Composers of Doom, How do you make your music?

[StarSpun5000]

I'm curious to know the process by which you create your music, do you start with a melody in your head and plan everything out, or do you just make stuff up as you go along? And another question, do you believe that knowing how to play an instrument is necessary knowledge in musical composition or is that more of just a helpful tool rather than a necessity?

[Fernito]

For me, the creative process starts when either a melody, chord progression, bassline or drumline randomly appears in my head. If I feel it has potential, I write it down in my software of choice and start playing around with it. I rarely "plan" my tracks, I usually go with whatever feels right in the moment. If I run out of ideas for a particular track, I just leave it there and come back to it when I feel inspired again (trying to force inspiration has never worked well for me).

 

Personally, I can neither play an instrument (properly) nor have any formal musical training. That hasn't stopped me from making music, though I have to admit that relying only on what my head is able to output limits my creativity quite a lot. I really have the feeling that if I had learned to play an instrument that would act as an "extension of my thoughts" (if that makes any sense) would definitely allow me to make better music. So yeah, while I don't think playing an instrument is a must if you want to compose music, it really helps a lot.

 

Another consideration is that, if you're planning to make music that's supposed to be actually played by musicians, it's quite useful to know what every instrument is capable of doing: register, available techniques, etc., so you don't end up writing unplayable stuff.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Fernito

[Pechudin]

1 hour ago, Fernito said:

For me, the creative process starts when either a melody, chord progression, bassline or drumline randomly appears in my head. If I feel it has potential, I write it down in my software of choice and start playing around with it.

 

So just like making a map. An idea for an arena or a cool vista pops up, and the map grows from there.

[Fernito]

1 hour ago, Pechudin said:

 

So just like making a map. An idea for an arena or a cool vista pops up, and the map grows from there.

Actually yeah, that's a good analogy. I guess it applies to pretty much any kind of means of artistic expression?

Edited June 26, 2023 by Fernito

[Pechudin]

2 minutes ago, Fernito said:

Actually yeah, that's a good analogy. I guess it applies to pretty much any kind of means of artistic expression?

 

Probably.

[SkeletSpook]

On 6/26/2023 at 4:13 PM, Fernito said:

For me, the creative process starts when either a melody, chord progression, bassline or drumline randomly appears in my head. If I feel it has potential, I write it down in my software of choice and start playing around with it. I rarely "plan" my tracks, I usually go with whatever feels right in the moment. If I run out of ideas for a particular track, I just leave it there and come back to it when I feel inspired again (trying to force inspiration has never worked well for me).

 

Personally, I can neither play an instrument (properly) nor have any formal musical training. That hasn't stopped me from making music, though I have to admit that relying only on what my head is able to output limits my creativity quite a lot. I really have the feeling that if I had learned to play an instrument that would act as an "extension of my thoughts" (if that makes any sense) would definitely allow me to make better music. So yeah, while I don't think playing an instrument is a must if you want to compose music, it really helps a lot.

 

Another consideration is that, if you're planning to make music that's supposed to be actually played by musicians, it's quite useful to know what every instrument is capable of doing: register, available techniques, etc., so you don't end up writing unplayable stuff.

 

What software do you usually use?

[Darkcrafter07]

Sometimes music comes in dreams just before I wake up and as soon as I'm awake, it's only a matter of minutes to record basic notes before I forget it completely. What's about gear is that I prefer FL Studio 10 or 11, 20 gone a bit too bloaty for basic stuff but still nice to work with MIDI.
 

The basic idea of this DAW is that music can be divided into chunks that have the same contents, and these are called "Patterns", then before you start adding notes or recording them, you have to set tempo right, turn on the metronome and tap your own metronome you hear inside, set the software accordingly. It's usually that most music comes from 90 to 160 BPM, not such a big gap.

 

Choose a melodic sounding instrument with a flat ADSR (super fast attack, infinite decay, sustain and short release) and open its piano roll. You'll see it has a grid on it, you can set it up by selecting an appropriate stepping (4/4, 4/16 etc), it's for your notes to fit the tempo tight and be worked with easier. Then just put these notes you hear inside as closely as you can. This way you can come up with one of such "patterns".

 

The same applies to drums, choose a drum synth instrument and put these notes according to what you hear inside.

 

Then put the resulting patterns into one song, that is how it's done.

Edited June 27, 2023 by Darkcrafter07

[Fernito]

9 hours ago, SkeletSpook said:

 

What software do you usually use?

 

FL Studio is my main DAW, however, for not-so-complex stuff like Doom MIDIs I stick to Guitar Pro 5, mostly out of habit, as it was my first midi sequencing software. I've heard very good stuff about Sekaiju though, I've been meaning to give it a go for a while.

In any case, for learning and experimenting I'd definitely recommend some piano roll-based DAW.

[DiR]

Whenever I compose something for doom, I usually have the map (or the partially finished map) on the side that I play through every now and then. While composing, I try to mimic elements of the map into the MIDI rather than fitting a map's theme around the MIDI. As for how I compose, I'd say it fits more under "making things up as I go" side, with a broad theme in mind but no specific melody, key, or anything yet.

 

Knowing an instrument definitely helps (especially piano, as that's the basis of how the MIDI notes are formatted) but it doesn't mean that you cannot compose for said instrument if you don't play it. Knowing your way around an instruments will speed up the composition process a lot if you can get your ideas out faster than they disappear. I've had my fair share of losing an idea before I got it down before I learned my first instrument.

 

Something I did early on before composing anything of my own was to just learn songs that I liked, regardless if they were songs in the same genre as what I wanted to compose. I couldn't technically play them because of my lack of ability, but I knew how it was composed and how the notes flow. Oftentimes it's enough to know how to compose it with the knowledge of each instrument's qualities (as Fernito said)

[TheHambourgeois]

I am not gifted with aural skills (though I've been working on it) and I play bass, so usually I either music theory my way into an idea (oh I want to make a song with a iv - bii7 - i progression). Sometimes I noodle on my bass until I come up with something I like and compose around it. Like fernito said above I tend to be pretty organic in my process, I usually have one idea and it grows from there, catches me by surprise sometimes.

For projects I tend to try and incorporate some elements in common in all the tracks. For example, in my long delayed Heretic wad Condemned I tried to write a lot of modal music, incorporate tone clusters, use the same midi instruments as Kevin Schilder, etc.

[bofu]

I usually have a single snippet of melody or a guitar riff in mind. I'll then paste it a few times into my composition software (I use this old program called Noteworthy Composer, since I'm a notation-first guy and have been using it since the 2000s) and then try out some variations. Once I find something that sticks, I'll layer other voices one at a time, usually starting with bass but sometimes starting with pads.

 

On a few rare occasions, I actually start with percussion.

[wumbo]

On 6/26/2023 at 3:40 AM, StarSpun5000 said:

I'm curious to know the process by which you create your music, do you start with a melody in your head and plan everything out, or do you just make stuff up as you go along? And another question, do you believe that knowing how to play an instrument is necessary knowledge in musical composition or is that more of just a helpful tool rather than a necessity?

 

I've been making music since before I started getting into Doom, and I either hear some random piece of music and decide to copy it a little bit, and the rest just flows through by itself. Sometimes when I'm trying to sleep, I think of a melody or bassline and I'm like, "damn that would sound really good as a MIDI" I usually forget it afterwards, but that's just me. I also use Signal, an incredibly underrated DAW for even complex MIDIs, because I don't wanna pay for FL studio.

Edited July 19, 2023 by wumbo