Award Sounds

If you're stuck with a composition now, listen back to some of your earliest recordings.

Background
I've been composing for over 15 years now. I've been improving every year. I know that I am because I've recently come across some of my old recordings from the late-80s and I've improved since then. Yet oddly enough, in some ways I prefer them.

I've improved in many areas, yet there's an attractive rawness in the old recordings.

Clarity
The ideas that I want to convey nowadays are clearer. My mixing and mastering is better, recognisably so. Earlier recordings sounded muddy. It doesn't help either that the really early recordings were recorded with an old Tandy/Radioshack DJ mixing desk onto a home cassette recorder - hey, we all have to start somewhere. These were from a time when I was still at school doing DIY recording at home, nothing professional. That said, the quality is sufficient to pick out the notes played, so I could now re-record them if I wanted to. At that point, I hadn't heard of compression or mastering. I was one of those people always confused why my music always sounded quiet compared to commercial recordings.

Performance
There are some styles that I play better now. Oddly enough, I listen to the old recordings and I can hear phrases that I don't think I'd be able to generate today. Given time, I'm sure I could play them again, although I may need a lot of practice. I suppose it's because at that time, I was at the height of my classical guitar phase including all the technical ability and knowledge of theory that came with that. That's now waned and I only really pick up the classical guitar to record a part I think would sound better that way.

Variation
There wasn't much variation in my old music. There were two types - those with guitars and those without. As for those without, they featured several synthesizers, usually one pad, one arpeggio, one lead, plus a casio RZ-1 drum machine with only three levels of dynamics; normal, muted and accented! I still sometimes use 3 synth parts but I'm more likely to mix in real instruments a lot more, or at least believable samples of instruments.

For the pieces involving guitar, I hadn't quite learned how to envisage how I wanted the work to sound. So what you hear is a sequenced phrase, looping over and over for 5 minutes, while I played melodies (or sometimes just soloed) over the top. There wasn't much to it really, and what there is wasn't worth recording

Melody and Harmony
I liked the white notes back then. I wasn't that good a keyboard player (I'm still not that good by professional standards) and couldn't think fast enough to be able to play much on the black notes. Now I'm a lot more used to it, but I still think a lot like a guitarist in that I'm more used to sharps in the key signature or at most a couple of flats. I used other keys, but usually only after writing something then finding it would sound better once transposed.

As for harmony, my concept then was a very pure and simplistic idea of harmony. I could only really write in octaves, 3rds, 4ths and 5ths. Anything else could just about be used as a passing note, but not as a principal note in the harmony. It's amazing how much you can do within those constraints. There's still enough variation to play with. However, add more complicated harmonies as I can now, and music seems more natural.

Progressions
I think this stems from having a preference for white notes again. By not introducing incidentals into the music, I was limiting the chords I could use and so I was limiting the chord progressions available to me.

Rhythm
That RZ-1 was both boon and bane. It was a glorified metronome. I could write drum tracks for songs, combining parts into patches. But the 3 levels of sensitivity made it severely restricted. It was better than nothing for making sounds, but having nothing may have better, by way of forcing to me to have been more creative.

Different Instruments
Back then, if I wanted an orchestral sound, I had to use a FM synth patch for strings, another for brass and so on. With only 2 synths and sometimes able to borrow another two, I didn't have much scope. It changed when I bought a used Roland D110. It's a multi-timbral sound module triggered by midi. I learnt how to sequence more tracks using different patches. It was a revelation for me. Even at that point, my compositions improved.

Move forward a decade or so and Logic Pro with sample banks has helped no end. Now an orchestra can have a violin section, a cello section and so on, or better still separate violins. If you can then pan and mix their levels, it makes for much more variation and realism. Along the way, I've also learnt how to play the bass, drums, different styles of guitars. These give me more flexibility in transferring the sounds in my head into a finished product.

Was the time spent listening to my old compositions wasted?
No, far from it. Here's are some of the gains I found:

• I learned how much I'd progressed. That's really good for morale. Really good.
• I found one gem of a track that I'd forgotten about. Enough that I want to re-record to the professional quality that I can now.
• I found a few other tracks that have potential and may be massaged into something more useful.
• I'm now aware of some habits that I don't want to fall back into.
• I'm more aware of where I want to focus my composition energies in the future.
• I regained up a few musical concepts that I'd forgotten about and I'll bring them into future projects.

Something to think about
So review your old music and ask yourself the following questions: