A Cool And Easy Way To Use Your Computer To Write (Or Start) Songs

[MikeRobinson]

Your computer probably has a DAW (digital audio workstation == musical word-processing) program installed already.  Every Mac these days, for example, has GarageBand, and PCs are finally getting in on the action, too.  If not, it's easy to download these programs for every major platform.  Okay, but I don't want to talk about that.  I want to give you some ideas of how you can use that tool to compose interesting, original songs (or, song-bites) using MIDI.  

 

(That is to say, where the computer is generating the music that you hear; i.e. "not audio recording or live instruments.")

 

I just want to outline an approach that you can take, basically to get started, and there are endless variations on what I'm about to describe.  The key point is that we're going to try to leverage the computer's unique capabilities to go farther than we otherwise [easily] could have.  In much the same way that the text word-processor let us leave the typewriter behind.

 

Open up any DAW program and there will be two basic things available to you (read the manual ... heh):

• A "piano roll" display, which works just like the perforated strips of paper did on a player piano.  Parallel "lanes" corresponding to notes, with the highest notes at the top, and the horizontal axis is time.
• Probably at the top of the page, an area where you can define and arrange regions, each region being shown to you in the piano-roll area when you click on that region.  You can copy/paste them, move them, lengthen and shorten them, and so on.

Those are the two tools we're going to use, and I'm not going to tell you how to do that.  I'm just going to quickly suggest what you can do with them:

1. Define a region that is, say, just two bars long.  Maybe a little longer, but in any case, short.  Now, put notes in them, following some [any ...] sort of pattern.  Up and then down, or a few notes in a pattern that you repeat.  It can be anything you like.  (And don't think that you have to fill 'em up... silence is important, too.)  Just start putting a bunch of these little regions and listening to them, in no particular order.  You might not use 'em all; you might not use most.  But, don't discard them.  (You never know.)
2. Take some of the regions, copy/paste them, and .. "fiddle with them."  Make variations.  Feel Free.â„¢  Keep the regions short, more-or-less the same size, but maybe not all exactly the same (short) size.
3. Important:  As you come up with these regions, try to start them from (nearly) the same starting notes and to guide them to the same set of ending notes.
4. If your DAW can do things like flipping a region upside-down and/or backwards, make copies of some regions and give 'em a whirl.  Try other things, like moving all the notes up and down a few steps.
5. Don't let your critical mind get too critical.  "Just Do It.â„¢"  Don't delete things:  make a duplicate, fiddle with the copy, and then keep both.
6. If your DAW lets you "write-protect" a track or region, that can be very helpful.
7. (Heh...) Save constantly.  (If you've got a Mac, get to know Time Machine.  A removable drive costs next to nada these days.  Plug it in, let TM start doing backups constantly for you, and forget about it.)

Now, open another track (or window) in which you'll now try to put a song together.  Do it by copying and pasting some of your regions and stacking 'em one after another in that track.  Mute the other tracks, play it and see how it goes.  Experiment freely.  If nothing seems to be "clicking" yet, keep going.  (Besides... it's fun.)  Suddenly, something will click.  Maybe several somethings.  Maybe more somethings than you can use right now.  Never underestimate the power of serendipity.  (At the Grammy® Awards party, you can take full credit for it anyway.)

 

Take advantage of repetition.  Like a musical "loop," a region that leaves from one point and that more-or-less comes back to it can be repeated and it will sound both fine and familiar.  It won't sound "repetitious," and if it does, pull a piece out and drop a "variation" in that slot instead.  Repetition and contrast is the stuff that helps hold a song together.  After a few reps and variations, try switching to something completely different and working that for a few more bars.  You might find that you need to stich together a bit of "glue," maybe one or two bars long, just to connect one thing to another more smoothly.  Cool.  Do it.  Keep 'em all. Keep 'em all. Keep 'em all.

 

Feel free to open a new track and try something else.  Keep your darlings.  You're not exactly going to run out of resources, eh?  Don't delete things!  (A product of your creativity is a valuable thing, and if it sounds like a "clam" right now, maybe in the future it will not.)

 

(Does your DAW let the computer "select and arrange at random?"  Try it!)

 

Try adding a different kind of instrument – another parallel track – and start dropping regions into it, too, playing both at the same time.  Not workin'?  Cool.  Mute it, forget it, hide it if you can, keep it.

 

When you're sure that you've got it ... great ... make a copy, nice and safe, and then ... start smashing it up again.    You can't lose what you've already did, so try something else.  ("Why not?")

 

You haven't had this much fun since you were five years old in a mud puddle.

 

You won't know just what you might come up with, doing things this way, but you will come up with something that really, really surprises your ear.  Probably many somethings.  You won't necessarily come up with "a finished work, just like that."  (Only Venus came out of an oyster-shell fully formed ... and fully ... but I digress.)   What you will come up with is a much fresher and original starting point than you otherwise would have, and you leveraged the unique power of the computer as a music-processor to help you get there.

 

Yeah, eventually you'll have to take some segments and start seriously arranging and refining them, into a finished song product, but that's really a separate process from this pure-creativity.  Playing in the mud for an hour is a great way to start or end your day, and you build up a resource of truly-original stuff (along with some clams) from which you can draw.

