# Album From Start To Finish | Acushla (Part 16)



## Kyle Preston

*Current Video*

​

Sharing yourself publicly is terrifying. It doesn’t feel safe and it never has (for me). As a young lad, I developed an obsession with music in part from a need to feel safe. To feel like there was a place I could express myself without judgment or social pressure. It wasn’t caution or timidity, but necessity. It was a voice saying _express yourself or something very important inside you will die_.

And it feels like we’ve arrived at a time where listeners are just as, if not more interested in how art is made as the ‘finished’ art itself. The popularity of YouTube how-to tutorials, all the great chef documentary shows, etc. It's encouraged me to try and come out of my shell a bit more. It still goes against my instincts, but onward and upward as they say.

There are plenty of forums for game developers and filmmakers to post progress of their project. Devlogs, dev journals etc. I looked hard for a musical equivalent, have yet to find one that specifically serves this purpose. I’ve found good work reaching out to game developers and filmmakers because of their willingness to share their progress publicly. So I’m taking a page out of their book and trying it here.

By sharing all this, I'm hoping two things will happen:

You’ll learn something valuable about yourself and your process watching me complete (and fumble through) an EP from start to finish.
I’ll learn more about myself through my transparency with you.
One thing I’ve learned about songwriting that has always held true: the more solid your initial idea is, the more precision you have in executing it. Having a beacon makes creative choices easier. Rather than testing many random ideas, you can drop possibilities that aren’t right for your creative goals. These limitations can be liberating because *you* are the one building the structure! You define the rules. Sometimes a director or game developer builds the structure for you. But you still get to define the rules of the space you occupy in that structure.



​As an example, a few years ago I worked on an amazing game called Prune. A game about the beauty and joy of cultivation. The story determined every creative choice I made. The beginning of the game is optimistic. It involves a tree growing (mostly) unimpeded.

_A Golden Ratio
_
Every instrument I used had to please one of two rules:

Made from wood
Sound produced via air pressure (organs, flutes, pads I designed from wind sounds)
I used a piano which felt like cheating at the time so I ran it though a wooden chamber reverb to feel better about myself.

The next level introduced an opposing red dot, mechanical and ominous.

_And Then There Was Red_

Rules I made:

The ominous instruments needed to sound metallic
The wooden instruments needed to feel stronger, resilience in the face of adversity sort-of-thing. Hence the subtle introduction of the Cello which became the main instrument of the entire soundtrack.

I made up these rules for every part of the game. And then I did my best to adhere to the rules. That’s what I’ll be doing with this new EP. Establishing rules and then attempting to follow them.





Artwork Test #1​
My Creative Goals For This Album:

To not rely on synthesis to ‘fill the space’ (a typical habit of mine) . Which means I have to get better at traditional orchestration and rely less on my sound design chops.
I’m straying out of my comfort zone with this, both musically and socially. I want the music to reflect that. Adventurous but not carefree.

What I’ll be sharing:

Part of my creative process, good/bad ideas. This thread will be a public journal.
Boring Business Strategy Stuff (album release, licensing, press, etc..). All the stuff I don’t enjoy but am forced to do because capitalism
Designing the artwork

Anyway, stick around. This’ll be a learning experience for us both : )


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## AdventureSounds

Hey Kyle this is a superb idea! 
It's true not many people document their process publicly and I'm sure it will be very insightful to learn how another composer works, but probably terrifying for you 

My only wish is that you document both the good and the bad. I think it would be really valuable if you provide a real picture of any problems you've faced as well as successes. 

A while back Hans Zimmer released some early sketches of the Man of Steel soundtrack. They were really ruff and the MIDI programming was not great, but they were incredibly personal and very moving - almost like I was seeing the real him for once.
Anyway I'll stick around to see how ya get on


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## Kyle Preston

Totally @AdventureSounds! I had a similar experience watching some videos of Radiohead in the studio. It was fascinating watching them test ideas. Some of em were.....not flattering, but they were authentic.


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## Kyle Preston

*Who Are We. Where Are We Going? (Part 2)*​
Designing pad sounds from scratch is fun. For me, it _can_ be a crutch. They’re lovely but sometimes they feel like cheating. I’ll spend a few hours stretching or reverb-ing a source sound that I like, then assign pitches in Kontakt. It's a meditative thing and feels subconscious. 

*But*

Then I finish designing the sound. And push a lone key on the keyboard to generate richly textured sounds that can make _anything_ sound like a composition. It becomes easy to forget good music theory because most things instantly sound awesome. And for this project, I don’t want to rely on synthetic pads. I’m sticking with my rule of ‘organic' instruments only. But as I don't want to crash and burn straight out of the gate, I need a pad replacement to start with. First instrument I thought of was a nice soft organ. 

I played around with a couple pump and reed organs. I was lucky enough to grow up with a pump organ in the house and have a nostalgic understanding of them. Spent hours manipulating some of the available NI Kontakt instruments and one from Soniccouture & Rhythmic Robot. But the resulting sounds didn't feel quite right to me (apologies for the background noise).

​

I like the chords but the sound isn't quite right. Feels too piratey.

Oddly enough, I found a freebie pipe organ that hit all the right valves (pun intended). The Sample Phonics Town Hall Organ, preset 1 is a real beauty! Here it is completely dry:

​
7th chords just sound soooo niccce. 

Since I rely on synthesis and sound design a lot, I’m going to start there. But I'll replace the synthetic sounds with appropriate organic instruments. For the piece below, I started with Reaktor. Most of the sounds were a bit eccentric, but I kept the mellow bits and replaced the crazy parts with strings and harmonics. 

