Produce music

When the idea hits you, you know it’s a good one. You run back to your room at breakneck speed, wanting to get this thing down as fast as possible. You have the greatest idea of all time for a new track. It’s going to be an insane banger.

The moment you get to your computer, firing up Ableton, you put in that holy sample: the Amen break. You slice it up a bit to create a twist on the classic, and then quickly sketch out the rest of the drums. You throw a plug-in at it to up the transients, run it through a compressor and… voila! Nice and choppy, just the way it should be. It’s off to the basses next, and here you want something deep and resonant, but not so big that it takes over the track. The right set of filters and appropriate EQ does the job. You spend a second fiddling with some details before you catch yourself. Now’s not the time for that. You need to get to the meat of things. Because what you’re doing is something that’s going to defy genres and shatter people’s expectations. This isn’t going to be a jungle track… it’s going to be pop jungle.

It’s time for the synths to go in. The melody in your head is simple, easy, ear-wormy, which is good. That’s pop. You overlay the leads and then pause. What are the lyrics? It doesn’t really matter. You quickly record yourself singing some nonsense to the tune (doesn’t matter that you can’t sing, your voice is never appearing on the final track. You’ll sort out the lyrics on Tuesday, when you’ll get a chance to record with {if VocalistSarah == true} Sarah). {elseif VocalistDani == true} Dani). {else} Gina). {endif} Then, you spend a few minutes putting in some missing pieces, but it’s there. That’s the core of the track.

You hit play, ready to appreciate the rough cut of the song from start to finish… or all thirty seconds of the snippet you’ve put together, at least, which is the most important thing. But by the time the thirty seconds are over, you’re laughing to yourself. Pop jungle? What were you thinking? This is a disaster. It’s worse than a trainwreck. You lean back in your chair and play it back one more time, just in case you missed something the first time around.

Nope. This is flaming hot garbage. You’re tempted to delete the entire project. But you stop yourself. There’s always something that can be salvaged. After all, there’s been this track that you’ve been stuck on for the better part of a month that just feels flat, but maybe…

You pull up that project and mess with the drums for a couple minutes, taking them in a direction that calls back to some jungle roots. This time, you let yourself agonize over the details, getting the transients just the way you want them to. And then, when you play back the drums, and play back the whole shebang after that… yeah. This hits the way you want it to. With that extra kick to it, the whole track comes to life. There’s more work to be done still, but now you’re in a groove, and this song’s been given a second life. It’s time to make it work.