Why does the music you make sound like it sounds?

I am not a tweaker. Everything I intend to write must be able to be played live, so I try to keep in mind that little embellishments will get lost in the general racket. I have no home recording facility.

I'm usually pretty happy about that. When I first started toying with recording things, I was more interested in what developed in the recording process than in writing songs beforehand. But back when I was recording indie-rock songs with guitars, I think I got to a point where I knew what I was doing just enough that nothing "happened" during recording -- it mostly came out as the song I started out imagining and outlining. Switching to assembling things on a computer makes it much more of a long process, and more of a process where things turn out in ways you don't expect, and lately I think I'm less good at sitting down and "writing a song" than I am at dealing with the process in a way that can maybe come out in an interesting spot.

(Though come to think of it I suppose the songs of mine that I like best have come from parallel courses -- conventional songwriting with the acoustic guitar, development with the sequencer, back to mapping it out on guitar, back to the sequencer, and so on until it's done.)

i think i'm almost at the point where my guitar sound is how i want it to be. almost but not quite - although i think i know what i still need to experiment with. the next stop is of course working out how to make my recordings sound how i want. no engineer i've worked with has been able to get the sound i have in my head - but i believe i can find it with some trial and error..

For me, those variables occur when I take stuff into a rehearsal. One of the others may pick up on a detail that they like that I hadn't thought about, or suggest another section, or just play it differently to the way I had intended. These variables are what keeps it interesting - in the mid 80s I had a go at recording some solo stuff where I played everything and I hated having total control. It just felt *arid*. I guess in those days the lack of software/computers to allow you to record at home was a barrier to quickly trying things that would take a recording off in an unexpected direction.

a far more experienced artist/producer than me once heard me bemoaning my tendency to work on something, overcook it, then ditch it and all the attendant frustrations that that brought. his advice to me was: 'when a track collapses on you, you have to realise that it wasn't a complete waste of time. you're always learning from situations like this - you start to recognise the blind dead-end alleys before you go chuntering down them. it's not a quick process, but with time you get better at it.'

when i finally started finishing tracks to my satisfaction i realised how true that was. it can be soul destroying when tunes disintegrate or you get so bored that you HAVE to let go eventually and move onto something different, and this keeps happening over and over and over again, but you have to be strong and just keep throwing yourself at the wall. it will resolve itself. comfort yourself with the thought that you're chasing The Grail - artistic truth - a rare commodity these days, and while you may not go to the grave a materially rich person, you WILL ONE DAY achieve a level of personal fulfilment from your music that a whole host of multi-platinum selling cunts will neither know nor understand.

dissatisfaction is all part of the package. i've noted before that i'm trying to get tunes to the point where they don't irritate the bejesus out of me. it can be done.

remember that a work of art is never finished, only abandoned.

just wanted to clear that up...

*of course that doesn't stop you wishing you'd done it differently later on, that unfortunate side-effect of getting better as a band/artist!

i think your definition is good to go doctor...

Obvious answer is 'cos I like it' but lets go a bit deeper. Way upthread n/a said *The band I'm in now was consciously created as a "pop band," as kind of a reaction to a more experimental band I was in before*. That struck me as interesting because I've never really made a big flip like this. Why did you do it? What was hard about it? What came naturally?

Also nabsico said 'back when I was making indie-rock songs with guitars'.

My own answer is that I play pop-punk and Factory/Fall-ish stuff for various reasons, mainly that this stuff mobilized me as a musician in the first place and I still feel at home with it over 25 yrs on. Maybe the feeling was so strong that I've never moved on. I might listen to King Tubby, Chic and Northern Soul as much as Joy Division and The Sex Pistols, but when I pick up a guitar, it just *comes out like that*. Also it's easy to sound good, and we're not great musicians. Competent enough maybe, but I can't do a good Nile Rodgers! Also, I'm not bothered about doing anything *new*, other than in the sense that I want to write the great songs within the parameters I've chosen. I'm not making much sense. Another factor is that I'm interested in live performance first, recorded work second. I'm afraid I'm not making a lot of sense, so I'll press pause for a while...

I joined a sample-based kraut hop band in the mid 90s because I wanted to do something more technologically aware after spending the early 90s in garage bands. I then started a girly power-pop band as a reaction to that. Post the girlband I started recording classical symphonies as a way of doing something totally different to anything else I'd done before.

Now I'm trying quite hard not to pay attention to genres when I write, except as a stylistic shorthand to a mood. I think it's better that way.