Welcome to part 4 of the How It's Made
series, where I've been diving into
different details each week about the
latest single. This is the final one in the
series. I'm doing a Q&A answering your
questions about the single; how it came together,
what the production process is like and
so on. So in terms of the questions that
we've got coming up, "what were you
thinking about when the song was only a
blank piece of paper?", "was there an artist
that inspired you during production?",
"what's the weirdest sound you've
recorded and managed to use in your
music?", "favorite power food that helps you
get through a long recording session?" and
"what part of making music do you enjoy
the most
and the least?". Some great questions so
let's just get straight into them. So
#1, "what were you thinking about
when the song was only a blank piece of
paper?" - That's by @semaradharmaputra who
is also an electronic music producer on
Instagram,, check him out. It's a great
question, the beginning in some ways is
the most difficult part for me. Whenever
I've had a break from completing my
previous tracks and I sit down again I
struggle to remember how I started from
that point of having a blank page, an empty
project. Even if I've written something
on guitar and I have a melody or a chord
progression that I know I want to use
or experiment with, it's still difficult to
get that into a first version of a track.
One thing I find that helps is just to
remind myself of how crude a project
might sound for quite some time in the
early stages, so if I'm really just at
step one and I've just kind of put a new
melody into the step sequencer and I'm
just looping that back, I know for some
time this project is probably not going
to sound that great. The composition
might be okay
but the sounds themselves, the sound
design and the mixing are probably gonna be a
bit trashy, and it can take some time to
persue a project long enough to get
through that barrier where it starts to
sound like something that you might be
proud of. One thing that I take
inspiration from to kind of guide me
through that part of the process is
other art formsm. A particular one that I
use is video game design. A great
example that I come back to a lot is the
game the witness. There's a guy called
Luis Antonio who's one of the designers
on The Witness and he's got great series
of blog entries which go through the
early stages of the game design right
through to the end and you can see the
vast difference from start to end. The
concept was there the idea was always
sound. Visually as you'd expect there were
some massive differences, and if you've
played the final game, without seeing
these early versions it might be hard to
imagine how simple the initial concepts
were but it's always the case with a
proof of concept and the same applies to
music projects as well. The final track
that gets released into the stores has
usually had a serious amount of polish
added to it. That takes time, it takes
effort, so being prepared to deal with
those early stages where you're still
just trying to get something that sounds
"ok" can take you a long way. So the second
question from @goodziemusic. Goodize's
another great producer, he's a friend of
mine who's done
a remix of one of the Northern
Intorvert tracks in the past. "Was there an
artist that inspired you during
production?" - I find that I don't often
uncover my influences until I've finished a
track, and in this particular case after
the track was released a couple of
people said that it sounded a bit like
Radiohead which was a big surprise to me
because although I'm a big fan of
Radiohead, I would have never linked my
style to them even remotely but then as
I thought about it I recalled that I had
been listening to a lot of Radiohead in
particular Burn the Witch, which if you
haven't heard it has an incredible
string segment that runs through almost
the entire track and it's very
reminiscent of the string section that I
have in The Coming Days. So this was
totally subconscious, I'm sure in the
back of my mind there's that track and
many others which are kind of playing a
part in the decisions that I make when
it comes to working through different
segments in a track or parts of the
composition. It's often a choice between A,
B, or A to Z in terms of this note, that
chord, this layer that layer so on, and I
think there's probably tons of tracks in
the back of my mind to help me make
those decisions but that was one of them
in this case I think in hindsight.
Question 3 is from Briiv who have just
had a, wow, massively successful
Kickstarter campaign, £191,000
absolutely huge. They're not
sponsoring me, but if you do want to send
me a free air purifier ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ So the question
is "What's the weirdest sound you've
recorded and managed to use in your
music?" - I have to think through a long
history of sound recordings. What I often
do is use my phone to capture field
recordings, so I have a huge list in my
voice recording app of sounds, whether
it's kind of public chatter,
certain machinery, trains, things like
that. One of the sounds lab used on this
new collection of tracks was recorded in
the Russian Metro in St. Petersburg,
and anyone who's been on the metro in
Russia will know that the kind of
clanking sounds you get are really
distinct.
Some of the trains are quite old and
there's a really interesting dynamic
sound that you can capture when the
trains are coming in and out at the
stations, and that's something that can
allow for a lot of creativity
particularly in more atmospheric parts
of a track, so if you're creating a break
that has a certain atmosphere that you
want to create. The next question is from
@mccarrickmark whose profile is
private. Fortunately he's accepted my
follow request so I can check him out.
Yeah, pretty sure that's not legal. That's
not right.
Blocked and reported, thank you. Anyway
the question was "favorite power food
that helps you get through a long
recording session?" - my personal favorite
is grilled hedgehog. It's got a very
distinct flavor, a little bit crispy if
you overdo it but you know, tastes good.
It is slightly frowned upon by some
members of this household who shall not
be named. But y'know, gives you a good kick,
good energy boost. I'd say it's worth it.
And finally @4y_polina who is a
professional chef. She asks "what part of
making music do you enjoy the most and
the least?" - That's a tough one actually because
there's a lot different parts to the
process particularly if you're an
independent musician. It's really fun
early on just kind of sitting with a
guitar and messing around, trying to
write new melodies. The next stage after
that which is starting to put an
arrangement together in the software
is also a lot of fun. If I'm working on
a new track and I've got a new section I
really like I can just sit for ages and
listen to it on loop and just kind of
experiment, adding and taking away
certain parts, trying different
variations and so on.
And also after the tracks done there's a
lot of fun for me in preparing the
promotional material; image editing, video
editing for artwork is something I enjoy as
well, but in terms of the least, probably
the last stages of a track when you're
getting ready to have the final version
complete. It's the part of the process
that I'm weakest at which is creating
the final mix, and that's the part where
you need to pay a lot of attention to
detail in the individual sounds, having a
look at frequency bands, stereo imaging,
really paying as close detail to the
track as possible. The goal in that phase
of music production is to try and make
sure that the final master of your track
is going to sound as good as possible on
all possible systems and there's also
some context awareness required there in
terms of the type of music you're
producing, whether it's intended for club
environments, radio environments or
everything. So that part for me strips
away a lot of the fun. It's enjoyable to
an extent but I always get to the same
stage where I'm thinking "I just want to
have this done now", but it's worth the
extra effort at the end. Ultimately those last
stages are going to determine the
quality and the reception of the track
that you've been working on, so if you
don't pay attention and try and get that
extra polish onto the track you might be
throwing away a lot of hard work that
you've put it up until that point. And
that's the last one, thank you so much
for sending your questions in they were
really interesting to answer. Hopefully
the answers were interesting as well, and
thank you everyone for the feedback on
the single so far, really glad to hear
that people have been enjoying it. I'm
looking ahead to the next single now
which I'll be able to announce some news
on very soon. There won't be long to
wait. This next one's a lot more upbeat.
It's a sort of synthwave, ,
80s influence track, very different
from The Coming Days but still featuring
that same style and lots of orchestral
instrumentation as always. So thanks for your
support thanks for watching as always.
[Music]
