I am again at my usual: a pretty good idea for a song but ...
At some point in the creating of my songs, I always have my best set of ears - Barbara, my wife's ears, that is, listen to what I am doing. For those of you new to these scribbles, let me say she has a great set of ears. B was a violin player for some years way before I was on the scene, so its not like she doesn't know anything about music.
Good for me, she is also extremely honest in her opions, so I pay attention to what she says. Much of the time, if I have doubts about a piece, she will reinforce them.
So last night I am working on a song that as usual for me has been in process for far too long. B listens and besides some comment on the mix, has a real problem with the synth used for doubling the melody. I will note here that of late, when I write an instrumental melody, I seem to come back to it at some point and come up with lyrics. Ah, the mystery of creation!
In any event that is what happened here, so now I had this nice vocal line being echoed by the original synth sound. B says, its too thin and doesn't really work with the rest of the song. There were some other comments about the drum sounds too, but what I want to concentrate on here is the never-ending seach for the golden tone, if you will, in any piece of music.
I can remember playing in rock bands for so many years, I would spend endless amounts of cash and time trying to get "that" sound out of my guitar - every experiment I could think of. Of course, everyone I played with was also attempting to get the best sound out of their instruments.
In those days, I would simply write out the structure of a song, bring it to the band and then we would work on it. In the organic way these things happen, the song would mutate and hopefully grow and at some point it would be pronounced "done".
Now, I did work with synth and keyboard players then too, but it wasn't like I was writing their parts, or certainly not the sounds they would get. I might have suggestions, but that was it.
Flash forward to now, and of course I am doing it all myself. Naturally this is a harder bit of trick to accomplish, and that is one reason that, for me at least, it all takes so much longer to finish any piece of music.
Therefore when B says, I think that synth sounds too thin, if I agree with what she is saying, then I have to go on a fishing expedition. That is exactly what I did for the rest of the time I had that night, going thru the 1000's of presets that are on my synths, trying pretty much in vain to find something that a) sounded fuller b) didn't step on the other instruments and c) well, just worked
In my mind I had heard some rather string-ish sounds on the refrain, and I found a preset that was close and modified it a bit. I think that will make the cut and stay.
On the verse, B was saying "you know, something like an organ...". Funny, we had just been to a jazz club the other night, and the best guy on the stage was the Hammond player. Now I have to say, I don't really like organs much at all, they just don't work for me. This guy did have a great left hand on the black (bass) keys tho. He was a killer.
With that in mind, I try about 200 different organ sounds on the verse, and none of them cut it. So I begin searching out other sounds - and boy, the descriptions the sound developers use just bite - who can tell what many of them may sound like at all from something as cryptic as "Syn25".
What I finally came up with was something that I know won't make the final cut but I want to take the concept: its a fairly full sound, but does an intriguing bit of processing with the fx, so that it fades in and out and in a rhythmic fashion. Now, I will have to tear the preset apart and find out what makes it tick, and mess with it to make it work with me. This may take a looonnnnggg time, and I may fail at it, but that is the game, no?
That is the crux of electronic music to me, its blessing and its curse: when you start to just deal with raw sounds, as opposed to simply trying to learn to play several instruments with some degree of facility, write, and arranage and record a good song, then mix and master it - well, I think none of those will happen without that golden tone.
It reminds me of an intreview I read with Jimi Hendrix. He said that, during any given concert, if he could manage to play one good note, he would be happy. I think that if I can make that one good tone, I'm halfway there.