@onezero hope all is well.

i also like the immediacy of sitting down and playing piano. and you would start with basslines. huh, funny, thats what i do, im trying to find more basslines at the moment, starting on the root of the minor scale

i feel there is room in your playing for a vocal, for sure. but its whether or not you feel you want to put a vocal to it, of course

i think i see what you mean, you attended the show and you thought of a few improvements. maybe im trying to be overly positive, but i think you werent reacting against something and you were instead reacting positively towards something you thought would work better in some small ways. when i think of negatively reaction to music i think of me thinking "this entire music is fucking shit, i could make a better version of this by clapping my ass and putting reverb on it, fuck you, person who made this music". no, but i see what you are saying. i think what you're talking about is a kind of helpful way to think about the practicalities of making music. we've talked about how we both love a type of jamming but i personally find its a struggle to wrangle the jamming into a format to 'sell'

i really liked minor progression 1534 today. new minor bassline i just found, i guess. or 1746 minor progression i also liked recently. im getting bored with the 30 basslines ive been doing over and over

uh, yeah, i did really like codeine and bedhead. i wanna listen to some more slowcore

how old are you? i never can tell how old people are on internet

i like your example of how you can spin a positive into a new way to make music. i do like it but i just fucking click shit in my daw i dont really try and get inspired by that shit. im more pure than you. if i came back from a shit rock show. i would still click shit into my daw the same way. i must be more pure than you. but if i hear a bad riddim song on the internet. i might click shit in a lot more aggresively. so im the same as you. but the weird thing is, i think we both make 'sad' music. a lot of my music ends up sounding sad. and sometimes it makes me want to delete it just caus i think 'fuck this sounds too sad, ill delete it'. lol idk bro

i have this problem where i make music but it sounds too sad and i think: "nah, this one is getting deleted". maybe i should have the opposite reaction and say "i am going to make this even more sad"

i am about to turn 32, me turning 32 isnt the reason i make sad music. i am sad person who has always had a massive love, for sad music, although im not overtly happy about ageing either

the problem i have with being negatively inspired by music is i dont wanna get stuck in a rut where i want to create the next thing that is "better" than the next guy. i like to do that in playing chess. but i dont want my music-making to turn into that. i prefer my music-making to remain closer to an "exploration" type feeling. i dont know. making music has become boring to me in a lot of ways. i dont have the answers for how to make some music. when i jam on piano i know what i want to hear at that moment. i think we both share this love of jamming. its the ultimate for me. if i went to an edm show, id think the whole thing was shit. but i am only interested in the music itself or something.

im trying to think of times when ive thought "this is shit, i can make it slightly better". i dont think i let myself be inspired by these thoughts, except momentarily. and im pretty selective with the music i enjoy

but i dont know how good music actually gets made. i feel like the times ive made music that i liked at least, it wasnt something i planned. i feel like its a kind of thing i cant control very much

@rain26 Apologies for the late reply--there's been a lot going on. I'm glad you liked Bedhead and Codeine, who are two important bands for me.

Drums: in the past, I was doing a lot with full arrangements, and then in 2021, did a guitar-only track that worked pretty well. I liked the immediacy of just plugging in and going. Previously, I spent more time during the week on drum arrangements, leading with bass lines, and then putting a little guitar on top. It's a standard enough way to work, but I kind of fell out of it.

For vocals, I don't feel that there's room in these arrangements for them, but I could imagine them working in others. For those cases, I think I'd have to start with the vocal rhythm and melody, so I'd be able to leave space for them. It's an interesting thought. (I've done vocals on covers, though I'm never all that satisfied with how those turn out.)

It's understandable about not wanting to create something as a response to disliking something, but it is a situation I've encountered. Some years ago I went to a show put on by a band I've heard of, but wasn't familiar with, and I found it extremely boring. Rather than leave, I started thinking about what would be better. Why was this show boring? Why wasn't it working? What would work instead, in a way that'd be interesting for the players and the audience? That kicked off some thoughts about a different way to write pieces, and I ended up doing a few shows with that approach. (It was difficult to sustain the group, but it worked for the moment.) So in a way, that was a case of creating in opposition to something.

