Midi Production vs Acoustic Recording

These days most music is hardly acoustic and made from 'real' instruments. The synthetic sounds are taking over everywhere from pop to rock and blends of various genres are evident in new trends with bands like 'Skrillex' (gotta love them!) Alternative indie bands take advantage of cymbals and tambourines everywhere you go but in terms of 'love for your instrument' the focus seems to be on quantity of instruments over quality. Anyway despite this I am super keen to mix up (and always have been) a blend of real orchestral sounds with electronic and synthetic instruments especially FX. It's been my plan to produce my stuff myself since the early days in 2008 when music was my focus and my whole life but even when I got ahold of the right programs the amount of time and effort involved in putting the songs together was just... errr overwhelming and so I put it aside as I didn't see the rush. I made a few attempts to get a producer on board with my stuff, and was looking at a few studios and funding a song myself, but I found it difficult to find someone with the same vision as me.

At the moment there isn't much of a market for acoustic 'girl on piano' type of performances or the audience to support this. Not that it's what I want from my music but gone are the days when musicians wrote their own music and demonstrated their legit skills in raw form. Completely REAL. These days its all glitter and flashy fireworks with backing tracks and automated drum beats. Sigh. But as we know, not all the glitters is gold and perhaps there is still a place for my beloved piano in amongst today's modern music. I love pop, and I love all the new dance stuff out at the moment but in the context of music as art, for appreciative intelligent listeners rather than just for a good dance I am intent on blending genres.

This brings me to my most recent focus - Propellerhead's Reason. Now I am working on putting together my stuff within this program and a mixture of Ableton Live & Adobe Soundboth/Premiere Pro for YouTube. Reason is pretty much state of the art MIDI technology and it does everything you want, however I'm a bit musically frustrated at the moment trying to coerce it into creating it as fast as I'd like. If anyone knows what I mean feel free to leave me a any info on the best places to find resources for this stuff other than the obvious YouTube. But I know these things take time and despite not being able to get what I want at the snap of my fingers I will write it all down and keep track of it as I tackle my songs one layer at a time...

I'll do some experimental stuff too and post it as I go. This is gonna be a looooot of work. But it's worth it to get some feedback on the finished product. The funny thing is I never meant my songs to be 'finished' with just piano and vocals. And despite what a lot of people think they were never meant to have an acoustic backing with a basic drum kit and swooping orchestral layers. No, I was never intending to do what Tori Amos and Vanessa Carlton have already done very proficiently. I think of my potential finished music tracks as a mix between Regina Spektor, Justin Timberlake, with an element of general pop and a little Evanescence. Sounds weird in theory but in practice I'm determined to complete my mission. Here's a quote which I love love love and it pays to remember: 'Rise, and rise again, until lambs become lions'.

xox

K.A.M