Thoughts on Making Music - Replacing the Melody
So I finally dusted off the old keyboard and plugged it into my Powerbook G4 12”. I am decidedly lo-fi. I *could* use my more powerful computer; I could use better instruments. But I’m using my tiny laptop, cheap headphones, and Garageband. Because if you can’t make good music with that, will money solve your problems?
I have the “sound” and the mood in my head. I find the base instrument and build a rhythm pad and a base for the melody. And then keep building on that: other dinking notes and another textured pad. Most tracks I keep in time and beat-fix them. Some I keep free-form and a bit random. And then I was done. There wasn’t much else I could do.
But I didn’t have a *song*. It’s just the intro, or like a bit of a movie soundtrack. How do I turn this into something someone would want to take the time to listen to?
Then I realized that through building all these tracks on top of each other, I had replaced the melody with a bunch of, for lack of a better term, crap. I had filled up the “sonic space” with so much that there was no room for a melody. No room to sing, no room for any other melodic lines to carry on top of it all.
So this “song” just became an inspiration piece. A warm-up piece. I should throw it away. I could chip away at it and figure out what tracks are “blocking” the melody from flowing. But, rather, I should move on, take what I’ve learned, and build a new base, for a new song, keeping in mind that I have to reserve that space for some vocals so that I can have something through which I can communicate to a listener.