@onezero i would rather try and create music in response to things that resonate with me, rather than making music in response to things i resonate against. but i do admit - i sometimes hear some electronic producer in recent years and i think 'pssssh even I could make something better than this'. i try not to be fueled by that type of competitiveness in making music though and prefer more to sort of noodle around in the daw with things im more used to.

im probably a bit lazy with trying to seek out new music. i sort of stick to the genres i know, or pop radio. but i feel a lot of genres end up in pop radio in some shape way or form. i was liking about 2 new tracks i heard on pop radio this evening, for example, which seemed to be some slightly new stylistic blend of older genres in some way

this concept you have of responding to your own improvisations in later takes, i find very interesting. not something ive tried with my piano-playing. it does sound tantalizing. a lot of DAW-work is kind of re-creating or re-imagining your own ideas in different form, but id love to try it out in some way with the piano at some point

ill check out codeine and bedhead's music. listening to codeine - atmosphere, youtube tells me. theres a vocalist on this track, have you considered adding your own vocals to your music? the guitar playing does sound stylistically similar to your playing. but im no guitar-appreciator im not even sure im on the right artist. checking out bedhead - left behind. again, melancholy-type guitar. i love melancholy. this reminds me of macy's day parade by green day. love that track. this track has drums. have you thought of adding drums to your compositions? so far i have only heard pure guitar from you. i love pure piano with nothing else but i got into drumming and DAW so now i do drums as well. bedhead has a vocalist too. u ever tried singing? lmao i could never sing. maybe you should try it though. i wouldnt know what to sing about

i do love the improvization aspect of jazz. i think the picture i have in my head of jazz is some really good drummer, and a saxaphone player just going crazy on stage. its just a fantasy image of jazz but i like it. i do love improvizing piano. probably my favorite thing to do in music tbh, whether in some jazz style or not

theres an electronic music producer's music work i really respect, and he says he pretty much only listens to jazz in his listening time. i might have to get listening one of these days

haha, i wish the structure of what i made overlapped with the listener more, that is the dream isnt it

i like bedhead. reminds me of some of nirvana's sadder songs i like. slowcore huh

haha thats a funny anecdote. on a smaller scale, ive noticed something similar in uploading to streak club, i dont know if this has ever happened to you. i went to export something i liked so i could upload it to this website, and somehow some way or another a (quite loud) FX noise build had snuck its way into an earlier part of the track than i intended. and i never noticed when i exported the upload. but on listening back ive kind of liked the addition. even just in my use of DAW, i occasionally bump a note on my keyboard and i like how it sounds, and it influences the way i write the rest of the track. happy accidents?

some youtube user made a slowcore playlist and im really enjoying it

@rain26 That makes sense. We create music in response to things we've heard that resonate with us, or in reaction against things we've heard that we don't like. We're all products of our environments. We can also change our environments by finding music that's new to us.

The playing style I'm doing in these guitar-only pieces is an exploration: I'll start playing something, record some phrases, and respond to it in other parts. Then I'll respond in a different way to one part, and record more in response to the new thing. It's essentially a collage of improvisations.

Stylistically, this stuff is informed in part by instrumental fingerstyle guitar (as it's developed after Fahey), in part by 90s slowcore (Codeine, Bedhead), experimental minimalism, and other listening I've done over the years.

Jazz is in there as well, but that's a very broad category--1920s jazz and 1970s electric Miles Davis all fit under the term "jazz," which makes it hard to determine what those things share. Syncopated rhythms? That's likely. Improvisation? Definitely. Does jazz require particular instrumentation? Probably not: jazz can exist in a large variety of instrumentation forms. Also jazz is not merely extended variations on chord substitutions: that was certainly a factor in bebop, but not so much in the forms that came after it.

Probably the jazz forms I'm most fond of are with Monk's work (maybe a genre to himself), Miles beginning with the modal thing into his electric period, Coltrane when he was freeing his playing, the harmolodic music that came from Ornette Coleman (including Charlie Haden's duet albums), and then Keith Jarett's long piano improvisations in the 1970s. I could go on, but there are whole worlds of different musics under that large genre label.

As for structure, I'd say there's no correct structure. There's structure that's correct for the musician, structure that's correct for the composer, structure that's correct for the listener. It's especially good when those overlap, and listener and creators connect.

