Award Sounds

I've been writing the series of articles on Musical Creativity and how to overcome composer's block for a while now and I'm always curious about the creativity part of it. No matter how well I prepare a composition, some of the best compositions become better by improvising a new melody.

Dr Charles Limb's research into the brain's activity during jamming and improvisation is enlightening.

Sometimes it's easy to get lost in more complicated structures and then a song brings back the joy of a simple structure. A lot of pop/rock songs have been based around three chords, hey some popular songs had only two. That should be no surprise. I'd expect most readers to already know that.

But when was the last time you wrote a song using just three chords?

I like it when something just works, but I always feel a bit ambivalent when I can't really notice it working.

The Kit

In this case, I've just been using the Radial Engineering Reamping Kit. It consists of two main components (the J48 active phantom DI and the X-Amp amp driver) plus a power supply for the X-amp and a plastic box to hold it all in.

Plugging In for Re-Amping

Compressors are regularly used to tame errant dynamics or to increase the perceived volume of a track. As well as squashing the audio, the compressor can be used to bring out some elements more than others.

Letting the attack through

However, I love putting an ordinary audio track through a plug-in and working through the presets, especially those presets that it's not designed for.

The Award Sounds website had its first birthday yesterday. One year old. Wow. I posted the first articles on 15th July 2007. They were mainly placeholders stating what I was going to place on the site.

Mention an octaver to a musician, especially a guitarist, and you're heading for a conversation about Hendrix.

It can be used for other styles. So here's a quick trick for writing funk. Forget the bass when you start. I half-expected to get lynched, but bear with me, at least until the end.

Background

I like the old P-funk of Funkadelic and Parliament. I think what made me hear it more was the inclusion of a distorted guitar in a funk show. This was often played in sync with the bass guitar.

Setting the groove

I've talked about tremolo as a musical feature before, this time I want to go into more detail.

First things first, let's sort out the guitarists: I don't mean using the tremolo arm/whammy bar or whatever you want to call it ("handle" as my girlfriend called it - and no she won't be picking up my guitars for a while). The whammy bar creates a vibrato feature, not a tremolo. Vibrato alters pitch.

Amplitude

13. Meet Other people

13a avoid being recluse

Composing music can be a solitary activity. For some that works, for others it can be a lonely experience. Whatever the perspective, it can quickly turn into isolation. Collaborating with others reduces the isolation.

13b friends

I've met most of my best friends through music and music-related activities. Some of the people I met as acquaintances have turned into good friends over time.

Even arranging a loan with your bank manager is a form of collaboration. Ok, it's a purchase of a product by you from them, but if responsible, then the bank should be acting in partnership with you. I'm working on a few projects where I can see finances becoming an issue in the medium term. I could also see a few of the project members funding their own areas. None could fund the whole project, but as each could fund their own area, the project could still work. It's like pooling resources but more controlled.

8. Opportunities