MikeRobinson

Also, as I recently re-read in one of my favorite tiny-books: "Music theory is generally descriptive, not prescriptive." It tells you what you did, and suggests why it did or didn't work (and what else might). But it doesn't tell you what to do. The major triad in root-position is two minor intervals in their proper place in the overtone series. In the second and third inversions, there are major and minor intervals, with a perfect fourth supporting the root. Thirds become sixths. Intervals, not notes, are really "where it's at," and in any sequence there are always at least three factors at work: The intervals within a particular chord. The flow between notes of adjacent chords, which is an arpeggiation that can spell-out (over time) one or several chords that are neither the start nor the end of the pair, nor any one of the chords around and through which they flow. If you use suspensions and other tricks, one thing that you're doing is to emphasize these "ghost chords," which otherwise exert a very "phantom" influence upon the total phrase. Phantom, yes, but ghosts are real. The intervals that the notes of any chord imply relative to the song's established tonal-center or "public key," are in addition to the established ones that they have within their own "private" key. Every note in the scale has certain tensions, and if you're playing, say, "D-major" in the key of "C," the D-F#-A of that chord is perceived, not only as (say) a root-position triad (1-3-5) of the chord's home key of "D," but also as a (2-4-6) against the song's home key of "C." So you've got both the comfort of a third, and the dissonance of a second. (Three seconds, in fact, in root position ... no, make that six since they're hitting their neighbors above and below ... but, notice, not-so-much in other inversions.) If you modulate to D as a new key, that sense of dissonance will quickly go-away; if not, it lingers. When you talk of "voice leading" – of "why voice-leading?" – I think that's really "it." The leading is occurring over time. The "little book" that I speak of? Why, yes, imagine that – I have it right here ... The Elements of Music: Melody, Rhythm & Harmony, by [Dr.] Jason Martineau. (New York: Walker Publishing Co., 2008.) ISBN-13: 978-0-8027-1682-8. It is literally small, 7-1/4" x 6", and a mere 58 little-pages long, but it is stuffed with approachable information, such that it took me about 5 minutes to carefully read every page, each of the very many times that I have done so. And, each time I do it again, I learn more. (In that regard, it's exactly like the middle-third – the "textbook section" – of Jimmy Webb's Tunesmith.)

I agree. But I'm not an attorney either. If it were me, I'd make just one application.

The "collections" mechanism is simply a matter of administrative practicality. For one registration fee, basically any number of works by the same author(s) (claimant(s)) can be registered at once. The components of the collection can be of any appropriate form or forms; for example, a set of audio files plus lead sheets plus documents containing lyrics. Whatever is appropriate. The legal rights then apply severally to every component of the collection. The notion of "a collection," in other words, is a pragmatic record-keeping device, meant to reduce the total number of claims that must be processed by the copyright office. It doesn't alter the rights that you obtain – it just reduces paperwork and fees.

And I would echo that sentiment. Your situation sounds "fuzzy" and "ambiguous" and "not nailed-down in (sufficient) writing," and that's just not a good situation to be in. As they say, "everyone who's staring at each other in a courtroom, every one of them unhappy, started out as friends." Consult a friendly attorney who knows, or who knows someone who does know. (You should have an attorney, regardless.) Make sure that the proper documentation as recommended by him or her is properly signed and executed, and that it is kept forever. Verbal agreements and "handshakes," sincere though they might be, simply are not enough in cases like this. Especially if your song does go anywhere, people are gonna get hurt, and they'll be finger-pointing at one another because everybody basically has their pants down; has walked into this thing ignorant and un-prepared. Which is an entirely avoidable situation to be in. "Don't go there," and if you are there, "get out of there." Laws are changing all the time; precedents are being set and reset. As Judge Wopner said so long ago on People's Court: "Get it in writing!" All of the parties in this situation need this to be squared away, now.

