Reflection

This blog is a reflection on the piece I made in the end and why I decided to stop where I was.

The piece I made was exactly how it should have sounded, well at least exactly how it would have sounded. Unfortunately, that sound wasn’t necessarily nice or interesting. But again, it’s what you would have expected with the idea I had.
I think one of the big pitfalls I faced in this project was making it tonal at all. The piece is meant to be tonal and then taken out of context for it to become atonal, and almost see I achieved that; however, the piece didn’t have enough interesting ideas to carry it through its runtime. This is mainly an oversight on my part as I thought the idea itself would be interesting enough to carry it to the end but that wasn’t enough. What should have been done to make it more interesting was raising the average amount of samples for each instrument and also having each sample be very different in terms of frequency. For example, the bass guitar part was too infrequent while for vocals were way too frequent and this meant that I couldn’t really raise the tempo because it would thus become too cluttered.
Another problem I faced was sidechaining the FX. In Ableton, there wasn’t any native plugin to sidechain specific potentiometers and I honestly didn’t have to know how to make a plugin for it ( nor did I have Max for Live). This meant that I couldn’t put any relevant automation on my FX, contributing even more to the problem that it became stale over its course.
The biggest drawback I found was that the program I was using, Ableton, did not support my idea as the tools just were not there. If I was to do this again, I would make it in pure data as it should be able to handle the ideas I’m trying to realise.

Probably the hardest decision during the process of making ‘4 Position’ was making it nicer acoustically. I had to decide between breaking away from the graphical score and actually submitting something a little bit decent, and this was the a little bit decent path. I mean this in a way I used effects stop that wasn’t connected to the audio signals of the other instruments and that I also changed the notes of an instrument so that the piece at the very least fits tonally, which made it a lot less jarring to listen to.

The thing with my graphical score is that I loved making it, but the product isn’t anything I would like so it’s hard to judge my own piece critically when I can’t necessarily appreciate it for what it is. I do think that there would be people who like this, even if those people are far and few between, but there are reasons why I stopped where I did.

Firstly, it’s been a struggle to actually finish this project, there wasn’t much free time, had to work a lot, and honestly, the creative flair wasn’t there like it was in previous projects, which of course stagnated the progress of the projects and also meant that I didn’t iterate enough.
Secondly, it’s an idea I want to revisit but I know I don’t have the time to completely change what I’m doing. It’s polyrhythmic so maybe I’ll just use drums. Maybe with more loops, it would have been more effective, instead of there being no real weight between over instruments. Maybe I should have made one of the instruments the “guide track”.
On top of this, I’ll need to learn coding to fully realise this idea in its best form, which I think could probably be quite similar to what I’ve done in this project but with the changes I said I would make if I did it again as well as using very similar instruments that can make a variety of sounds for each instrument (like a synthesiser, drums or woodwind).
Another way to rectify some of the problems I had with this project may be to make each part play the same sequence, but still at a different tempo and time signature.

While the result wasn’t necessarily what I was looking for, this project is probably the one where I have done the most growing because I’ve made the most mistakes in it. I need to prototype more, I need to iterate more, and most of all I need to learn the necessary skills to realise my ideas instead of relying on the skills I already have. That last point is something I’m personally proud of because if this project has shown me one thing about myself, it’s that my idea generation is not restricted by my skill set but instead by my interests, so if I really want to push myself as a sound artist I need to broaden my horizons.