# Ok guys. What does organic sound like?



## Dan Mott (Sep 2, 2013)

I hear a lot of people mention that things can sound organic in a musical context..

How so?

When I think of the word organic, I think of food, or chemistry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic - That's the meaning.

So, how does music sound organic? :D


----------



## Jimbo 88 (Sep 2, 2013)

When my clients say "organic" they usually mean live, raw sounding music as opposed to "midi file" sounding stuff.


----------



## pkm (Sep 2, 2013)

I think of real, human, natural, unprocessed. Something like an acoustic guitar or piano or flute is more "organic" than a synthesizer. It can also refer to a more natural human rhythm than a totally quantized drum machine.


----------



## tmm (Sep 2, 2013)

Funny... I never thought about it, but it's probably one of those terms that basically means something different (slightly or greatly) to everyone, like "warm" or "tight".

To me, it means something 'lush', with a full, harmonically rich midrange, whether it be a 'real' sound source (ex: a great sounding stringed instrument, like 8Dio's Bazantar) or a synth source (like a lot of the tones from the Zebra2 Botanica bank).


----------



## eorjatsalo (Sep 3, 2013)

Term "organic" has always kind of puzzled me. In my native language we mostly use term "luonnollinen" which translates to "natural" and "organic". Process of converting changes in air pressure to changes in voltage and then to 1 and 0 sounds kind of unnatural to me 

When a client asks me to do natural or organic sound, I tend to approach it with less processing and smaller spaces (depending naturally what I'm working on of course). If I'm recording I tend to use only room microphones and I might even skip close miking completely. Again YMMV. I compress less and use eq's mostly to cut out unwanted resonances in the room.


----------



## Dave Connor (Sep 3, 2013)

Here is my definition, which has to do with _organic_ in the sense that the musical material used in composition is related in some way and not just sort of grabbed for because they sound cool. (Just one approach to organic writing I should add as there are numerous ways to achieve it.)

http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtop ... highlight=


----------



## Dan Mott (Sep 3, 2013)

Thanks guys.

Seems like there are many different meanings.

I think Dave's example is what makes most sense to me. Music with parts that work together, rather than just grabbed because they sound cool. Everything is it's place for a purpose. That approach, plus real raw and natural sounds is what I have concluded to be organic for me


----------



## chimuelo (Sep 4, 2013)

I think of a Hammond B3 or a great DSP Phys.Mod/Native (Native EVB3) and a new Leslie Studio 12. They're not that expensive and sound just like the old Walnut 147s but weigh 80lbs. 
Even the sickliest of classic rock players can huff one of these.

Or maybe Earth, Soil, or Grit which means some elements of real instruments supplemented by great samples like LASS, Hollywood Strings, even that ancient Celli I still have from Miraslav.


----------



## Ned Bouhalassa (Sep 4, 2013)

For me, nothing beats these instruments for this kind of sound:


----------



## gsilbers (Sep 4, 2013)

Dan-Jay @ Mon Sep 02 said:


> I hear a lot of people mention that things can sound organic in a musical context..
> 
> How so?
> 
> ...



oh yes, those client terms,,, drive me nuts. 

imo- organic comes from a lingo to explain the oposite of midi sounding, fake sounding bad sounding sequenced music. 
that was back in the days of VSL being the only game in town and poeple using motif and roland fantom to do aa whole orchestra. which sounded midi-ish. 
so organic made the cool word to say "real" , like an organisim, its alive. 

today is similar but the clients use it to add more live, raw instead of synth sounding. 
still a crutch to describe a problem in a non musical way when it should be musical.. but oh well, the client has to worry about other thigns


----------



## Sasje (Sep 13, 2013)

A dynamic -preferably- random balance between low and high entropy. :wink:


----------