As far as I know, "the official registered copies" are what the Federal Judge is going to look at when (s)he is considering whether to rule that infringement has occurred. Therefore, I think they must be usable in that context. An audio recording, in the case of your microtonal songs; a printed lyrics sheet of the square-dance words to a folk song; a lead-sheet if you have one (i.e. when you have no audio); a mixture of all three. Your non-traditional schema (very interesting though it looks to be!) probably wouldn't be "playable" hence particularly useful. So long as they are all usable, officially registered copies that will serve to identify "the claim" in case of an action alleging infringement. Your lyrics to "Fire on the Mountain" would be the (only) substance of that particular claim. You're asserting your rights to the lyric, regardless of what music (if any) it may be set to. Certainly you can mention that it's intended to be set to "Fire," but you should also explicitly mention that you are making no proprietary claims with regard to "Fire." If your co-writer friend wants to be a co-claimant on one particular piece (or a separate group of pieces), guess you'll be spending $70 instead of $35 because you'll be filing two claims: one for each group. Separately ... I'd like to know more about your microtonal schemas and whatever software tool it is that you're using to create them. (Perhaps this is not the right thread, however.) Your music sounds very interesting. A topic for a different forum space, yes, but one that I'd like to pursue.

Amen to that! "A picture's worth ten thousand words," especially when thousands of people around the world can see it. Change that profile immediately. If you want to be treated seriously, you've got to look the part in everything that you present to the public; including right here. Especially right here. FYI, lots of performers use a stage-name that has become a trademark, without legally changing it. Vincent Furnier, for example, can cash a check made out to Alice Cooper, which is the name of the fictional character (originally, the name of the band) that he plays in his rock shows. He's well known as the granddaddy of "theatrical rock-n-roll," and he himself describes it as theater. He speaks of "Alice" as the third-person that "Alice' is, in the same way that Charlton Heston would speak of "Ben Hur" or of any other of the many hundreds of fictional characters that he portrayed to entertain the public. If you decide to go on stage as a persona, then you are an actor playing a role. Your millions of adoring fans might know you [only] by that "other" name, but you don't have to change your driver's license. (At least, it's not as bad as the Great Depression / Vaudeville times that George Burns once wrote about: "if you bombed out in one city, you changed your name and went back, because you had to eat.") (Or the apparently-true story about Paula Abdul, who went to an audition with a box of leotards. She was turned-down three times, and each time she left the room, changed outfits, changed her name, and got back in line. She was picked, and that's how her career began.)

I still think that it just comes down to what you intend to do with the demo – who's going to receive it, exactly what are you selling, and what ($)action($) do you hope that they will take? If you're a performer, you want to show off how well you can sing and play, so you might do a couple of well-known standards that are within your best vocal range. If you're (in effect) a producer, and "the recording that is being demo'd is the product that I want to sell to millions of adoring fans," then of course it had better be that good, and that costs money. If you're trying to sell the song, e.g. to someone who would be willing to produce it so that he can then sell it to the millions of fans, then you really just need to show it in the best possible light that you can manage. Especially in a light that suggests what the potential of the song is. And if it's either of the latter two cases, then you ought to think seriously about which of these two scenarios makes the most sense for you and your song. If you really can do everything that it takes to produce a top-notch, printer-ready recording, fantastic! But if not, be realistic: you're going to need some help and you're going to need to share the wealth. You need to attract, then engage, a producer/promoter who'd be willing to put the spit-shine on your song in anticipation of a future return. Your demo therefore is to make it perfectly clear to that person why he or she should, right now, take a chance on your fantastic song. As always, it is better to go for less, and succeed, than to go for more and fall short. Find a commercial recording that you really like, which is of a similar style of music and playing, then simplify it down to what you're sure that you can manage, then try to make it sound reasonably "like that."

