Here's a reply to the message "[idm] Musical duos (was something stupid)"
written on Wed, 27 Feb 2002 12:00:55 +0000:
quoted 2 lines Any people who work in pairs on the list care to shed any light on how
>Any people who work in pairs on the list care to shed any light on how
>they go about composing?
Used to produce tonnes of stuff with a mate from college back in the
early/mid-1990s. Our typical work method involved us going away on our own
and developing our own tracks in rough demo form. We'd then get together
and go through each other's tracks, commenting, "That's good!" or "That's
shit!"
We'd then end up with a bunch of tracks we both liked and would then focus
on these. Fortunately we had a pretty much identical studio setup (same
synths, Akai samplers, Cubase, etc), so sharing data was a piece of piss.
We'd typically spend a whole day on one particular track. We'd get the
patches/samples/files all loaded up and one of us would just sit in front
of the gear and tweak the track in any way we saw fit. The other person
would be sitting nearby, either listening, having a smoke or cup of tea,
would be listening to something else on headphones, would bugger off down
the shops, etc.
Once the person in front of the gear was bored, or the other person had a
sudden flash of inspiration, the other would take over and rearrange
stuff, add new bits, delete old bits, etc. We'd just carry on this fashion
until we'd eventually find the best mix emerging that we'd both agree on.
We'd then save everything off, knock off some mixdowns to DAT and
cassette, pack up and go home.
Whilst we shared a very similar taste in music, our own compositions,
whilst both in the "ambient dance" mould, were wildly different. We both
had our own unique styles and particular quirks -- he'd be great at
structuring, balancing the mix and finding bizarre ethnical samples, I'd
be good at finding obscure breakbeats and creating melodies and riffs. It
all came together quite nicely.
We haven't collaborated much for quite some time, but we're planning on
getting back together to work on some new projects soon. Should be
interesting to see how our working methodology changes now that the
technology involved is radically different. (Ie, all laptop/PC and
software-based.)
--
Mark Stevens
http://www.insertdisc.com/
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