Lucciole CD’s Now Available for Pre-Order

Lucciole is now available for pre-order via my bandcamp page, this will be the first album of mine to be available on CD. It’s a limited edition on 30 (which is all I could afford to print for now), will cost €10 and comes in a cardboard sleeve with a sticker. It’ll start shipping out on July 20th and here’s what it will look like…

You can also stream the album on Spotify

Till later then…

Day SeventyFour: Album Release/Epilogue

Well slap around and call me Susan/Sumayya/Stefania…it’s done! All seventy four strategies in seventy four days, must say I am still getting to grips with the fact that I will get up  tomorrow and not sit down and read a chapter, think about it, use it and write about it. It’s a bit bittersweet. 

The question that has been popping up in my head for the past couple of days as I was looking back on the music I made during these past two and a half months is this: how different would this album have turned up had I started this project a couple of days earlier or later? My guess is it would have borne some resemblance, but it would’ve been drastically different. 

That’s the beauty of making music (or probably any form of art), it’s an extrapolation of who you are at a certain point in time. This album, therefore, becomes an extension of who I was for these past two and a half months moving under the book’s guidance. There’s a huge upside to this besides the huge amount of stuff I’ve learned while going through this, I know that if I am ever stuck for ideas or in a rut again (which will inevitably happen), I’ll have a method that’s tried and tested to fall back on. That’s a comforting thought.

So without further ado, here’s the album. Just like everything I have released thus far, it’s on a pay what you want basis. Unlike everything I have released before, however, this album will be available on iTunes, Spotify, Beats music…etc and with the possibility of a limited physical release.

All that’s left now is to thank Dennis DeSantis for writing this amazing book, Ableton for publishing it, every single person who has taken the time to read it and for every message of support, my wife, her family, my family and friends. 

I’ll update this page every once in a while, but if you’d like to keep track of all things Pie Are Squared, you can do so on:

                    Tumblr / Soundcloud / Facebook / Twitter / Youtube

Till tomorrow later then…

x

Day SeventyThree: Fail Better

It took me a while to wrap my ahead around the idea of ‘failing better’, it seemed like a bit of an oxymoron because when you fail, you fail and that’s it. But that’s not the point here, the point here is learning to finish whatever song you’ve started regardless of how bad you might think it is and even if you’re fully aware that it will never leave your hard drive.

It’s put quite nicely in the book, “We get to be better sound designers by designing sounds…better drum programmers by programming drums…and better song finishers by finishing songs”. So it is basically an exercise in finishing songs, on going through the different ways and methods that one can use to finish a song just to practice doing that and in turn making it come more naturally. 

For example, the song I was trying to finalise a couple of days ago (on day sixty eight to be exact) ended up not making it into the album and that’s something that I kinda knew for a while, but I finished it nevertheless. In this case it was because I felt that this song could end up reappearing at some point in the future but mainly it was to do exactly as the book mentioned, to finish a song. 

I’ll admit that this is not something that I’ve done often, mainly because once the song feels isn’t worth it, I just take whatever sounds I liked from it, place them in my sketches folder and ignore it completely. That said, I have a shedload of songs that need finishing and I think I will actually try to finish them regardless of the outcome. I just might find a couple of surprises or hidden gems in the process.

Till tomorrow then…

Day SeventyTwo: The Big Reveal - Album Artwork/Tracklisting

So here we are then, two days away from the end of this project. Given that I am a couple of days ahead of the chapters in the book, I decided to reveal the tracks that make up the album (and the chapters I used in making them), the title and the artwork with tomorrow’s post covering the final chapter of the book and the final one being the album release.

The album will be titled Lucciole (which means fireflies in Italian). Now there is no overly elaborate story behind the title, it’s just that I saw fireflies for the first time in my life last month and thought they were the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Simple as that really.

The artwork therefore, is a composite of two photographs that Margherita took using an insanely long exposure of said fireflies and here’s what that looks like:

And now for the tracks that make up the album and the chapters I used to make each, so you can see how they progressed if you’re so inclined

Tracklist:

1. Waves (Two Different Kinds) [Nine, TwentyFour, TwentyFive, FiftyThree]
   
2. Pretty Little Creature (feat. Margherita Gambi) [Eighteen]
3. Yr Misery, Babylon (You Babble On & On) [Three, ThirtyTwo, FortySeven, FortyEight]
4. Lucciole [Twenty, FortyOne]
5. Chiusa S Marco (Interlude) [Four, Forty, Sixty, SixtyTwo]
6. A Cure to Cure (feat. Amr Ashraf) [Six, ThirtyThree, SixtySix]
7. FRWRD>>Yr Dusty Skies [Fifteen]
8. Phlegm [Seven, FortySix, FiftyFive]
9. What An Idea Wants to Be (Wants to Be) [Seventeen, Thirty, ThirtyOne, FortyTwo, SixtyFive]

You’ll notice that there some days and the songs made on these days missing, that’s because these songs didn’t fit in with the rest. That doesn’t mean they’re gone for good, I think I will be releasing them as an EP in a couple of months.

Till tomorrow then…

Day SeventyOne: Getting Feedback

The only album I’ve released so far without getting any feedback beforehand was my last one, Farewell/Gratitude. For every other release, there were at least 3 or 4 people that I’ve asked for advice prior to moving on. 

It’s extremely important, for me at least, to have someone else listen to whatever I am thinking of releasing. Mainly because at a certain stage, which is usually after listening to the song for the 9678th time, I lose all connection to it. I would have heard it so many times that I lose almost all objectivity and I either love it or loathe it. In the first case, I need someone to point out its faults, in the latter, I need someone to show me why I liked the song in the first place. That means, that I mostly seek advice before mixing, when still in composition mode, so that I can change whatever needs changing without having to redo the mix. Then sometimes I ask for feedback again before mastering, just to make sure that everything sounds right. That means that the people I choose for feedback have to be very honest, very good listeners and would tell me what needs to change or if the song is just terrible. It’s not a time for niceties, because subjective niceness won’t get me anywhere. 

As for who I go to for advice, there’s always been Yasser, who is the only person who’s listened to every song I’ve made, every work in progress and sometimes just sketches. He listens to everything and he has a hugely eclectic taste in music so his advice/criticisms/feedback has always been important. Then there’s my brother, who I as I’ve mentioned before, is an extremely talented musician and sound engineer with an exceptional ear for melody and groove so he advices me on that kind of stuff, also he’s brutally honest, if he hears something he doesn’t like he’ll say it. The third person is usually either one of my former bandmates, Zizo or Ali, sometimes both, and that really depends on the song. They know the way I approach music inside out, so they tell me if I’m repeating myself and Ali especially is insanely thorough with his feedback. Finally there’s Margherita, who gives the seal of final approval.

The one thing I’d say about this is that if you take criticism personally, you’re better off not seeking it because at the end of the day the worst outcome of asking for advice would be for everyone to say it’s amazing when it isn’t. And of course, not all advice is good, so use your judgement.

Till tomorrow then…

Day Seventy: Diminishing Returns

Whenever you’re making a song, there’s this magical spot when everything comes together and everything you try to add or change about it after that point makes it worse. This carries on the idea from yesterday and both revolve around the idea of knowing when to stop.

Unfortunately, there is no tangible way of knowing where that point is. The best way of determining it in my opinion, is to “Save As” after every change is made in order to retain everything if that extra change proved detrimental to the song. Here’s a graph that sums it up:

The same definitely applies to mixing, and I recommend doing the save as thing and bouncing after every change to keep track of everything and to help guide you in knowing when the song is finished. When it comes to mixing, given that I do a rough mix as I go with the composition, sometimes I find that the rough mix was actually the best version of the song. So I just use that.

