Composing music after a break is shit hard

Composing Music is a daunting task in general

When opening up the music production software, All you see is horror. I mean, seriously take a look at this shit. 

My current hell

As you can see there are a lot of knobs, buttons and things all over the page. And that’s not even all of it.  But it is the main thing I see on a daily basis when handling audio. 

For a person simply calling himself a musician playing an instrument, well at this point, anyone can hold an instrument and play. But not anyone can sit at their laptop for hours staring at this shit wall and compose anything. 

Why am I writing this?

I want to rant, really. The stress I am feeling right now when facing the activity I onced loved. It is technically the activity I still love but am currently in the phase of hating it to death. Ah, young love. 

And the other reason I am writing this is to kind of just talk about my experience of being a music producer a little bit and write what being a music producer is about. 

What are the steps in music composition?

 Scrolling through the web, you can see that there are many ways of classifying and categorizing the steps of music composition. But I’d usually see them this way:

1. Brainstorming and Inspiration

2. Composition and Structuring

3. Mixing and Mastering

Wow, it’s just three steps. It’s simple right? Well if you wanna compose songs in the same level of Mary had a Little Lamb then it’s easy. But if you are thinking of being an epic orchestra composer like 2WEI or an EDM artist like Alan Walker, then that’s barely child’s play. I’d call that fetus’s play. 

The same way a person approaches a project in any other field, it applies the same way with music. 

When you start on a blank slate, you see well, this empty thing

The blank canvas of logic pro

And you want to start with the first step. Brainstorming and Inspiration. You can call this step Ideation and motivation or whatever but this step is all about finding the groove. Finding the focal point or the theme of your music. 

The purpose you gave it that name. The reason why it sounds a certain way. The whole story. The whole identity of that song. 

This is the step to find that signature sound of the song. 

Well there is not much to this step really. You just have to sit at your instrument of choice (for 90% of producers, that would be the piano or keyboard) and start hammering on the notes and find the melody and rhythm that hits just right. If you are skilled enough (like me or even better). You can get your chord progression out on the spot as you play. 

Then after you got something that is “inspiring” or in simple words, “catchy” or “exciting” to you, then build from there. 

The Composition and Structuring process is the actual process of ‘making’ a song. 

This is the bread and butter of music. It is the core of how music sounds and how it progresses from start to finish. It is the part where musicians and producers decide how their music will actually sound. 

Or some would call it “the process where we decide what is the story of the music.” Some would argue that the story composition begins way before we start the piece of music. And some would argue that the story reveals itself throughout the process of composition. For me? It depends. 

I can admit that when I started music composition in 2019, newbie me just made whatever that sounded good based on the music theory knowledge that had been bestowed upon me for the past decade and a half of my life. 

But now as i matured and don’t have as much time as I did back then, I have to be a tad smarter than that. I have to plan ahead. Because my purpose of making music then and now are different. Now I compose music to tell stories. The same way I am writing these words, composing music now is like writing sounds that fit a narrative in my head. So the same way writing this little blog needs preparation before the actual writing, that approach is also applied to composing my music .

You have to decide how you want to expand your theme. How will it start? Do I want to start the song slow? Why do I want it to be slow? What’s the story? And how will it peak? Why will it peak in such a way? 

These are the things that I question millions of times to the point causing me mental and emotional breakdowns due to not being able to answer these questions most of the time throughout the composition process. 

Mixing and Mastering is all engineering really. 

It is an art. It truly is. But it is the art of computers. In this step, your story is complete. All your instruments are laid out in the right place and in the right way, but now the next step is to make it sound ‘right. 

If we were to strip all the tech back and just think of a single piece of instrument, like for example a piano. Any sort of control to the sound depends on 3 factors: the player, the instrument, and finally the space the instrument is played. 

All these 3 components affect the conditions and the delivery of sound to the audience’s ears and any changes to these three will cause a huge difference in how the sound is heard. It’s like comparing the sound of RM5000 second hand upright piano to a RM1 000 000 grand piano. And compare the skills of a beginner piano player with an experienced piano player. And finally try to compare hearing a piano played in the middle of a mall in comparison to the piano being played in a music theater. 

The comparison is already wild with these three things right? Then how about in digital music? To put it mildly, it’s all these 3 but on steroids. Because the world of digital composition gives us the ability to alter these 3 components and more at crazy high precision. 

And with these precision comes extra requirements of skill and knowledge. You need to know what affects the timbre of the sound of the piano. And how that “mixes well” with the rest of the mix( or song). We have to pick the correct reverb to be used (and understand how reverb actually works) to determine what kind of space we want the sound of each particular instrument to sound like they're playing in. 

And we have to decide how loud each instrument is in relation to each other and to the listener. Which one is closer? Which one is farther? We have to decide each of these details. 

Wild. 

After all this gibberish, we need to still maintain the spark within us. 

The motivation and inspiration that drove our initial enthusiasm to proceed with the project, needs to live on through every step of the process. You’ll start excited, then challenged, stressed, depressed, anxious and then happy again and drop dead depressed suddenly and then anxious throughout the process of composing. Rinse and repeat that a few cycles and voila. A piece of music was created.

I would call music composition to be a journey, cause it really is. It is the journey of self discovery and self acceptance. To accept that maybe along the way you realised that what you envisioned was shit too difficult and soon after that you learn to accept that you fucked up the process somehow and now don’t know what’s going on in half of your composition.  

I used to feel at home looking at the blank canvas of logic pro, now I just feel stressed. 

Back before I went balls deep into medicine, Logic pro was pretty much home to me. It is the space where I could fully be myself. Now I feel like I’m in a cage. I feel restricted, stressed and rejected. I feel that my brain is rejecting my old passion for music. 

I feel like I could  not do it anymore. But as they say, life keeps moving so i just have to get started somehow. I have decided way back then and even now, Music is my life. I have to somewhat get back on my toes and keep myself moving. 

I have to keep on using the app. 

I have to find my home again. To find the comfort I feel in using the app that I use to express myself. I have to slowly change the way I see the world of music composition again and make it all look less daunting. 

Therefore despite not really making much progress in the world of composition, I will still continue to use the app for editing vocal audios or any types of audio. To reduce the stress and feeling of being lost. 

I have a deadline

I always have to remember that I have a goal right now. To complete 2 pieces of music by the end of this month. 2 pieces of music with significant purpose and meaning to me. 

I may have started late despite my previous plans, but I just have to keep on making it work. 

Creating content is my passion for life. I have to keep creating. Cause if I keep on creating I will one day be so comfortable with creating content to the point I can shit content out and still make it be good. 

Being great doesn’t happen in a day. It happens a lifetime.