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Overcome progression wall

Wassim Samad

Wassim Samad

Lifelong learner
Hello,

Did you ever reach the point you feel like whatever you do you don't know how to progress and increase your songs (composing skills and mixing skills) ?

I am at a point where I've watched a lot of tutorials (YouTube, Evenant), read some books and I'm still very far from what I would like to achieve. For some people it seems very easy, but for me even with hard work hard, training, listening, analysing, I feel my tracks are too much similar. How would I improve my palette of ideas/tools for composing, harmonizing?

I also face something I don't know how to get rid of that. When I think of the song doing nothing, I have ideas or what I could do but as soon as I'm in front of my DAW trying to sketch / record, it's like my brain switched to a stupid mode limited by my keyboard skills (which are not bad but limited). Do you guys have hints about this?
Click to read more...
 
Wassim Samad said:
When I think of the song doing nothing, I have ideas or what I could do but as soon as I'm in front of my DAW trying to sketch / record, it's like my brain switched to a stupid mode limited by my keyboard skills (which are not bad but limited). Do you guys have hints about this?
Click to expand...
If not in front of your DAW when you get ideas, have you tried humming/singing them into a voice recorder/phone so you can reference them later?
 
Maybe get a score from Omni publishing and try to recreate parts of it? You might improve your mockup skills and learn something from an established composer in the process.

You don't have to do all of a piece. Even eight bars can be illuminating -- orchestration, tempo, ranges -- all of it.

Or if you favour classics, look at Debussy or Ravel's orchestral works. They brim with ideas. Every time I look at just one page of Ravel I see great orchestration / arranging ideas.
 
JohnG said:
Or if you favour classics, look at Debussy or Ravel's orchestral works. They brim with ideas. Every time I look at just one page of Ravel I see great orchestration / arranging ideas.
Click to expand...

Richard Strauss is another great one to check out for orchestration. Guy was freeky great.
 
I would suggest you write as much as you possibly can. When you're happy with a track, compare the orchestration and overall impact to one of your favorites. Rewrite/re-orchestrate and repeat as many times as necessary :) [I don't mean this to be a flip response - this is truly how I've progressed]

For me, reading a section in Adler every so often is also a great education, as is studying the scores from e.g. Brahms while listening to the symphony.
 
Thank you for your answers! I will work hard on rewrite/re-orchestrate, it seems to be the most straightforward way to progress and learn new ways to compose !
 
Wassim Samad said:
Hello,

Did you ever reach the point you feel like whatever you do you don't know how to progress and increase your songs (composing skills and mixing skills) ?

I am at a point where I've watched a lot of tutorials (YouTube, Evenant), read some books and I'm still very far from what I would like to achieve. For some people it seems very easy, but for me even with hard work hard, training, listening, analysing, I feel my tracks are too much similar. How would I improve my palette of ideas/tools for composing, harmonizing?

I also face something I don't know how to get rid of that. When I think of the song doing nothing, I have ideas or what I could do but as soon as I'm in front of my DAW trying to sketch / record, it's like my brain switched to a stupid mode limited by my keyboard skills (which are not bad but limited). Do you guys have hints about this?
Click to expand...

After browsing quick through many of your tracks on sc, I encounter that very often you use the same kind of recipe for your tracks:

1. Orchestration: Epic Percussion, Strings, Choirs almost in every piece. (Guess why it starts to sound so similiar?)
2. Articulation: Long string or brass notes (there is more than long sustains or staccatos)
3. Harmony: Same chord progressions (Hans Zimmer tropes all over the place, there is definitely more than that to explore..)
4. Tempo: More or less the same or similiar tempo without any change
5. Dynamics: Same dynamic build up, starts delicate, ends loud.
6. Using percussion like a Bandmusician and not like an orchestrator for symphonic music. It is not the percussion which are exciting your music really, in fact they are making your music boring and very predictable. Probably throw out your typical percussion tropes at all. Can your music be interesting without any of that?


So just by listening through your pieces "once" I allready encountered all these things. No wonder why your tracks sound not only similiar but like also very much like having no real "identifier" at all which I find even more concerning or lets say that you should focus on trying to develop your own sound. But do you want that? I don´t know if that is of any importance to you personally. I guess for many composers these days not that much rather than sounding like somebody else.

My advice: Study different music rather than modern (epic) filmmusic, go back in time musically, there you will find imo more interesting harmonies, more edge and complex harmony and arrangements. So if you aim for more diversity you should be aware of that writing in your comfort zone with Points 1-6 will not give you diversity in your music. But if that is what you love to do, then do it because I can imagine that you like it the way how it is, but there will be nothing more interesting in your music when you limit yourself to 2% what an orchestra is able to do.

Go and Write a Woodwind only piece. Not your comfort zone and dont know how to orchestrate for winds? Well go and study windwriting from the greats (e.g. Tschaikowksy). That is how it can start. Want more edge in your harmony? But donß´t know how to replace Dom chords lets say with an open voiced Dom7 flat9 chord which is not diatonic but works and adds some sexy reharmonisation with a definite chance to modulate to multiple different keys? Go and study Jazz harmony and voicings. There is an endless list of things you can do. But you need first to ask yourself what you really want. Wanna write modern (cliche) filmmusic then you do a pretty descent job already (take a deep breath its all good). But it can be boring after a while I guess because of what I said. Reducing your palette to a fraction of colors and harmony will not give you any diversity in your music, it is simple as that.
 
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In a nutshell - study jazz improvisation for the piano. It will open up a whole new world. When you find yourself improvising in different keys and modulating to different key signatures the whole palette opens up in front of you.

I don’t really like to listen to jazz piano in itself - but by golly it has made a ton of difference. Some times I’ll switch to a different key, and simply the difference in the way in which my hands fall on the keys will change both the way I harmonise and my voice leading.
 
Lots of great advice here! Especially Alexander's post (well done sir!)

What works for me (and I am still learning) is challenges. Which sort of encapsulates all the advice so far.

Listen to new things, and even more important, write new things!

Challenge yourself to write a piece in a style you've never tried before. Even if you wish to write epic trailer music you will expand your vocabulary by writing a huge orchestral piece, or a chamber piece, or a pop piece, or a country piece, or a string quartet, or a wind ensemble, or a bluegrass piece or <fill in the blank>.

Beyond style try using different tool sets. One of my favorite challenges is to select a handful of instruments and use only those to create a piece (any style). Many years ago I was tasked with writing a score for a production of Shakespeare's The Tempest, set in an insane asylum. I was constrained by the fact that the only players available were a fluie, a cello, and a guitar.

To say that it turned out nothing like my original vision would be an understatement. But it turned out well none-the-less. The players enjoyed playing it, the cast and audience loved it, and if I am candid, so did I.

Another time a friend and I challenged each other to write a piece for piano without ever touching the piano. I loved his piece, and mine was not awful - although I was able to make some improvements once I played it for real<G>!

I've started with "ground rules" such as a simple melody, or a simple bass pattern, and the results have ranged from embarrassing to not so bad, to pretty cool.

Generally I'd suggest that this approach is far better as a training exercise than for an actual project - that stunt with the Tempest was at least in part more luck than talent. The "orchestration" suited the production, although I'd have never come up with it by myself.

Last thought - when I first started using sample libraries (think Giga Studio<G>) I found mock-ups to be singularly disappointing. Maybe because the libraries were not quite up to the task? Nah, I remember mock-ups done with GPO that sounded awesome. It was a mind set. If you allow for the fact that a piece realized entirely with libraries will be fundamentally different than a piece played by live players you will eliminate one road block. That used to make me nuts!

Someone suggested mocking up a section of a piece, I think that works well because it reduces the need to make it sound like live players. At least it does for me. And that lets me focus on the underpinnings - why specific instruments play specific lines, or why those lines exist in the first place.

Have fun, don't be too hard on yourself, but don't cut yourself too much slack either<G>! (now there's a tricky line to walk!)
 
Music is 3 things, melody, harmony and rhythm.

Pick one of those elements and explore. Write a melody. Then use different tools, retrograde, diatonic inversion, chromatic inversion, a melody is a statement, write another melody that's an answer to that statement. This is just exercises, not complete pieces.

