Starting a track (Ie. Intro arrangement)- your techniques...

Hi all,

This is my first post so apologies for any etiquette/obvious rules not adhered to.

My creative issue is that I struggle actually begin a track well. Anyone can put a drum preface and a simple chord progression at the beginning of a track but it just doesn't gel with the rest of the track. It simply starts off sounding like something is missing. Once I get going the groove really comes into its own as does the outdo. Everything except the intro.

Now, I am producing electro-blues, electronica etc so pads, synths, any drums etc are fair game. 

My skills in logic are up to relatively advanced so if there's any videos/personal advice you care to throw my way then please be my guest.

Thanks.

Sam.

I know that some people who work in these genres, and they basically tell me that there should be almost no real "intro" at all:  that you should begin your song smack-dab in the middle of it.

"Get into the groove, then throw away 150% of 'how you got there.'"  The song will probably naturally segue from one musical idea to another and back around again to the first one, and any of those transitions could serve as the song's introduction."  (Just as any of the musical ideas could serve as "the first one to be introduced.")

As for me, and given that I don't work in those genres, I really like a song to "open with a little hook."  Don't start with a drummer who sounds like he might be covering up for the fact that the band is still tuning-up, followed by a vague fill-pad, so that I'm 16 or 24 measures into the thing before I know what's going on or what the first musical statement is going to be.  (I'll probably be long gone by then...)  Instead, in the first eight if not four if not two measures of the song, "do something that no other song on Earth has ever yet done."  Go ahead, surprise me.  Then, in the measures that follow, tie that initial 'surprise' logically into the fabric of the song.  (Once I am "hooked," I am now listening.)

As any card-player knows, after you have gathered together your entire hand and you therefore know every nuance of it, then you select the one card that you will choose to throw down first.  You won't know this until after you have all your cards.  So, after you have drafted the entire thing, look for the four measures that "iconically define" your song throughout its entire length, and work these so that they become your opening card.

"dah dah dah DUMMM!"  (Roll Over, Beethoven ...) You get the idea.

Professional writers quip that their most important tool is an eraser.  That the title of the most important writer is, "editor."

"The purpose of the first (at most) six measures of any [commercial] song is to persuade the listener not to change the channel ... yet.  If you've hooked 'em at that point, they're probably good for the next three minutes. (But, don't count on it ...)"

If you are performing all the tracks yourself, it always takes a while to get the groove going..  I start something, add some instruments.  Sometimes I loop/create alias's for a long segment, and jam over it for a while..  Then another section comes into mind.  I  build that up. Sometimes I create the intro after the body of the song is done..  Occasionally I find the Verse section is more interesting than the chorus, so I trade up..  and then make a new verse chord progression.  It works differently for each person.  and you will use different techniques as you create more songs..   

Sometimes it's helpful to find decent midi tunes and load into Logic and assign voices.. and learn from what the original composer did.. That can be a great tool.  Take mp3's of songs you like and do a thorough analysis. of what happens.  I mark it on graph paper with different colored felt tip pens.. Or just keep repeating the song, and pay very close attention to one part..  guitar comes in at measure 9, plays new riff at measure 17, drops out at 25, comes in with fuzz tone at 29,  etc, etc.. 

Study songs that you like, ones that are in the vein of something your doing, or something new you would like to learn. Careful analyzation is a very valuable tool.

When I am "noodle-jamming with" a new song, I will often create a background loop and just hit the Record button and let it roll.  (In fact, when I am just "farting around   on the keyboard for 'no particular reason,'" I always "hit Record.").  I've literally got a folder called, "Daily Noodles."

When I get a little more serious about the song, I try to play through it (to a metronome click), and if I "clam" a phrase so what ... just pause and do it again and again.  (Sometimes, if I don't "clam it," I'll still re-play it two or three times.  Each one will inevitably be slightly different.)  It's all grist for the treadmill.    I don't try to think it too much ... I just "roll tape.")

Later on, go back and listen to it, marking the sections that sound clean and making notes about what you've got.  Then, mute that track and start assembling something "more final" out of these pieces ... copying them, not cutting.  Lock(!) that original track.  If you want to "quantize" something or what-have-you, do it on a new track.  (Then, lock that one, too.)  

Now, to try to make a song out this.     I stop being a filmmaker and start being an film-editor, stitching pieces together within the expected structure of a song.  When a phrase "comes around again," maybe this time I'll use a different slight-variation, just so that it doesn't sound exactly the same.  (Which a real human player will never do.)

And as for [all] the rest of it, "I keep it."  Because you never know when "something that made no useful sense to you at the time" is just what the doctor ordered for a new project.  Since you're never realistically going to "run out of disk space," you really can afford to keep it all.  ("Hey, don't trash that [version of that] file!  C'mon, what did it ever do to you?  Set it aside.  Keep it.")

I always liked the quip that "Creativity is 10% 'what you do,' and 90% 'what you do with it.'"  One part consists of capturing material.  The rest consists of assembling it into something new.

Thanks for all your suggestions.

It's interesting to see how everyone's creative process starts and what people do from then on.

In my own experience I get, say, 8 bars of the main track after having built it up and up and then (as Mike Robinson says) play one card at the start.

I've been messing around with some techniques and found that a strong, heavy-velocity piano chord with a tape delay on gives it gravitas where I then go from there.

Thanks again.

Something else to think about is:  "the intentionally-invisible role of the Editor in any creative project."

When you listen to ... anything ... or look at ... anything ... or read ... anything ... you get the idea ... you have no idea how many committee meetings(!) might have led up to that point.  Nope, you simply get to be "the blissful but demanding consumer."  You want to admire the sculpture, and you don't want to see the slightest hint of marble-dust on the floor, let alone a single marble chip!  (Yeah, we consumers are funny that way ...)

But, yes, there was a time when Michelangelo was signing a piece of paper handed to him by the quarry's delivery-cart driver.

When you regard "a creative work," bear in mind that you regard only the finished work.  You might innocently assume that the creators "knew the end from the beginning," but they didn't.  You might assume that the stuff that the creators "initially created" was the final form that you see, but (unless their name was Mozart ...) it wasn't.

When Stephen King wrote an early draft of Carrie, he threw it in the trash.  His wife fished it out and said, "Steve, I think you have something here ..."

A most-interesting book about the creative process is The World of Star Trek.  (As in: the original 1960's TV series.)  So you think that it was a foregone conclusion that Captain "James T. KIrk" (where "T = Tiberius") piloted the Starship "Enterprise" accompanied by "Spock" and "Bones" and so on?  Or, David Gerrold's The Trouble With Tribbles [book]. So you think he automagically knew to call them "tribbles?"  Nope.  They hammered out hundreds of choices with their typewriters, then a committee finally chose one.  (The original Captain's name was "Christopher Pike.")

I think that a lot of artists throw in the towel far too soon because they don't realize how un-deterministic the (commercial!) creative process actually is.

In the case of music, Editors, Producers, Engineers (and so forth), these people all want to be "heard, but not seen."  But, I submit, [commercial] creative things do not actually happen without them.