​
Just released this as a single today. In it is a seed of the idea for this project. To replace electronic sounds with strings and other traditional instruments. Eventually, my goal is to have no electronics whatsoever. And the organ feels like a good place to start .


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## Kyle Preston

*Preservation (Part 3)*​*Writing melodies is hard*. I hate mine, especially after hearing them 100 times in a DAW. Every once in awhile, there’s one that feels good. This one has a spark in it somewhere.

​

Technically, I guess the piano part is an ostinato and the viola the melody, but I intend to simplify both (after needlessly over-complicating it first) later in the EP.

Some new goals I’ve established for the EP:

Needs to be lean, tight and minimal. Every. Single. Instrument. Note. Should be justified.
“Because it sounds cool” is not going to fly this time around. It has to feel relevant.
I recently watched _The Pacific_ from start to finish. It’s an amazing series. I came away with it feeling this urge to do my part somehow (however minuscule) to preserve important ideas of the past. Ideas that sometimes get blindsided by new trends and progress. Ideas that come up in discussions like this one on VI. 

Both the _Band of Brothers_ and _The Pacific_ soundtracks seem to easily translate to piano. They’re very straight-forward. Very American. And there’s something genuinely fascinating (to me) about how magical they sound. They feel reserved, yet powerful. Minimal, but cast-iron. How the hell do you do that?

And more importantly for me, how do you _preserve_ that. I’m beginning to see a pattern in my work. Preservation. My last EP, Geo, was about climate change. The singles before and after were about sustainability (and inaction). I must be afraid of losing something…I’ll leave the rest for a shrink to unpack : )

Anyway, I’m trying to figure out _how the hell to do that_. I hear Aaron Copland’s https://www.amazon.com/What-Listen-Music-Signet-Classics/dp/0451531760 (What To Listen For in Music) is good. I think I’ll start there and report back. Here's another test melody: 

​


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## AdventureSounds

Writing melodies is hard I agree, but you have some really good ideas here. Kind of bleak but hopeful at the same time, how is that even possible 
It's really interesting how concepts shape your music. Normally I just go for an emotion, but having an abstract idea I think has more depth.
I really like Waves Coming. Its the kind of track that starts quietly with a simple idea but ends in a massive crescendo.
Preservation is interesting as well. I wonder what important things from the past we have let go. Probably many things.


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## ghobii

Interesting. This is making me think a lot about my own processes.


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## D Halgren

Wow, beautiful stuff! You have a new fan in the Pacific Northwest. Greetings from Portland!


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## Kyle Preston

AdventureSounds said:


> I really like Waves Coming. Its the kind of track that starts quietly with a simple idea but ends in a massive crescendo.



Much appreciated @AdventureSounds! I'm trying to think how to increase the force of the piece without too much on the crescendo at the end. We'll see what happens .


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## Kyle Preston

*Synthesis —> Aleatoric (Part 4) *​
I'm working out the inevitable kinks that arise converting synth sounds to classical instruments. I wanted more practice. Limbo is my favorite video game of all time – it is a masterclass in game audio and sound design. Luckily, I don’t have to worry about writing this EP in middleware, I can choose when to execute musical moments however I please. So, for this exercise I focused mainly on timbres and tone color. There’s not much music theory going on here, but the vibe of the original soundtrack is what I wanted to capture.

Here is the original main menu track from the game:

​
And here is my conversion to orchestral instruments.

​
One of the tricks I learned doing this is how well Aleatoric ideas work for converting ‘unnatural’ sounds to classical ones. So that’s what I did. My version is a combo of the the Sonokinetic _Espressivo_ library and a sizeable number of other strings patches performed with little regard for tempo.

It's another piece of the puzzle for the EP. And it's convincing me to push the music into darker territories.

I started Aaron Copland’s book – excited to share more. But in the mean time, I found this sentence in the intro illuminating.
_
"The nature of each piece of music defines its purpose, and the realization of the implied purpose indicates the success or failure of the composition, performer, and listener."_

- William Schuman

It reminds me how important it is to genuinely listen to your piece as you write. You have to adapt and react to what it feels like - to what it's telling you. Writing music is less architecture and more archaeology. Some days, I feel like I’m simply aggregating ideas instead of creating them.


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## ghobii

Love your interpretation, very beautiful. Though, for me it has a very different vibe than the original.

And I agree, that the fewer preconceived ideas we try to force onto a song, the more likely it is to find it's own path. The moments when I sense it want's to go left, when I was planning right, are when I learn things.


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## Kyle Preston

*Shame (Part 5)*​
It's interesting how different time periods seem to have their own arguments about what ‘real’ composers do. According to Aaron Copeland, a myth exists that writing your music at the piano is shameful. And that one should be able to write music out in a field somewhere just like Beethoven. Stravinsky counters this in his autobiography. He suggests to write music from the piano because the composer should always be in contact with _La Matière Sonore_, the 'sound material’. 

Could not agree more. Copeland goes on to say _“The method is unimportant. It is the result that counts”_. With that in mind, I started working on a piece at the piano and developed a theme I really like. Here it is in simplistic form:




It’s flexible and I can manipulate it in various ways to get the emotion I want. Though it's somewhat indifferent at the moment. Eventually, I want to end on a happier note. Right now, the motif goes up as equally as it goes down. But in an optimistic form, I’d like it to go up both times like so: 




​Here is a delicate intro to the motif. It's barely noticeable (I think) which is what I want for the beginning. I'm not sure I'll ever reach forte in this EP, not sure that I want to. 

