I’ve learned to make music through reading, experimentation, and by asking questions of people more experienced than myself. One of the things I’ve learned along the way is that there is more than one way to go about many parts of the process. I’m not sure if my process is unique, rare, or the norm, but here is my process when it comes to making a song. Keep in mind that this is a general process. Sometimes the order of the steps is different, steps are skipped, or steps are added.

1. Initial Creation – A song has to start somewhere. Sometimes it will start with music, sometimes it will start with lyrics, sometimes lyrics and music will be created simultaneously. Creating the music involves choosing instrument sounds to use, and programming the notes into a midi sequencer.
2. Recording – Once the instrumental and vocal parts are written, I record the vocals. Usually, at this point, it’s just a rough version – especially if I’m the one doing the vocals. This rough take helps me hear how the music and the vocals mesh together, it gives me a chance to refine them so that they take even better advantage of each other, and it helps me learn the words for an improved take later on.
3. Rework the music – As I said, once I have the rough vocals, I can make the music and vocals work together even better. This is the point where I cut instruments out to highlight lines, add accents with drums, and rewrite parts of the lyrics and music if necessary. Because of this step, I never consider music I write complete until I have a rough version of the vocals and get a chance to rework the music around them.
4. Record Vocals – Normally when I make a new song I stop after step 3. Once the rough draft is down, I can come back anytime to finish the song. In the meantime I listen to the rough version a bunch of times and maybe even memorize the lyrics. Now, when it comes time to finish the song, my familiarity with the song (even if it’s not memorized) allows me to record a better vocal performance, more suitable for a final version.
5. Record the music – At this point, the instrumental is still midi – a set of instructions that, when combined with a hardware or software synthesizer, will replay the music. In order to add whatever processing is needed (EQ, compression, etc) I need to turn these midi tracks into traditional audio files. When I use software instruments, this is as easy as a few clicks of the mouse, but usually, my songs have a significant amount of instruments that come from my E-Mu Pk-6. When that is case, I have to record each instrument to a separate track. This step tends to be a pain in the ass. If I have a 4 minute song with 7 instruments played through the PK-6 (a typical scenario), it will take 28 minutes (4 minutes x 7 instruments) to record all the instruments. Add to this the time it takes to set up each track before I record it and the time it takes to redo tracks when there is an error (when dealing with midi, my computer frequently hiccups, throwing everything out of time) and the time to record the instruments grows – sometimes to more than twice that 28 minutes. Because I have to catch errors as they occur, I have to be nearby throughout the whole process. What makes this all so annoying is that this is a purely technical task – it involves no creativity and little thought. This is the type of busy work I would give to low level employees if I had the luxury of employing people other than myself.
6. Mix – Now that I have all the elements, I can mix them to make them all sound right together. Mixing involves EQuing and compressing the individual tracks, adding reverb and delay where they are needed, and applying any other effects and audio manipulation that is necessary. Sometimes I will mix with the rough vocal tracks and then carry out step 4 after this step.
7. Extras – This is actually a new step that I plan on incorporating into the process. Sometimes ambient noises or strange little background sounds can make a track come alive, but looking through a ton of sound effects while I’m trying to construct a track would be an interruption to my creative process. Instead, as one of my last steps, I plan to search for an add the subtle sounds that will help make the track more dynamic.
8. Fix – Throughout the process, I listen for parts of the song that need fixing or improvement, but at this point I try to be extra critical and analytical. If there is anything wrong, I go back and fix it.
9. Master – Now that everything is done, the track can be mastered. Ideally, I should be sending tracks off to a mastering house and paying them a heap of money so they can make sure my levels and overall EQ are well-suited for mainstream play, but for money reasons, I do this step myself. This is the final polish before I present a track to the public.

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while – I just found a note to myself from July ’06 reminding me to blog about this. The note is titled “Emotional Music” and the entire content of it is:

I like emotional music.

By “emotional music”, I mean music that makes me feel things. I like music that can make me scrunch up my face as I marvel at the sheer power of the instrumentation. I like music that can make me feel the depth of the artist’s sadness or the enormity of his loneliness. I like music that will take control of me, of my emotions, music that will guide and shape them, music that will captivate me, music that will let me lose myself in it. I love music for the power it has over me. Whether I listen to sad music that makes me wallow in the artist’s pain as if it was mine, or music that reminds me of everything good in life, the experiences that emotional music gives me always leave feeling refreshed and energized.

