Check out Vlaams Radiokoor "Barber's Agnes Deis" by choir to really hear what Barber was intending. Hearing it sung is very moving but also shows off all of the complicated parts.
No I don't put a beat to every bit of music I make, only when the type of music requires a beat. I will often sample the "Just Music" projects into a beat however.
"life is short, ergo make garbage". That doesnt logic. If you are appealing to the preciousness of finite life, you should then conclude that they shouldnt just "make whatever" but should strive for greatness and merit
@ilearncode7365 Whether it be greatness or garbage created...it doesn't change the fact that life is short. Maybe you should try to focus on producing something before your time is up. Versus trying to troll on people's comments.
@ thats a retarded take. Saying “YOLO, ergo do something stupid” is not logical. If anything, DONT splurge on a stupid thing if YOLO, and instead spend your time wisely. Life is short, spend it meaningfully not hedonistically chasing dopamine. If you are going to make music, try to make it good.
I feel the same when people call my songs "beats", almost implying that it's not actually a song of it's own, not until a vocalist hops in. It's a bit annoying...
This is such a weird phenomenon. A beat is the rhythm. Not the whole music minus voice. As an older rock musician, I was so confused when I began working in DAWs and kept coming across this term.
There is even dance music without percussion/beat. Think of tango, waltzes and lots of folk music styles. Applying the principles of these styles to danceable electronic music, there may be an entire hidden universe in this area ...
This is so true. I was sat noodling with an NTS-1 and a web-based sequencer last weekend laying down some multi-track stuff in LMMS and couldn't decide what to add in terms of drums and percussion. The answer hit me after just a few minutes, and the answer was nothing.
(I'm sorry, pun incoming.) How did the answer "hit" you without percussion? Maybe better to say it slid in place, no? But I'm glad you sorted your idea.
"Beats", "FIRE!" and " 🔥" are all over the place on music production vids and I'm getting tired of it. The ideas that you spoke about regarding textures and rhythms are spot on for certain genres.
Same. Most not all of those folks are ripping off others and just chopping and rearranging a few samples, and that is a great tool to have in the box. But it’s just a tool, and there are troves of people making it The Thing. Boom bap, I can’t even listen to that shit anymore except legit old school tracks
@@Hysteric_Subjects I have a love/hate relationship with LoFi as well. I appriciate good and minimal vibey song... But then I get flooded with lame ones wich were made lofi as excuses for bad mixing decisions 😅
I love the title to this video. Agree so much. Especially tired of hearing modular synth people start out so interesting and then just throw a beat over it... boring.
The problem? I suppose, with modern beat makers and beat maker TH-cam especially, is they nearly always sound the same. Sample a piano/soul voice/horns, pitch it down, some drum pack drums, eight bar loop, done.
That's beat production, and anything more then that requires additional skills such as composing, songwriting, engineering, sound design, mixing mastering, all thise are not actually production.
That's the reason why I get the feeling of being out of breath while listening to Irish Folk Music. It's an ongoing strain of melody without any pause.
Makes logical sense to me, but personally I love genres like traditional Irish music, bluegrass, black metal, deathcore, hardcore EDM etc that just shred my face off at 200bpm with zero reprieve 😂 Might be an ADHD thing
@@griffinlester9098 hahaha, hey if it works for you it works for you! I do prefer taking (and making) my black metal with a little more nuance, but to each their own!
Beats themselves aren't the problem, it's the people who don't put in the effort to add real emotion into their music. Too much quantizing. Not enough attention paid to a notes velocity or when a note starts and stops. Too much copying and pasting parts instead of playing the part a second time with a different feel. Too much visual focus on where a note should go rather than listening to where the note should be played. A lot of beats these days just have people bobbing their heads saying "That's Hard" but they don't really take the listener on an emotional journey.
Beat makers vs music Composers or some lime Me who does both, dont get confused on what production actually is. Did you know that composing is not music production? It's additional skill that is not necessary to be a producer. If I just take samples made by someone else and arange that into a end piece of music that is still production but to those who also compose it looks lazy.
@@HOLLASOUNDS Don't be ridiculous. I've been a musician for over 25 years and I make beats. If you sample someone else and that loop sounds really good, then chances are that the sample brings that emotion that I'm talking about. What I say goes for the drums too, not just the melody. Samples recorded live by musicians aren't played right on the grid. If a producer listens to where the drum hits should be their music is going to sound a lot better than if they just copy and paste or draw in their drums on the line. If you're a beatmaker you can definitely do things that composers do and vice versa. I don't have a problem with beatmakers. I don't have a problem with using samples. I don't even have a problem with medicore beats, I am just stating what I see in the industry today.
@@soundgrips Yes I understand what your saying and while I can compose My own stuff I still use loops made by someone else including drum loops. My approach is production first and I will only add My own composing if I feel it is necessary. My music could be 100% composed by Me one day and then the next I make something completely from pre made samples but put the two side by side and they sound just as good as each other, because of how I arrange and produce. I know to then end listeners, they dont care who made what, all they care about is does it sound good.
Love this one! The thing that really got me was when you started talking about the role of modular. And you spent time building up the case for rhythmic textural elements and then mention this something really clicked. That’s totally what I love about it and it gives me a lot of ideas of how to be more intentional about it. I think NIN and Radiohead use modular in that way a lot, as well as many others. Thanks for talking about this. I feel creatively inspired!