You can find everything that you need (with regard to the United States) at http://www.copyright.gov, including the ability to register your works online. Actually, the companies that are trolling these waters are doing so for a fairly legitimate purpose. There is an extremely important legal principle known as the Doctrine of Laches, which basically says that you are required to be timely in asserting any claim, or you might forever lose the ability to make a claim. Holders of important copyrights know that "the moment of registration" is an ideal time to detect an upcoming (commercially significant ...) infringement and to stop it before it happens ... or at least, to ask questions. Not all of your personal details are made public. Some details are requested so that the Copyright Office can contact you with any questions they might have, and they're understood to be nobody else's business. Simply retrieve any entry to see what data is included in the public view.

Since you intend to make commercial use of the remix, I would flatly tell you to obtain ... and pay for ... the written legal opinion of a qualified lawyer. Nothing else will do. Following that lawyer's explicit instructions exactly as he or she gave them to you, you will need to document your "due diligence" in searching for any potential suggestion of infringement; every letter that you wrote and when you wrote it; every reply that you obtained. And then, from that lawyer, his or her statement that in their expert opinion, the necessary legal requirements have been correctly identified and met. Fast-forward to the point when your commercial product is wildly successful ... and here come the opposing lawyers, with their claim of copyright infringement and their prayer to the Honorable Court that the Court should grant an injunction stopping the distribution of your product and a hefty penalty. And let's say for the sake of argument that their assertions are totally false. But you are the defendant, and they can nevertheless shut you down or back-room strong-arm you into paying them lots of money to go away. Did you mind your P's and Q's?! Can you prove to His Honor, in complete detail, exactly what you did? Can you prove to His Honor that, if infringement did occur, that it was "innocent?" And so on. 'Cuz if you can't, His Honor just might grant a "temporary" injunction while the Court takes its own sweet time to sort things out ... by which time your venture is bankrupt.

Never underestimate the power of "forums like this." Anything that brings together thousands of people in near real-time is a thing that has never before existed ... never mind that it is now perceived to be commonplace. You can post your lyric ... or your tune ... or a complete song ... in a place where thousands of people can see it mere seconds later. Sure, anyone else can do the same thing and everybody else is. Lots and lots of useless drivel ... but ... They say a pile of straw makes the gold coins that much brighter. If you wanted to buy a lyric, say, isn't this a great place to go shopping for one? Can you think of a better place? Yes, there are buyers out there. (No, I'm not one. Just looking for one.) But think about what it now means, to be one. No one will even know you're out there: you're the perfect mystery shopper. You can send the author a private message to start the ball rolling. I-f they formally secured the copyright, such that you have something "exclusive" to buy, a deal can follow. The cost of doing so is basically zero, and you have a virtually unlimited freedom of choice. If you're a buyer, the entire world is, as they say, "your oyster" now. (Note: if the author didn't very-timely do the legal paperwork, the song or lyric or what-have-you is basically useless to you. You can't "buy" it. You have nothing exclusive, and no defense when, not if, someone else comes out of the woodwork and insists that the work was stolen from them. You'd have to commission them to create an original work, different enough not to be a derivative-work, and that's an entirely different oyster. You've got staff-writers for that ... the folks who churn out country songs about red pickup trucks, beer, tight blue-jeans on "girl," and muddy rivers. Which is why you're constantly looking for new material.) The "serious songwriter" is the business(wo)man who strives to build and to sell a marketable music product, or some IP-securable portion of the same, who minds the legal P's and Q's, who's easy to work with and knows about deadlines, and who actually perseveres at doing it. There are no "affirmations" in this business. No one to tell you that you're a songwriter. No one, these days, who'll pay you to write a song or promise you that it will actually sell. Virtually no "record deals." A completely new and different set of economics. But, with it, a completely new and different set of opportunities for those who understand the business implications of the sea-change that has now occurred. It is "an understatement beyond meaning" to merely say that we live in interesting times.

