Editing + Arranging

When choosing sounds to edit and use in your arrangement it's important to consider why you're making the choices you are and how those sounds arranged in that way serve your purpose. Are you looking for a sound that replaces another, like a percussion sound instead of a more traditional drum sound, or are you looking for a sound to act in a different way in your arrangement, with a purpose or role that has not already been clearly defined.

If you are replacing a sound, is the replacement more interesting or different or a better choice sonically than a sample or a synth or drum machine? Do you want the listener to know what source made that sound or not? Is there a personal association about the specific object or the place or recording from which that object, or the sound of it, originated?

From my perspective part of the purpose of using sounds like these is the potential for personal associations with sounds (or types of sounds) to influence how they are used, to affect the arrangements, to change what type of music you make with them. That being said, the more time you spend with a sound the more personal it becomes. Regardless of any initial connection one may feel, if there is a lot of effort and care put into working with a sound - editing, processing, looking for the right place in an arrangement - the association begins to take on a life of its own and that sound may become important, not because of its origin but because of the working through, the editing and processing one does to it.

Using less traditional sounds, that you record yourself, is meant to be a different approach, a different system. It changes the need for what is traditionally thought of as an instrument. It puts all sound on an equal plain and lends itself to all your sounds being your sounds, thereby helping to set up a system that is inherently personal. Even if you try to make a techno track and adhere to the tenets of techno, it will sound different. The idea here is not a novelty but a means of personalizing your work, even if you aren't trying to reinvent the wheel. Using these sounds that you made yourself sets you up to think and feel differently about what you're making, which should have an effect on the results.

Think about the difference between making something with tools that you know are available to millions of people and tools that are very much yours. This is not about ownership but a sense of connection, a connection that is simpler and stronger because of its origin. Sounds can change intention, change the work at hand, so the choices of what to work with shapes your piece in a literal way, as the building blocks, but also steers you because of how those building blocks make you feel in that moment, what they remind you of, the ideas they inspire in you.

Assignment:

Make three loops using only the sounds you edited out of your recording.

• loops should be 16 bars long
• BPM is your choice
• you don't have to use all the sounds you edited, but you can only use sounds from that group
• try to do this without processing the sounds too much
• you can make slight variations of each, or do something completely different (perhaps that is obvious but I feel the need to state it explicitly)
• think about why you structured the loop(s) this way, the extent to which the sounds determined what you made or were in service to an idea you had