No beat is awesome, but the bigger problem nowadays is that everything is expected to just have a pumping 4/4 dance beat. There are loads of different types of rhythms and time signatures that are totally ignored in today’s music.
Great vid again. You touch on two important aspects which i relate to very much. 1- Rythm: Personnally, i just DONT use drum loops. And i NEVER start with kick. Just never. I think starting with drum loops sets an illusory feel that everything is okay and that the tune is going to be awesome. I prefer to write them all in midi. I examine what percs, various alt instruments and various synths orchestrations can do to give an influx of rythm. 2- I totally agree regarding melody being humanly playable. When doing my lives, all melodies and lots of chords, i play myself. I adds organicity over the programmed counter-melodies and synths BG runs.
Hell yeah. I've been meaning to watch this video and really glad I did. I started as a sample based producer and have since learned piano. I've grown realy bored with that formula. I've been growing more interested in music with less focus on "kit" style drums (kick, snare, hi hat, toms, and cymbals). This really helped formalize ways to explore this more mindfully and intentionally.
Its because people buy garbage speakers and then play music in already noisy places where you can't hear anything else. So, beats, because no other elements of the song matter.
Mainstreaming music means everything has to be OBVIOUS. No space for subtleties and I would say they (the people who want beats at all cost) have no sensibility to intrinsic rythm.
I don't find melodies difficult to write. It's just difficult to know if it's original. There is 99% chance someone somewhere have played the same or very similar melody already. I hate hearing "this sounds like that." Off course everything sounds like something else. It's like saying "the sky is blue most of the time." Sometimes it's purple or orange but it's blue most of the time.
Your ideas of how music should be or could be arranged are very technical and interesting, but the bottom line is if other people cannot feel it in someway it's really just a personal musical experience.
Dismember is definitely a great example of how you accomplished this with a "texture kit." Still my favorite song of yours. Thank for this informative video. You made some good points. I know I've been guilty of just going to playing the usual drum/ drum patterns when I want to add more energy. Thanks!
ow! I'm very glad i found your channel. I subbed right away. I"m a music writer and although most of my stuff is rock based, since I'm a synth player first, I do write ambient music too. Not enough though. Now I have a reason to! Thanks for that!
Well said. One well to draw inspiration from would be orchestral/film-score music; which has a lush universe of textures that the percussion section serves instead of becoming a be-all-end-all focal point (especially before the Zimmer-ites). There is a video that I would earnestly recommend being paired with this video: * The Death of Melody * by Andrei Samoylov (the channel used to be "Inside the score").
@@HOLLASOUNDS Dunno, man. On a functioning definition, you're right. However, if you've sat through Trey Xavier's Gear God's SONGwriting Contest, clearly the world needs to stop maxing out beast fader and bumping up composer just a little.
Fascinating. I think I have been approaching compositions both ways but not really thinking about the distinction between the two methods. One approach was appropriate for one particular purpose, so forth.
I meant to encourage you, that I often also think about adding beats to non-beat music :P But take it as a compliment because you my amazing friend are allowing enough space in your music to offer the listener a place to imagine. That's mighty rare - people are stuffing their tunes with too much noise, including me at times. It's as if people saying this are simply, tapping their proverbial feet in response to what you create :) I hope that helps. Thanks a million for what you do, keep going forward.
I couldn't agree more... I also came to like Ambient music without beats more and more over the years - and even came to the conclusion that people who always need beats in their music tend to be less intellectual and savvy when music styles and music history is concerned 😊 As a fan of the classical music style one calls 'impressionist', the like Debussy and others are famous for, and which very often not only lacks beats, but also clear Major/Minor distinction, I can't stand it if people are so narrow minded in their taste.
Janacek was a great conversationalist in his melody writing. Speech patterns lie behind many of his instrumental composition as well as vocal writing. It makes for a very distinctive and personal melodic technique for him as the rhythm of the Czech language is very distinctive. We have, I believe, grown too used to making words conform to pre determined rhythmical structures instead we can fit a melody to pre determined speech patterns. In the neo jazz end of hip hop we hear both freely used, although melody, per-se, is more likely to be pitched speech, the rapid evolution of rhythmical patterns in the rap, often inspire melodic shadows in instrumental accompaniments.
The track from signals at 3:09 gives me a very odd feeling. I can justify sitting and looking at my wall when I listen to it. Say nate, how do you do it. How does you music evoke such powerful emotional effect. Not even just basic sadness or melancholy but straight up trapped in your mind thinking about your mistakes.
I think you kinda nailed it early. If you are going for a feel or effect then you can use many devices/methods to achieve you desired goal. Using the same trick [almost] every time gets, stale and old, doesn’t scratch that itch. I think this approach is much more inline with people who do music as a hobby, wherein commercial appeal is not the main goal (or even an important goal). If you are someone trying to maximize money making or clicks then using well worn methods that people expect is incredibly useful. If you are mainly a hobbyist or someone trying to appeal to a much smaller audience, then it becomes much more important to please yourself first, else why would you be doing it as a hobby
I use a Torso T-1 sequencer and though it works really well for making dance music I love making music without beats with it, where the rhythm comes from the rhythmic use of the melodic elements. Occasionally it’s nice to add a spartan snare drum in there but I love to do it without beats.
Beats are just too incorporated in popular music, and have been for a long while. That so much music is consumed via bad headphones and phone speakers does not make it any better: snares, hats and clicky kicks will always have presence, even on the worst sound systems, while subtle texture changes will be lost. The expectations of beat drops are also very important in many genres, and playing with them can be both fun and satisfying.