I'd think that a lot would depend on exactly what you intend the tape (MP3? heh ...) to be used for. A demo for copyright-registration purposes only needs to be good enough for the judge. A demo for a song, meant to be professionally produced and recorded by someone else, needs to make the song look appealing in the context of whomever you're pitching it to. Easy to hear, free of obvious glitches, appealing. A demo for yourself, as a performer, I think really needs to be top notch in its production values, because your performance of the material (whatever the material is ...) is the thing that is being sold. But, nevertheless, don't hold a song back from being heard by anyone, just because you don't think it's technically produced well-enough for everyone. Give it the best spit-shine you know how to give it, then look around for folks who can help you take it the rest of the way. (And if you can't find that someone, don't stuff the song under a pillow. Let the song be heard anyway.) It's always a good thing to ask for – and to give, if you can – help. "Hey, I'm looking for a real sax player who can do a better job on this sax part" ... "Hey, I've got this cool new song, but this mix sounds wishy-washy to me, and I was wondering if anyone out there can help me remaster my demo ..." There's a world of "fellow musicians" out <there / here>. As long as you ask nicely, and you're not asking someone for "a favor" that's equivalent to "what they do to pay their rent," hey, it can happen. Never hurts to ask. (Nicely.)

Do things like ... this. Tell people about it, anywhere you think they might gather. Including here, where you know that you'll find a musically accepting and diverse audience. But I'm still waiting (probably forever) for Spotify's whatever-it-is to start. Consider putting copies on SoundCloud ... maybe they're complete, maybe they fade out after 30 seconds ... and anywhere else that it is easy for anyone to very quickly start playing it. Even the slightest obstacle that stands in the way of "instant gratification" can kill the sale. (Like, basically, Spotify just did for me.) You've got about 30 seconds of interest, max. You must get my speaker started!! Also ... be careful about how you present yourself. Don't beg. (Even if that is precisely the way that you feel!) Nope, what you've got to offer is really great stuff and you want to give us (the world) the chance to hear it. You're the salesman, confident in your product and confident also that you have good reason to be so. But also:

I like to think of it this way ... to a certain extent, any song is "a work of fiction." It's a poem, accompanied by music. Its intention (maybe!!) is to evoke a feeling and/or to convey a message to (the heart of) a listener whom you will never meet. And, throughout it all, to "sound (and indeed, be) 'real.'" And this reminds me of the old story of the "bottle of EverSoMuchMoreSoâ„¢." In the story, the glass bottle was perfectly empty, of course, yet the people were persuaded that it contained a magical, invisible stuff that made whatever-it-was ... well ..." And I think that it's usually a good thing to try to put some of that magical stuff onto your own lyric and song writing.

And I will be very quick to agree with that. I'm a professional, too, and I constantly deal both with amateurs and with the people who trusted them just as much as they (innocently, usually ...) trusted themselves. You should engage "someone who knows." Just as soon as you (or the company that's interested in commercially developing your seminal work ...) can afford to do so. But you also have to start at a point where you just might not have much money to spend. Just like Paul McCartney's early demo which has bathroom sounds (from the next flat?) in the background. So, you might have to "prepare your 'pitch'" with what you have, and with whatever skill you can muster and/or barter for. And it's probably not realistic to think in terms of "self-pub," because, gratuitous and warm-fuzzy though such a thing might be, it's going to be very difficult to achieve critical-mass. (A day in the life of just another piece of junk e-mail that really wasn't junk at all but it was lost in the fog and nobody ever knew ... hey, there could be a song in that.) I do think that there is, and that there always will be, professional recordists, arrangers, mixers, masterers, (mix-masters ...? ... hey, every well-appointed kitchen needs one ...) and so forth. But they're not going to be staff-members of big "record label" conglomerates. (Some of them, of course, used to be, but that's also the new economics at work.) There is no more profit-margin out there in the record business to support any sort of speculation; not even the classic "record deal." The product, itself, sells for far less money, and it sells against vastly increased competition. It's one thing to sell "a gold record" when each copy sold for $16 and the company could honestly book a net-profit say of $6. It's quite another to sell a million quarters, even if you get to keep 23¢ apiece.

