Symbiotic

Recently I’ve been working on a remix of a Bugz in the Attic tune (that will be available on myspace in the next few days.) I was playing it for someone yesterday and she told me that she thought the music I composed did a good job of bringing out the melodic character of the vocals I was working with. At first I took it for what it was – a compliment from someone who’s opinion I value very much. As the comment stayed in my mind, I began to see it in context with my musical development . . .

I started off taking full instrumentals and recording vocals over them. From there I moved to chopping up samples. One of the milestones in my development was when I had an epiphany – “I can make my own music!” Around that time I started paying more attention to the hip-hop I was hearing (as that was my main genre at the time) and I noticed that often the music was overly repetitive and far less complex than the norm in other genres. I set a goal for myself. “An instrumental should be complete in and of itself.” I figured that if an instrumental was sophisticated enough to stand on its own, then it could only serve to improve the song when vocals were added.

I was very wrong. I never explicitly stated that to myself or out loud before today, but I’ve known it for a while now. This remix I’m working on is proof of that. I started with an acapella which I built the music around. Now that the music is complete, if you take away the vocals, there is definitely a hole. I revise what I said previously – an instrumental should be sophisticated enough to keep interest on its own. If you take away the vocals and you’re left with something monotonous and boring, there’s a problem. The music should improve the vocals and the vocals should improve the music. If that symbiotic relationship isn’t there, chances are there is something that should be fixed.

As I write this, a bunch of different ways that this idea could be abstracted to apply to life in general spring to my mind but I’ll leave it to you to take the metaphor where you like.