Creating an Open Source (-ish?) Song: The Making of “The Gargling Swamp” pt. 1

Intro / Concept

It takes a long time to make music. I often spend hours just coming up with an initial beat idea, then it’s days to work out the variations and the song structure. A full composition can seem to take forever, so it’s a miracle when the thing is done.

Steem is a new opportunity to monetize that process… rather than laboring away at a song for months before it sees the light of day, one can document the process and even “open source” the song to an extent.

The Gargling Swamp

So this all started when I felt like participating in the Steemit Open Mic. It has been a few months since I did one of those, I’ve been very busy. (note: In the end, this turned into a song, not an open mic entry, oops lol)

I sat down with my guitar and starting strumming through ideas. The beginning of any new song is weird. There’s nothing, and then you have to create something from within that nothingness. No matter how brilliant you are, the first note won’t be amazing.

The first note is just a note. The second note isn’t much better. It takes layers, multiple ideas bouncing off each other, for the magic to happen. At first it’s just awkward.

After several false starts, I came up with a guitar arrangement. It took me a few hours to get these parts recorded - I did each guitar part several times, panning them hard left and right to get a bigger sound going on. Here’s what the guitars sound like:

_{Photo source: Mike Wilson / Unsplash.com}

Note: Listen on Headphones for Best Effect

I created two guitar parts - one panned hard right, one hard left. They start on the same notes, so the first riff is in unison and it sounds like one guitar. Starting a few seconds in, the guitars diverge.

Here is the sheet music for the guitars… the bottom part, with the steady Bb eighth notes, sounds an octave lower than it is written here.

At first this arrangement is dissonant, then it slides ever so slightly to related notes that are immensely consonant and pleasant. That shift back and forth, riding the stable bass note of Bb all the while, creates the swampy flavor of the musical idea.

Next Step Vocals

Vocals are often difficult. I am so open minded with the difficult vocal approaches that I often don’t know where to start.

Lately I am most excited by very rhythmic vocal ideas. I guess it’s from all the rap music that I’ve been listening to. Stuff that’s kinda warped and fucked up, but still feels rhythmic and hooky, can be sick, like what Iglooghost does.

After some consideration, I chose a single note vocal line that is more ambient than anything. You can’t really understand what I am saying, but it sounds good and blends into those guitars well. I really like this. Also, I put a weird vocal effect on part of it. Check this out:

The chord here is very open because there’s no middle note, it’s just the outside notes. Basically without getting too theoretical, most chords have a bottom note (root note), an upper note called the “5th”, and then a note in the middle. By leaving out that middle one, it sounds all psychedelic and epic.

I love how the mix works on this, its so weird but so hip. As you will see a little later in the post, it blends really well with the guitar. Those notes line up in a great way… and now we can add some drums.

Adding Drums

I usually start making music with a drum part, but not this time. Doing drums last can be nice because it gives me way more context to work with… remember what I said about the start of a song being the hardest part?

I chose to use a drum machine for this one, Logic’s Ultrabeat synth, which comes loaded up with hundreds of samples to choose from.

_{The Ultrabeat Synth}

I love this synth because you can re-pitch every sample so easily… that allows for insane sonic creativity without much technical work.

When building an electronic drum beat, I often start with the basics: Hi hat, kick, and snare. Figuring out the right rhythm for those key parts of the beat is where everything starts… from there, I can weave in all manner of noises and effects.

Honestly working on drums in the least organized, most intuitive part of making music for me. It’s a language that I speak, but can’t explain super well. In the end I came up with some crazy shit, check it out:

_{photo source: UnSplash / Julian Laurent}

These are CRUNCHY. It’s running through some serious compression and distortion - the hats and weird sounds through one channel, and then the kick and snare through a separate one. Most of my mixes have a lot of the sounds side chaining against the kick and snare so it can be YYYUUUUGEEE.

Putting it All Together

At this point you have to be wondering what the final product sounds like. To put it all together, I spent some time cleaning up the mix, mostly taking low-end out of the non-drum instruments and making sure that the kick would sit just right in the mix.

Here’s the final result, a conceptual idea / beat that I am calling “The Gargling Swamp.”

_{photo source: UnSplash / Markos Mant}

Yo, not bad! This would make a solid intro / pre-verse to a song, something to happen in the first minute and set up the real vocal melody or whatever would happen next.

What Do You Think?

This post is a test. I am playing around with new post formats to explore better ways of sharing the musical experience with steemit… in particular, I am thinking about this image from Sndbox:

_{Source: www.sndbox.co}

Basically, how can steem help artists like me to monetize the process? Perhaps by creating great content around the process of making music, I can increase the amount of time that I spend on creative work. That would be cool - and it would be doable for other artists too.

Let me know if you enjoyed this post format… I will keep experimenting in the meantime. Your feedback helps me hone in on the best content and understand steem a little better.

What did you think of this post? Let me know in the comments.

Cheers,