead(blue synth), or pick up a flute or piano(kontakt2) and play some melody...
I just try to feel the sound and atmosphere and let it drive me to something I don´t and won´t expect.

Enjoy your creativity break Paul, it is just a time to relax and during this, you can start small tracks like this, play around and soon you´ll see a new track out of all building sites, as I call them.

_________________
Music starts where any language ends

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ChrisWerner on 2005-10-13 01:24 ]</font>

Thanks for the comments, guys.

It's an erhu you hear in there. I find that this particular style of music lends itself to adding all kinds of "exotic" instruments, don't you?

My rut comes from the fact I am so friggin' tired of being in my 9 by 7 room, by myself all day long. Since the internet happened, even my clients who live in my area send me email instead of picking up the phone. They send the work they want done by email or ICQ or MSN instead of coming by with their CDs or whatever they need done. The person I used to make music with the most has more or less left the face of the earth since the birth of his son(understandable, I know).

I am not afraid of harmony, never have been. I am working on something way more complex harmonically right now(clue: jazz). It's just that when the only people you have to bounce ideas off of are on the internet(i.e., you guys) it gets really alienating.

I also lost the biggest job I had for TV so that doesn't help my present condition. The last year has been really shitty business-wise...

Back to the tune, does this type of music work for dancing?

me, I doubt it.. i mean, the beat is dance-able but I think it's pretty much hiphop/breakin'/house or nothing at the moment, and this beat is more new-jack swing in terms of dance. (since the beat dictates the dance form) New-jack swing had its first wave in the mid 90's, then a smaller revival around 99-2000, in recent years sort of fused with house dancing. So, the general dance form stayed, but the music seemed to have left the club scene.

But, I think new-jack swing music still has its place as club-influenced ambient tunes like this. Works as soundtrack material, or something you'd hear at a fashionable shop/show/any sort of space. For that, I might prefer to lighten up on the drums tho.

If you ask me, I think club-goer dancers are way too selective... I mean, they say a specific tune is dance-able or not because of the vibe or whatever, when all it is is their narrow vision and essentially... miseducation. I've met a dancer who couldn't keep count when there were more than 4-5 tracks.. told me alot that these people could do all the moves, but not necessarily the best ears. Ties directly in with the prevailing hiphop music form.

I totally agree with the people situation.. I mean, you know I'm also stranded here in Miami, and the only music people around is from Z. Very stressful.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kensuguro on 2005-10-13 06:33 ]</font>

You mean people don't dance in lounge bars?
No kinda laid back moving to the sound like in the late 60's early 70's? Maybe I should get out more often

I don't wanne throw me in as a specialist, but I'd say it's definitely (chill) dance
a bit like in the early days, when a groovy dance loop was enough to keep you going if the rest was appropriate.
I didn't comment sofar because there's too little arrangement in it.
Nice combination so far, great voice sample!
You could slice up the loop en do some edits over the arrangement, to start with

I'm by no means and expert - but basically I think what you have here works in it's own right as a nice repetitive chill piece that requires no over-thinking or over-working. I'm a fan of repetition within chill spaces because I feel it achieves the desired effect - to chill you out.

I find that those ethno-loops(instruments) always tend to lend themselves more easily to chill spaces but they can also be used in high energy music.

The most boring and obvious thing to do would be to lift up the tempo and slam a "Four on the floor" beat underneath it all to drive it - using the more sparse drum loops as nothing more than percussive elements and punctuation points.

This method would be easiest because you already have the elements for the breakdown - just remove the 4x 4 beat, main erhu motif and keep maybe a cut down version of the bass line and even perhaps a more sparse version of the erhu motif with a nice swirling delay line.

You could then decide how much further you want to break it down by either adding or removing the percussive elements.
Then just build it right back up again (tried and true )
You can do the total opposite - remove everything except the percussive/ethic drum loop.

You could even just slice and dice a 2-4 bar loop out of your arrangement and paste it back together randomly to create new loops and dot them throughout the arrangement or make a whole new movement.
I can think of millions of things to do with it - but in the end it boils down to what you want from it.
From my POV - you have something finished here - but you can always turn it into many something else's.
regards