Reflecting on past efforts and recent improvements
Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 10:00 am
I have recently been purging any unused unworkable sounds, ideas, riffs, sounds etc that have been saved in template form for cubase and have "past participle of get" rid of close to 250 or so? ideas that I had to be realistic about and move on.
I came across some cool stuff that I had totally forgotten about and was stoked to find that I was able to get a very good idea as to my mindset and skill levels as I was went all the way back to late 2003.
The good thing here is that regardless of new PC builds, reformats etc I always keeps samples in the same directory C:/Samples as a master directory so it was cool to see these suckers just load up.
Comparing where I was then to where I am now was quite teh refreshing and validating excersize as I have come leaps and bounds over what I did in the past.
But the more I went back, one thing tended to stick out. The way I used samples and aranged tracks was in a really haphazard manner, free style like and not so much in tune with the overall song but still added and genuine good raw element that has been lost over time due to improving mixes and as theory increased. I didn't care so much for the everything is musically correct, it was more about the overall sound... and it worked.
For me it was a real life experience in the whole 'unlearning' debate and I took some really important lessons away from the excersize.
I wasn't thinking outside of the box so much as I didn't have the box to begin with and was doing whatever I could to get where I wanted to go which now appears to be a little unorthadox.
This is mainly to do with production/songwriting with breaks bass and synths (guitar had left my radar back then)but can be just as relevant to the guitar.
Good news is that I was able to find some ideas from 6 or so years ago that are keepers.
From this experience I can only say that some of the best lessons can come from the past (no brainer there) and being honest with your evelustion.
I came across some cool stuff that I had totally forgotten about and was stoked to find that I was able to get a very good idea as to my mindset and skill levels as I was went all the way back to late 2003.
The good thing here is that regardless of new PC builds, reformats etc I always keeps samples in the same directory C:/Samples as a master directory so it was cool to see these suckers just load up.
Comparing where I was then to where I am now was quite teh refreshing and validating excersize as I have come leaps and bounds over what I did in the past.
But the more I went back, one thing tended to stick out. The way I used samples and aranged tracks was in a really haphazard manner, free style like and not so much in tune with the overall song but still added and genuine good raw element that has been lost over time due to improving mixes and as theory increased. I didn't care so much for the everything is musically correct, it was more about the overall sound... and it worked.
For me it was a real life experience in the whole 'unlearning' debate and I took some really important lessons away from the excersize.
I wasn't thinking outside of the box so much as I didn't have the box to begin with and was doing whatever I could to get where I wanted to go which now appears to be a little unorthadox.
This is mainly to do with production/songwriting with breaks bass and synths (guitar had left my radar back then)but can be just as relevant to the guitar.
Good news is that I was able to find some ideas from 6 or so years ago that are keepers.
From this experience I can only say that some of the best lessons can come from the past (no brainer there) and being honest with your evelustion.