Stuck in public with my laptop and no headphones, I started an experiment to pass the time -- programming a song in Reason / Ableton, without hearing it.
Which isn't that difficult, obviously: people who know what they're doing write and arrange hugely complex things straight to paper all the time. So long as you keep the rhythms and chord progressions equal to your level of musical knowledge, it's not too hard to keep everything in your head.
The fun part, though, is that all the sound settings, textures, effects, and such come out weird: you'll think you made a propulsive groove, but it's actually all ghostly and clangy, or you'll think you made something fluffy and dreamy, but it turns out the drums are pushing hard behind it.
Anyone else ever tried this? It's fun, especially the final reveal -- and a good way to put in an hour and come out with odd ideas you wouldn't have come up with otherwise.
― nabisco, Thursday, 30 August 2007 17:52 (seventeen years ago) link
(I might post this when I get home: one thing I attempted was a standard early-90s hip-hop beat, a simple funky-drummer / bassline / Rhodes thing -- and then I got home and put it on, and it was disturbingly ominous and gothy!)
― nabisco, Thursday, 30 August 2007 17:55 (seventeen years ago) link