​


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## Kyle Preston

*Horizontal vs Vertical Development (Part 6)*​
A few days ago I watched @mverta's Theminator course. It's filled with great practical info and tips (and I'm only half way through). There was an idea he presented that inspired me to write this: _Horizontal vs Vertical _development.

To simplify, think of the vertical qualities of music like harmony and tone color (timbre). These qualities are independent of time. Notes that describe harmony are simultaneous and tone color is a qualitative (not quantitative) quality.

But horizontal qualities are completely time dependent. Melody, Rhythm, things that you develop in a time frame are horizontal. (just like a Cartesian y = mx + b graph).

It's worth pointing out (and Mike does) that horizontal musical development is how music has been made since the beginning of time. _Even before we wrote it down!_ Rhythm probably came first (according to Copland in his book _What To Listen For In Music_). Those primal patterns are burned deep in our primate brains. Melody probably came next.

Tone color and harmony are more recent sophistications of music.

I'd say melody and tone color are the qualities I've spent most of my life attempting to improve in my music. Melody, more so lately. I'm still poking around with my main motif:




​The reason this topic fascinates me ties into my previous post on preservation. These traditional ideas, the ones that are deep in our brains – these are the ideas that we creators are ignoring. It's not that they're under attack, but they're not connecting with audiences like they used to. At least, not in any circles I spend time in. Studios are asking us to focus more on these vertical qualities and less on the horizontal. And my suspicion is the reason this technique is effective is because audiences don't stick around for long-form horizontal development. Even if it's amazing music.

We've all heard the trailer music that focuses nearly all of its effort on vertical development. The DAW sessions with 97 tracks of orchestral instruments stacked on top of each other performing at the_ same time_. This is not a criticism, I'm describing what it is. And on a side note, I'm sick of the predictable ivory-tower finger-wagging (borderline classism) at composers that pursue trailer music for a living. To each their own; we're all in this together. And it's worth pointing out that trailers are novellas, so of course there's not going to be long-form horizontal development.

But I'd like to propose a hypothesis for why vertical music is so effective today: we, as a culture are developing shorter attention spans (at least when we sit in front of computers and cellphones all day which is where we're consuming our content). We think in McNugget time.




​It's been said by many (and it's true) that traditional thematic development in music leaves listeners feeling like what they're hearing is old-fashioned. Not just in music for media, but even classical music is feeling that fear.

Anyway, I'm completely unsure where musical taste is headed. I don't care that much. But I'd like to preserve the efforts of those that came before me – that I've benefited from in so many ways.

Mike, if you're reading this, please don't be pissed that I shared a few of your bullet points. These are things I've thought and read about a lot. But I've never seen them presented in a modern musical context like you presented in your masterclass.

This was longer than I intended, but it's a dense important topic. I really just came here to post the latest development of my simple motif for violas:

​

I love the way violas sound in the their lower register.

p.s. a bonus logic pro tip I learned this week and wanted to share:

​


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## Kyle Preston

*Art Prototypes (Part 7)*​
A note from my diary:

_Embrace the dirtiness and griminess of string sounds. Close mic everything. Think of it as crafting work that is *painfully *beautiful. I’ve been living with too much polish. Concert halls use to be rowdy. I want my strings rowdier. _

I've had a few urgent (exclusive) requests from licensing libraries I work with. It's slowed down my work a bit. But groceries are important. I'll be working in Vegas the next two weeks, which should give me time to catch up on the artwork(s) but not much for music.

Here's a few prototypes:












This last one sort of feels like _*the one*_. It conveys everything I want: remembering our roots, where we come from, etc..

Also, I'm flirting with the idea of doing a vlog style-thing for this – that is, if it's helpful for yuns. Sometimes reading (and writing) development journals takes more time than necessary. But I'm wary of the typical positive spin everyone puts in their vlogs. It creates this false reality in our heads (most social media does this). Vloggers tend to edit out the non-fun stuff and we only see the amazing-awesomeness that is their life. We rarely see the insecurities or anxieties. We need more of that. Without it, we're just viewing life through a sort-of _National Enquirer_ lens – which is disgusting.


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## mc_deli

Love your writing


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## Kyle Preston

Thank you kindly mc!


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## D Halgren

Kyle, any progress on this? Waiting patiently. I'm a big fan of what you're doing!


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## Kyle Preston

You read my mind, @D Halgren : )

*Las Vegas (Part 8)*​
I returned from a work trip to Vegas earlier this week – such a bizarre place. At night, in my hotel room, I would try to work on the EP. The styles I’ve been crafting felt all wrong in that place. Ambient-classical music, for whatever reason in that city, felt weird. It was like eating pizza and sushi at the same time. 

So I caved in. _When in Rome do as the Romans do_ is a philosophy I live by. I let the city influence me. 

And I learned that this philosophy doesn’t always work. Now that I’m home and I hear the ideas, they’re terrible. Sometimes you lower the creative bucket into your well and a gallon of dog shit comes up. This sketch is the least terrible of the bunch. 

​
But it represents how I felt sleeping every night in the 108 °F _Entertainment Capital of the World_. I’d call this piece _reluctant locomotion_ if anyone asked – who knows, someone might make a movie about a character who is indifferent to Vegas. And I’ll have one piece ready for them. It’s good to be home is what I'm saying. 