When I make music, I constantly strive to make it emotional music. I can’t help it – I try to make the best music possible, and in my opinion, the best possible music is emotional music. This leads to one of my major issues with hip-hop music. Most of it is not emotional music. I love the form – that should be obvious from the fact that I make hip-hop – but I hate the fact that I don’t see nearly enough people taking it as far as it can go.

Commercial hip-hop is definitely not emotional music. I can’t relate on an emotional or intellectual level to some guy bragging to me about how he’s the best MC out or about how much money he has. When I hear songs about dealing drugs, being a gangster or mistreating women, my anger is a blockade between me and any chance of emotional attachment to the song. These guys degrade black people, the hip-hop culture and Black American culture with the things they say. They serve only themselves and money hungry record execs who care nothing for the art or for the people listening to the music. Commercial hip-hop pisses me off for the most part. I can’t and don’t want to get past that anger to “feel” the music. Even if I disregard the vocals, way too often I find the music to be uninspired and uninspiring. It seems to be getting even worse lately as super-simple beats that sound like they were made for toddlers seem to be becoming the norm.

That leaves the “underground” and the “conscious” artists. I look to them and what I find is not that different from commercial hip hop. There is a stigma throughout hip-hop that it has to be boastful, full of machismo and that an MC can admit no weakness. The conscious and underground artists put out many songs that contain the same pointless bragging as the commercial guys. I am so tired of that. It’s been done. The lyricism and wordplay was interesting at first, but why not put some content into the music? The subject matter often differs from that found in commercial hip-hop, but it is just as limited. It seems as if the one unifying theme of hip-hop artists is that they can be pigeon-holed. If your music doesn’t fit a stereotype, many people won’t find it worth listening to. An MC must fit one of a few categories – thug, baller, player, backpacker, revolutionary, or hippy.

My problem is that rather than engage me, these cliche topics bore me and I know that hip-hop can be so much more. I have no problem with the subject matter of the militant, revolutionary MCs who use their music to explore questions of race and class. I have no problem with the subject matter of the hippy MCs who use their music to explore ideas of religion and spirituality. Sometimes I don’t even mind the backpacker’s focus on lyricism instead of content. What I can’t stand is the fact that so many MCs have so little variety in their material that it is possible to easily categorize them. Even many of the MCs who fit in multiple categories cannot break out of those six archetypes. We all live life. We all have a ton of experiences, ideas and feelings that can be translated to music and words. Why do we limit ourselves? We end up painting limited pictures of ourselves and our experiences, and the repetition and lack of variety render our messages emotionally sterile. It seems that with just about any other musical genre, I can find examples that cover a wide range of subjects, stories and emotions, but when it comes to hip-hop, I am much harder pressed to find that variety.

I’ve heard a lot of songs about what is wrong with hip-hop – I even have one of my own. I’m going to try to limit my complaining to that one song (and maybe a few more). I don’t want all my music to end up being about how I think music should be better. I’m doing my best to teach by example. (I think I’ve said this elsewhere, but) Reverse Psychology will be my first major step in this direction. My aim with it is to communicate emotions, to reveal weakness, and to tell stories that any human can relate to. My goal is to make emotional music. I want listeners to go through an emotional journey as they listen to my album, feeling the feelings behind every song, and when it is over, I want them to feel refreshed and energized when it’s over.

Of course it will be up to every individual that hears my album to judge whether I succeeded at what I was attempting, but I hope that at the least, the recognition of the attempt will give people the idea that hip-hop can encompass much more than it currently tends to.

On a message board I visit from time to time, somebody asked how to develop and improve vocal rap skills. I found this to be (to me at least) a pretty original question and I think it’s an important one. Many people seem to be born with a natural ability for a particular form of art. We call it talent. The thing is, while talent may be necessary at times, it can never take the place of practice just as practice can never take the place of talent. One may help to hide the absence of the other, but one can’t hold a candle to both. In the modern day Web 2.0/D.I.Y. world we live in, many people forget the importance of practice and learning. Amateur photographers can grab a digital camera and start snapping shots without ever learning the fundamentals of photography, so they don’t. Aspiring musicians can load Garage Band and record their band’s demo without learning the basics of recording and mixing, so they don’t. Etcetera etcetera. In the end, the difference between the people who take the time to learn and practice and those who don’t is usually apparent. The amateur photographer who has taken the time and effort to learn the technical aspects will have good shots on a more consistent basis. The mixes of the guy who spent a little time learning technique will sound better.

Rap is not very different – anyone can play a beat and start rhyming. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see someone actually think and ask about ways to improve. I added my two cents to the list of answers in the thread, and since I liked the question, I figured I could expand here.

• A few of the people who responded to the question said it was necessary to listen to and study the greats. It was even suggested that one practice reciting other people’s rhymes. I disagree with this. I believe hip-hop already has enough copycats and sound-alikes. There is no need to go out of your way to join them. It is important that an MC work at developing his own voice. The best cyphers I have been involved in were ones where everyone sounded different.
• Speaking of cyphers, do not underestimate the use of the freestyle. I made that mistake once, but once I started regularly getting involved in cyphers I learned how wrong I was. Freestyle has several benefits. It gives you practice using your voice and it helps you develop and recognize your own cadence and style. Also, freestyle is closely related to some of the exercises other artists use to open themselves up to inspiration. A painter might let the brush go where it wants with no particular picture in mind. A writer might sit down and write whatever comes to mind however strange or incomprehensible it might be. Freestyling is the MCs version of this. Something you say during a freestyle may give you great idea for a song and after freestyling on a regular basis for a while, you will find it helps your writing to. These last benefits will be more extreme if when freestyling, you attempt to challenge yourself and step away from the “typical subjects.” See what you come up with when you avoid the hip-hop cliché of how great you are and the mainstream money, violence and sex themes.
• Pay attention to energy and emotion. Energy will help you get a hold of your audience. Emotion will give your words authenticity. Imagine hearing a song about pain and sorrow performed in a toneless, bored-sounding voice. You don’t want to be that ridiculous image when you perform. Don’t just practice your words, breathing and timing – practice your emotions. Get used to putting yourself in the moment of a song, whether that moment is happy, angry, sad, etc.
• Listen to music. Your songs should not consist of your voice and some music in the background. Your vocals and the music should work together to make the song. To do this consistently, it is important that you have an understanding of music. Help improve your understanding by listening to music. Try to make a habit of listening to all kinds of music, not just other hip-hop. Pay attention to individual instruments and how they work with the other sounds.
• Get out of your musical comfort zone. Trying reciting your verses to music they were not written to. Practice with beats at different tempos and even non-hip-hop instrumentals. This will help accustom you to the nuances of different beats. Also, try freestyling to music you have a hard time freestyling to – music that’s faster or slower than you are comfortable with or with difficult rhythms.
• Don’t forget good old fashioned practice. Practice your songs. Memorize them and get comfortable with them. This will help improve your breathing and give you room to play around with cadence.
• Writing is important. If you find that a particular line is constantly giving you trouble or sounding awkward, rewrite it. Rewording a line can change how it sits on the beat. For example, don’t try to force “I got inside of the car” to fit when you could simply rewrite it as “I got in the car”.
• Last but far from least – all of the previous tips have to do with technique. Composition is extremely important to. Try to choose varied subject matter and to approach it in interesting ways. Too many MCs seem to feel that a rap can only be about a few limited subjects. It doesn’t have to be. Rap is just one form of expression among many and it is compatible with anything out there that can be expressed whether it’s a story, an emotion, or an idea.

Music is powerful. Have you ever walked around with headphones on, blocking out the sounds of the regular world? Yes, I know it’s anti-social and all, but forget about that for a minute. Walking around with music that you feel can change the whole world around you. Walking down a city street becomes a cinematic experience as your music becomes the soundtrack of life. When I walk through the world with a headphone cord extending from my ears, I feel like I’m in my own private world, separated from the rest by a one way window. I see but I am not seen. Sure, they see my body, but they don’t see what I am seeing and experiencing, and without that, are they really seeing me?

Oh, and my experiences, wow. It’s like everyone becomes a dancer as every action, every movement is made in relation to the music being pumped into my ears. It is not just background to what I see, it gives definition, clarity and emotion to what I see. The music can make a solitary walk through the city at night be one of the most dramatic events ever, the men washing the streets becoming grand actors showing an endless depth of emotion through their simple, methodical motions. The music can turn every member of the Saturday afternoon shopping crowd into my dance partner as our steps follow some intricate pattern that allows us to get where we’re going without collisions. A sad song can turn the girl joyfully jumping rope into a symbol of good things lost. A joyful song can take her happiness and paint the world a brighter color with it.

Sometimes I feel a little guilty for cutting off the world like that, for making it impossible for people to initiate polite conversations, but it’s hard to give in to that guilt and take off the headphones. The world is simply too beautiful to resist when various melodies, harmonies and rhythms highlight its poetry.

OK, back to my music. Nice talking to you.