Excellent advice, thanks! I have a few synths but no drum machine. I find the rhythms of the effects I use sets "the beat" and that can move about pleasantly as you change parameters. Or sequencing triggers of synth sounds that are not obviously drum sounds also works well, also while changing parameters gives a drum/rhythm feel but not as obvious. But jamming and noodling 'ain't composing!
I think it is. Depends the jamming level. I struggle to structure, interprete, create, recreate, play something different from what I played 2min before. I experiment things, I mix harmonies, I take elements from different genres. I feel I'm doing this especially in my solo piano project, or my poetry and synths project. Both of them have no drums. But there are layered sounds, intricate rythms, polyrythms. Otherwise, I would find it boring. But other people are perfectly ok with a simple line of music. Myself included when listening to other's music, and following my mood. But when I'm playing, I've the feeling, the fear or the desire to do something complex, stimulating or entertaining. My third project is live electronic music, and it's about Beat and synth arpeggios to make ppl dance
I love this!! although i make music predominantly for dancefloors (techno, psy, trance, progressive) so "beats" usually come in the form of electronic drums.. having said that, i like to keep energy in my breakdowns so subconsciously i use some of the methods described to keep the music "danceable" without drums. When i put my DJ hat on im also subconsciously looking for this in other music.
I don't know. Melodies are pretty easy for me to make. Percussion can be a little more difficult. Maybe because I have less interests in it, but I know it needs it... sometimes.
Hitting something (wood, rock) in a rhythmic fashion is the reptilian music mind. Totally primal and will never lose its appeal for humans. Are beats a modern crutch? Absolutely. I would say the beat grid in a DAW is the biggest problem. Even when not making rhythmic parts, producers still feel tied the scrolling grid instead of letting the tempo breathe with the emotion of the music. If you want to go hard mode in music production, turn quantize off for every recorded part and never use the grid lines as a guide for music movement. Then mix it lol. It's the DAW that's killing music.
Interesting! So… for example… I could use sounds (which maybe never make their way to the master bus) to trigger side-chain compression to create a “throbbing” sound/feeling… rhythmic or otherwise. Or, really, as side-chain triggers for any effect. Since the beginning of my ambient journey (1996), I’ve used sounds to “trigger” reverb without the original sound appearing in the mix (a fancy way of saying all-wet reverb), even chaining this multiple times with other effects appearing between the multiple reverbs…. Very interesting… I’ve got some new ideas. Thank you.
Awesome video, I can relate a lot to this. I am almost always reaching for a kick and a snare.... Is your Muse behind you there in tune? And does it play sound when all mixer faders are at 0%? Mine have some minor issues... ;)
Thanks! I haven't had any issues with mine. There's almost always a little tuning drift and oscillator bleed with most of the analog synths I've owned though.
Amazing video as always! Would absolutley love for you to do track breakdowns! For example of the you play at 3.09! Would love to see you talk about the production, the idea and how it evolved etc😊
I like "beats" more than melodies because I frequently enjoy passive listening more than active listening (such as while working out or working). However, I love your style and take on this. Your music is very interesting to me, and I like it a lot. I don't think I've ever tapped my toe to it, though, which is sometimes preferred (and sometimes not).
I'm also tired of producers obsessing over "beats." I believe they often use them as a way to appropriate the musical efforts of others. They put a beat to someone else's track, release it because they have the right industry connections, then get all the credit. I suppose this is okay if they are paying royalties & the copyright owner is happy with the arrangement. But it still proliferates this idea that everything needs a beat. Don't get me wrong, just about everything I write has untuned percussion. But I want the ones that don't to stay that way.
Wish all producers watched this video a thousand times. Then, maybe then, we would have music that's not all "copy-paste" and sounding all the same. I think the music nowadays lacks something very important: personality, the personality of the author(s).
Good stuff. So when you say "beats", you are really talking about typical drum parts. I would say a modulated tape hiss pulse is also a beat, as is any other regular rhythmic pattern however it is produced. I just wonder when people will finally realize that 5/4 should be considered common time LOL
"Beats" for me, especially the stuff posted frequently on TH-cam often sound to me like an unfinished song's starting point. A lot of my songs start as what could be considered a 'beat', I'll come up with a cool minute long loop or neat drum pattern, but that's just step one. A lot of people seem to just get kinda stuck there and make a series of of these one shot loops of whatever genre, call them 'beats', and never turn them into actual songs. Even if you are using that loop as backing for, say, a hip hop track, it's still unfinished, and even then it benefits from variety and change over time and not just being a static loop.
I halfway think that “beat”, as the term is commonly used now, is an attempt to downplay what it is, that being a loop. And why downplay it by calling it something else? Because even the person saying it knows that loop is not enough, and is far from “done.” They think their job is done, but we know that getting to a loop is the easy part after which the real work begins.
@@jg_ultra Yeah exactly. And it’s perfectly ok to say ‘I’m new at this and this is where I get stuck at’. We’re all there at some point. But these days people just move goalposts and say ‘this is a finished beat’ and really, it’s just an incomplete song with extra steps. Being bad is part of getting good. If you don’t work past that, you never actually get good. I’m just now, after like three years, putting out stuff I’d co sider passable. It’s a lot of work. It’s hard.
@@Androsynth75That's thoughtful. Right now I want to write music, instead of storing coubtless riffs and/or loops. For now most of my music is based on improvisation. And it works. But I'd like to compose some things. For 2 months I've wandering how to write. I mean literally, what will my way to write my songs. Sheet notes and part with a pencil ? Ableton midi roll ? A hardware midi sequencer ? Jazz chords grid ? Videos shot and edited with my smartphone ? Lines and drawings on a big chunk of paper ? Allegorical stories written on my wall ? Input midi not on musescore ? I don't know, and it's frustrating for now. I think your comment refers to discipline too (not the King Crimson album lel). And I lack some. That's why I spend a crazy time improving my improvisational skills. But every time I try to write, I get bored and distracted after 10min. But anyway, it works, and of course there are countless way to achiever creating music.
@ I know what you mean. For me the answer was ‘get a groovebox’. Depending on what you get, it’s a very immediate and improvisational like an instrument, but you’re able to build out loops into song sections, and then on to songs then dump them into your pc to mix and master, maybe add some sound effects. If you do something complex like an MPC, you don’t even need a pc really. I can’t understate how that hands one approach changes things. Maybe something to check out?
@@Androsynth75 Yes indeed thanks for the input :) I've just bought my first drum machine, a Drumbrute for Calixte (live electronic music). So it's a first step in the sequencer world, along with using my PC4's simple sequencer. I began looking for a bigger and deeper midi sequencer, but couldn't decide yet which one is "simpler". I hate menu diving and I already spend way too much time in front of screens, so I don't know if an mpc, a digitakt, a deluge or a pyramid is the answer. For now I'm trying to conceptualise how I could "see" the whole musical composition in front of me. Without having to scroll through time. That's what's marvelous with musical notes writing. You take you partition, get directly to the page you want. The midi roll approach is similar: you can go directly to the section you wanna edit. But it is a screened approach. So, I'd like to try some good midi sequencer/groovebox. And I'd to learn how to freaking write music. Because it's a marvelous tool. But I need discipline, and for now music is "pleasure only".
this video and its comments feel so damn vindicating for me. it's as if 99.9% of all music-making content online is BEATS BEATS BEATS DO THIS TO IMPROVE YOUR BEATS MAKE FIRE BEATS WITH THIS BEATS BEATS PRODUCING BEATS it feels insanely reductive in a frankly insulting way. like no, I'm not making a beat for someone to do vocals over, I am making a _song._ you know, the word we've had in our language used for FAR longer to describe both beats AND every other possible umbrella genre of music? you'd be hard pressed to find ANYTHING resembling what you think of when you hear the word "beat" in the vast majority of what I make, despite there in fact _being_ percussion present
3:09 this remains one of my favorite ambient tracks across multiple listens. Have you done a breakdown of the rhythmic modular patch in any of your videos?
Thanks! I haven't, but if I remember correctly it was created by sequencing one of the wavetable shapes in the e352 Cloud Terrarium, then using the the Planar to automate the panning.
The harmony concepts that have helped me the most over the years (for free)➡bit.ly/FreeHarmonyGuide
Thank you for the download.
Check out Vlaams Radiokoor "Barber's Agnes Deis" by choir to really hear what Barber was intending. Hearing it sung is very moving but also shows off all of the complicated parts.
No I don't put a beat to every bit of music I make, only when the type of music requires a beat. I will often sample the "Just Music" projects into a beat however.
Life is short people. Create whatever you wish.
"life is short, ergo make garbage". That doesnt logic. If you are appealing to the preciousness of finite life, you should then conclude that they shouldnt just "make whatever" but should strive for greatness and merit
@ilearncode7365 Whether it be greatness or garbage created...it doesn't change the fact that life is short. Maybe you should try to focus on producing something before your time is up. Versus trying to troll on people's comments.
@ thats a retarded take. Saying “YOLO, ergo do something stupid” is not logical. If anything, DONT splurge on a stupid thing if YOLO, and instead spend your time wisely. Life is short, spend it meaningfully not hedonistically chasing dopamine. If you are going to make music, try to make it good.
I feel the same when people call my songs "beats", almost implying that it's not actually a song of it's own, not until a vocalist hops in. It's a bit annoying...
This hurts because i always dedicate great attention to my melodies, making sure they're singable and catchy, and making my lead synths expressive...
People call _my_ songs completely different things. I won't repeat them here as to not alarm the TH-cam algorithm.
This is such a weird phenomenon. A beat is the rhythm. Not the whole music minus voice. As an older rock musician, I was so confused when I began working in DAWs and kept coming across this term.
@@unduloid hahaha
Yeah but tbh if I hear any instrumental with a trap snare it’s automatically a beat in my mind.
There is even dance music without percussion/beat. Think of tango, waltzes and lots of folk music styles.
Applying the principles of these styles to danceable electronic music, there may be an entire hidden universe in this area ...
no, thanks, I would hate percussionless trance
there is a time and place for what you propose, nonetheless
"inevitable rather than predictable" is a lovely turn of phrase.
This is so true. I was sat noodling with an NTS-1 and a web-based sequencer last weekend laying down some multi-track stuff in LMMS and couldn't decide what to add in terms of drums and percussion. The answer hit me after just a few minutes, and the answer was nothing.
(I'm sorry, pun incoming.) How did the answer "hit" you without percussion? Maybe better to say it slid in place, no?
But I'm glad you sorted your idea.