And it takes a few days to get back into a daily rhythm. So I’ve been shooting from the hip with new ideas. This one needs plenty of work (it’s not edited or mixed), but I like the chord progressions: 

​
Happy to be back with my grimy strings and darker inclinations. 

p.s. Las Vegas taught me a few things:

Classical music in elevators is a beautiful thing - should be mandatory
Every hotel room is bigger than your Seattle apartment

What happens in Vegas, stays in a smartphone attached to a selfie stick
Coffee and garbage are synonyms 
I'm not a ‘robe guy'
Smoking indoors is still a thing
Cheesy Pringles cost $15.00 but Poutine (with an egg on top) is $14.00
Housekeeping is a collection of ninjas that are fucking amazing at their job!


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## D Halgren

I think all ideas are valid as a start for something. If I were you I would chop and blender that first piece into something. Use the drum midi for a different instrument, effect the shit out of the other instrument and chop and reorder, etc, or not. The second one is gorgeous!


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## Kyle Preston

Thank you kindly : )



D Halgren said:


> If I were you I would chop and blender that first piece into something



Absolutely. I used to do this with finished songs of mine I hated - I'd toss em in Paulstretch and give it hell. At the very least, it gave me a nice custom pad sound


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## D Halgren

Exactly


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## Kyle Preston

*
 The Performance (Part 9)





*​There’s no midi brick above that arch – just a silent CC1 movement. A nervous tick captured at the beginning of a performance. Something I do every. single. time.

Literally every time.

With the record button armed, that red light illuminates the screen and does something to my brain. And my brain responds.​_Get your shit together, you’re about to perform. AND THIS TIME IT MATTERS! _​
Now, most of us performing MIDI in our computer know this isn’t true. In a pinch for time, sure. But we _aren’t_ recording on tape anymore. To us, 0’s and 1’s aren’t precious (expensive) resources that run dry if we’re not careful. There’s always _next time_ to get that performance right.

I grew up recording on tape, first, a simple cassette recorder, then I upgraded to this:​



I still get the occasional nostalgic-longing to buy one again.​
One of the things cassettes taught me was that re-recording parts degrades the quality of the sound (Exhibit A). Which means (back then) ideas had to be finalized before the “real” recording started (I used "sketch" tapes for this purpose). This is a skill that feels lost on some of my younger peers. Because it’s not an inevitable part of recording anymore (at least, not one you’re forced to learn by necessity). It's a skill that one also develops naturally as a live performer. That _oh shit_ moment feels the same in front of an audience as it does in front of that red light. Because you’re *performing*.

I’m convinced this is one (of the many) reason(s) that professional recordings with professional musicians sound better. Their time is expensive, if you don’t capture what you need during a session, it’s twice as expensive. Problem-solving ahead of time prevents this expense and solidifies ideas in your head – it generates better performances. And as I’ve said, the more complete an idea in your head is before you perform, the easier it will be to achieve your creative goals.

Now, there’s no reason we can’t do this in a DAW. _Sketch_ tapes are exactly what I’ve posted in here so far. And that little OCD tick of mine (the arch) symbolizes the importance of treating music as a collection of complimentary performances. If these performances blend well together, and they tell the story I want to tell, then I believe I did my job.

​


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## Kyle Preston

*Pieces Coming Together (Part 10)
*​Below are 4 pieces put together in a barely-coherent order – recycling and expanding on my main motif throughout.

​


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## D Halgren

Amazing and beautiful! I really love your style so much! Was that all real instruments? It had such a raw and gritty sound.


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## Kyle Preston

Thank you thank you @D Halgren! This is the first time I've done it like this, but everything in the demo is a VI. All of it (pretty sure it's all Kontakt too). Everything is close-mic'd and sent to 2 or 3 reverbs : )

I'm still debating about hiring a violinist for this project.....budget is pretty tiny. We'll see though, nothing beats the real thing!


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## D Halgren

Close mics explains it. So brooding and powerful. You should get over to that Twin Peaks set and be the musical guest at the Bang Great job, I look forward to more.


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## Kyle Preston

*Texas Sharp Shooter Fallacy (Part 11)
*​Indulge me for a moment. 

The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy works like this: A retired sharpshooter from Texas decides to shoot at the side of a barn randomly. When he’s finished, he notices certain bullet holes grouped closer together than anywhere else on the barn. So he draws a bullseye around those holes and leaves. 




Now, when future passer-bys see the barn, they conclude that the shooter was aiming for that target all along. 

Today, I realized something terrible about my creative process. I am 100% guilty of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. I sketch out various random ideas, shoot them like bullets at a wall. Then, if I see a few bullet holes next to each other, I draw a bullseye around it. This then becomes my target as I aim future bullets in its direction. And it honestly never occurred to me that this method isn't rooted in anything truthful. ANY idea _feels_ true under this fallacy (especially creative ones). But in reality, it's just a bullseye I drew - circling random holes that hopefully contain a deeper meaning, but probably doesn't.

All of this realizing is convincing me to start over from scratch and dig deeper. To form better first principles for writing a collection of coherent pieces of music that fit snuggly together. I want the finished album to feel like it could ONLY fit together the way it does. Not glued together with half-baked theories that were never rooted in anything true. 

For me, music and art are about truth. Or at the very least, they should aim to be. 

What I think I may do is write a narrative. Build a frame work of story. When I look back on the better projects I’ve worked on, they’ve usually been for other developers/directors that had a fully structured story. Music naturally fits in a narrative framework, and I think I’d like to architect my way through this album, from first principles.