It takes a lot of self criticising (is that a word?) and a lot of going back and forth but it’s a step that has to be made, or rather one that shouldn’t be made, whatever works.

Till tomorrow then…

Day SixtyNine: Rendering as Commitment

I think without this step, most songs I’ve written would’ve never reached completion. This step being, freezing and flattening to audio (this is a very good tutorial on how to do that). What freezing does is that it disables all devices and effects on a track, leaving only the mixer section active (levels, pans, sends) and it’s an absolute life saver especially in projects that are full of heavy plug-ins and effects as it cuts the CPU usage significantly. Freezing is a non-destructive process, meaning that at a click of a button, you can get everything back.

The extra step would be flattening (rendering) to audio, which is a destructive process, meaning that after clicking that flatten button, there’s no going back. That does a world of good when finalising a song as it’s pretty much a point of no return; no more tweaking parameters, no more playing around with pitch and filter envelopes, what’s done is done and it’s to move on. And moving on is exactly what you want to do if you’re on course to finish a song.

This is actually a step I take pretty early on. Once I feel that the sound and how it’s used is there and probably won’t get better (more on that tomorrow), I freeze the track. It then becomes one less thing to worry about and I can carry on with the rest of the song. When the next part is where it should be, I freeze that. But bear in mind there are almost no mixing considerations at that point. 

When I have reached the mixing stage, that’s when I flatten. As after you flatten you can proceed with adding more effects to that track whereas when frozen that’s not an option. So it’s perfect for that purpose. The only times I choose to render prior to the mixing stage are when I find myself getting the urge to unfreeze and tweak some more. 

Another way to do all that is just to bounce all tracks as stems, at this point you can just edit audio, but honestly speaking I have never done that. Mainly because when you flatten, you still retain all your sends, pan and volume automation whereas when you bounce to stems, that’s not the case (the picture below shows how to bounce to stems in Ableton Live)

I’ll admit it’s a tough piece of decision making, especially because no sound will ever be perfect, but then again that could be seen as a reason to forget about that one sound, progress and look at the bigger picture. 

Till tomorrow then…

Day SixtyEight: Three Ways to End

Things are now coming full circle as the book’s end mirrors it’s beginning. The first chapter suggested three ways to start now we’re at three ways to end. The first of these three is mirroring.

Mirroring is heard quite often in dance music, DJ’s use it a lot as well in live performances. The set starts with the kick, then the hats, then the bass and everything gets going and at the very end these elements are stripped down in the same order they started ending with the kick. In rock as well, songs can start off with the main guitar riff and maybe a bit of vocals and end the same way after going through all verses, choruses, bridges and solos. It just makes everything symmetrical and neat. 

Another, much more complicated, way of thinking about it is using palindromes, things that are exactly the same when played forward or back. A very popular example of palindrome is “Amore, Roma” and in a musical context you can hear it on Boards of Canada’s “Music is Math” off Geogaddi, Sigur Ros’ “Starálfur” off Ágætis byrjun and even in classical music. I used that once on the title track of my album A State of Unwavering Contempt, after being stuck for ideas to finish the song, I changed all the percussion to sound exactly the same forward and back and recorded a guitar “melody” with the e-bow which followed suit. You can hear how it sounds like in the video. 

The second method harks back to the short loops as endings chapter from two days ago. Which you can then expand to change the surrounding sounds to filter in and out until the song comes to an end and the final method is the simplest of them all, fading out. 

Now if you’ve followed the blog from the very beginning, you’d have noticed that I really am not that big a fan of fading out. Mainly because if what the song fades out on isn’t that memorable, or is done just out of lack of ideas it becomes very obvious and very rarely feels complete. Plus, it’s been done like a trillion times over. But I digress, there is a time and place for it if the song needs one. In the video, I go through all three ways and they’re all worth trying to get to what sounds best for your song.

Till tomorrow then…

PS. In this video, I am using Ableton live 9.2, which was just released yesterday. It’s a free upgrade to Live 9 owners, which you can check out here.