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swerve tweeter
Joined: 09/09/05
Posts: 50
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Moods influencing your music
Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 12:29 PM
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Im interested to hear how everyone starts a musical composition. Does it start with you feeling a certain way and then trying to encompass said mood into a musical form.
Or do you just go at music with no preconceptions of how itll turn out, and go with the flow.
Personally i find mood does'nt always influence the way for a new tune, i can feel totally happy and churn out the most depressing gothic sounding piece, and vice versa.
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A Bit Crusher
Joined: 01/26/02
Location: Tilburg
Posts: 1794
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RE: Moods influencing your music
Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 1:37 PM
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swerve tweeter wrote:..........Personally i find mood does'nt always influence the way for a new tune, i can feel totally happy and churn out the most depressing gothic sounding piece, and vice versa.
The same for me....I just sit down and make music (almost) everyday, sometimes I get inspired, sometimes not, sometimes I'm influenced by my mood, sometimes not....in the first place making music is hard work, nothing more, nothing less IMHO....
BTW...haven't done a lot of musicmaking lately....see my earlier posts...
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swerve tweeter
Joined: 09/09/05
Posts: 50
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RE: Moods influencing your music
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 at 10:46 AM
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Well kudos for making music nearly every day, i wish i could muster the energy for that but my job puts paid to that. Which is a shame cos only making music every couple of months or so means i tend to forget where i am on the keyboard. It tends to take me 2 or 3 tunes to get back into the flow of writing music.
I wholeheartidly agree with you on the fact making music is hard work. it totally is and the older i get the harder it becomes. I wish i had the energy i had 10-15 years ago and also know what i know now about the process/composition. Alas it isnt to be. 
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Synerdata.Net Radio
Joined: 04/01/04
Location: Canada
Posts: 102
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RE: Moods influencing your music
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 at 6:57 PM
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swerve tweeter wrote:Well kudos for making music nearly every day, i wish i could muster the energy for that but my job puts paid to that. Which is a shame cos only making music every couple of months or so means i tend to forget where i am on the keyboard. It tends to take me 2 or 3 tunes to get back into the flow of writing music.
I wholeheartidly agree with you on the fact making music is hard work. it totally is and the older i get the harder it becomes. I wish i had the energy i had 10-15 years ago and also know what i know now about the process/composition. Alas it isnt to be.
I agree with both of these comments... where I get into working on music, but when I have to pause it to work on other things, it can end up taking time to get back into a compositional flow again. Even a bad song is a lot of work to poorly do well, let alone, a great one.
I find I am most inspired to produce new music after I have heard a new harvest of what everyone else is doing, a few times... Then it's a rush to get the music done before I have to stop to harvest more new releases, invariably breaking the creative flow.
It is strange how mood may have nothing to do with a new track, or even, how a new track can change one's mood and inspire one as it is produced, and thus set the mood.
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Joe Kurve
Joined: 06/30/02
Location: Orange, TX
Posts: 19
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RE: Moods influencing your music
Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 2:00 AM
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For me there are basically two types of songs.
The first one is the most common - just start laying things down. Drums first, then bass, in most cases. After that it's just kind of a free for all - start dialing in sounds, jacking with sounds, playing however my brain tells my fingers to play summed with my twitchy nature. Sometimes I progress, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I wake up only to realize that everything I wrote last night was CRAP - at least IMO.
The second type of song is special, and holds a deeper meaning for me. These songs normally start out like the first, drums and bass. Yet a week, a month, even a year (or in my current projects case, 7 years) after having begun the track I revisit it once again - and it GRABS me. Gets me hooked. No blinking of eyes, no thinking...just all of a sudden it's 8am and I have to get ready to go to work. At least once I've written an entire song overnight, start to finish ("Sensory Flood" - not inspired by mood but rather weather). That is rare though, so normally once I have the first night of inspiration and the track gains substantial momentum, it becomes an "every few days" type track where although I may not accomplish A LOT, I am working steady towards completion. I completely believe that my moods have major influence over these types of tracks for me, whether deliberate or not.
ALL of my music, regardless of how it came to be, HAS to be influenced by my mood, whether I know it or not. Why do I say this? Because EVERY SINGLE ONE of my songs is like a polaroid snapshot inside of a scrapbook - I can tell you WHO I was, WHERE I was, WHO I was hanging out with, WHO I was dating, what JOB I had, and the list goes on. If my songs can hold information like that in them, then I MUST be putting a piece of myself in there, yes?
Quote:Personally i find mood does'nt always influence the way for a new tune, i can feel totally happy and churn out the most depressing gothic sounding piece, and vice versa.
I agree, yet I wonder...hmmmmm. I identify in that if I am angry I may get something peaceful. Yet, I am open to the fact that there may be something I am unaware of. Maybe this "peaceful" sound stemmed from my anger in that it is my brain's way of yearning for peace. Kind of out there, I know...but it at least makes sense, yes?
I can sit here and argue back and forth with myself all I want - mood matters, no it doesn't, mood matters, no it doesn't. But now it should be obvious to everybody reading this that YES, mood influences MY music, whether I am making a conscious effort to LET it or not.
Sorry for the novel, but it's what I do.
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Synerdata.Net Radio
Joined: 04/01/04
Location: Canada
Posts: 102
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RE: Moods influencing your music
Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 3:21 AM
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Joe Kurve wrote:Sorry for the novel, but it's what I do.
The same thing happens to me, regularly, for the same reason.
It just kind of happens, doesn't it.
-Gordon
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Joe Kurve
Joined: 06/30/02
Location: Orange, TX
Posts: 19
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RE: Moods influencing your music
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 4:21 PM
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Yup yup. I just have a compulsion to try and communicate what I mean as accurately as possible, at the expense of being wordy. Hell, I'm not the one having to read it.... 
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Second Thought
Joined: 05/05/02
Location: Oh God knows.
Posts: 188
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RE: Moods influencing your music
Friday, May 21, 2010 at 5:43 AM
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For the majority of my Second Thought output, I've tried to convey the idea of a place, an image, or such, instead of a mood - so as long as I'm in the mood to create music that sounds like a city or a forest or whatever to me, then that's what I'll make.
Recently I've been demoing up some tracks for a new album and they're a lot more personal. At the moment I'm having a bit of a major change around in my thinking and approach to life and am moving away from my wilder studenty days towards wanting a nice job and moving back to the countryside. It seems this album I've begun to plan out is taking the perspective of recalling my childhood, maybe trying to get back there even. It's quite melancholy and nostalgic which is how I've been feeling for the last six months (in which these pieces have been composed).
Drug use for children has for many an education and with obvious alarm to both parents on the increase almost yearly.
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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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RE: Moods influencing your music
Friday, May 21, 2010 at 12:38 PM
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I try to keep my mind and feelings out of the process and work from experimentation and reacting to the results. I do this for the pure joy I get from creating something that I couldn't think of or plan. Looking back on the songs I've released, I feel most are songs I couldn't have 'written.'
On a more subconscious level, I think this also allows me to externalize the music making process, and feel like I am a participant as opposed to the sole creator. Why this is necessary, I am not sure, but I do know that several artists/composers I've enjoyed over the years feel something similar - that they are a channel for the music, that it already exists and that you as the artist are open to receive it and attempt to translate it for all to hear. So it becomes music discovery as opposed to music composition.
The actual process usually grows from a drum beat/pattern/loop, and experimenting on top of it. In the last few years, the experimenting has been done by jamming a bass or guitar on top of the beats, then opening the wav file from the jam, locating interesting parts, extracting them, importing into ACID, then arrange and cut things up to get something going. Although, you can hear more similarity in the last 5-10 songs of mine as I have become a bit too comfortable with this process. Once you get too comfortable... you get lazy, which means it is time for change.
Pre-electronic music, I was playing guitar in a few bands - back then, I wrote for guitar only, and would sit down w/ a notepad and pencil, and since I couldn't write music, I had my own method where I'd write the chord name, and draw dots to denote the timing for accents, and use vertical lines to show measures. The root ideas still came from jamming, but the overall writing process was more like composing than what I do now. Plus, back then, I would also write lyrics. The written music was never shared w/ the band. Once a song felt done, it was usually fairly fast and easy to play the song and have them learn it and build upon it. When composing for guitar, I never considered bass or drums - only chords, rhythms, and accents, as I had no clue what the bass or drums should do.
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just john
Joined: 09/27/01
Location: Poughkeepsie
Posts: 110
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RE: Moods influencing your music
Saturday, May 22, 2010 at 3:36 PM
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I just read this line in Dexter in the Dark a couple hours ago and it (perhaps unfairly) prompted me to make note of it, for quoting in this thread.
"A recording played softly, the sound of someone who seemed to be fighting off an overdose of downers by occasionally ringing a series of small bells."
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swerve tweeter
Joined: 09/09/05
Posts: 50
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RE: Moods influencing your music
Sunday, May 30, 2010 at 3:32 AM
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Re:Gideon
Your so right with what you say about musical discovery, its a far more enjoyable process if the whole thing feels new and undiscovered to yourself. So the whole experimentation thang brings a kind of joy that cant be pre-written and experienced.
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Joe Kurve
Joined: 06/30/02
Location: Orange, TX
Posts: 19
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RE: Moods influencing your music
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 5:59 AM
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Gideon: I like what you say re: "Why this is necessary, I am not sure, but I do know that several artists/composers I've enjoyed over the years feel something similar - that they are a channel for the music, that it already exists and that you as the artist are open to receive it and attempt to translate it for all to hear."
I've often told people something very similar - to the effect that "all music was written from the beginning," and that I am not creating anything new. It's as if there is a master score, that is blackened by the presence of all notes, rhythms, and articulations. All I am doing is merely picking out the ones I like.
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(((stereofect)))
Joined: 09/02/01
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1333
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RE: Moods influencing your music
Saturday, July 17, 2010 at 9:48 PM
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Eliminating the computer from the creation process (other than to edit samples for the es-1 or record what I play) has been very liberating for me. The "drag and drop" mentality was really getting old with me. Removing the computer from the equation completely changes how you approach music. I find the results much more satisfying. Though, admittedly, the process does take longer to complete. It's a trade off I'm willing to live with....
Steve
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” Albert Einstein
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A Bit Crusher
Joined: 01/26/02
Location: Tilburg
Posts: 1794
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RE: Moods influencing your music
Sunday, July 18, 2010 at 11:33 AM
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(((stereofect))) wrote:Eliminating the computer from the creation process (other than to edit samples for the es-1 or record what I play) has been very liberating for me. ......
Every now and than I think I should do the same....but I'm so addicted to my MAC...and so used to my way of making music....
On the other hand....I started making music without one....
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