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Marshall Benson
Several of the past nights in a row have been spent writing and recording music in my home studio. A new sampler (Yamaha RS7000) has improved my beat-making workflow and sample quality, mastering a new analog mixer, and setting up outboard FX and studio ergonomics has lent conductivity studio studio workflow. Each new session I start ends better than the last -- and inspiration is flowing (not an incredibly common occurrence), so I'm taking advantage of it.
But one problem continues to present--I never move to the arrangement and mixdown phase; I get stuck in the beat-making, sound designing stage, which basically amounts to a 16- or -32 bar loop. Though the loop may sound good, thinking about song arrangement seems to require using a different part of my brain. It requires me to say "OK, this loop is good enough for now; what story do I want to tell?" And that can be tough to do, when designing sound and playing with reverbs is so fun.
I've always been a 'sandbox musician' type -- I don't read or memorize musical pieces, but I improvise on piano, explore Classical ideas and modal playing, and compose melodies and thought-out chord structure; similarly on guitar, I can riff well and play extended solos, but rarely turn my playing into a song structure. This is my biggest obstacle, as, well, a songwriter. Songwriting requires patience, a type of intelligence about the audience's perspective, and the ability to "project manage" a musical idea into a cohesive story with a beginning, middle, and end.
Arrangement is a nightmare to me, because it demands that I leave the sandbox mindset, and provide termination points to musical ideas within an arrangement--in the sandbox, I don't terminate/evolve from a musical idea until I'm tired of it; unfortunately, the audience tires at a timing which is much more perscribed, or perhaps more masterfully, controlled as a good composer could do.
Being able to finish a song writing-wise is very similar this way to finishing a mix. Unless I am forced by external factors (i.e., deadlines), I simply will not finish mixes, I will not finish songs...
I've worried about this tendency. Having constraints and deadlines is critical for my production output, something that is all-too true.