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## D Halgren

Kyle Preston said:


> *Texas Sharp Shooter Fallacy (Part 11)
> *​Indulge me for a moment.
> 
> The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy works like this: A retired sharpshooter from Texas decides to shoot at the side of a barn randomly. When he’s finished, he notices certain bullet holes grouped closer together than anywhere else on the barn. So he draws a bullseye around those holes and leaves.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Now, when future passer-bys see the barn, they conclude that the shooter was aiming for that target all along.
> 
> Today, I realized something terrible about my creative process. I am 100% guilty of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. I sketch out various random ideas, shoot them like bullets at a wall. Then, if I see a few bullet holes next to each other, I draw a bullseye around it. This then becomes my target as I aim future bullets in its direction. And it honestly never occurred to me that this method isn't rooted in anything truthful. ANY idea _feels_ true under this fallacy (especially creative ones). But in reality, it's just a bullseye I drew - circling random holes that hopefully contain a deeper meaning, but probably doesn't.
> 
> All of this realizing is convincing me to start over from scratch and dig deeper. To form better first principles for writing a collection of coherent pieces of music that fit snuggly together. I want the finished album to feel like it could ONLY fit together the way it does. Not glued together with half-baked theories that were never rooted in anything true.
> 
> For me, music and art are about truth. Or at the very least, they should aim to be.
> 
> What I think I may do is write a narrative. Build a frame work of story. When I look back on the better projects I’ve worked on, they’ve usually been for other developers/directors that had a fully structured story. Music naturally fits in a narrative framework, and I think I’d like to architect my way through this album, from first principles.



Can't wait! "Darkness makes me fumble for a key to a door that's wide open"


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## Kyle Preston

D Halgren said:


> Can't wait! "Darkness makes me fumble for a key to a door that's wide open"



Great song!


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## Kyle Preston

*Stuff & Things (Part 12)
*​Upon perceiving the flaws in my creative process, I couldn't listen to anything I'd written these past few months. So I quietly released my favorite pieces on Bandcamp and moved on. 

​
And then I picked up this:




​Excellent, excellent book. And not just for script-writing either but for learning story-telling fundamentals. I pushed through a few creative ideas and now have a nice pile of stories to base an album on. But I realized part-way through that I was repeating an old habit: trying to do it all completely on my own, in a vacuum. Which is impossible to sustain.

So to maintain this experiment of rooting an album in a story-structure, I decided to base it on one that's already written. Right now, I'm combing through some F. Scott Fitzgerald for possibilities.




​I'm gonna talk about music licensing next week. In the meantime, here is a new rough sketch about Artificial Intelligence:



​


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## ghobii

Honestly, I think you're over-thinking things. You seem to be saying that the sharpshooter approach, which is more about instinct, is less valid than starting with a preconceived target. Is it because it feels too easy? You're a very good composer, so maybe you're really just wanting to challenge yourself, as you feel in a bit of a rut. But if it helps you write music that, in your mind, is superior, then go ahead and work that way. I could see how it might help evolve a piece more deliberately...maybe, sometimes? It could also be needlessly confining. Though structure and limits are useful in any art to reduce the limitless choices.

But everyone is going to listen to your music with their own history of thoughts and experiences, and will not necessarily hear the connections that seem obvious to you. Truth can be very relative, especially if you try and pin it to something as ambiguous as music.


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## D Halgren

Beautiful as ever Kyle!


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## Kyle Preston

Thank you both kindly !



ghobii said:


> Honestly, I think you're over-thinking things.



I have a history of doing this. A friend brought up a really great point too; he said the subconscious deserves more credit and that barn-shooting isn't as random as it might feel. Which makes a lot of sense. At this point, I just want to run the experiment and see what comes out. Biggest fear I have is that I'm embarking on twice as much work to make something 1% better...we'll see.


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## ghobii

Kyle Preston said:


> Thank you both kindly !
> 
> 
> 
> I have a history of doing this. A friend brought up a really great point too; he said the subconscious deserves more credit and that barn-shooting isn't as random as it might feel. Which makes a lot of sense. At this point, I just want to run the experiment and see what comes out. Biggest fear I have is that I'm embarking on twice as much work to make something 1% better...we'll see.


Yeah, sometimes you just have to work through something to get it out of your system. And most likely you will discover something about your process along the way, so I don't think there's anything wrong with experimenting.


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## Kyle Preston

*Music Licensing (Part 13)*​
This post was promised last week and wasn’t finished on time. I’m sorry, I’m a liar. In my defense, I had two awesome short films fall into my lap, which I threw myself entirely into. I’ll post them when they’re released.

Moving on.

As a composer, you should be skeptical of most advice and I encourage you not to think of this post as advice. Think of it more like a Roman Coliseum - I’m in the pit fighting to survive and you’re watching (and hopefully learning) in the crowd. I’m writing this to help organize and remember what I’ve learned so far this year. It’s as selfish as it is altruistic. May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out.

Some recurring themes I’ve been told from those who’ve successfully licensed their music for years: _*BE PATIENT! *_

Holy shit are they telling the truth. I started licensing my music (123 pieces and counting) to various libraries back in March of this year. To my dismay, I learned how infrequent the payments are. Twice a year is about the avg I’ve encountered, some pay quarterly, some annually. And it takes……...time. Especially if you’re submitting to libraries and not music supervisors. I’ve also only encountered one company that pays up front for music (not very much). But there was a catch. They wanted all of my rights, including the copyright. And they ASKED ME TO LEAVE ASCAP, my performing rights organization (an org that collects performance royalties on my behalf). To each their own, but this is one sentence you should treat as advice: _Don’t give away your copyright or royalties, not unless you desperately need the money_. Even then, I would encourage to work part-time somewhere else and not support this destructive practice. Our industry has a lot of sharks. We lone-wolf composers are easy pickings for companies that profit by both our ignorance and desperation. So to combat that, here is a list of 100+ companies I’ve reached out to, with notes and details. Learn from my mistakes, I’ve written them in all caps.