Dissenting slightly here ... it always struck me as a crap-shoot approach, to assume (literally ...) "if you build it, they will come." Most likely, they won't. Not for music, anyway. For music, I would "talk up my music" on every music-oriented forum (like this one) that I could possibly find. Consider what places you might "hang out" if you were interested – as a listener – in the kind of music that you write and play. Which of these sites have a "new music feature" section? Which ones (like "macjams.com") have a random-selector which might introduce your music to someone by pure luck o' the draw? What Internet radio stations out there might play your music? I've found the great music that I enjoy ... from Internet radio, from satellite radio, but mostly from hanging-out (online) with musical friends who share common tastes. I've never found a single song by "Google searching" for it. Ever.

A beep is just what I have very easy access to. But I do find that it's helpful by sounding distinctly unnatural. It is played very, very softly, it's mostly white noise, it's a pulse and it has no rough edges. But, even so, that's exactly what makes it stand out, if and when you want to focus your attention on it, while also making it something that you can absolutely tune-out. It isn't part of the material, and it doesn't sound like it should be. It's just a common point-of-reference that everyone heard. You can focus on it, or fuhgeddaboudit. Give the singer a little phone-mixer box with knobs on it, one of them "click." Let them turn it up or turn it off as they please.

I'm a musician by pleasure, and a software guy by profession. (Hey, I like to say, still, that I make my living by doing what has always been my hobby, and that I've been able to do that for over 30 years now.) But a very interesting thing – a completely unplanned-for and unexpected thing – happened to me "on the way to the Forum." I conceived the need for a niche software product to do a particular thing, and wrote it (if only because I needed to have it, and was very surprised to find that it didn't already exist). Then, I just let the word get out on various internet discussion-groups of the day ... and, well, "it did very good things for me." Not a Porsche or anything like that, but nevertheless, "very good things." You can still buy a copy of it today, and some people still do, although most of the money came from OEM licensing to products that I'd never even heard of. It still solves the problem that it was built to solve, as well as ever it did, and it costs over $100 USD a copy. (In some Editions, several times that...) Cost of goods sold? Basically, zero. (I needed the product, so I was doing it anyway.) Cost of distribution? Zero, except for postage in the days when I was still shipping out floppy-disks. Market penetration? Most of the countries on the planet, I think. I could never have made that money if I'd been putting the products on disks, putting them in cardboard boxes, and shipping them to retail stores, every one of which had the contractual right to send unsold copies back at my cost. So, I never tried that. People who needed the product found a way to find it. I made a profit because all of the revenue essentially was profit. Even though I never particularly set out to "write a commercially successful product," and I never borrowed a dime of investment money. (This during the heyday of the "dot-bomb bubble," when people who should have known better were telling me to "go for the First Round." Well, I did send one letter to the holy grounds in Palo Alto, but they never wrote back and I never wrote again.) Today, I think that we tend to overlook the power, and the opportunity, of "Cost of Goods Sold = Zero." But that is the commercial environment that we live in today. I-F you have a product to sell that is "up to snuff," in the eyes and ears of the person who is inclined to buy it, then you can sell a copy of it for "jukebox prices," even 25¢ a copy, and still make money because you get to keep nearly all of that quarter. The difference between the two scenarios, of course, is that in music there is no "perceived barrier to entry." Anyone can produce drivel and shove it out there – SoundCloud doesn't care, for example. But that's just to be expected. You can't "open the doorway to everyone" and then try to post a bouncer at the door. Still ... there are companies out there who have set themselves up in the role of gatekeeper: taxi.com, for example, and they do charge admission to keep the riff-raff out. But it's nothing like the barriers-to-entry that used to be erected by the record labels who did, to their credit, have to deal with "speculatively printing product and shipping it to stores who had the right to send it back." Those barriers-to-entry existed for a reason, but that reason was established by the then-realities of a production and distribution system that was, then, "the only way to do it." That's not the case anymore, and I think that we all have to keep this foremost in our minds. For many platinum-album decades, the "Sound City Studios" was a hit-maker ... with legendary rooms, over a thousand pieces of off-board audio gear, many millions of dollars in investment that earned many millions more. All gone!! (And the subject of a very interesting documentary.) They simply weren't competitive anymore (although they still do lease out "that legendary Room"). You don't need "all that gear" to do it anymore. If you know how to do it, you can do it with your Macintosh ... and your competition is out there, doing just that. But ... they might not be trying to "put a hit song on the radio." They might be doing tracks for radio and television. They might be spreading the word by word-of-mouth. They might be making very good money because there simply is no overhead, no fixed costs, to what they are doing. You can "buy it now." They're lean-and-mean, and profitable. They're selling stuff for a quarter and keeping most of the quarter. They're selling and licensing their product directly to the consumer, and they're not waiting around for "a deal." The barriers are gone-for-good now, and both producer and consumer are "acting accordingly." For better and for worse. Today's gatekeepers will participate in bringing a commercial product the rest of the way to market, but they've found a way to do that without putting a lot of their money at speculative risk. You have to find them, have to have a solid thing to offer them, and you have to pay a nominal sum to get in. They serve the purpose of "a really great spam filter," and if you've ever tried to get e-mail without one, you know how necessary that has become. There are no "margins" to fall back on now. Nothing between you and the jukebox.

