Considering my desire to write down these nuggets of wisdom on the creative process I really should put them all to use, shouldn’t I. However, time and time again I find that when recording songs I get more traditional then I would like to be. As I lay down a guitar track, a dummy vocal, some bass guitar…etc. I too often find myself more in the middle of the road than I’m comfortable with.

Things fall into place so easily. I’m not really sure how to counter this, or if I should? One approach could be to see the early tracks as scaffolding. And to tear them down as the songs get built. Maybe I should make a promise to myself that whatever goes first cannot be used …

Now, that sounds like quite interesting constraints to me.

My experience is that once the arrangement of the song is “full” with plain vanilla sounds (or let’s say traditional, however great) it gets difficult to squeeze in the experimental sounds afterwards.

Maybe a more interesting approach is how Jon Hopkins works? Using his initial material – as material for sound design. Mangling and resampling. He described it very interestingly in the podcast SongExploder. (I have listened to that episode more than once).

There’s a difference of course when you make electronic music and you write as you produce. In my case I’m recording a song that is “campfire ready”.

A remix-approach is of course also possible. I will keep thinking about this. Resampling seems like a good idea. And the scaffolding thing – I got that idea as I sat down to write – seems really interesting. At least for me.