Chapter 2: The Rules

Experimental music shouldn’t have rules, right? Well, somewhat.

What follows between the lines is the original 2015 text of chapter one. I’ll expand a bit on the popular highlights afterward.

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Experimental music shouldn’t have rules, right? Well, somewhat.

Experimental music does have some external expectations. If it sounds like Dubstep and it feels like Dubstep, it’s probably not experimental music. For music to be experimental, it should least sound a little experimental. If anyone can listen to your music and say, “Hey, that reminds me of...”, then the name at the end of that ellipsis should at least probably be another experimental artist.

While your first day on the job as an experimental music producer may be directionless with a faint hint of anarchy, you’ll soon find tools and processes that work for you, and others that make you want to break things that shouldn’t be broken. So while there may be few guidelines imposed by the outside world, you’ll soon start developing your own basic rules for getting the job done.

Some rules may stick with you forever, but most will be temporary guidelines you put into place in order to focus on certain aspects of your work. We’ll cover this a bit more in the next chapter, but the complete lack of structure quickly leads to what’s known as “option anxiety”. When anything is possible, actually deciding what to do and where to start can be next to impossible.

Eventually you’ll get the hang of making up your own rules, but here are a few you might want to consider at least trying out.

Make Sure There’s an Undo Button

Sometimes you’ll be working in a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) or app that actually has a real Undo button. If so, that’s awesome. However, in many instances it won’t be that simple, especially if you’re an excessive knob-tweaker or you tend to improvise a lot. It’s a good idea to save your work regularly, create snapshots, create copies of project files, and keep multiple versions of presets. Music production is a series of choices, and being able to reverse a few of those decisions when things go off-track is a good thing.

Take Notes

Keeping a notebook – whether it’s in the form of a Moleskine, a text file, or a ton of sticky notes – is a pretty good idea. Without a shiny Undo button, it’s the only way you’ll get back to “last known good” without an eidetic memory. Beyond that, a big part of making experimental music is discovering new techniques and creating unique sounds. If you stumble upon an exciting new realm of sonic awesomeness, make sure you know how you got there, and how to get back.

What has worked best for me is to keep basic text notes using an app that syncs across my devices using Dropbox. I use Notebook by Appigo, but there are plenty of note-taking apps available. The important thing is to find an app or solution that you will actually use.

Over the years, I’ve migrated to simply using Apple’s native Notes app. I have 4 iPads currently in use, my iPhone, and 2 Macbook Pros, so it’s nice to have everything automatically synced and searchable from any device. I do occasionally pull out a pend and my trusty Moleskine when I need to do some sketching.

Record Everything

If you’re just playing around with a new app, you may run across something that sounds cool, without having any idea how it happened or how to make it happen again. Even if you’re using the same old familiar apps, practicing the same little melody over and over again, it can seriously suck to finally hit record and not be able to pull it off that one last time. Aside from running out of storage space, there’s no harm in recording your little jams, which can be readily deleted with the swipe of a finger.

I personally have AudioShare open all the time. Inside that unassuming little audio file manager hides the slimmest DAW on iOS. It supports Audiobus, of course, and it can also act as an IAA (inter-app audio) host with one instrument app and up to 3 effects apps. Both Audiobus and IAA will provide you with a remote record button for AudioShare inside of whatever music app you have connected and running in the foreground. That means a single click to save your audio doodles. Once you have a recording, you can trim, normalize, convert, reprocess, or export the file to another app. Since you’re not dealing with the overhead of a full DAW, you have more memory to run more apps without worrying about audio glitches or app crashes.

Things have changed quite a bit. AUM completely changed my workflow when it came out, although it’s telling that the app that replaced AudioShare at the center of my workflow was built by the same developer, and even better, it stores all the recorded audio in AudioShare, so it’s not as much a replacement as a major upgrade. Of course, audio units (AUV3) and infinitely more powerful devices have also had huge impacts, but the concept of always having the record button close at hand still stands.

Warehouse Your Artifacts

It’s a given that you’ll want to tuck a few copies of your final mixes in different spots, and some of us are fairly consistent at backing up our project files. But what I mean here by artifacts is a bit different. Electronic music producers create all kinds of digital things that are often discarded or forgotten at the end of a project. These include things like presets, samples, and MIDI templates.

Keep those things; label them, tag them, and put them in a folder somewhere. Not only is this a useful habit to get into in case you want to go back and use something, but you’ll also be building a library of artifacts that may actually have some value. Other producers may be interested in throwing some money your way for a preset pack or a sample disc later on.

Quotas and Deadlines

It’s a good idea to set goals. Goals let us know where we’re going and when we’ve arrived. Without artistic goals, you’re just playing around. Even if your only goal is to create one track, you’re working.

You can set a single goal, such as producing a track, but without a deadline, you may find yourself “working” on that track for a couple of years. Deadlines provide a pressure to commit to putting in the effort now instead of later (or never).

Quotas are like recurring goals: a song a week, an album a year, 50 songs in 90 days, etc. As participants in challenges like February Album Writing Month (FAWM) will tell you, even if you don’t meet the quota, you’ve still accomplished more than you would have otherwise.

Finish What You Start

A painter with a dozen half-finished canvases has nothing to show. Starting is important, but finishing is critical. What “finished” actually means in experimental art may differ from the standard definition, but as the artist you’ll know it when it happens. Going with the painter analogy a bit further, a canvas may eventually become unusable, but as musicians, our canvas is composed of sound waves. Even if your finished track doesn’t include any of the original parts, there’s really no excuse for not finishing.

Share Your Work

Whether you just play your music for a friend, or upload it to Soundcloud for the whole world to hear, sharing is a good thing. For one, it’s confirmation that a track is finished, or at least finished enough. It’s also good to get feedback from others – really, it is. Even if you’re just “doing it for fun”, having a friend point out that your new track sounds just like the one you posted two years ago can be helpful. Having a stranger tell you your music rocks is awesome. Learning that your music reminds someone of an artist you’ve never heard of could open up your whole world.

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These guidelines still serve me well. Hopefully there’s something of value here for you.

Following are the most highlighted snippets from this chapter:

I honestly wish I was still better at this myself. I do try to regularly save snapshots of my current AUM session as presets when I’ve made significant changes. This allows me to restore settings for all of the loaded apps that support it, which is helpful for when I want to backtrack to a certain sound.

This is another piece of advice I could stand to use more often. 50/90 is coming up in July, so hopefully that will prod me to knuckle down on some new finished pieces.

Thanks for following along on this journey. Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.

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