27 essential ambient production tips

[Guest]

I don't have a problem with the division of labour - I have a problem with 'subcontracting out' aspects of the creative process. I know there's nothing new about this, I know even Michelangelo let his students 'fill in' the backgrounds etc. It just doesn't seem right to me. But I hardly ever use samples in my work, maybe I'd feel differently if they were a significant part of it

What do you think about generative methods, then? Using generative tools as "subcontractors/assistants" can relieve artist from unnecessary mechanical work. And selecting "boundary conditions" by artists in his generative tools is probably enough significant.

I don't want to rag on TE here because I think he's simply one of the millions of people who have fallen for what is probably THE great cultural myth, namely that "real" art is an individual effort.

It never has been true. It never will be true.

The abiding musical myth of the 21st century is that the advent of cheap digital recording has made it possible for some asocial neurotic to produce a #1 hit in the virtual vacuum of his basement. It's incredibly seductive, but it's not true. It never will be true. The delusion sells a lot of gear, though. ;)

Even classic "lone nut" artists like Kafka or Van Gogh were in fact intensely networked guys, and their networks kept producing for them even after their suicides, never mind that they were actively and liberally inspired by the work of (and criticism by) others -- and every other random influence.

No matter what you're doing, you can't do it without being artistically influenced by others and you'll do it better with some help with the heavy lifting. What is the material difference between telling an assistant, "I want four or five samples of elderly Slavic women talking by tomorrow" and stopping all productive work in order to dig it up yourself? None. As the adage goes, "Doing things the hard way doesn't mean you're smart; doing things the hard way means you're stupid."

Any tool that facilitates achieving your artistic vision is legitimate.

This was the earliest lesson I learned as an artist's assistant when I was seventeen. Unfortunately, I forgot it for many years.

Get help whenever and wherever you can, even if (and maybe especially if) it's for mundane work. Listen to everyone. You never know.

I agree - we are all networked to some extent, and to quite a large extent really. And popularity is by definition a networked phenomenon. A minimal network would be the artists at home producing artworks using means of production they make themselves. In music that might be voice, hand made / found percussion and so on. But the musical language will come from a network of influences - changed by the artist but nonetheless developed within an environment. But once an artist goes public the extent of that public will be due to a whole lot of people and not at all just due to the artist and/or the work they produce.

I disagree with the "Slavic women" example for two reasons - in getting someone to find four or five examples you are giving over part of the selection to someone else even if you make the final selection, therefore the population from which you select is determined by someone else and will be different because of that. That may actually make the final result better, but even so it will be different. Secondly the usual "while you do one thing you aren't doing something else" applies. In this case you aren't undertaking the search process and so you won't have the possibility of the "happy chance" serendipitous find that may be tangential to the goal but of great value. Of course, you'll be doing something else with your time and that may yield great benefits of its own. There's no way of knowing which course of action is better from a creative point of view but there is no doubt that getting someone else does change things on the creative side not just on the production efficiency side. But from a production output point of view, getting someone to find those samples is obviously the way to go.

[MetaDronos]

getting someone to find four or five examples you are giving over part of the selection to someone else even if you make the final selection, therefore the population from which you select is determined by someone else and will be different because of that. That may actually make the final result better, but even so it will be different. Secondly the usual "while you do one thing you aren't doing something else" applies. In this case you aren't undertaking the search process and so you won't have the possibility of the "happy chance" serendipitous find that may be tangential to the goal but of great value.

I often work with samples and I higly value the role of chance and serendipity in creative process.
For example, clicking THIS LINK allowed me to find many unique sounds for further reprocessing in my tracks.
I make my own field recordings for this purpose, too.

I prefer to find and create such samples personally and I would not refer that work to others. I think that
every person is a kind of "filter", so I want to keep all sonic input without "human prefiltering" as much as possible.

[MetaDronos]

Both of these stories captures something we all understand on a deep intuitive level, but our creative egos sort of don’t really want to accept: And that is the idea that creativity is combinatorial, that nothing is entirely original, that everything builds on what came before, and that we create by taking existing pieces of inspiration, knowledge, skill and insight that we gather over the course of our lives and recombining them into incredible new creations.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/08/01/networked-knowledge-combinatorial-creativity/

[GaryG]

But hang on, are we talking about being artistically influenced by others, or having a team of flunkies to do the "heavy lifting".

That's where I got lost in Golodkins argument.

No one can argue with the former generally, maybe a few 'outsider' artists have just spontaneously created something without ever having heard or seen art before but... generally, no.

Heavy lifting: having someone source your samples is a collaboration in my book. If I ever wanted to release any of my one sample dare challenges, the source of the sample would be credited too. How could they not be? It's not like sending someone out for a new tube of chromium blue...

I guess I see inspiration as an amazingly complex net, you'll always be standing on the shoulders of giants, whether you have the 'talent' to apply those influences and create something markedly new is the question. Even if not, most art is a variation on something that's gone before and no shame in that. A cliche I know but it's about personal expression not creating new art forms in my book.

[Thought Experiment]

...it's about personal expression...

I totally agree

[Guest]

But hang on, are we talking about being artistically influenced by others, or having a team of flunkies to do the "heavy lifting".

That's where I got lost in Golodkins argument.

No one can argue with the former generally, maybe a few 'outsider' artists have just spontaneously created something without ever having heard or seen art before but... generally, no.

Heavy lifting: having someone source your samples is a collaboration in my book. If I ever wanted to release any of my one sample dare challenges, the source of the sample would be credited too. How could they not be? It's not like sending someone out for a new tube of chromium blue...

I guess I see inspiration as an amazingly complex net, you'll always be standing on the shoulders of giants, whether you have the 'talent' to apply those influences and create something markedly new is the question. Even if not, most art is a variation on something that's gone before and no shame in that. A cliche I know but it's about personal expression not creating new art forms in my book.

I think the difference between influence and heavy lifting is more one of degree than one of kind -re collaboration Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side popped in to my head a an example of collaboration - for me that song is totally made by Herbie Flower's bass line and I have never liked the idea that Reed wrote that song, for me it is a collaboration.

[aoVI]

Let's stick to confronting the ideas and not the people presenting them please.

[YnotB]

Even classic "lone nut" artists like Kafka or Van Gogh were in fact intensely networked guys, and their networks kept producing for them even after their suicides,

Errr... Kafka didn't commit suicide.... :daydream: