Category Archives: Learning music

Thursday 19th April 2012 – Self-Sufficiency and Honesty in Your Work

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Bands have always been an interesting endeavour for me. However, I have never been drunk with the delusions that musicians in bands often get; the chance of making money in a band is very slim, especially if you want it to support you. For this reason, bands have always been something to forward my musical skill, have fun with and develop ideas with. Of course, that isn’t to say I never wanted to take things further; I would still put the work in to take things as far as they would go but I think the realisation about how things really work should be central.

It seems that most of the time bands never work out because there are just too many people involved. Without the threat of pulling income away, people shy away from accountability. Also, with bands being non-earners for extended periods, people will always put their money earners first, along with their security. People will also tell you all about how much they are looking forward to being creative and working with a band but when it comes down to action, the rest of their lives influence them more and all of a sudden they are constantly taking the inferior easy option and/or being unreliable. All fair enough really, we all need to eat and have roofs over our heads!

Anyway, for these reasons I have actually started work on a new project, which will go ahead at a leisurely pace but will be an exploration of basic sound and creativity harnessed with myself as a boundary. I plan to write and perform everything myself, using my own acoustic instruments all recorded in my own space with my own equipment, each instrument having only one role.  For example, if I layered three or four guitar parts, it could sound luscious but if a group of musicians visited my flat without their own instruments it would be impossible to play, as I only have one acoustic guitar. I have actually talked out against people setting themselves creative boundaries before and it’s a little controversial but I still stand by those sentiments. It’s all about context in my opinion: Using only specific tools really does help, but why limit your ideas..?

These ideals are really at the forefront of my thinking at the moment, as can be seen with my project, Secret Soundtrack. Minimal tweaking, using what you have, not over complicating things and using natural ambiences. This is all just to see (or prove) what can be done without getting all excited about the myriad of technologies available. Musicians often want to use all the latest kit (influenced by marketing, no doubt) to give themselves a great sound but my experiences in recording have proved time and again that natural is best. For example, your living room will not sound as good as Studio 2 at Abbey Road, but it will have it’s own personality and flavour which you shouldn’t be ashamed of or scared to use. If you do use it, don’t do this under the premise that it is inferior, work with it’s natural personality to produce something different.  Tinkering too much will easily destroy the integrity, and therefore communication of the output as your aim will be to ape. Also, you do need to improve something that is just different (and therefore not inferior – embrace what you have).  So, to be creative, you need yourself, your ideas and whatever is around you. Of course, it won’t sound like Abbey Road but that’s only an issue if that has been specifically requested by somebody paying for your food and shelter…

If you like the ideas in this post, you may also want to read an earlier post: ‘Working With What’s Natural’.

Thursday 24th November 2011 – Sound, Architecture and Environment

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The odd thing about recording is that your end product, the music, isn’t exactly real… it is a process that allows replication of something that has gone on before:  The music etc is played live and a snapshot is taken.  Also, you may know that the recording process cannot capture every single aspect of what the sound was like when you took that ‘snapshot’.  Current technology is very good at trying to emulate the original sound and you could argue that it does it so well that the imperfections are not even noticed, especially to the non-musician.

However, there are aspects of live music that the face-value capture of sound encapsulates with great difficulty.  Think about listening to a great busking band on the street.  You have the excitement of stumbling upon the performance; the personalities of the performers as they interact with the crowd, verbally and with their instruments; the collective experience of being part of a crowd; your own state of mind, if you are on holiday for example; and all of the sounds and feelings associated with these aspects.  Then there are the more physical aspects:  the way the sound of the different instruments reverberate around the buildings (even depending on where each musician is sitting), the qualities of that reverberation (imagine the difference in sound of a cathedral to your living room); other sounds working with/against the music intentionally or otherwise; even the state of the air could influence the total experience.  You then buy a copy of the band’s CD as the experience was so wonderful but, although the CD may sound good, it just isn’t the same.