"Beats", "FIRE!" and " 🔥" are all over the place on music production vids and I'm getting tired of it. The ideas that you spoke about regarding textures and rhythms are spot on for certain genres.
I also prefer to make full structured songs...
I believe beats are OK for a start, as it's very simplistic approach.
Same. Most not all of those folks are ripping off others and just chopping and rearranging a few samples, and that is a great tool to have in the box. But it’s just a tool, and there are troves of people making it The Thing. Boom bap, I can’t even listen to that shit anymore except legit old school tracks
@@Hysteric_Subjects I have a love/hate relationship with LoFi as well.
I appriciate good and minimal vibey song...
But then I get flooded with lame ones wich were made lofi as excuses for bad mixing decisions 😅
@@DaveChips
I only make a beat if thats the music I'm making, but I see a clear definition between just music vs beats with music.
2:03 Sounds like percussion to me, ya makin beats
I love the title to this video. Agree so much. Especially tired of hearing modular synth people start out so interesting and then just throw a beat over it... boring.
The problem? I suppose, with modern beat makers and beat maker TH-cam especially, is they nearly always sound the same. Sample a piano/soul voice/horns, pitch it down, some drum pack drums, eight bar loop, done.
That's beat production, and anything more then that requires additional skills such as composing, songwriting, engineering, sound design, mixing mastering, all thise are not actually production.
Texture kit, love the idea and definition.
Thank you for putting the idea of a texture kit in my head!
That's the reason why I get the feeling of being out of breath while listening to Irish Folk Music. It's an ongoing strain of melody without any pause.
And note that much Irish Folk Music involves fiddle, bagpipes, mandolin, and other instruments that don't need to breathe.
@@Baribrotzer I know, but I do!
Makes logical sense to me, but personally I love genres like traditional Irish music, bluegrass, black metal, deathcore, hardcore EDM etc that just shred my face off at 200bpm with zero reprieve 😂 Might be an ADHD thing
@@griffinlester9098 hahaha, hey if it works for you it works for you! I do prefer taking (and making) my black metal with a little more nuance, but to each their own!
Can I sample this to make a beat?
I was thinking the same thing
The track you have playing around the three minute mark is an absolute masterpiece. Beautifully unsettling....Thankyou!
Thanks so much!
Beats themselves aren't the problem, it's the people who don't put in the effort to add real emotion into their music. Too much quantizing. Not enough attention paid to a notes velocity or when a note starts and stops. Too much copying and pasting parts instead of playing the part a second time with a different feel. Too much visual focus on where a note should go rather than listening to where the note should be played. A lot of beats these days just have people bobbing their heads saying "That's Hard" but they don't really take the listener on an emotional journey.
Beat makers vs music Composers or some lime Me who does both, dont get confused on what production actually is. Did you know that composing is not music production? It's additional skill that is not necessary to be a producer. If I just take samples made by someone else and arange that into a end piece of music that is still production but to those who also compose it looks lazy.
@@HOLLASOUNDS Don't be ridiculous. I've been a musician for over 25 years and I make beats. If you sample someone else and that loop sounds really good, then chances are that the sample brings that emotion that I'm talking about. What I say goes for the drums too, not just the melody. Samples recorded live by musicians aren't played right on the grid. If a producer listens to where the drum hits should be their music is going to sound a lot better than if they just copy and paste or draw in their drums on the line. If you're a beatmaker you can definitely do things that composers do and vice versa. I don't have a problem with beatmakers. I don't have a problem with using samples. I don't even have a problem with medicore beats, I am just stating what I see in the industry today.
@@soundgrips Yes I understand what your saying and while I can compose My own stuff I still use loops made by someone else including drum loops. My approach is production first and I will only add My own composing if I feel it is necessary. My music could be 100% composed by Me one day and then the next I make something completely from pre made samples but put the two side by side and they sound just as good as each other, because of how I arrange and produce. I know to then end listeners, they dont care who made what, all they care about is does it sound good.
Love this one! The thing that really got me was when you started talking about the role of modular. And you spent time building up the case for rhythmic textural elements and then mention this something really clicked. That’s totally what I love about it and it gives me a lot of ideas of how to be more intentional about it. I think NIN and Radiohead use modular in that way a lot, as well as many others. Thanks for talking about this. I feel creatively inspired!
Having been stuck in a creative rut for a while your advice has made me think about the process in a totally different way. Thank you.
The background music of this video is TOP!
Thanks!
fantastic insight on your musical approach and experience. Keep up brother!
No beat is awesome, but the bigger problem nowadays is that everything is expected to just have a pumping 4/4 dance beat. There are loads of different types of rhythms and time signatures that are totally ignored in today’s music.
Great vid again. You touch on two important aspects which i relate to very much. 1- Rythm: Personnally, i just DONT use drum loops. And i NEVER start with kick. Just never. I think starting with drum loops sets an illusory feel that everything is okay and that the tune is going to be awesome. I prefer to write them all in midi. I examine what percs, various alt instruments and various synths orchestrations can do to give an influx of rythm. 2- I totally agree regarding melody being humanly playable. When doing my lives, all melodies and lots of chords, i play myself. I adds organicity over the programmed counter-melodies and synths BG runs.
Thank you Jonathan for your insights, recommendations and reflections :)
Thank you, Jameson. Your videos are so thought-provoking. I often squirrel away your advice for later use. 😉
Hell yeah. I've been meaning to watch this video and really glad I did. I started as a sample based producer and have since learned piano. I've grown realy bored with that formula. I've been growing more interested in music with less focus on "kit" style drums (kick, snare, hi hat, toms, and cymbals). This really helped formalize ways to explore this more mindfully and intentionally.
