Three approaches to generating ideas
Jam and comp 1
Comping tools are now pretty ubiquitous across the board, existing for a long time in the likes of Logic or Cubase and more, recently added to the more ‘electronic’ DAWs Ableton Live and Bitwig Studio. Comp tools are often thought of as best used for vocal takes, but they’re also fantastic for capturing and amalgamating elements of a synth, guitar, keyboard or even drum machine jam. Pick an instrument and improvise for a while. Play to your strengths – if you’re not a keys player, use a sequencer and get hands-on with filters and effects, introduce some randomisation. Most comp tools let the user fold longer takes down into layered loops. You can then use these to pick the best parts of your jam session, mashing up riffs, patterns or tonalities into a single loop.
Resample ‘mining’ 2
An often fruitful way to get the creative synapses firing is to take a single sound and see how many different track elements you can create from it. A sampled loop – either rhythmic or melodic – is always a good place to start. Try feeding your loop through creative effects such as extreme reverbs, comb filters, delays and the like, and resampling the results. Or attempt to pick percussive elements from a melodic loop, or turn a percussive sound into a melody using resonator effects. For a great example of this approach, check out this issue’s Produce Like… with Ploy, where he uses a sampled loop to create both the hook and atmospheric elements of a track.
Raid old projects 3
Do you, like many of us, have a wealth of half-finished or abandoned projects lying around on your hard drive? These could be the perfect place to start when looking for ideas and elements for your next track. Just because something ended up as a creative dead-end previously, doesn’t mean you won’t find new inspiration when revisiting it. It’s common to find that a bit of time and distance can help you look at old ideas from a fresh perspective. Even if you don’t find something ready to reuse wholesale, try sampling your old ideas. Export abandoned loops, melodies or whole tracks and treat them as if you were sampling any other record, slicing out your favourite elements and applying creative effects.