Something else that's worth looking into is this Wikipedia article: List of Musical Works Released in a Stem Format. Although this is mostly the subject of the "Recording Studio" forums here, it's still very relevant to "musical production." Briefly, a "stem track" is an isolated recording – an input to the subsequent mixing process, more-or-less "naked" at this point. The idea, among other things, is that you can listen to the finished, published recording, and to "what went into it." Both the finished, painted, polished automobile that came out of the assembly-plant, and a close-up look at the nuts and bolts that went into that same plant. All legally provided by the owners for educational purposes. And, "educational" it is. When you want to produce "professional-sounding stuff," you have to glom what the total process actually is ... "what are all the steps from 'here' to 'there,'" plus the fact that there are multiple steps being taken whether you can hear them or not.

The traditional notions of "fame and fortune" are probably gone for good in this day and age. "Record labels" could pour the marketing-dollars into an act when they comfortably knew that they were the only way that the music thus produced could find its way into the hands of the buying public. But there are no such barriers to entry now. There are now many diverse and very direct pathways between "your music" and "someone who might wish to buy it," and there have sprung up quite a few companies – "taxi.com" comes immediately to mind – who are helping artists along those now-foreshortened paths. None of them, though, are promising fame or fortune. Still ... maybe "fame and fortune" was never a good bet, to start with. Perhaps, instead of "betting all your hopes and dreams on one grand throw," you should strive to put many songs into many viable sales-channels, in hope that in aggregate they will produce a dependable residual income-stream. After all, oil-drilling companies count on this: they know that they might never "strike a Spindletop," but that they might well be able to develop an inventory of several hundred "nondescript" wells. Even though each of them might "merely" produce an "unremarkable" flow every day ... "it adds up."

I'm a keyboardist, but not a particularly good one. My performance skills (full disclosure: I don't practice enough ...) are lackluster at best. But, this hasn't stopped me from using the computer to write music that I can't play. And, to me, that's what's so liberating about the computer. You don't have to be held-back by your music lessons, by your hand/eye coordination, by whatever-it-is. If you can think of it ... if you can design it ... the computer can either do for you what you wish you could do, or it can come acceptably close.