Often music today is dominated by ‘beats’ and the intrinsic rhythm(s) are seen to be of lesser importance
Its because people buy garbage speakers and then play music in already noisy places where you can't hear anything else. So, beats, because no other elements of the song matter.
Mainstreaming music means everything has to be OBVIOUS. No space for subtleties and I would say they (the people who want beats at all cost) have no sensibility to intrinsic rythm.
@@Cocc0nuttt0 that's just not true
at 8:17 you discuss the thing you do that I love... I want to learn how to side chaining and gating a sustained texture. Please share this technique!
A fantastic perspective. Thank you.
Thank you. Been saying this for years
I don't find melodies difficult to write. It's just difficult to know if it's original. There is 99% chance someone somewhere have played the same or very similar melody already. I hate hearing "this sounds like that." Off course everything sounds like something else. It's like saying "the sky is blue most of the time." Sometimes it's purple or orange but it's blue most of the time.
Your ideas of how music should be or could be arranged are very technical and interesting, but the bottom line is if other people cannot feel it in someway it's really just a personal musical experience.
Dismember is definitely a great example of how you accomplished this with a "texture kit." Still my favorite song of yours. Thank for this informative video. You made some good points. I know I've been guilty of just going to playing the usual drum/ drum patterns when I want to add more energy. Thanks!
ow! I'm very glad i found your channel. I subbed right away. I"m a music writer and although most of my stuff is rock based, since I'm a synth player first, I do write ambient music too. Not enough though. Now I have a reason to! Thanks for that!
Well said. One well to draw inspiration from would be orchestral/film-score music; which has a lush universe of textures that the percussion section serves instead of becoming a be-all-end-all focal point (especially before the Zimmer-ites). There is a video that I would earnestly recommend being paired with this video: * The Death of Melody * by Andrei Samoylov (the channel used to be "Inside the score").
Composer and beast maker are two separate things that are necessary needed to produce music.
@@HOLLASOUNDS Dunno, man. On a functioning definition, you're right. However, if you've sat through Trey Xavier's Gear God's SONGwriting Contest, clearly the world needs to stop maxing out beast fader and bumping up composer just a little.
Fascinating. I think I have been approaching compositions both ways but not really thinking about the distinction between the two methods. One approach was appropriate for one particular purpose, so forth.
I meant to encourage you, that I often also think about adding beats to non-beat music :P But take it as a compliment because you my amazing friend are allowing enough space in your music to offer the listener a place to imagine. That's mighty rare - people are stuffing their tunes with too much noise, including me at times. It's as if people saying this are simply, tapping their proverbial feet in response to what you create :) I hope that helps. Thanks a million for what you do, keep going forward.
Thanks so much!
I couldn't agree more... I also came to like Ambient music without beats more and more over the years - and even came to the conclusion that people who always need beats in their music tend to be less intellectual and savvy when music styles and music history is concerned 😊
As a fan of the classical music style one calls 'impressionist', the like Debussy and others are famous for, and which very often not only lacks beats, but also clear Major/Minor distinction, I can't stand it if people are so narrow minded in their taste.
Janacek was a great conversationalist in his melody writing. Speech patterns lie behind many of his instrumental composition as well as vocal writing. It makes for a very distinctive and personal melodic technique for him as the rhythm of the Czech language is very distinctive.
We have, I believe, grown too used to making words conform to pre determined rhythmical structures instead we can fit a melody to pre determined speech patterns.
In the neo jazz end of hip hop we hear both freely used, although melody, per-se, is more likely to be pitched speech, the rapid evolution of rhythmical patterns in the rap, often inspire melodic shadows in instrumental accompaniments.
Great video!
Great advice, thanks.
Another great video. Thank you!
The track from signals at 3:09 gives me a very odd feeling. I can justify sitting and looking at my wall when I listen to it.
Say nate, how do you do it. How does you music evoke such powerful emotional effect. Not even just basic sadness or melancholy but straight up trapped in your mind thinking about your mistakes.
🔥🔥❤🔥❤🔥LOVE it, thank you!
Thanks. I needed to hear this 👍😎
Damn that’s 🔥🔥🔥! Can I put a beat to this?😂😂😂 just kidding good video!
I think you kinda nailed it early. If you are going for a feel or effect then you can use many devices/methods to achieve you desired goal. Using the same trick [almost] every time gets, stale and old, doesn’t scratch that itch.
I think this approach is much more inline with people who do music as a hobby, wherein commercial appeal is not the main goal (or even an important goal). If you are someone trying to maximize money making or clicks then using well worn methods that people expect is incredibly useful. If you are mainly a hobbyist or someone trying to appeal to a much smaller audience, then it becomes much more important to please yourself first, else why would you be doing it as a hobby
I use a Torso T-1 sequencer and though it works really well for making dance music I love making music without beats with it, where the rhythm comes from the rhythmic use of the melodic elements. Occasionally it’s nice to add a spartan snare drum in there but I love to do it without beats.
Beats are just too incorporated in popular music, and have been for a long while. That so much music is consumed via bad headphones and phone speakers does not make it any better: snares, hats and clicky kicks will always have presence, even on the worst sound systems, while subtle texture changes will be lost. The expectations of beat drops are also very important in many genres, and playing with them can be both fun and satisfying.
