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Re: I want to take on an IDM style of looping



On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 6:37 AM, kay'lon rushing <k3zz21@gmail.com> wrote:
>>Intelligent Dance Music.
> What are some basic things I should know about the style as far as
> composing?


Why not listen to some IDM to find out about that?

The point in IDM is that there are no rules and that you can't dance
to the music unless following some highly intelligent strategy for how
to move your body related to the sounds coming at you. IMHO this
attitude has a bit of a Dada revival to it.

So how to produce IDM? The best rule how to fail crating IDM would be
to follow what you hear others are doing. This is special, because in
most musical genres "doing covers" or parroting can lead you to rather
decent results. Not so in IDM and that makes it difficult to talk
about. It is very much up to every composer to work out his own
language/dialect, and we are all different. The biggest challenge for
me, in IDM producing, is to avoid using melodic fundaments in
composing. One trick is to focus on sound, movement and evolution
(this may even mean crating music that is static in the sense that it
doesn't evolve somewhere - but usually there is a flow). On the
technical side you can try out methods to sequence, cut up, slice and
dice sound fragments - because normally it is not possible to directly
play IDM; you may play a sequencer to create IDM on-the-fly but your
role is more like the director's than being a musician.

As for software anything goes. From cutting up and reordering audio
files on the screen to setting up systems of inter modulating
sequencer mosules like in Numerology or custom built Max patches. Oh,
we must not forget to mention Mobius here as well, since you can
script ultra fast and weird sample mutilation.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.perboysen.com
http://www.youtube.com/perboysen