*Exclusive vs Non-Exclusive*​
When I started this in March, I knew almost nothing about licensing. I did the shotgun approach of contacting everyone and their mother seeking libraries that would accept my music. Again, because I’m skeptical of advice, I wanted my own data to base an opinion on. Not forum posts, tweets or jaded attitudes.

Another tip I’ve learned from those more experienced in the industry is that exclusive deals are becoming more and more common. Which, from my perspective, sucks, because non-exclusive licensing companies are appealing to me for three reasons:


Multiple libraries can host your music, which means you have that many more fail-safes in place for when one of these companies tank. And they will tank.
Non-exclusive libraries allow me to upload my music on Bandcamp, Spotify, etc as I maintain all rights. In my position of having a small, but loyal group of fans, this is extremely important.
I enjoy crafting my own albums and then finding an audience for it a lot more than writing generic trailer cues

Now that said, I’ve written several cues for exclusive libraries this year (again, to gather my own data and determine a good future course of action). But I regret the way I’ve gone about this. Between May-Sept, I wrote around 36 pieces of music for different exclusive libraries. I did this all while working on my own record, scoring music for a video game and three short films. And I burned out, hard. My plan was to see which ones performed the best for me, then dedicate more of my time to just those certain libraries. I still think it’s a decent plan, but I would encourage you to be selective. Wasting time writing for libraries that don’t value your work is simply that, a waste of time. What my plan for now is, reach out to every non-exclusive library I can first, then find one or two great exclusive companies and ONLY write for them. My reasoning is this: if you begin to hate writing music because you're writing it for people who don’t value it, you’re ruining the entire reason you became a songwriter in the first place. And I say this entirely out of love, but in 2017, only a fool would get into this industry to make money.

*TAXI Music*​
I want to talk about TAXI music. They’ve been around for awhile and if you google them, the first five links that come up (at least for me) are something like “Is TAXI music a scam?”. Which doesn't give you objective data. It tends to attract shitposting (or worse, composers discouraging others from joining to keep competition down). I joined TAXI earlier this year on a friends advice. And I view them as a long-term investment. I wasn’t expecting immediate reciprocation and neither should you. Just planting seeds and I think I’ll revisit this next year to give better data but for now, here are my stats:




​21 Forwards to 37 submissions → 57% forward rate. I compared them with TAXI’s own data. 11% of submissions actually get forwarded to libraries and music sups. So I’m doing just fine. But so what, forwards are just forwards. How many deals did this create? I signed up in January. So far, I've been offered two deals by two different companies from those 21 forwards. Again, everyone at TAXI (and virtually every successful licensing composer I’ve met says this), deals TAKE TIME. This is not a quick business. Think of licensing like an investment in your retirement account. So with that in mind, keep writing, keep submitting. Or if you want to save your money and wait for me to post a failure followup (which I absolutely will if it happens), go for it. But these are two companies that don’t accept unsolicited material, so, in the grand scheme of things, one placement will more than pay for the annual membership. And I don’t mind taking that risk for my future. If it turns out to be a mistake, I’ll be pissed, but I’ll share that mistake with you.

*Why Licensing?*​
It’s one of the last available industries that pays introvert composers and songwriters for…...writing music. It’s filled with sharks, zombies, and saviors just like every other part of the music industry. If you think people are icky but you want to make a living as a composer (or in my case, buy groceries and fund future records), it might be a solid option.

Further reading:

Emmett Cooke’s - The Business of Music Licensing <-- A tremendous resource
This series in SoundOnSound <-- Another tremendous resource and super-cheap
Next post will be back to something creative. I hate talking about money. But the lack of transparent honesty in this industry bugs me even more.

_edit: replaced 'rejections' with 'submissions' and fixed other English word failures_


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## ghobii

Kyle, this is an amazing post! This kind of information is constantly sidestepped around by people in this business. I get that it's a difficult way to make a living, and every composer is a potential rival. But all the misinformation and secrecy is probably why there are so many sharks taking advantage of the floundering, wanna-be composers.

I'm still on the fence about how I'm going to approach selling my music, so this is incredibly informative. Thanks!


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## D Halgren

Kyle, you are a saint! Thank you so much for all the information and sharing your process.


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## Kyle Preston

Hope it helps you on your journey guys : )


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## Jdiggity1

Just caught up with the whole thread. Not sure how it flew under my radar for this long.
Now eagerly following your journey. Thank you Kyle, and great work!


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## Kyle Preston

Thanks @Jdiggity1 : )

Also, just found this thread where @mac posted a ton more libraries. Between his post and my list, should be over 200+ libraries to get you guys started.


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## Kyle Preston

*Formlessness (Part 14)
*​Since I'm starting from scratch again, I've been trying to get certain things out of my system. I've been obsessed with timbre for as long as I can remember. And as I'm shaping things to be more _traditional _for this project, I thought it might be fun to try and bore myself with timbre. So I made two rules:

Choose two chords and two chords only
Focus entirely on timbre
I cheated by writing a tiny melody and hiding it throughout the piece. There are no intervallic leaps, only step-wise motion. A trick I grew to appreciate by listening to _Palestrina _(thanks again to Copland's book)! Particularly this song:

​
Anyway, I think it worked because I'm tired of listening to my piece now. 