And if you feel like having your mind blown about the possibilities, buy a copy of Jimmy Webb's Tunesmith. (Fair warning: the center section is a textbook!) He talks a lot about "chord substitutions" and how to do them (manually). Of course, there are also software plug-ins that will help you with possibilities. There are endless possibilities. Easy ways to spice things up: Add "7ths," "9ths," "11ths," and so on ... simply making the chord span more than one octave. Also try flattening or sharpening notes ... "diminished" and "augmented" and even "minor" chords are wonderful by-accident. Take a note of the chord and move it up or down an octave ... instant "inversions." Also, try intentionally leaving a note out! Take the chord and arpeggiate it: play the notes in sequence. Any sequence! Pick a different chord that has two or more notes in-common with the one that you intended to use. It will work.

Definitely throw "draft" copies up somewhere that some of us can hear them and critique. Hearing others' opinions, early enough that you can still do something about it, can help you to shape ideas for a song. If you're using a digital audio program (a DAW) on your computer, and I cautiously presume that you do (or should), there are some creative possibilities available to you that will let you "have your cake and eat it, too" with regards to how long a particular version of(!) your song turns out to be: Think of your song in pieces, of various but consistent lengths ... 30 seconds, 12 bars, whatever ... and as a creative approach think of ways to write these pieces so that they pass through common-ground(s) at the beginning and at the end, so that they can either butt-up to one of their "compatible neighbors" directly, or do so with a one- or two-measure bit of "glue." Let each of these be a "region" on the time-line. If you've already written your song, listen it through and drop "markers" along it where cut-points might be. On a copy of that one long region, split the region into pieces. (The split-point is not audible.) Yes, you have the original pristine uncut track, and the split version(s) of the same thing. Name each one. Take notes constantly. As you work, you will make copies of the material from these (muted ...) tracks, and arrange them onto a new scratch-track, muting all the others. ("Solo" it ...) If you decide that you don't like it, you will nevertheless keep it, "mute it and forget about it." You do all of your work non-destructively, saving your work constantly, and "Time Machine" is chugging away in the background on your Macintosh all the time. Now, start playing with it. You may, for example, come up with a "variation" of a region, maybe longer maybe shorter maybe just different. Keep it, putting a copy on a track near the top where you can always find it again. You'll come up with bits of "glue" that provide smooth transitions, and of course, variations on that glue. Remember: "non-destructively!" Tape that trash-can tightly shut. Never throw-away anything that you Created. Suddenly, you realize that this is an entirely different sort of songwriting creativity: you're stringing together pieces, like those colored blocks that have magnets on both ends. You can arrange them in different ways. Each one changes the dynamic of the song, sometimes in very unexpected ways that may or may not please you. (Or, please you "at first.") Play-back the muted ("yuck!") tracks every now and again ... something might sound good again. Same technique: leave it, copy it, fool with it (such that you still have both ...) and add yet another line to the note-pad (with a trusty sharp #2 pencil) that you're keeping beside you all the time. The variety and yet also the structure of the piece ... "structured variety" ... will shine through to the listener's ear. She will know it's there, without maybe putting her finger on just what you have done, and because the song presents her with both constant variety and a perceptibly consistent structure, the song will hold her attention (and yours) however-long. HTH!