Same thing with harmony, explore the world of chord substitutions, modes, non-standard chords, etc... Silent Night is a great song to practice different chords. You can play it with 3 chords or completely re-harmonized ala/Bill Evans with chords on every beat and never repeat a single chord.

Rhythm - explore odd meters, mess around with music in 4/4 with a melody of 3/4 superimposed on top.

There's literally tons of things to try that will be a little different from your safety zone, just take an idea, develop it and expand on it.
 
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Wassim Samad said:
Hello,

Did you ever reach the point you feel like whatever you do you don't know how to progress and increase your songs (composing skills and mixing skills) ?

I am at a point where I've watched a lot of tutorials (YouTube, Evenant), read some books and I'm still very far from what I would like to achieve. For some people it seems very easy, but for me even with hard work hard, training, listening, analysing, I feel my tracks are too much similar. How would I improve my palette of ideas/tools for composing, harmonizing?

I also face something I don't know how to get rid of that. When I think of the song doing nothing, I have ideas or what I could do but as soon as I'm in front of my DAW trying to sketch / record, it's like my brain switched to a stupid mode limited by my keyboard skills (which are not bad but limited). Do you guys have hints about this?
Click to expand...

Which are you struggling with most? You should pick one of the two to focus on and make it your mission for the next 6 to 12 months... As the saying goes... Jack of all trades ... (That also isn't to say you can't do the other, just give whichever you feel weakest at the priority of your attention...)

For example...The hat you wear when writing is completely different from the hat you wear mixing.
Frankly I can't say I don't know a single composer/producer/self-producing-musician that doesn't at least stress having to juggle a wardrobe of hats they need to put on and take off day in and day out... Compositionally-skilled ones often freak out about mixing, sonically skilled ones often freak out about theory or arrangement... Composition and arrangement are going to speak volumes more about who you are as a composer... So if you feel like your writing game is generally strong then there's you answer... Take your mixing hat out of your wardrobe, put it on, and get on with it...

Also avoid seeing youtube as a source of education so much as a way to find broadly useful ways to solving the answer to a single question. I.E. - You'll never find an answer to how to mix on youtube no more than you'll find an answer to how to compose...

YT's become a viral/marketing cesspool with no structure in place on how you might learn anything. You can definitely find answers in a jam... But it aint experience, school, practice, etc...

Anyway best of luck...
 
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Kony said:
If not in front of your DAW when you get ideas, have you tried humming/singing them into a voice recorder/phone so you can reference them later?
Click to expand...
+1

Edit: What I do is following:

- I sing, hum or improvise with the piano.
- while singing, humming or improvising I hear (like Mozart) other instruments playing at the same time in my head (counterpoint, percussion, harmony or whatever)
- I record always when I'm composing
- Second pass I try to play, sing, hum what I have heard in my head (first pass already recorded)
- while recording second pass I'm already hearing new stuff in my head...
- I try to make a second version, e.g. re-harmonization of the main idea
- I try to make a third version, e.g. a re-rhythmization of the main idea (other measure e.g. 7/8, 3/4, 6/8, 6/4, if the main idea was in 4/4)
- I tend to make a part B in relation with part A, but i love to make a part C or bridge with little relationship to part A & B to boost and contrast familiarity
- I like to FX whole mixes, little granularity on classical instruments, weird reverbs on acoustic instruments fine mixed so that there is a little special thing but not turning all like a madness
- I save projects always at different states, e.g. Impro01.logic, Impro02.logic, Impro03.logic, Impro04-mutedbones.logic, etc. and come back to some versions if needed always saving project with increasing numbers
- I like to pay attention to energy and give the piece diversity > peaks & valleys, tempo changes, rhytmic pattern changes, main theme played from different instrument groups from time to time
- I try to be not disturbed by phone calls (put smartphone in silence mode), work mates asking for attention (hang a shield "don't disturb"), I close my door and if necessary close safe, working when everybody in the studio is gone or very soon at morning when nobody has arrived
- I drink coffee
- Pauses to eat
- let the day as it is, come back the next morning
 
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If you find yourself falling back into the same devices you might not be ingesting enough music. Studying theory, counterpoint, and orchestration as well as score studying will give you a lot of ideas. You can’t pour from an empty cup.
 
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