Why I Stopped Making 16 Bar Loops
Hey friends,
There is a moment in almost every jam I record where I catch myself getting bored. Everything is in place, the sounds are good, the balance is fine, and after four minutes I know exactly what is going to happen next. So does whoever is listening.
For a long time I could not work out why. The parts were nice. The gear was fun. It just went nowhere.
Everything was the same length
Here is what was actually going on. Every loop I made was 16 bars. Or 8. Or 4. Whatever the number, they all matched each other. Which meant every element arrived at the same point at the same moment, forever. Bar 9 always sounded like bar 9.
That is fine for something you are going to arrange and edit afterwards. For a jam that has to hold up in one take, it is a dead end.
18, 13 and 12
In this week's Melodic Minute I did it differently, mostly by not paying attention. I played the piano chords by ear until they felt finished. Same with the pad. I never looked at the grid, never counted bars, and never decided in advance how long anything should be.
When I checked afterwards, the piano loop was 18 bars, the pad loop was 13, and the arp running on the Elektron Digitone was a 12 step sequence. Nothing lines up. The three parts meet in a different combination every time they come around, because each one is always at a different point in its own cycle.
That is the whole trick, and it costs nothing.
Give the listener somewhere to stand
One thing I learned the hard way: this only works if something stays simple.
With three parts drifting against each other there is already a lot going on. So I kept the bass deliberately plain. A few notes, nothing clever. It gives the ear a reference point, something to hold on to while everything else moves around it.
Without that, the whole thing just feels unstable. With it, it feels alive. And I hope you’ll try it out yourself.
Stay creative and curious,
Milan
P.S.: My patrons get every video a full week before it goes public, and that support is what makes it possible for me to spend a year finding this stuff instead of rushing something out. If you want to come along for that, you can join at https://www.patreon.com/kvndra
