Some Musings On Sound Design

CAUTION: RANT AHEAD

So, I do enjoy simple, conceptual sounds more often than not. Since a lot of my music is melodically driven, I tend to forego at least some of the "dressing" that is perhaps customary. While my music is usually not minimal (I suppose I'd view minimalism as an intentional and rigorous reduction of a medium to its fundamental elements) I do view some basic sounds as "sufficient" for carrying a melody or some melodic element of a phrase and hence make no further effort to add interest value to the sound itself, as that would possibly even distract from what I want the listener to focus on. In fact the melody carries itself (or should, at least).

I've posted a piece called "Tapioca" on Newgrounds just now. I've had it on my drive for a while, but only just got around to "publishing" it, which spurred automatic mental review and also general reflection. Take the guitar-ish sound from its middle section, for instance. It is basically just a monophonic pluck with some porta (made in Massive). The important details are that its pluckiness comes from an enveloped low pass filter variant (I used Scream, which is surprisingly smooth if you null the resonance), which reduces some of the high frequency content, making the pluck somewhat smoother, and the porta is a legato type, which is basically the only kind I ever use, since it allows you to shape your melody in a micro way and make it more diverse (as opposed to all-glide or no-glide). It's simple. It's functional. It incorporates the needs of my melodic considerations into its design, but nothing more (there is some more, such as reverb and some amplification stuff, but those are basically no brainers).

And that kind of approach appeals to me, because, mentally, I'm still in that stage where I often don't have the patience to engineer an entirely unique and complex sound from scratch, while also making sure it's capable of being used melodically.

If you've heard Knife Party's "Sleaze", the gated formant lead they use is a good example of a sound that relies solely on its own design to provide interest value. I shan't muse for too long about what precisely defines a melody, but I think it's relatively safe to say that "Sleaze" contains basically no melodic content in the traditional sense, and that doesn't in the least stop it from being great music, because it just has really nice structure, sound design, and it's innovative, in some respects. It's just not the sort of music I'm good at, or even capable, of producing.

I probably wouldn't mind being an electronic music guy in the 80s and/or 90s. Hell, even today's market pushes lots of software that emulates analogue sounds and whatnot. There must be some demand or interest in it, at least. But I feel like this is beside the point. Producers back then were doing the best they could with the tools available to them, and the same approach would equate to something totally different now. But, I'm emphasizing mere functionality.

But, speaking of maximum utility, Massive is such a great VST, and for more than just bass sounds, though it seems like a lot of its appeal comes from that. Or maybe there's just a lot of online content that's just like "Oh, how do I make deh Skrillex wobbles, gotta use Massive". Yeah, I've used Modern Talking... ONCE. Anyway, this is all just a stereotype. People know that Massive is dynamic.

rant.end();