Day 4: Doubt Sets In

Today has been interesting. It finally hit me. The sheer enormity of both what I am doing and just how little I know about what I am doing. Been eating at me all day. Still, we struggle through. I figure, eventually, I will know more about what I am doing. Hopefully. I must be quite fucking insane, though. Who does this? Who puts themselves through this kind of humiliation? Ah well. At least I don't have a youtube channel. Not yet, anyhow.

So, I've decided to ditch the last two beats. They don't work. They're just cobbled together. Interesting, rather than good. I worked really hard today to make sure I wasn't inconvenienced by throwing out those last two. That said, torn about by doubt, I'm not sure if I was working at my best. I think these three beats stand up to the first three, though. They are all quite different but I think they work.

1. Croaking Triplets
Croaking Triplets MP3 by M. O'Neill

This is my attempt at taking the best parts of Herky Jerky and doing them properly. It's in triplet time, quite layered (lots of little percussive flourishes) and at 85BPM. My main thought in making this was the relationship between groove and space. I tend to poo-poo the idea of more layers of drums hampering groove in a song (despite such an idea's popularity) but I thought I'd experiment with meeting people halfway. There's lots of layers to this track but they're almost all percussion (as opposed to additional beats in and of themselves). The actually beat itself is pretty much 90% kick drums. (I've decided to forego listing the specific kits - it takes too long and isn't very interesting).

2. Out in the Streets
Out in the Streets MP3 by M. O'Neill

This beat is my attempt to program something at 120 that still suggests rap music. I'm pretty sure I've failed. It's basically rave music with some modern kits in 5/4. I like it all the same, though - partly because it has chopped up Amen breaks in it (one of my favourite sounds in the world) but also because it kind of captures that weird vision I have in my head for this music. Part of it, anyway.

The music I want to make is supposed to sound vivid, lively and cultural. The halfway point between a market in India and a street in Tokyo. My favourite band is Killing Joke and one of the many reasons I love them is because their music sounds simultaneously urban and spiritual. I want to blend together elements of that - kind of like how rave culture was so organic, despite being built on chemicals and machines.

3. Spontanocussion
Spontanocussion MP3 by M. O'Neill

Really, this was just me dicking around with live drums. I really love how The Roots manage to create such gritty beats with live drums and I wanted to kind of figure out some of those patterns. I didn't really get around to doing that with this one, I was just tossing ideas around and I found I really liked the result. It's really simple but really kinetic and evocative (for me, anyway). I'm excited to see what happens to it.

The thing that drives me insane, though - with this and every other beat - is that I'm not sure what is essential to a beat. What is the correct and incorrect way to program a rhythm. It's doing my fucking head in, I tell you. So many questions. Should I stick with one kit? Should it be longer than a single bar? One time signature? Should I use quantisation? How much should I mess with the velocity of each hit? Should I be mixing now or later? Is it too electronic? Is it not electronic enough? Should it sound more or less like dance music? Does it sound too Australian? Does it sound too UK?

Seriously. Driving me up the wall. Any ideas, anyone?