 

And, believe me, sometimes "serious creativity" really does work this way.  Maurice Jarre was beating his head against the wall trying to come up with a theme for Dr. Zhivago ... the Director kept turning his efforts down ... when, at the end of another frustrating session, he was just fooling around on the piano, fiddling absently with a few notes, when the Director turned to him, suddenly smiling.  "That's it!" he said.  And it was ... Lara's Theme.  ("Somewhere In Time.")  And an Oscar.  There it ... was.  Sure, a huge amount of work yet to do, to get it shaped up into a film score, yes, but.  There it ... was.

Edited February 6, 2014 by MikeRobinson

[MikeRobinson]

I want to add just a couple of thoughts as to why this technique actually works so well . . . 

 

Our brains have a tremendously-refined, yet largely unconscious, ability to recognize pattern.  Songs, therefore, are naturally built up of repeated patterns.  Yet, what you might not realize is just how much pattern-recognition capability all of us actually have.

 

We can recognize a pattern built up of other patterns, even if some of the constituent parts are played backwards or upside-down; even if we've included only the last half of a region and butted it up against only the first half ... or, why not ... the middle, not even on an even measure-line(!) ... of something that we've recently (and completely) heard before.  Our brains will recognize it, and will embrace it as being familiar.

 

We'll be aware of the patterns at several levels at the same time:  the familiar repetition within regions (or slices thereof); the similarities and differences between the regions; and, at the same time, the complex layered patterns of the regions themselves.  Our brains will take all of this detail in stride, and enjoy the experience.  We can both =see= it (in the little note-dots that are usually in the little region-boxes), and =hear= it.  Effortlessly.

 

This is something that is very deep, physically, within our brains.  An exceptionally large portion of our brain "comes alive" on scans whenever we do it.  Maybe it was essential for spotting yonder hungry tiger in the bushes, long ago.  But, scientists confirm that it is there, even as they struggle to explain it.  We can be deep in conversation or deep in thought, and change triggers an instantaneous, disruptive reaction.  ("Tiger!" ??)

 

The DAW – the computer – can take you to those places like no other musical tool can, or ever could, because it has no difficulty at all with taking whatever ("hey, let's throw this against the wall now and see if it sticks!") arrangement you've come up with, and playing it back for you instantly and perfectly.  It will happily tolerate each and every variation you dream up, and, if you let it, it will keep them all.  It doesn't matter in the slightest how good of a "player" you are or aren't.

 

Your innate pattern-recognizing capability will also come into play as you do this.  It will guide your own decisions, again unconsciously (or maybe not), as you "noodle with" whatever you decide to put into a new region.  That's why I emphasize that: you should {a} never throw anything away, and {b} be as spontaneous as a five-year old kid in a mud puddle (with a garden-hose nearby).  There's a reason why I said that.

 

Yes, your musical training (if you have any) will definitely guide you, too.  I'm not saying that the creative process is mud-puddles and random chance.  But it is a thing that the computer has enabled us to tap in ways that never were so accessible before.

Edited February 6, 2014 by MikeRobinson

[Lisa Gates]

Thanks Mike, I'll have to go home and play around!

Lisa

[MikeRobinson]

I like your article, Mike, and I think you make a lot of good points.  Kudos.  I think one thing missing from your discussion though is a recognition of the importance of, if you will, the third "tool" used to both inspire and express musical creativity in the DAW environment via MIDI - the sounds at your disposal via MIDI.  I think it's the most significant tool, and not all DAW's that do allow you to record and edit MIDI include sounds/instruments that are all that "musical."  But, I guess maybe that's a subject for another article?    

 

Granted.  My intended emphasis in this piece was on getting to the point where you have something that can be developed further.  To get to that all-important ("the director likes it!") noodle that became Lara's Theme.  There's an entire slew of tools and techniques that must be engaged from that point forward.

 

There is, of course, an endless variety of sounds that can be invoked by MIDI.  (As an extreme example of this, I actually got to see Pat Metheny's The Orchestrion Project.   http://theorchestrionproject.com speaks for itself!)

 

If what you can lay your hands on during the initial creative (mud-slinging) process is ... "crappy sounds" ... then, I say, go ahead and sling those against your musical wall, just to see what sticks.  If you use a "General MIDI" compatible patch suite or soundfont or what have you, your brainchild will sound at least similar when you're finally ready to pull something out of the mud and take it on to the next level.

 

The value of the creative technique that I describe, I think, is that it lets you expose yourself to a wide variety of patterns, made out of short pieces – anyone can compose two or three bars – that you (think that you) have "just slung together."  The piano-roll lets you pattern notes; the regions area lets you pattern regions; maybe it allows you to group groups and pattern them; maybe it can algorithmically transform notes without effort on your part.  Perhaps unconsciously, the process guides the new patterns that you (not so ...) "randomly" create.  Stand by for a musical surprise.  You'll get a bunch of 'em.  The more "stupid, 'hey let's try this'" things that you do, the more surprises ... and, uhh, a few clams. (But, maybe that "clam" is just waiting for the right chowder.  Don't throw it back.)

 

Just have fun ... "and don't you dare walk into this house, young <man | lady>, until you have hosed yourself off!"

 

When you do get something or a few somethings that are useful, and they either sound good together or you can quickly stitch them to make them so, then is when you might want to start thinking more seriously about what patches to use; dynamics, effects, mixing; the whole nine yards.  There's still some distance between mud-pie and a Grammy.  Having said that, though, yes, sometimes "just the right patch" (or sometimes, having accidentally(?) picked the "wrong" one ...) is part of the creativity too.

Edited February 12, 2014 by MikeRobinson