Many would say that one way to inspire yourself to be creative is to step out of your comfort zone. I agree with that, but sometimes it can be hard to identify what your comfort zone is and even harder to figure out what lies beyond its borders. I’ve been happy for the last few days because I found something beyond my comfort zone. I was reading a music magazine and I came across an article on odd time signatures. Most western music uses even time signatures with 4/4 being the most common. A 4/4 beat contains 4 beats per measure – 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4. Odd time signatures like 7/8 get broken down into unequal parts, for example – 1 2 1 2 1 2 3.

Conceptually, it’s not such a great leap for someone raised on 4/4 to make, but in practice, wow! After reading the article, I went home and tried out a song in 5/4 and it was like I was learning to make music all over again. For every part I added, I had to rewrite it several times before I could get it to sound natural and not like a robot was playing it. While the idea is technically simple, it seems like a whole different set of rules applies when it comes to making 5/4 sound aesthetically pleasing. I was explaining it to someone and I said that it was like trying to write poetry in a foreign language. You understand what makes a phrase sound poetic and pretty in your language, and you may understand the technicalities of the other language – the grammar, the lexicon how to put sentences together – but you won’t automatically understand how to construct a poetic phrase in the foreign language. A sentence that may be beautiful in English may be awkward and ugly in that other language. The strange thing is, as unusual and unnatural as 5/4 seemed to me, I read that odd timings are very prevalent in some eastern cultures and in those cultures, it comes naturally to the people because they’ve been hearing it for all of their lives. It’s all about what you grow up hearing.

I’m going to work on that song and finish it, and hopefully it will push others to step out of their comfort zones. Because of the timing, it will not come out sounding quite like anything that people around here are used to hearing. I guess I found the easy way to get out of my comfort zone – step into someone else’s.

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.

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.

I often look back and wonder what things would be like today if I never got into music. It really was a close thing. I had a little bit of formal training in piano as a child, but I had absolutely no passion for it. For a while I wasn’t allowed to quit, but the moment I could, I did. My piano teacher had showcases where all her students performed once every other year. When I finally got permission to quit, that last concert was the last date I had to play. I practiced hard in the weeks before it, and after that day, I was done.

Years and years later, I started creating music on a whim. It was during the summer of 1998. I was walking home and I started writing a rap in my head. It was your typical boastful substanceless rap that can be expected from someone brand new to it…

Two to the face and one to the chest
Yo take it slow, cherish your last breath
You thought battling me would not bring you death
Some kind of error of judgment on your part I would guess . . .

I got home and finished off the verse, grabbed a CD with an instrumental, and recorded that verse with a shareware audio program – Goldwave. I wonder if that’s still around . . . (pause to google it) . . . (http://www.goldwave.com/) A friend of mine who was getting in to production showed me a program called Cool Edit Pro (now known as Adobe Audition), and from then on it was a forward progression. Over time I went from recording on other people’s instrumentals and making simple remixes to writing my own music.

My entire involvement with the creation of music came about because of two pieces of software. If I never had Goldwave and Cool Edit Pro I would not have discovered my own interest in creating music. Right now, that is one of my major passions in life and I discovered it by “messing around”.

I’m currently reading the biography of Quincy Jones. Quincy had skilled musicians tutor him and guide him. He stood on the shoulders of giants. Right now, I’m wondering where my giants are. Up until very recently, its been a completely solitary journey for me, and even now it still is in many ways. Most of the creative people I work closely with aren’t into quite the same things that I am. I recently released my first album and its full of a bunch of electronic music, but no hip-hop. Most of my “crew” does hip-hop. Everyone is very supportive, but I cannot use many of the avenues available to me because this particular project is not in the right genre.

This isn’t a complaint – more of an observation – because I’m starting to understand why things are the way they are. Quincy looked for people to teach him. An artist I know is beginning a set of projects that will be her first “releases”. Her first step in the process was to seek out people who have already been releasing material and ask for advice. I’m realizing that part of the problem, for me is I have not been looking for help. Looking back, there were a number of people along the way who could have helped and taught me had I recognized the possibility and gone after it, but I didn’t. I don’t tend to look for help. It’s an advantage and a disadvantage. When I want to figure out how to do something, I get online, grab some books, and or experiment. Because of this I can proudly say that I’ve taught myself most of what I know and I’ve had the space to form my own opinions and methods, but because of this I know there is much I need to learn. No man is an island and I need to find the line between doing it on my own and learning from others that is the right balance.

Better late than never, right? The search is on. As I’m writing this, I am making the resolution. I will start trying to learn from the people around me. It will be hard because as I said I have a hard time finding people who are into what I am into, but they are out there and I do know where to find some of them.