Strawman

Quickie improvisational electronic song, made in the span of 2 hours, to see what would happen.

This isn't the best song in the world, but I like challenging myself and I enjoy the process of creating music.

There was a debate in the recent Calvin Harris FPP on quality of music produced in relation to the amount of time it takes to produce that music. I wanted to see what would happen if I, a total noob at music production, could make a song and upload it before midnight (GMT -600, Central time zone for North America). What kind of quality would emerge based on limited skill, technical constraints, and a tight deadline?

The song was composed using a Korg EMX-1 synthesizer.

(Get Flash to see the track player.)
posted by hellojed (8 comments total)

This needs way more work, sorry. You could only get away with those preset sounds if you were going for a definite "look, retro!" angle.
posted by kersplunk at 10:38 PM on August 14

I know feck all about synths, but here's the minimum standard I'd be aiming for if I was aiming for lazy stock sounds. Paper Planes (DFA remix)
posted by kersplunk at 10:41 PM on August 14

I realise I've come across a bit harsh/not in the mefimusic spirit, but I was kind of reacting to the "my four-year-old could have painted that" spirit of the original thread. Nothing personal intended.
posted by kersplunk at 10:45 PM on August 14

"my four-year-old could have painted that" spirit of the original thread.

That was not my intended message, fyi. My point was that, for a professional electronica musician, it should not take two years of all-day-every-day work to create a single album.

And I like this song. Great work!
posted by The World Famous at 11:02 PM on August 14

hellojed, if you enjoyed doing this have a look at the immersion composition society. One song in two hours is a great start =)
posted by bigmusic at 5:04 AM on August 15

strong groove, nice hook, great sound -- the seed of a monstrous club hit, IMO :)
posted by February28 at 8:43 AM on August 15

Working fast is a lot of fun but rife with challenge. If you came away from this feeling like it was a good exercise, I can't recommend strongly enough that you keep at. Post-game your process afterwards to identify what slowed you down, what went well, what could have gone better if only you'd worked out x (or had a working strategy or two for dealing with x) before you started, etc.

I've found a surprising amount of stuff that used to be time-consuming (or sound like total ass) for me became pretty easy to do quickly in practice once I'd figured out (a) how to plan out a lot of stuff in my head before I ever started Actual Work and (b) that it was okay to just get each piece to Good Enough, where I would know my limits and only retake things two or three times at most to get the part down reasonably close to as good as I can do.
posted by cortex at 11:53 AM on August 15

Thanks for the input guys.
posted by hellojed at 12:25 PM on August 15