Then again, there's an anecdote from Walter Becker of Steely Dan--he'd always liked the version of Mingus's "Hatian Fight Song" on the album Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus. It's an unusual song: it's a blues, and at one point has a section that's 13 bars instead of the expected 12. Becker always thought of that as an interesting, genre-expanding choice on Mingus's part. Years passed, and Steely Dan was signed to MCA, so Becker had access to the MCA vaults, including the Impulse! record label recordings. He went to check out the master tapes of that Mingus album, and learned that the 13-bar blues he'd liked was a mistake by the recording engineer. (Mingus was understandably not happy about the lack of care taken with his music. And yet, it gave Becker something to think about in terms of musical structure.)

@onezero it is interesting how music has changed so much over the decades. i disagree with melodies having a narrow frequency range in modern popular electronic, some have a wide range. i agree about the chords being fewer and simpler. i grew up pretty much only listening to popular radio (first CD i got when i was about 5 yrs old was backstreet boys). i haven't found an interest in other forms.

when i play piano i think my piano-playing sounds similar to your guitar-playing in some ways, sort of an exploration(?). but in uploading music i try and strive for more structure. i haven't thought about "jazz-informed standards". im not sure i even know what jazz is. i sometimes play piano with emphasis on the offbeat, which allows a kind of exploration where everything naturally flows into the next part

theres one classical piano music track which reminds me of modern pop: fur elise by beethoven

i just mean i dont know if pop music is the correct structure, its pretty much all ive known. i might look into the previous or other forms, such as jazz-informed standards

@rain26 Interesting questions. Are pop forms the correct musical structures? Certainly other forms or presentations are less salable, but is the market (or market alignment) the correct arbiter of the value of a musical experience?

Coincidentally I've been thinking about how the pop market has changed over the decades since, say, the age of jazz-informed standards. Pop forms now use fewer chords, simpler chords, and melodies have a much narrower frequency range. Which pop is the "correct" pop?

yea but this guy can play. he just needs more structure. to make the $$$

u want people to make only music that you enjoy rain? i dont know if your feedback can be considered "constructive"

well i try and separate myself from my music. it does still hurt

it hurts when people roast ur music like ur doing rain. ur music isnt good rain.

yea rain, why dont u upload something, useless critic

can you not find a way to en-sparsen the first minute so that the following 2 or three minutes means something?

too much meandering. i only listen to pop. i like something to build and then drop and then build again and then drop and then i leave the track. this is my ruthless assessment

@Kedbreak136 I've had to rewire a number of guitars over the years--either I'd got them as guitars with bad wiring, or specific parts were broken. (One of these was a guitar stepped on by United Parcel Service; I replaced the toggle switch.)

The Res-O-Glas was one I'd bought in pieces: the body was for sale as a kit that could be assembled, but the electronics, neck, and other hardware were all things I needed to buy. I couldn't decide on which capacitor(s) to use, so set it up to be switchable. You can see the finished guitar here, with the insides visible here.

I've not tended to experiment with capacitors all that much, apart from this switchable arrangement. Checking up on some other Varitone documentation, I think I may have wired it incorrectly. In this instrument, it makes the tone control darker, but some of the demos I'm seeing show different tonal profiles entirely, with some frequencies being emphasized and some attenuated. I should probably rewire it.

@onezero I did not know you also customized your guitars! Do you also experiment with different types of capacitors and components?

Thank you, @Kedbreak136 ! I think the contrast between the bright-shining parts and the not-shining-as much is (in part), which pickup I'm using: the neck pickup is inherently bassier, while the bridge is inherently more trebly. Another factor, though, is how I wired this guitar.

This one's got one volume control, one tone control, and a rotary switch for an Epiphone Varitone circuit, which I wired in as a switchable tone capacitor. (That may not be the correct way to wire those in, but it's the way I did it.) The two potentiometers are Fender No-Loads, so in the all-the-way-up position, there's no signal going to ground, and it's very trebly. With the tone control all the way down, the tone gets bassier as I progress through the Varitone positions.

On listening back...I probably should have stayed with a consistently brighter tone, as the bassier ones seem a bit too bossy. But I like the overall tone and structure of this one.

I am listening to this track as I'm starting my Monday work. I like the quiet positive energy it brings into my day. Some lines shine really bright in a good way.