​
Still looking for the right story to base the work off of. Also, coming to the conclusion that I'll need to hire a string player to perform melodies that my samples just can't compete with. Which, I'm genuinely looking forward to. Will keep you posted !
​


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## mac

I don't know if I've already commented in your thread elsewhere, but I just wanted to say your music and design work is _really_ nice. I look forward to every update, keep it up


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## Kyle Preston

Much appreciated @mac, thank you for the kind words : )


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## D Halgren

Great, it sounds like dawn! May I suggest mythology as a source story. Dealer's choice on which world region. I have a particular fondness for Gaelic myths myself.


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## Kyle Preston

Funny you should suggest Gaelic myths. My wife and I took a DNA test a few weeks ago and I was really surprised to learn that I'm almost entirely Irish. And it occurred to me how ignorant I am of Irish history and culture. So I bought this book hoping to find something inspiring and informative. 



​


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## D Halgren

Perfect! Yeats, Joyce, and Flann O'Brien are also great sources. Yeats has a good amount of straight mythology and folk tales. I've personally spent half of my life trying to fully comprehend Finnegans Wake by Joyce. Line by line, it is so dense.


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## Kyle Preston

O awesome, thanks for sharing man. Going in my list : )


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## Kyle Preston

*Everything Must Be Said Again (Part 15)
*​_Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again. 

- André Gide _

I’ve spent the past few weeks burning the candle at both ends, pitching for a game and working on another short film. Throughout that time, the above quote, for some reason has seared itself in my brain. It’s one of those nice reminders to have when it feels like pursuing a creative life is a lost cause. 

Anyway, thank you @D Halgren for suggesting James Joyce to me. I’ve read through a number of his short stories (and they’re all lovely, particularly _The Boarding House_). I think I came to the conclusion that I should stick to something abstract for this project. So I’ve begun bouncing ideas off of this book: 



​And the results feel good. Here’s a smudge of a concept:

​

I’m finishing a few cues for a licensing library over the next few weeks. And then depending on whether I’m asked to score this video game (I signed an NDA or otherwise I’d share details), I intend to ONLY work on this album until it’s finished. This 'commit to 4 things at a time' schedule is killing me - I’m in awe of composers that find a way to live like this sustainably, no idea how they're doing it.

Also, an unrelated note - I attended _GameSoundCon_ earlier this month and during one of the panels, I heard Garry Schyman say something that made me feel good inside. He was asked to give his younger self a piece of advice. And he responded by saying "it's going to be alright".


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## D Halgren

Sounds great, Kyle! Is that Orchestral Swarm I hear? I'm glad you found the works of Joyce enjoyable. He is one of the masters! Try and read Finnegans Wake and get back with me


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## Kyle Preston

Thanks man. It's actually the Olafur Arnalds Evolutions @Spitfire Team library - one violin and one viola. And then in the chorus, the Tina Guo cello by Cinesamples (probably my favorite Kontakt instrument).

Adding Finnegans Wake to my list immediately .


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## Kyle Preston

*Are Computers Replacing Musicians? | (Part 15)
*​Computers aren’t smart and neither are people. But a fundamental difference exists between us (for now): computers don’t _know_ they’re dumb - we have to teach them. Which naturally begs the question: can a computer _know_ something? 

There is a rich, accessible history of the music industry’s Luddite behavior toward new technology. We appear to have a bottomless distrust of its role in the creative arts. Sometimes, this impulse inspires us to pick up machine-manufactured instruments and write songs. Don’t worry, I’ve done it too.

*The Harpsichord Players Lament
*​




​This conundrum of machines replacing human labor has been with us for centuries and is not going away soon, if ever. So we’re forced to ask the question, as Martin Ford did in his TED Talk: _is it different this time around?_

Recently, I learned that the piano roll MIDI feature in most DAWs got its name from self-playing pianos called _player pianos_. They performed much like a music box, containing literal paper rolls with holes punched in. And like modern MIDI, it played back captured performances of a human being. In some cases, the paper roll was edited for tempo, taste, or even to perform unplayable compositions (unplayable by people anyway). George Gershwin made a good living editing these piano paper rolls. He even recorded himself with them, playing with live effects like "foot pumps" and "expression levers”, very MIDI. And quite beautiful in my opinion. 

In 1906, John Phllip Sousa wrote an unintentionally hilarious paper called The Menace of Mechanical Music. It contains statements both profound and lame. 

_“Right here is the menace in machine-made music! The first rift in the lute has appeared. The cheaper of these instruments of the home are no longer being purchased as formerly, and all because the automatic music devices are usurping their places.

And what is the result? The child becomes indifferent to practice, for when music can be heard in the homes without the labor of study and close application, and without the slow process of acquiring a technic, it will be simply a question of time when the amateur disappears entirely, and with him a host of vocal and instrumental teachers, who will be without field or calling.”_
_
— JOHN PHILIP SOUSA
_
The crux of this argument is defensive (if you didn’t go to school, you can’t be a _real_ musician, if you haven’t studied Wagner, then can’t discuss leitmotifs, if you don’t write music in a field with pen and paper then you’re a hack, etc). I submit to you that when we primates began singing songs to each other, we didn’t wait to learn music theory first. Somehow, we already heard it. Our instinct to categorize that architecture in writing came much later. But the implication that hearing music at one's leisure would prevent (and NOT nourish) a love of musical study is absurd. Were musicians in close proximity to concert halls developing impulses to stop learning music because of its accessibility? _Why bother learning when there’s always a show right around the corner to provide music for me_…said nobody ever in the history of the universe. 

