Session Notes From A Bedroom Producer

[theryancrabtree-blog]

Hey guys, I'm starting to work on producing in more genres than just dance music and I'm looking for artists, singers, rappers, poets, etc.

I plan to start posting 16-bar beats for people to pick and choose from. If you know a dope lyricist and they need music, check out this first idea.

[theryancrabtree-blog]

Somebody Once Told Me

The world was gonna roll me.  I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

Today started off like a boss.  Decided to turn on the #ThrowbackThursday playlist from Spotify and All Star by Smashmouth immediately started playing.  Instant good mood, engaged. Nostalgia kicked in full force and I found myself singing along to a barrage of songs - Meet Virginia, Mmm Bop, Flag Pole Sitta, A Thousand Miles, on and on and on.  Days like this are the best.  

[theryancrabtree-blog]

Resetting & Redirecting

Hey guys!  It’s been awhile.  

I’ve been taking the longest time off since I started making music about 6 years ago.  Over a month has passed and it’s been the most unproductively productive time ever for me.  I’ve had time to reset.  Time to step back and get some perspective on what I want in life and what kind of music I enjoy making.

During this time I’ve been reflecting on life and I realized that I spend a lot of time kind of managing life through tasks... basically on autopilot and a lot less time consciously experiencing life in the moment.  I’m starting to think that this way of going through life is a challenge to creating music that gives you the feels.  

I’ve written a few songs that I’m quite satisfied with, that captured a great feeling.  My remix of “So Fast, So Maybe” captured a really fun, nostalgic feeling.  Oasis captured a really calm, adventurous feeling for me.  Both of those songs were written in only about an hour or two each.  I LOVE it when the creative spark hits and the songs basically writes itself.

The vast majority of my other work, however, was created from a very left-brained place.  I tend to click-in notes and start mixing/EQing the music before I’ve really even written and arranged it.  I never really gave myself the chace to feel out the music.  To get back to feeling things out, I bought myself an Ableton Push, hoping that I could learn how to use it to its full extent and then be able to get into a groove more quickly and more creatively. We’ll see where that goes and how it works, but this time off is setting me up for some really fun times.

P.S. Pokemon Go may have played a part in this time off.  No Pokemon were hurt in the making of this message.

[theryancrabtree-blog]

I wrote some chill, tropical-style music to this footage captured by a drone over a beautiful beach.  

[theryancrabtree-blog]

June 13

I just successfully finished a remix for a really great artist that I'm excited to share with the world soon. After I turned in the project, I found myself getting bored with writing songs over the past few days. I'm realizing that I need a little more creative playtime, in a sense. Sometimes writing music with the sole purpose of writing a hit gets redundant for me. So today I just took an hour and wrote a short (1min) background track to a video I found online of images taken from a drone of beautiful beach, shoreline and overhead view of a city - not quite sure which one. (Yes the video was free to work with). I'll post that soon. Really enjoyed playing around with something different for a change.

[theryancrabtree-blog]

May 17

Today was more of a learning session.  I sat back to get some insight into what stage I’m currently in as a producer.  Sam Matla at EDM Prod (I’ve been on a huge EDM Prod binge this week) outlines the five stages of a producer beautifully and reading through this helped me realize that I am in stage 3 - you can read more in the link if you’re interested.  

I’ve been particularly interested recently in how other producers go through their process.  To find out about this I’ve been watching more and more long videos where producers give an uncut view at their process.  These make for long videos but, in my opinion, provide the most insight.  

Just today, I was listening to the recent podcast episode with Sam Matla interviewing Hyperbits, they describe one of these long, in-depth sessions where Hyperbits goes through the process of creating a song from start to finish, completely from scratch.  It makes for 6+ hours of content along with some bonuses.  They’ve made all of that content available in a series called From Start to Finish for $67 and to me it is completely worth it considering the amount of insight you’ll get into the full process of a successful producer.  

