Do you create a track with a careful plan or do you just make music through improv and experiments?

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I always start with very specific ideas in mind, but they are not enough to make a complete track. It takes some improvisation to make a consistent melody and flow. It's always a bit of design and a bit of chaos.
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Tricky-Loops wrote: (...)someone like Armin van Buuren who claims to make a track in half an hour and all his songs sound somewhat boring(...)

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Improviser/jammer here.

Like many, I usually start with an interesting drum rhythm and play keys (my main instrument) over it.

But sometimes I'll start with a guitar lick and go from there.

And if I'm feeling really crazy, I'll take an improvised vocal line (I sing into my phone from time to time when inspiration hits) and I'll build a track around that.

Lately, I'm pleased with the results.

Cheers
-B
Berfab
So many plugins, so little time...

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I start with a plan. First sound in the project always sticks to the plan. Then I add a second sound and I have to make a new plan.

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Both, with the emphasis on improvisation as the underpinning source of the material. For example, for a lot of material, Ive started the process by improvising with a particular combination of sound sources for several hours until Ive built up a set of 'patterns'. (That choice of gear might have come from several days/weeks/etc of experimenting with various things until something resonates an idea, btw).
Then when I get to the point where I'm happy with them, I'll leave things for a few days, often modify the setup of the gear used, and then record another improvised set of 20-30 minutes worth of audio, derived from trying to recreate new versions/variations of those patterns, which ultimately serves as the source material.
Once Ive got my source material, the next stage for this would usually be going through the improvised recording and cutting out sections to be used as part of the final composition. Separately I'll often also create some sort of score (I think of them as maps) to work from.
The final stage would be layering/compositing/processing the sections of source material (according to the score, or further experimentation).
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e@rs wrote:I start with a plan. First sound in the project always sticks to the plan. Then I add a second sound and I have to make a new plan.
:lol: Yup. Sounds very familiar.
Berfab
So many plugins, so little time...

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I work by planned experiments. I plan what I will try, and most of the time I am able to predict results. But unpredictable outcomes are welcome, too.
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I guess most people fall somewhere in between - extremes in either direction can lead to sterility - too much plan/thinking is not good but sometimes not having any sort of structure can also inhibit creativity. My music is very improvisatory but I tend to always have some sort of structure or "frame" to work within, this creates a discipline that for me improves the creative process, gives me something to push against and interact with. Often for me the 'frame' is temporal, like a limit to how long the piece will be, how long I will spend on creating it, or some sort of loose quasi tempo (but I don't work to fixed times) - sometimes a drone or sound can create a structure to improvise around, or a responsive effect. I try not to have goals though, goals get in the way. Instead I have processes.

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Not sure if my 2 cents on this matters at this point,
but no. I don't like going into my music with too strict of a plan; I often find the more strict of a plan I have the more I set myself up for disappointment. I'm sort of experiencing this right now with a cover of a song that I am doing. It had been a long time since I heard the original and so my cover was mostly based off of what I remembered in my head. Just to check my progress, I listened to the original version and...wow....my piece pales in comparison

The same thing really applies to any track I go into; if I have a planned structure for the song, it usually winds up failing and sitting in my junkyard folder of abandoned projects.

On the other hand (edit)
A song with no structure might start falling off the rails and go a direction I don't like. Though to be honest here, I have completed more songs that started with little to no structure than I have completed with songs that were started with a little to a lot of structure.

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Sendy wrote:Guided improvisation. If you throw a lot of stuff away and keep only the material that fits, and you arrange it well, it'll sound like you had a plan (because you did, it just was executed from a bottom-up rather than top-down approach!)
yup. i do random stuff until i come up with a plan.

i think you have to think about this in terms of feedback cycles. improv and plans are a part of any musical process, but the starting point may be different.

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I only plan AFTERWARDS. makes no senses, but it's kinda how I work. I just start with a really simple idea, then think about it and internalize it, and then something else will pop into my head. then i start thinking of that, and hopefully at some point a plan will start to form itself. It's not really planning or improvisation, more just playing it by ear.

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Sometimes I have defined some parameters and this is the reason for the thing; more frequently I start with a soundworld and feel my way around in it and record and more-or-less commit to a composition that is a founding layer and then populate it with parts. I commit to that and print as audio; while I may work further with that in 'stretch' terms or inserting, I have decided 'this is the groundwork'. It seems to be typical that I expand the timeline from the middle out.
The sound design may take quite some time; I imply instrumentation through use of synths and by the time I record the 'detail', instrumental lines and so forth the sound is fairly defined.

I enjoy improvising as the mode of operation a bit more than a very concrete formal thing I think. When there is a definite form, this means it's a basic kind of rock pattern.
I have found that pre-planning very involved things doesn't pan out so well, it's kind of kidding myself.
For years, for as substantial a portion of my musical life as there is, I sought to compose music in real time, improvising with others. One time in the studio we charted out a form, this happens for this amount of time and then this, and we'd defined how long the piece would be and were pretty organized. And there was a pop song in the beginning of it. The form was actually thought out as to agreeing with golden section as much as we could. Oddly this was a good plan and we got in and out of the studio wasting little time. But here I was relying heavily on the other person to provide that founding layer, which I decorated as a lead player. Only the pop song part was 'written', we just set markers in terms of length and proportion. We had 'a language' by then.

Then there is the Satie adaptations where I take the work as a basis and write over it or treat it like it's jazz changes and make a new work out of it.

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I tend to find that some sort of planning helps me get a tune finished. Usually i just start doing whatever but my first aim is generally (depending on the tempo) to get 16 bars down in a reasonably full state, this is usually enough to know i can make a whole track without too much repetition.

Next up, i try to get some sort of skeleton structure down for the main bulk of a track, everything up to the second breakdown at least. Having this much sorted as early as possible helps me to establish what is needed and where it will fit in relation to everything else, it also means i can work on a section as i feel like it already understanding the context and purpose.

Of course, there are plenty of times i want to approach things differently, though these times seem to make up the bulk of my unfinished projects.

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for me it's both but both at the same time, kind of a chicken vs egg thing. Sometimes some improv leads to an idea which leads to a plan that goes back to improv, new ideas, another plan and on and on. Other times a plan leads to new ideas from improv which leads to a new plan and on and on...I'm just along for the ride :shrug:
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.

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I always start with a CREATIVE IDEA, then I EXPERIMENT with the arrangement and in the end I PLAN the song structure, i. e. I use markers and regions for the different parts and elements...

So it's usually a mixture of improvised planning and planned improvisation...the same applies to my humor... :P

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Tricky-Loops wrote:I always start with a CREATIVE IDEA, then I EXPERIMENT with the arrangement and in the end I PLAN the song structure, i. e. I use markers and regions for the different parts and elements...

So it's usually a mixture of improvised planning and planned improvisation...the same applies to my humor... :P
humor?
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.

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