My suspicion (I have no evidence) is that these opinions stem from that wonderful part of our western heritage called _guilt_. How dare anyone enjoy the pleasure of a genius like Mozart in the privacy of their own home!!! David Byrne suggests something similar in his book How Music Works, because he’s a beautiful, beautiful anthropologist from Mars! 






​Not to say that learning music theory isn’t essential to understanding the mechanics of music - it is. Starting from a place of emotion and understanding that emotion through the lens of music theory is one of the most fulfilling things a composer can do with their life (regardless of whether a computer is capable of doing the same). Treating theory as an extension of creativity (rather than an engine) always yields better results anyway. 

What I’m getting at is music is emotional first and mathematical second for the same reason a child learns to eat before she learns the difference between fruits and vegetables. You learn to nourish yourself, _then_ you learn about food. Attempting the opposite is, creatively speaking, a waste of time. 

*TECHNOLOGY*​
_So is it different this time around?_ For musicians, not yet. But it could be very soon. Computers aren’t writing film or game scores, yet they’ve disrupted every aspect of the music and film industries. The technology to supplant creativity just isn’t there yet. At any rate, in terms of music, it won’t be disconcerting until artificial intelligence develops a higher intuition than a human. If that happens, computers will soon fool most of the public in blind human-vs-computer song writing contests. I don't pretend to have the solution for this problem (no one yet does), but there are good ideas worth testing like universal basic income and incentivized income. These measures may quickly become necessary just to keep the economy afloat. There are also helpful lessons to be learned from history, even recent history. 

We know what would happen to our bodies if we minimized our cost by eating only McDonalds. We’d get ass cancer. And we’ve seen the push-back to industrialized food through growth of the organic food industry. Consuming cheaper, algorithm-made music could generate a similar cultural backlash, especially if it’s forced on us in public spaces. 

On a personal note, the only reason I know how to write for strings is because I’ve been able (and lucky enough) to navigate MIDI virtual instruments fluidly. They provided a window into classical music that would have been closed had I been born fifty years prior. And I’ve thought on these ideas as I sketch out pieces for my new album. Pieces, I’m beginning to realize, that will benefit from a more human touch! So in a weird way, my computer has made available to me the skills to write for _and hire_the kind of musician I never would’ve had the chance to work with otherwise. I have great hopes that developing this skillset, with the help of technology will continue to be a mutually beneficial endeavor throughout my lifetime. Not a black and white, us-vs-them positioning battle. 

Incidentally, experiences like mine are the exact reason some fellow software developers continue developing newer and better tools. @christianhenson from Spitfire Audio tackles a similar aspect of the technology problem for musicians:


​
_Are computers replacing musicians?_ Right now, only the stubborn ones. The ones that refuse to see the computer as anything other than an invasive big brother. The ones who can’t see it as a musical instrument, an extension of creativity, a means now available to nearly anyone. My simple advice, learn music theory and keep an open, curious mind. If we’re lucky, future technology will merge into yet another tool in the musicians arsenal benefiting our culture in new and interesting ways. 

p.s. Also, I didn’t mean to pick on Sousa so much, his fears are ones that I feel and internalize still. And I think his following prediction will come true if artificial intelligence develops high intuition:

_“Under such conditions the tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant.”

— JOHN PHILIP SOUSA
_
p.p.s. This post was edited by a very unsophisticated AI. Also, Sousa’s paper contains the funniest picture I’ve seen in years: 




​*FURTHER READING*

Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Musicians?
Are Robots Going to Replace Musicians Too?


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## Kyle Preston

One piece from my new album, Acushla. I just put it on Bandcamp, will be on other streaming services later tonight/tomorrow. 

​

Gonna post a walkthrough on Press and all that stuff soon. I went a little insane trying to finish this, I’m sure there are moments you’ll be able to tell. My self-organizing skills are truly atrocious and this project amply demonstrated that to me. 

But here are a few creative key points involved:


_Solar Winds I_

Rules:

Needed to be beautiful, Solar Winds create the magnificent northern lights for us

Northern Lights always remind me of Iceland (they have amazing views of them being so far north). Which is why I purposefully used Icelandic Composer Ólafur Arnald’s Evo Strings! They’re the bread and butter of Solar Winds I & II
Seismic Waves

There’s this idea that animals have a keener sense of the environment than humans. Stories of dogs barking and cats howling seconds (sometimes minutes) before Earthquakes occur. And there’s a plausible reason for this. Animals hear different (usually higher) parts of the acoustic spectrum than humans do. It’s not that they have better hearing, but they’re able to hear frequencies we can’t. These high frequency pressure waves travel faster than lower frequency waves, arriving sooner before the Earth literally quakes. 




​I was inspired to loosely translate this concept into music. So it became important to introduce higher frequencies (violins, violas harmonics) first - and they needed to be difficult to discern and far away. These would fall down into mid frequencies, (cello, clarinet), then the lows (double bass and a sub synth), building to something terrible and beautiful. 

Nomads

This piece wanders around the circle of fifths, like we did as nomads wandering the Earth. It created a sense of not having a ‘home' key, which I liked a lot and felt appropriate.


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