writing electronic music with other people

[luke viia]

how many of you jam with your friends / colleagues / professional business team?

 

i'm wondering because i've had a few projects with friends of mine, and the music always turns out drastically different than anything i'd write on my own. i've had ambient projects with friends, noise rock projects, electro projects... it always feels so much more taxing to work with other people, but it's a fun time.

 

my questions to you are: do you record with other people, and if so, how do you divvy up the responsibilities? is there a "drums" guy and a "melody" guy, or some other setup? does one guy write all the parts? how do you like to collaborate?

[Guest nuclearaddict]

I find it really difficult. I've tried it in the past, we shared the same computer, but it would just turn into lots of ideas rolled into one. Not a lot of coherence to the tracks. I prefer working alone.

[Guest Frankie5fingers]

My pal and i always jam together. and the music we create is always dramatically different than what we usually write on our own. i think its cause when we're placed in that setting we both open up our minds and go with whatever we create instead of having a certain genre in mind.

 

as for responsibilities, we kinda leave the parts to each other. i write the bass and he writes the guitar. but we also comment on each others playing, so if he has something kinda cool and i have an idea for what he could do to make it cooler i tell him and then we try it out. and vice versa. if it sounds good we keep it if not then we go back to how it originally sounded. the same goes for our electronic music (in a way). usually we sit around with a blank patch on a VST then try to make a sound. once we make something one of us can use we go from there. then we do kinda like a "hot potato" approach. one of us will work on it then we switch off and have the other do something. keeps the music fresh.

 

though the reason we work so well together is a little unknown to both of us. we worked with others but it always comes out in a mess. but us together, works perfectly.

 

we did do something that most people dont do and that is for the first 2-3 years we just jammed. and i mean pure not planning anything and just trying to play with each other with no intentions of trying to write music. by doing this we learned about each others playing styles. how we think about music. we've gotten to the point where we almost dont need to speak to each other and we already know what the other is gonna do. like a sixth sense of music.

 

honestly, if you dont put in the time to learn how the other(s) think musically then making music together will most likely be a huge pain in the ass.

[cloud capture]

I miss jamming. It's the only thing I miss. It's so enjoyable & satisfying

[LimpyLoo]

My neurotic type-A bipolar control-freak ocd asperjers brain precludes me from giving up any control over any aspect of my music.

[Audioblysk]

I jam regularly with a guitarist I know. He has some amazing gear and is a pretty damn talented guitar player... but we both know that our talents lie elsewhere and I think that really helps when making music. I can play guitar very well, but differently, I have played more finger-pickin' open-key guitar and he is a way better rock guitarist and much more technically clean.

 

Mostly I stick to synth and drum responsibilities and he will play the bass/guitar/other. We arrange together as in how the song unfolds, but I generally do the engineering with some of his input (i.e. delays, reverb decay ect.)

 

I hate jamming with other electronic musicians. Mostly because the ones I know are either very musically illiterate, or the vast opposite, and spend way too much time making jazzy crap that lacks emotion and rawness.

[Guest]

Have had good & bad experiences, depending on if we started from scratch or continued jamming on an existing idea. The latter having better results. Throwing a bag of weed in the mix often negates the eventual usefulness though...

[AnalogueCreamPie]

Hit & miss. For me its cool when you're younger & you're learning, collaborating with mates back in the day actually produced some interesting stuff for me. Now, everyones a bit older & have their own processes & ways of working, seems a lot harder to come up with decent results.

[luke viia]

interesting replies so far

 

I find it really difficult. I've tried it in the past, we shared the same computer, but it would just turn into lots of ideas rolled into one. Not a lot of coherence to the tracks. I prefer working alone.

 

 

My pal and i always jam together. and the music we create is always dramatically different than what we usually write on our own. i think its cause when we're placed in that setting we both open up our minds and go with whatever we create instead of having a certain genre in mind.

 

as for responsibilities, we kinda leave the parts to each other. i write the bass and he writes the guitar. but we also comment on each others playing, so if he has something kinda cool and i have an idea for what he could do to make it cooler i tell him and then we try it out. and vice versa. if it sounds good we keep it if not then we go back to how it originally sounded. the same goes for our electronic music (in a way). usually we sit around with a blank patch on a VST then try to make a sound. once we make something one of us can use we go from there. then we do kinda like a "hot potato" approach. one of us will work on it then we switch off and have the other do something. keeps the music fresh.

 

though the reason we work so well together is a little unknown to both of us. we worked with others but it always comes out in a mess. but us together, works perfectly.

 

we did do something that most people dont do and that is for the first 2-3 years we just jammed. and i mean pure not planning anything and just trying to play with each other with no intentions of trying to write music. by doing this we learned about each others playing styles. how we think about music. we've gotten to the point where we almost dont need to speak to each other and we already know what the other is gonna do. like a sixth sense of music.

 

honestly, if you dont put in the time to learn how the other(s) think musically then making music together will most likely be a huge pain in the ass.

 

agreed. and you're lucky to have a buddy that meshes so well with your style imo! I have a good friend like this as well, we've played together in all sorts of duos and somehow we both seem to understand how to communicate with the other guy's ideas. we write pretty fun stories to go behind all the music as well. every time he comes up to visit we end up with an EP, haha =]

 

nuclearaddict, maybe you just need to find a better jamming partner? :) (or maybe it's really just not for you)

 

I miss jamming. It's the only thing I miss. It's so enjoyable & satisfying

 

did you move to an island bunker...?

 

My neurotic type-A bipolar control-freak ocd asperjers brain precludes me from giving up any control over any aspect of my music.

 

tbh this is not the answer i was expecting from you limpy, though i can understand your feelings here. you seem to take music pretty seriously as a meaningful art form and i guess jamming usually works better IME if i treat it as something more disposable, so that i don't get caught in details until it's actually time to look at details. for whatever reason i really value the ritual act of recording itself, and even if the output kinda sucks sometimes, being able to reflect on the exact sounds we produced on some particular day is still highly satisfying to me. i don't generally even consider the jams my friends and i write to be "my music," it's something more organic and far less controlled and that's what makes it exciting, i guess. sorry to hear about your neuroses and all that.

 

I jam regularly with a guitarist I know. He has some amazing gear and is a pretty damn talented guitar player... but we both know that our talents lie elsewhere and I think that really helps when making music. I can play guitar very well, but differently, I have played more finger-pickin' open-key guitar and he is a way better rock guitarist and much more technically clean.

 

Mostly I stick to synth and drum responsibilities and he will play the bass/guitar/other. We arrange together as in how the song unfolds, but I generally do the engineering with some of his input (i.e. delays, reverb decay ect.)

 

I hate jamming with other electronic musicians. Mostly because the ones I know are either very musically illiterate, or the vast opposite, and spend way too much time making jazzy crap that lacks emotion and rawness.

 

lol at the last line. exact same thing happens to me. i have one friend who's an excellent piano player but he never records his tunes and always just jams and jams solo until he perfects it, so when he and i try to jam, it's mostly just him fretting over the details as he tries to record and the process tends to move real slowly unless i keep pushing it along. on the other hand, i have a friend with no musical chops at all but a great intuition for knob twiddling and making interesting sounds, so when he and i jam almost all of the structure of a song is left to me, and he'll essentially add layers to what i do. the dynamics for every person i jam with are wildly different.

 

Have had good & bad experiences, depending on if we started from scratch or continued jamming on an existing idea. The latter having better results. Throwing a bag of weed in the mix often negates the eventual usefulness though...

 

exactly the opposite effect for me! if i have people "help" with songs i've already started i just feel like they're botching it all up, lol. starting fresh and getting high usually leads to pretty interesting results, but most of my jams are set out with some sort of vague guideline like "c78 style drums and huge pads could start it off" or "it could work up to some war drum toms and huge clunky guitars" so it's not like we're just walking in completely aimless. i could see that going nowhere fast...

 

Hit & miss. For me its cool when you're younger & you're learning, collaborating with mates back in the day actually produced some interesting stuff for me. Now, everyones a bit older & have their own processes & ways of working, seems a lot harder to come up with decent results.

 

hm, that's a good point, though when i was younger i was always worried about collaborating because i didn't have any sort of musical confidence or real trust in my own ideas. (i gained some confidence playing in noise bands where there was no wrong way to do anything. nice environment to suck and learn in.) now i feel like i can explain what i'm doing, ask other people meaningful questions about what they're doing in the song, etc. works both ways i guess, but i do understand what you mean about most people just finding their own ways of working and sticking to that.

[LimpyLoo]

 

My neurotic type-A bipolar control-freak ocd asperjers brain precludes me from giving up any control over any aspect of my music.

 

tbh this is not the answer i was expecting from you limpy, though i can understand your feelings here. you seem to take music pretty seriously as a meaningful art form and i guess jamming usually works better IME if i treat it as something more disposable, so that i don't get caught in details until it's actually time to look at details. for whatever reason i really value the ritual act of recording itself, and even if the output kinda sucks sometimes, being able to reflect on the exact sounds we produced on some particular day is still highly satisfying to me. i don't generally even consider the jams my friends and i write to be "my music," it's something more organic and far less controlled and that's what makes it exciting, i guess. sorry to hear about your neuroses and all that.

 

 

Don't get me wrong, I love playing with other musicians. And I will forever hold improvising in high holy regard as the closest a performing musician can get to that sense of play you have when you're a child that slowly gets wrung out of you by the seriousness of the world.

 

But for whatever reason that openness doesn't translate to writing music. And really it has (almost) nothing to do with me thinking other people's ideas are inferior to mine or anything. It's just that my taste and vision are very specific.

[Guest arbee]

I'm having lots of success with one of my friend. it's true to say that we've been making music together for lots of years now, many live shows, etc. we do jam a lot and most of the jams turn out into interesting finished tracks... so we do have great results when working together. the thing is that we progress so damn quick that it gives lots of motivation to make it happen again.

 

the tracks we do make together does sound different than both of our solo material. this is mostly because of the "jamming" aspect of the creating. our workflow together is smooth. it sure is lots of fun.

[awepittance]

There are so many different ways to approach music making with another person, especially in electronic music that it's too broad of a question for a simple yes or no answer. When i first started making proper electronic music I spent many of my days switching back and forth with a friend sitting at a computer. We smoked a lot of weed and enjoyed listening to each other tinker away and evolve the track we were working on together. For some reason, maybe because my collaborators drifted away I stayed away from this approach for almost 7 years. I absolutely could not stand doing the whole computer musical chairs thing. Only recently have I decided to try it again. When you have a specific shared goal in mind this method can be extremely awesome and fruitful. If the person I'm collaborating with has no input or isn't interested in reaching a specific goal, improvising with a recorder running is usually my go to. If something particularly good comes out of that session and the recording is usable then I'll sit down with that person and try to incorporate it into something more deliberate.

[Guest A/D]

I do it! I have a goofy pop-metal-electronic project with a dude in my neighborhood. Our division of labor is pretty cool - both on writing, me on production, him on vox, both on guitars/bass. It's a very studio thing with few live elements. The fun part is that he has tons of ideas and I can often fall back on technical creativity if I'm feeling dry. Then again I have started most of the songs, and he moves on with structure and getting them ready to be pop. It's very fluid and we don't really disagree on much, or don't care when we do, and end up liking whatever happens. Weirdly enough we were also born on the same day (different years though).

 

I've had a number of brief successful collabs in the past, but rarely have they resulted in finished tracks. We're finishing up an album probably by the end of the summer, got 9 or 10 songs at about 80%. I'm really happy about our output.

[Guest Aces]

I have only collaborated with one person making electronic stuff, I would say that it was an interesting experience. We did make some pretty good stuff (some of the only music I make any regular money from) I would say over all though that it was slightly unrewarding. It seems you have pretty much totally in sync with someone if you want to make anything meaningful.

[Friendly Foil]

It's not very fun. Just annoying.

[kcinsu]

Whenever A/D and I are in the same city we get together and work on a track. We've never finish them though, mostly because I suck and forget to send him the files when he leaves. I feel like an ass about that. Public apology :-/

[Ragnar]

I prefer to play with myself

[ambermonk]

Sweepstakes and I kind of collab'd as teenagers. We also had a garage band with his buddy who was a drummer and devout Metallica fan back in '97. It was tricky coming to consensus on the direction of our music though, since it usually ended up being some form of rock. I was an electronic junkie at heart tho, and still am.

Perhaps a collab is in order once again.

[CharlesWatkins]

i would never do it unless i was working with someone who was way better than me

 

so basically, never

 

not because im good, but because im so bad no one would ever want to work with my utter crap

[Lane Visitor]

Great post...

 

Personally, I've been collaborating on electronic music with various buddies for quite some time... My main project being a new wave/hip hop/electro-rock duo since 2003 (still together, been working on this current album for 5/6 years, released 2 before that).. Also have been working with a quirky electro-pop group as the main producer/co-songwriter for about 4 ish years.. put out two releases, still doing a few tracks here and there... and now for the last 7 months, have been collaborating with a producer/dj from the early chicago house scene, on his next release, which has been quite humbling and an absolute honor to say the least.

 

The work flow always varies, but mostly im behind the computer, and my partners bring over their laptops.. most of them are on ableton and im on cubase, so collaborating can be a bit time consuming, but works out. We're both doing a little bit of everything, but we each kind of specialize in certain things (some of us do nice buildups/fx, others- nice hi hat patters, etc, others- funky basslines.. i'm always hearing hooks in my head and lead melodies.. sometimes we both do sound design, some songs we're getting the groove together, and other times, ill come with a "full package" of a track and one will just help me arrange and put some vocal ideas to it, so it all depends on the particular track.

 

balancing it all and time management/project management is the challenge. I do think it's good for everyone to specialize, but also nice when multiple songwriters are building upon elements together (can make for some truly unique stuff).

[Guest A/D]

lol! Just signed on to mention that Matt. No worries man, it's still a good time whenever it occurs! May it happen again soon.

[Lane Visitor]

Whenever A/D and I are in the same city we get together and work on a track. We've never finish them though, mostly because I suck and forget to send him the files when he leaves. I feel like an ass about that. Public apology :-/

Boards of Canada, is that you?!?!?

[kcinsu]

lol

[LimpyLoo]

For the sake of stepping out of my comfort zone I would be interested in collaborating with someone.

 

PM me if you wanna try some shit.

[awepittance]

I tried collaborating with you Matt/kcinsu and your abelton session was so complex and macro-i-fied that I had no fucking idea how to do anything with it! I'd still like to collaborate though, you just somehow have to sink down to my abelton ignorance level. I'm getting way better though, i'm finally comfortable mixing down tracks in it now. Huge step for me. I was idiotically for a while doing the most absurd work around. I would pump 8 stereo tracks from abelton in real time via soundflower into 8 empty stereo tracks in cubase, and mix and finish the song in there.