Ruso's Audio/Visual Blog

Are you finding yourself starting projects as "ideas" and then spending too much time sculpting so you kind of, in a way lose interest and decide to come back another day but never do? That is a very common issue with artists and I think I know the fundamental problem most don't realize.

I am willing to bet that the real problem lays with in the fact that what you're doing is you are finding an interesting element and you try to "sculpt it to perfection" which takes hours. By the time you have finished sculpting one sound you have probably gone tone deaf to that sound and when you bring in the other parts you realize it needs more work so you decide to continue tomorrow... but never do. This problem usually occurs in the beginning "idea" portion of the process where the natural instinct is to make some drums, add some bass, and maybe another sound and then basically perform a multi-hour mix down trying to figure out what it should sound like. The problem is that at this point, it is only an idea and it needs more to really get going. These "ideas" are hard to come back to because they do not yet have a real flow and they do not yet tell a story.

As a musician I feel that the most important thing about producing music is to be engaged and "in the moment" by circulating as many ideas as possible at any given time. In other words, you want to have the ability to take any sound which sounds stubborn... and, be able to either replace it with a whole array of other sounds, and also, more importantly the ability to tweak the sound source itself so that instead of trying to fix something you are simply replacing it with something better. This will keep your brain "entertained" and will let you enjoy the moment rather then spend the time fighting. The best thing to do at this point is to let the track take you where IT wants to go.... not where YOU want it to go.

Develop tools that let you take a sound and rapidly and drastically change it into something totally different (or into something that is rather similar but has totally different tonal characteristics/harmonics). If a sound is sticking out of the mix, you definitely want to tame it by using tools like the EQ... and you want to add atmospherics with reverbs and other FX but the bottom line is, you want to define the TONAL characteristics of the sound... NOT trying to make the sound fully "mastered". You will get better at mixing down sounds as you work with time and if you can keep yourself fully engaged in the process and will find yourself with mostly a properly mixed down track in just a matter of hours that seemingly came together "on it's own" and is still a surprise to you. It is very often that I find myself having "I can't believe I just made that" kind of moments.

This will let you develop a big pallet of ideas for one project which you can then arrange into a track very quickly. if you keep it fresh and are in the "moment" and are "playing" with sound and not "fixing" it, you will be done with the full arrangement in just a couple of hours and then you can move on to fix the sounds.

If you can't fix a sound at that point, you just replace it with a better one. You got to keep in mind that you cannot simply sculpt a single sound....because that sound will resonate and create harmonics and volume fluctuations with the other sounds. I find myself (on a daily basis) taking lower Freqs. out of a particular sound only to bring them back in when I am doing the final mixdown for a track.

One final thing I will stirr up into this pot of thought is this: Now that you have found yourself with a big file of unfinished ideas... I think you are in a productive place already. Go pick one and instad of trying to fix it, use the elements it contains to turn it into something else. I will bet you this alone will be enough to get you started on engraving this methology into your everyday musical production. The easiest way to do this is to take the midi notes out, and introduce a new drum pattern and new synth notes. Also basic things like picking a sound up or dropping it by an octave can produce plenty of fresh tones to keep your brain happy as you work.

Happy producing!

-Ruso