Make Me Move

Creating music is one of the most wonderful and exciting journey’s you can embark on. And yes, it is a journey. Any worthwhile composer/musician will never find himself in the same place for very long. Music is constant change – evolution, regression, reversal. The route doubles back, loops , turns at acute angles…you name it.

Tonight I gained inspiration and knowledge that will contribute to the next stretch of my journey. Maybe my excitement is not soley due to the concept running through my mind right now. Maybe its partially caused by the music itself. The music I heard tonight was constantly moving, packed with energy. The revelation part is that I realised how that feeling is put into the music.

Pause – this is not a post about general life experience that I think everyone can relate to, it’s about making music. Forgive me if it bores you – Unpause

I’ve been sleeping on shakers and on fast paced miscelaneous percussion in general. Back in the day, the hi-hats on many of my tracks were monotonous. I would routinely lay down a hat on every eigth note regardless of what it did to the feel of the song because I didn’t know any better. Eventually I figured it out and both slowed and varied my placement of hi-hat sounds. Today I realized that what I was dooing was not necessarily wrong or bad. Back when I had that blanket of hi-hats in songs, it gave them energy and a sense of movement. Take a simple drum beat – something real simple (booom-clap-boom-clap…) and add those eigth note hi-hats and suddenly the beat seems to not want to stop moving. Underneath the steady, solid beat there is a light double-time groove going on. In house music, that double time groove can make you want to move. Done properly, it can give a song that feel that makes your foot start tapping when you weren’t even aware that you were listenening. AND, it doesn’t even have to be hi-hats. Tonight, I heard it done with hats, shakers, and other miscellaneous percussion. Oh the possibilities!!!

Ummm…yeah, that’s all. I’m going to sleep now.