The total experience (the actual music added to these aspects missing from the CD) is atmosphere (which I go on about all of the time!) and modern recording technologies can even go a long way to accounting for this; think about those realistic reverbs for example.  To my mind, maybe a change in focus is what’s needed to get closer to this elusive ‘atmosphere’.  When recording, maybe don’t think of it as recording music; or even as recording a performance.  Maybe think about the process as recording an experience.  This combined with keeping an open mind about what you can use to achieve this may produce even stronger results.  Music in particular tries to reproduce the thoughts and feelings of the song-writer using abstract methods (communicating with a guitar is very different from talking!), so why not extrapolate this to the whole process rather than just the sound-making?  You could even take this to the extreme by reproducing the atmosphere of a performance without actually including the instrument being used, although this would be a little silly if you are recording a virtuoso violinist because they are technically brilliant, for example!  Obviously, the balance of sound reproduction and atmosphere would have more real-life applications…

So, that finally brings me to the more overt topic of this post.  Architecture could be said to be one of the unsung heroes of the life experience.  We take it for granted that buildings, trees, and the rest of our surroundings are ‘just there’ but as any architect will tell you, these surroundings mold our lives and our life experience/atmosphere.  Therefore if we are thinking about the recording of music as above, it follows that we should take time to notice how sound interacts with the spaces it is immersed in.  This could go further than just putting the sounds in a reverb that emulates the space, and many musicians work with furthering this idea (for example Gustav Holst tried to describe the planets of our solar system in his music ‘The Planets’ using an orchestra; The band The Gathering used samples of crowd noises and street noises in their album ‘If Then Else’ to manipulate the atmosphere).

Thinking about how sounds interacts with architecture or the environment may not lead to placing sounds in a space as such, but it may also deepen an understanding of sound by looking into it’s real-life behaviour, which could loosen-up a musician’s perspective and therefore increase creativity.  For example, watch this you-tube video of a fantastic sound-art installation and see what you learn…

http://youtu.be/Ve6PTrlLGOU

Also, think about the application of sound within the architectural field.  Have a read here for some actual buildings/projects that have been designed to work within an environment that takes sound into account.  A couple use fountains to put up a mask of ‘white noise’ (which contains sound from all frequencies- i.e. the ‘snow’ on blank analogue TV channels) to cover traffic noise; a classroom was also designed to reduce spill of outside noise whilst emphasising the frequencies that the human voice occupies; raised portions and physical barriers evade noise and different materials sound differently when walked on.  Related to this, there are companies out there that design sound for business, taking every sound made within the company’s remit a part of their brand i.e. you wouldn’t use a noisy, clangy metallic floor in a shop that specialises in massage or meditation.

Of course, this is a two-way street as well.  Musicians and sound recorders can learn from sound in the real world and architects can learn from musical idealism i.e. calming soundscapes may be used in a massage parlour so maybe the building can be constructed in a way to emphasises these sounds.

So, if you are a music fan see if these ideas change the way you listen to music; musicians out there, maybe try thinking about sound differently and see if it enhances your output; and if you are involved in any aspect of creation think about how sound is as much a part of experience as your chosen field is and how careful thought around it can enhance the end product.

Thursday 29th September 2011 – What is Musical Atmosphere and how do you Create it?

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Atmosphere is something that I often refer to so I thought I would try to explain this abstract term in relation to my interests.  Many musicians are expert at manipulating atmosphere but many don’t even try so I thought I’d give my opinions and ideas.  If you look at a dictionary definition it will tell you that atmosphere is a pervading tone or mood but I’m a little conscious that this is a bit vague when referring to music/sound.

In terms of creating a convincing, all-enveloping atmosphere that transports the listener I think that it is helpful to expand the above definition.  An atmosphere is an intricate network of various emotions and senses that are tightly knit together, sometimes so much so that the overall effect gives no clue to what it is composed of.  Because of this, creating an atmosphere by working backwards from a general feeling may produce very bland results i.e. just filling a happy song full of happy melodies/chord.

To effectively transport the listener into the song or music, a deeper understanding of the happy situation is needed.  The best way to achieve this is to try to affect as many senses as possible and refer to related thoughts and feelings, untangling multiple causes of the atmosphere and deciding their weighting. I also find that it helps to picture the scenario and think about what you can see and/or feel as well as think about what others may see or feel.

To me, the most important aspect of an atmosphere is the space it is contained in because this seems to form a basis of almost any experience (through the filter of experience and emotion, but I’ll come to that).  For this reason, I like to start here.  Generally, a song or piece of music can have a sense of space when listened to because of the amount and/or type of echo (reverb) added to individual instruments or the whole piece.  In many cases, this echo is added for technical reasons to help individual instruments be heard more clearly and to add depth for a bigger sound.  In other cases, relevant to this post, it is used specifically for mood such as to enhance emotional vocal lines: the sound of an emotive vocal in a big hall can be very powerful.  These days you can use convolution reverb to actually sample real spaces and use your computer to put your recorded audio into these spaces.