(keyboard / electronic player here ...) Well, you can use arpeggios to "outline" a chord when other competing parts of the arrangement are already busy in the same sonic space, so that you get the effect of the chord without "something that just goes 'plop.'" It takes up much less space, and it takes more time, all of which can be used to add spice and variety. (And, mind you, you don't need to pour "a bucket o' reverb" onto the thing to make the chord-perception come through clearly.) It's also fun to have one instrument "comp'ing" some wide-open chords, to some interesting little rhythm, while another instrument is doing arpeggios on a chord that sounds good with it – say, a fifth. I've even read songs (scores) where one instrument is playing open chords with notes left-out, while another instrument doing arpeggios is hitting those notes, maybe in another register. And, since Santa App-Store dropped a copy of Logic Pro X into my stocking this year, I've also been fooling around a little with arpeggiators, including a mallet-percussion patch which they call Zen Garden. What this does is to play the notes at-random, while putting delays and lots of reverb in there ... which sounds rather cool. As a goof-around experiment, I dropped a series of notes on a pentatonic scale (just grab 5 notes from the Circle of Fifths), leaving a "hole in the middle" (or at the bottom or at the top) into which I could maybe put another motif. (Maybe another group from the Co5, played on percussion but a little less "wet.") It sounds like there are some interesting, "Kitaro-like" possibilities there. Stay (de-)tuned. The nice thing about arpeggiators is, of course, that they are automatic. As long as you don't use them so much that your song screams, "80's Music!" ... or maybe you do, and hey, I grew up with that music and love it to this day ... you can really get a sense of what an arpeggio can do for you. They can add a lot of variety, especially when the chords in question are four, five, or even six notes wide. (Go ahead, add them 9ths, 11ths, 13ths into the pot. Or, add 2nds and other "assonant" intervals that wouldn't be so welcome at the table if everyone was sitting down at exactly the same time.) The arpeggiator can do random fills, or "strum" sequences, or whatever-you-want. Great for ideas, even if you subsequently go back and draw the sequences in on a score or piano-roll. I've used arpeggios and runs on several songs, including (on MacJams) Ditty, Trading Places. And now, "after a suitable interval, a third" ... ... one that will be called Saint Marten Boogie. (a.k.a.: "A marimba, a xylophone, and an electric piano basically go nuts for three minutes ...")

Well, "size does matter," although I've never wished for 88 keys. For some reason known only to marketroids, you pay dearly for those "extra" 88 - 61 = 27 keys, yet you very rarely actually use them. A lot of controllers seem to have "extra gee-gaws," meant for live performance or just to look good on the showroom floor. Like the "extra" keys, if you don't use 'em, don't buy 'em. A perfectly "naked" 61-key controller e.g. from Alesis can be had for about $100 USD. A virtually identical controller with 27 more keys might cost five or ten(!) times more. (It's easy enough to do the math and to know that they're just taking gobs of pure-profit here, basically from the buyer's ego.) Likewise, you can always buy "a box of buttons and knobs" and set it right above or beside the controller, using them to trigger/capture anything you need, configuring every one of them to represent what you want them to mean. I'd focus on the sensitivities of the keys: velocity, pressure, etc, and ideally if these are adjustable (with a nice knob that you'll set and then forget about). Sensitivities are the things that actually capture the nuances that mark a "live" performance, which is actually the only thing that you use a keyboard for in a non-live performance situation. Like speakers, you don't care how the thing looks, only how it "sounds." (And that it won't break, or totally break your budget, if you accidentally drop it on the ground. The road is rough, especially in airport baggage claim.) Secondarily you might care how it feels under your fingertips, but I find that if you can play to a good, expressive sample, with a keyboard that manifests good resistance to your touch and captures the nuances that you intend (and that the sample is capable of expressing), your fingers/brain will automagically do the rest. The keyboard will "feel" right, simply because you're able to make it respond consistently to your mental-image of what you want to be playing. You pay a lot for keys that try to physically mimic a piano action (or that actually contain one), although, to be fair, the more-expensive ones really do. Sure, people make good money selling very-expensive pianos which will ultimately just look good (and out-of-tune) in someone's two-story living room. But a controller keyboard is a tool.

I find it handy to have a soft, mechanical metronome-beep "in there," so that I can at my pleasure either listen for it or ignore it. Even if the drummer is thumping away and I'm basically trying to sing to that, I can also hear the common reference tone that I know the drummer is/was also listening to. Injecting a very tiny amount of that tone into a track (if it doesn't have timing data otherwise included in the file), quiet enough to be reliably clipped-off along with the rest of the "noise," is also handy when lining-up the tracks in a DAW.