Now that we’re most of the way through the month, what (if anything) do you feel like you’ve learned from the experience?
I’m definitely used to making music quickly, and not spending too long finishing any individual track, and I’m pretty prolific in general. But committing to recording and sharing something on a daily basis is different. There’s less room to reject tracks that don’t feel like they’re working out, or give up in frustration if a session just isn’t going smoothly. On the other hand, I feel like there’s a built-in excuse for a lack of perfection 
That also kind of equates to having more freedom to experiment, maybe get gimmicky or step outside my usual practices a bit… which has been useful.
Since I’m planning to release a “best of” album from Jamuary, I’ve been going back and listening to my work so far, rating tracks as “yes”, “probably”, “maybe”, “doubtful” or “no” and trying to identify why. What I’ve taken away from the experience has been:
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The weakest of my tracks are the ones that feel a little too random. With improvised lines, I am responding to other elements in the music or I naturally create a melody or a sort of story arc. But with generative sequencing, or an ostinato sort of sequence that doesn’t have a good contour to it, there’s not really that feeling of tension and release, or resolution. The same can be true on the song level rather than a phrase level; if the improv just doesn’t work out or I bring elements in and out in the wrong way, it can feel like it doesn’t go anywhere. (This tended to be more of a problem with my Jamuary efforts than usual, where I might take a little more care to craft melodic lines as well as being open to rejecting something that doesn’t work out.)
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Reinforcing my feeling that I’m personally best with drones and abstract “scenery” pieces, more so than rhythm-oriented tracks. The latter tend to feel less genuine, and like I could have used some collaboration with someone else to lean on their judgement and contribute something else to make it whole. It doesn’t matter that I’m a former taiko drummer… this is just how it is with my electronic music.
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I feel like my mixes are usually pretty good, given that I do them live as part of the performance/recording session… but sometimes I go a little too harsh or too complex/busy with sound design and it doesn’t work as well in the context of the piece. Distortion is easier to add than remove. There were a couple of tracks I think would have worked much better if I’d been gentler with them.
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Especially when working at a faster pace for Jamuary, I need to slow down with my endings… don’t fade out so fast, or have some reverb or delay on standby to bring in. I’ve often found my fadeouts are a little too abrupt and need some doctoring, but this has been even more true with my Jamuary stuff.
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I dug out my Thingamagoop 3000 from the drawer it was consigned to years ago, and I found that wow, it is really great for drones; it suits the music I’m making now much better than it fit what I was trying to do back when I first got it.
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For the last year, I’ve been in the process of figuring out how I want to integrate bass guitar with my synth playing. In a couple of Jamuary tracks I gave myself more permission than usual to use extreme processing instead of feeling like it still has to sound like a bass. That worked out great and is probably the right approach.
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On the other hand, extreme granular effects / slow attack reverbs which add a lot of latency to playing just don’t work well when you’re trying to keep up with a rhythm established by another part. This is a disadvantage with the live recording method I use. If I’d tracked the part separately without the effect, I could apply it afterward and adjust the time to compensate. I don’t know if I’m willing to change my workflow that much though
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One track gave me all kinds of technical issues, when I was trying to use multiple MIDI clips in Bitwig and switch between them live but one of my controllers or automation or something was causing it to switch on its own. It was super frustrating and I almost gave up – but the resulting track turned out to be one of my stronger ones despite everything.
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I used the Note Grid in Bitwig for sequencing more than I ever have before, both for simple rhythmic patterns and ostinato parts and some things that were a bit more generative. While it’s not quite as nice as a simple analog sequencer like 0-Ctrl, it still suits the way I like to make music, and this is an area I want to explore a bit more.
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Ambient and drone music can be slow without necessarily going on for too long. Sometimes I feel like my own recordings are improved by being shorter, so I cut out a few minutes. There were a few posts from others where I thought they had a strong start and felt great for 5 minutes but they went on for 20… to be fair some of those were livestreams, and it’s harder to develop a sense for that kind of thing when really performing live (that part of the realization was part of what I learned too).
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I can do it! I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to overcome laziness, fatigue and various other challenges every single day, but as of the 27th I’m still at 100%. Despite an almost 11 hour drive on January 1st, illness that had me take a day off work, technical issues, and sometimes really just wanting to play video games instead. This might be the best of the lessons