If you look at the space you are currently in you will see various objects around, some of them make sounds on their own, others may need a little help… If you are at work and think about making music about it, you could use machinery/technology noises but morph/adapt them to underlying emotions. Emphasising uncomfortable sound frequencies could increase a sense of stress (at work) along with using a rushed timing. You may use the same sounds but soften their sound and transients to make them more calming if your story involves a calm workplace.  You may not want to use field-recordings in your music so, to communicate stress, you may play your guitar faster with a strong attack (note onset), and also emphasise those harsh frequencies.   For work-related stress, you may also play with a mechanical, repetitive feel or even mirror the sounds of machinery/technology present. To soften this you may slow your playing down, manipulate the sound to get a warmer (bass-influenced) feel or layer it with a soothing instrument like a string orchestra.

There will always be more sensations though, such as experience or other emotions, as life just isn’t that simple.  If you are at work, you may have an underlying sense of stress and also relief of being able to joke around. You may have a sense of pride or despair; or you may experience excitement and longing if you met your husband/wife there.  Conveying the overall feeling may be hard without breaking this atmosphere into it’s parts.  Of course, lyrics can convey these ideas but this wont work for instrumentals and if there are vocals wouldn’t the experience be far more intense if the instrumentation strengthened their effect?  To create an overwhelming sense of being placed right inside the music’s subject matter, dissect the elements of the atmosphere you are experiencing and find sounds/themes/ideas for each aspect.

There are also more aspects you can reference; atmosphere also contains the perceptions of the people in the space, or have been in it, along with your own possibly unique viewpoint.  These interactions may be a central theme but hard to convey from a general perspective so all these aspects could have sounds or themes. You could layer physical themes with references from personal experience or common sense to create your whole; obscuring the sounds may give the impression of dreaming or forgetfulness; you could use different sounds, instruments, styles of playing or different sound treatments to represent different people.  The way the themes interact with each other in your ‘physical landscape’ can also be manipulated. Are they in harmony? Are they fighting? Are they working together to solve something?

Well, here are a few ideas of how the atmosphere in music can be intensified (in my opinion!). You may want to do this to make your music more convincing and substantial or you may be exploring sound and it’s relation to the human experience but either way have fun and use these ideas, if new to you, to open up a whole new universe of inspiration. If you have any thoughts or ideas on these ideas please feel free to comment below.

My first experiment into using atmosphere in this way, using synth, is Bedtime Nursery Rhymes.  My next venture along these lines, using ‘found sound’, is Some London Life; go over and take a look!

Thursday 25th November – What is music?

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Yeah this is quite a huge question (and follows on from last week’s post…) but as so many people, musicians and non-musicians alike, are so quick to judge what is and is not music I feel it is a very important question for me.  They can’t all be right…


So, at a basic level you could say that music is a communication of ideas conveyed by the musicians to whoever is listening.  These ideas could be personal or more general and concerning society or abstract ideas.  If the former use is made, the listener can relate in a personal way to what is being said.  This can help the listener understand their own thoughts and ideas in a way similar to talking through problems (which is probably why some music is popular with teenagers – I remember it isnt easy being a teenager!).  With the latter, it may be said that the cause is more noble and relevant to people in general as it seeks to inform us of our collective shortcomings and tries to induce change for the better.  To me, each type is viable as they are both a communication of ideas that have an affect on people.


Music could be said to be art, so conformity to artistic sensabilities is vital if this classification is to be used.  Some people have honed their skills to a point where they can really push the boundaries of accepted sound and music and create music for music’s sake.  Others not so much… (popstars that call themselves artists fall into this category a lot – they are generally a mouth-piece for a writer or use a paint-by-numbers approach) …but artistic music or not, it’s still music…


Another factor justifying entrance into the category of music could well be the skill or ‘talent’ of the musicians that are conveying the ideas (talent is not a word I like but more on this another time…).  Is ‘real’ music played by highly trained classical musicians, highly trained jazz musicians, teenagers learning their instruments or the person on the street?  It is a well known fact that many classical musicians find improvising music terrifying.  This is because they are taught to be an instrument of the composer and to basically do what they are told (notice the parrallel to ‘brainless’ popstars).  Would you tell a highly trained classical musician they cannot play music?  The reverse goes for some Jazz musicians:  They thrive on making it up as they go along and refuse structure and order to varying degrees (an earlier post: ‘Freedom‘ touches on improvisation).  Again, as with classical musicians, they can be seen as the epitome of what being a musician is  all about.  The teenager or inexperienced musician does not have the above qualities to justify themselves but nonetheless I believe they still make music.  An inexperienced teenage band can still rock a crowd (even if this is less likely) and they can also convey some very relevant and provocative ideas.  So, how about person on the street?  Well, if you give them some shakers and other noise-making items and ask them to make some music, they will.  It may not follow musical convention or be played with precise musicianship, but it is still music and this is proved by layperson participation in carnival music etc.  The computer musician without musical training that makes music from sampled loops of tunes, beats etc also falls into this category.  They still make music, and even make a living from it.


Many people would think that not all the above types of musician actually make music.  I disagree.  I disagree mainly because it still has the effect of music.  These people make sounds and these sounds induce an emotion in the listener.  This could be contextual as with the carnival or booze-fuelled teenage gigs, but this does not detract from this emotion.  So, is music just the ability to make sounds?  Partly… I think it is, but there is one factor that runs through all of the above examples.  No one would choose to listen to an out of tune singer but such a performance can still be moving, and I have experienced this.  This constant thread is the self-expression of the music-maker.  This could emerge as the need to make some one dance, to interpret or do justice to a classic work, to say something  perceived important or just to move with the music.  There is no person alive that has the right to tell another person that their version of self-expression is irrelevant or incorrect (well, unless it’s illegal or of questionable morality of course!).  So, those that do pass such judgements:  Please stop it and concentrate on expressing yourself less to the detriment of others.  And don’t be afraid of the criticism of others as their opinions are not founded in an appreciation of what you are doing…only of their own insecurity…

Thursday 4th November – A Music Lesson

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This week, I had to move between two offices during my day-job.  This was during school-run time which meant  I saw many parents dropping their children off at school.  This was in quite a deprived area and I as I looked around me I started to see signs of the hopes that these parents had for their children (which are probably more pronounced compared to those living in more well-off areas).  I started to think that, in fact, a lot of these parents, many new to this country and new to how this country works, would see education as a means to an end.  A way to make sure that their children would be able to do well for themselves and live without money trouble.


The hill these children have to climb is immense, learning all manner of subjects at school…. as well as the other lessons life teaches you that you can’t study at school.  I started to believe that many people think formal eductiaon is a means to an end so they switch off their own thoughts in favour of being carried by it and what it tells them.  When outside of this environment, and formal education is over, I think the need to be carried probably sticks and manifests itself in the pursuit of some end goal (happiness, wealth, etc).  Dont get me wrong, I’m a strong advocate of formal education but it seems people do think about it in a rather limiting way.  In my opinion, these goals dont show ‘the end’ even though they represent it for many people trying to achieve them.


I believe the same goes for music.  You can learn a lot about music with examined goals; the way it works, how to make it all fit together, how other people have done it, etc etc.  But, like life, can you really respect and understand it until you have taken part?  This doesn’t mean I’m being elitist, in fact it means that I think people should just take part; make some noises, try to get these noises sounding cool, interact with other people, express themselves and have fun.  Or course, it’s unlikely that things will sound as great as you wish when you first start, but if you realise the things you need to teach yourself as and when you need them then you can learn them and improve…


I taught myself about music alongside some pretty unstructured yet invaluable help from friends, and as I need to know something or want to be able to do something I research it and practice it until it is as I want it.  This may seem like a hit-and-miss way of doing things but on the other side I’ve ‘jammed’ with quite a few classically trained musicans that are terrified of jamming/improvising.  A lifetime’s study of music and they find it hard to just make music.  I’m no jazz musician, but I give it a go and climb that hill.  As I said, getting an education is obviously important and learning academically is also but I just think that the attitude of those learning can be limiting.


I personally still feel I have this huge hill to climb, and I’m sure most people do whatever they are persuing.  Contrary to what our society teaches us I think we never ‘make it’ but continue to learn and experience as time goes on.  If you want to try something new, like music, just do it.  Dont worry about all the academics and elitists that make you feel nervous about giving it a go.  What do they know… they are still learning too….