IDM wants to have a word with you ser
Tell it I'm not home
That's all well and good, but which is the best vst for 808's? 🔥🔥🔥
Standing against the tide much appreciated
top as usual !!thks!!!
Excellent video! Subscribed
Thanks! And welcome!
Ambient musician says music doesn’t need percussion. Got it.
🔥 fire fire 🔥
Knock it off, Beavis.
fire emoji's remind me of the fire festival disaster.
🔥🔥🔥
No one would ever play that... besides Frank Zappa
Excellent advice, thanks!
I have a few synths but no drum machine. I find the rhythms of the effects I use sets "the beat" and that can move about pleasantly as you change parameters. Or sequencing triggers of synth sounds that are not obviously drum sounds also works well, also while changing parameters gives a drum/rhythm feel but not as obvious. But jamming and noodling 'ain't composing!
I think it is. Depends the jamming level. I struggle to structure, interprete, create, recreate, play something different from what I played 2min before. I experiment things, I mix harmonies, I take elements from different genres. I feel I'm doing this especially in my solo piano project, or my poetry and synths project. Both of them have no drums. But there are layered sounds, intricate rythms, polyrythms. Otherwise, I would find it boring. But other people are perfectly ok with a simple line of music. Myself included when listening to other's music, and following my mood. But when I'm playing, I've the feeling, the fear or the desire to do something complex, stimulating or entertaining. My third project is live electronic music, and it's about Beat and synth arpeggios to make ppl dance
Thank you.
I love this!! although i make music predominantly for dancefloors (techno, psy, trance, progressive) so "beats" usually come in the form of electronic drums.. having said that, i like to keep energy in my breakdowns so subconsciously i use some of the methods described to keep the music "danceable" without drums.
When i put my DJ hat on im also subconsciously looking for this in other music.
P.s. I do experiment with atmospheric music but I tend to over-produce it..
Good advice
I m jealous of your collection. Yes. If I am in your area I will have to become friends and touch all your keyboards. 😀😀😀
I don't know. Melodies are pretty easy for me to make.
Percussion can be a little more difficult.
Maybe because I have less interests in it, but I know it needs it... sometimes.
And don't forget to listen!
The Adagio is one of those instances of perfection I always go back to,and strive for (however horribly)
Same
Hitting something (wood, rock) in a rhythmic fashion is the reptilian music mind. Totally primal and will never lose its appeal for humans. Are beats a modern crutch? Absolutely. I would say the beat grid in a DAW is the biggest problem. Even when not making rhythmic parts, producers still feel tied the scrolling grid instead of letting the tempo breathe with the emotion of the music. If you want to go hard mode in music production, turn quantize off for every recorded part and never use the grid lines as a guide for music movement. Then mix it lol. It's the DAW that's killing music.
lots to think about. I still like beats though
Good talk!
Interesting!
So… for example… I could use sounds (which maybe never make their way to the master bus) to trigger side-chain compression to create a “throbbing” sound/feeling… rhythmic or otherwise. Or, really, as side-chain triggers for any effect.
Since the beginning of my ambient journey (1996), I’ve used sounds to “trigger” reverb without the original sound appearing in the mix (a fancy way of saying all-wet reverb), even chaining this multiple times with other effects appearing between the multiple reverbs….
Very interesting…
I’ve got some new ideas. Thank you.
They don't feel that you music need beats. They want to use your music FOR beats. Hip hop beats most likely.
Awesome video, I can relate a lot to this. I am almost always reaching for a kick and a snare.... Is your Muse behind you there in tune? And does it play sound when all mixer faders are at 0%? Mine have some minor issues... ;)
Thanks!
I haven't had any issues with mine. There's almost always a little tuning drift and oscillator bleed with most of the analog synths I've owned though.
Beats are not songs . Great video
Conversely, it boils my piss when someone goes "TUNE!" when melody is nowhere to be heard in the piece playing!
Cold hard truth
Amazing video as always! Would absolutley love for you to do track breakdowns! For example of the you play at 3.09! Would love to see you talk about the production, the idea and how it evolved etc😊
I've got a few breakdowns from 3-4 years ago still up on the channel I think. :)
@@JamesonNathanJones will check those out then!
turning is a great track
Thanks!
I arpeggiolistically agree! 😉
I like "beats" more than melodies because I frequently enjoy passive listening more than active listening (such as while working out or working). However, I love your style and take on this. Your music is very interesting to me, and I like it a lot. I don't think I've ever tapped my toe to it, though, which is sometimes preferred (and sometimes not).
Slowly opens up Adagio for Strings...🤣
Phat Beatz!
This is very true 😂😂😂
Very well said
I'm also tired of producers obsessing over "beats." I believe they often use them as a way to appropriate the musical efforts of others. They put a beat to someone else's track, release it because they have the right industry connections, then get all the credit. I suppose this is okay if they are paying royalties & the copyright owner is happy with the arrangement. But it still proliferates this idea that everything needs a beat.
Don't get me wrong, just about everything I write has untuned percussion. But I want the ones that don't to stay that way.
thanks for this very informative video my brother, it really gave me more of a vision of my original material, SHIMI The entertainer Rochester NY
Finally people are saying it
or a heartbeat
Reznor-y!
Wish all producers watched this video a thousand times. Then, maybe then, we would have music that's not all "copy-paste" and sounding all the same. I think the music nowadays lacks something very important: personality, the personality of the author(s).