Today I watched the first piece of the series - it showed the initial idea phase where Hyperbits finds a couple of vocal samples he likes and begins building a quick loop.  I’ll be continuing to comment on this as I go through the rest of the series.  

[theryancrabtree-blog]

May 16

Today I got some stems to work on a new remix for an album that’s coming out very soon. Not quite sure if/when I’m allowed to announce it so for today we’ll keep things anonymous. Today’s main goal was to lay a foundation for this remix and to do so, I referenced a podcast from Sam Matla at EDM Prod - specifically an episode where Sam interviews Noah Neiman. Noah works a full time job as a physician while putting out an incredible amount of music. To do so, he does a great job of recycling old ideas to quickly make new ones. For example he may reuse a drum kit or arrangement he liked from a previous project and his workflow increases significantly. For some reason I have had this notion that I am only supposed to use brand new patches, drum kits, sounds, etc. for each song. If you work a full time job like Noah or myself, this is really just an inefficient way to work. So I set out to use the arrangement of an idea I haven’t released previously and I’ve already gotten a massive head start on the track. I will likely be working on this specific project quite a bit for the foreseeable future so more to come as I work though this.

[theryancrabtree-blog]

May 15

Song at the moment: “One Dance” by Drake

Got back today from a trip to the mountains to see some family I hadn’t seen in years.  It was a great way to clear my head with the beautiful scenery and kind of reset.  

In one of my last posts I mentioned that I found a need to do more listening to the music around me and to do it with more intent.  In doing so I could collect ideas and have a big bag of things to pull from when I sit down in a studio session.  Fortunately I spent the weekend doing just that.

One of the things I pulled from was the chord progression in “Paradise” by Coldplay.  Now I know - it’s an overplayed song from which we’re all trying to recover because it’s found its way into every little piece of content everywhere.  Having said that, I still find myself gravitating toward the large sound of the song.  It sounds like it could fill a stadium with ease and it gives the song this ever-lasting feeling for me. 

Taking this idea and trying to create a song in a style similar to Flume - that was the focus of the session today.  I was able to get the bare bones of something resembling an arrangement and a theme.  

Something I already knew but had reinforced quite a bit during the session today was the idea of focusing only on an idea in its most basic form, getting the song loosely arranged and not allowing myself to get distracted with effects, sound design or anything of that matter.  It’s challenging to say the least when you have an entire studio available at your fingertips but I’m slowly finding the benefit in keeping things minimal at the start.

[theryancrabtree-blog]

May 11

Wasn't able to create any music today. Had a friend in town and went to go hang out with him for the evening. Found myself hearing the music at the restaurant on multiple occasions and taking notes on what it was and what ideas I liked from it. This sparked the idea that I needed to start just listening and enjoying more music more often. Two reasons: it's insanely fun. I get more ideas. Seems simple but I'm finding that I don't spend enough time doing this when I'm not in a session. Not bad for a non-working day.

[theryancrabtree-blog]

May 10

Today was the first day in a while where I had a solid 3 hours to create music. I found myself sitting there staring at the blank session in Ableton wondering what the hell I wanted to make. Since I work a full time job, I only have a little amount of time to focus on music. This leaves no room for decent sound designing so I chose to grab some good free sound packs from various places. I got lost in collecting so many samples that I realized most of the time I had in front of my disappeared... Wasted... I think what I struggle with is trying to be great, like my favorite artists. So I try to pull ideas and inspiration from their music. But soon I find that my sounds are nowhere near similar to theirs so I turn to samples. I work with samples and loops for awhile only to realize that I feel like a cheater for not creating my own midi work. So I revert back to that and it brings me back to a blank session. When I first started creating music, I was enamored by the endless possibilities and thought it was the coolest thing in the world to create whatever I had in my head. Should I go back to that? Do I sit down and just create honest music again? What if it's bad and I've wasted my time? If what's in my head is no good then I should go back to inspiration from my favorite artists. This constant feedback loop does nothing but create a whirlpool that entraps my time and prevents progress. I've got to figure out how to break out of this thought pattern.