Music may not need beats, but I do 😜
Not every song calls for a beat but maybe it’s the African in me but beats have a spiritual significance to me personally.
what is playing at the very end? Would love to hear it in full, thx!
jamesonnathanjones.bandcamp.com/track/kept :)
Hey this is a cool video can i put a beat to this FIREEMOJI
Ok...but only because you typed out 'fire emoji'
Good stuff. So when you say "beats", you are really talking about typical drum parts. I would say a modulated tape hiss pulse is also a beat, as is any other regular rhythmic pattern however it is produced. I just wonder when people will finally realize that 5/4 should be considered common time LOL
Drum machines and beats are getting boring after using them for 40 years. I use 5U modular to create very unique rhythms. Old Tangerine Dream style.
It was better when I had my modular but I just kept making sounds and no completed stuff. 😂
onya bro, kids these days need to listen to more ORB
Something about poor carpenters and tools
"Beats" for me, especially the stuff posted frequently on TH-cam often sound to me like an unfinished song's starting point. A lot of my songs start as what could be considered a 'beat', I'll come up with a cool minute long loop or neat drum pattern, but that's just step one. A lot of people seem to just get kinda stuck there and make a series of of these one shot loops of whatever genre, call them 'beats', and never turn them into actual songs. Even if you are using that loop as backing for, say, a hip hop track, it's still unfinished, and even then it benefits from variety and change over time and not just being a static loop.
I halfway think that “beat”, as the term is commonly used now, is an attempt to downplay what it is, that being a loop. And why downplay it by calling it something else? Because even the person saying it knows that loop is not enough, and is far from “done.”
They think their job is done, but we know that getting to a loop is the easy part after which the real work begins.
@@jg_ultra Yeah exactly. And it’s perfectly ok to say ‘I’m new at this and this is where I get stuck at’. We’re all there at some point. But these days people just move goalposts and say ‘this is a finished beat’ and really, it’s just an incomplete song with extra steps.
Being bad is part of getting good. If you don’t work past that, you never actually get good. I’m just now, after like three years, putting out stuff I’d co sider passable. It’s a lot of work. It’s hard.
@@Androsynth75That's thoughtful. Right now I want to write music, instead of storing coubtless riffs and/or loops. For now most of my music is based on improvisation. And it works. But I'd like to compose some things. For 2 months I've wandering how to write. I mean literally, what will my way to write my songs. Sheet notes and part with a pencil ? Ableton midi roll ? A hardware midi sequencer ? Jazz chords grid ? Videos shot and edited with my smartphone ? Lines and drawings on a big chunk of paper ? Allegorical stories written on my wall ? Input midi not on musescore ? I don't know, and it's frustrating for now.
I think your comment refers to discipline too (not the King Crimson album lel). And I lack some. That's why I spend a crazy time improving my improvisational skills. But every time I try to write, I get bored and distracted after 10min.
But anyway, it works, and of course there are countless way to achiever creating music.
@ I know what you mean.
For me the answer was ‘get a groovebox’. Depending on what you get, it’s a very immediate and improvisational like an instrument, but you’re able to build out loops into song sections, and then on to songs then dump them into your pc to mix and master, maybe add some sound effects.
If you do something complex like an MPC, you don’t even need a pc really.
I can’t understate how that hands one approach changes things. Maybe something to check out?
@@Androsynth75 Yes indeed thanks for the input :) I've just bought my first drum machine, a Drumbrute for Calixte (live electronic music). So it's a first step in the sequencer world, along with using my PC4's simple sequencer.
I began looking for a bigger and deeper midi sequencer, but couldn't decide yet which one is "simpler". I hate menu diving and I already spend way too much time in front of screens, so I don't know if an mpc, a digitakt, a deluge or a pyramid is the answer. For now I'm trying to conceptualise how I could "see" the whole musical composition in front of me. Without having to scroll through time. That's what's marvelous with musical notes writing. You take you partition, get directly to the page you want.
The midi roll approach is similar: you can go directly to the section you wanna edit. But it is a screened approach.
So, I'd like to try some good midi sequencer/groovebox.
And I'd to learn how to freaking write music. Because it's a marvelous tool. But I need discipline, and for now music is "pleasure only".
808 wiped out „sound“ from „music“
I’m so sick of people forcing me to hear their beat, and it’s the same beat I hear from top 40/reggaeton song
Much like the way “melody” now means ‘anything with pitch’ to ignorant people.
this video and its comments feel so damn vindicating for me. it's as if 99.9% of all music-making content online is BEATS BEATS BEATS DO THIS TO IMPROVE YOUR BEATS MAKE FIRE BEATS WITH THIS BEATS BEATS PRODUCING BEATS
it feels insanely reductive in a frankly insulting way. like no, I'm not making a beat for someone to do vocals over, I am making a _song._ you know, the word we've had in our language used for FAR longer to describe both beats AND every other possible umbrella genre of music? you'd be hard pressed to find ANYTHING resembling what you think of when you hear the word "beat" in the vast majority of what I make, despite there in fact _being_ percussion present
3:09 this remains one of my favorite ambient tracks across multiple listens. Have you done a breakdown of the rhythmic modular patch in any of your videos?
Thanks! I haven't, but if I remember correctly it was created by sequencing one of the wavetable shapes in the e352 Cloud Terrarium, then using the the Planar to automate the panning.