Hi all

I'm not sure that this post constitutes a "technical issue", but I'm posting it here anyway.

I took up PD sincerely this year, after over five years of flirting with it. I've loved electronic music all my life and always wanted to create it myself, but could never work with any of the existing suites (Ableton, etc). PD seemed like the right choice for me, partly because it is elemental and versatile, and partly because it is materially and ideologically free. In just a few months, I've grown comfortable and even competent at patching, and would count it amongst my greatest hobbies. I love the sense of control that PD allows, and the way in which it merges programming with design. I even sort of love some of PD's quirks, ("trigger: can only convert 's' to 'b' or 'a' " etc.). I've made several patches which I am proud of and have learned a great deal in the process. But there is one problem that keeps on nagging on my mind:

My musical output has been almost zero!

I have created all sorts of weird and wonderful contraptions for creating music, but very little actual music. The trend is pronounced enough that my wife has affectionately coined the term pre-music for my craft. But as the trend continues, I worry that all I will ever produce is more pre-music, more and more elaborate but never musical.

I see two problems with my current condition, one more technical and one more artistic. I would seek advice or reflection of any sort on both.

1. I have gotten pretty good at the dataflow and control elements of PD, but am less skilled at sound design. I know how to make basic synthesizers and samplers, but I struggle to create sound that actually sounds good. I'm sure that this is the kind of thing that comes with practice, and that I should just start constructing more advanced synthesizers, but I still often don't know where to start.
2. Even with a functioning, sonically appealing program, I still struggle to make music. It's that feeling you get when someone who plays an instrument beautifully places one in your lap, and you don't know what to do. Your creativity ceases up and you just feel clumsy. I know how to play some instruments, but I still don't know how to make music on computers. How do you access your creativity on a machine?

I am guessing that many others have faced similar challenges to some degree of other, and would value your advice or discussion.

Hi Liam,

If you'd ask me if I had a same experience as yours, I'd answer both an yes and a no. Yes because indeed my compositional output with Pd has been ridiculously small since my switch from Max, basically I have only been rewriting older compositions of mine from Max into Pd, but on the other hand I dedicated these last months to really and properly learn Pd without any worries or pressure about producing music (I feel much more confident about Pd nowadays than I've ever felt with Max in the past). So right now I am just starting to work on a major instrumental piece with live electronics and I consider that what I have been doing so far was some important research for this and all my future pieces.

As for your points, here is what I think:

1. I have always felt this difficulty in creating actual good sounds as well. Certainly this is a huge topic, but on the most basic level I see that it is simply very tough to construct sounds from scratch using simple oscillators and achieve some kind of rich or new sonority. A lot of my pure electronic pieces use simple sinusoidal oscillators (and this is not a problem if these pieces are conceptual, or if the structure is of main importance, etc.). But if this is troubling you, here is a possible solution: use Pd for composing musical structures, and use sounds from somewhere else (via other synths, such as some VST). This way you can skip (at least for now) the tough area of sound design. Or use samples: record them yourself, manipulate them in some DAW (I really recommend REAPER http://www.reaper.fm/, I am utterly in love with it right now) and then use them algorithmically in Pd. Then you can simply organize them with Pd, or also manipulate them using reverb, delays, effects in general, etc.
2. That's the tough part of being a composer in general, I'd say. I come from an academic background, which means that I am a full time student of composition and I have been dedicating almost a decade of my life exclusively to that, and this is still something that hits me from time to time (and everyone around me as well). On the bright side, the older (and hopefully wiser!) I get, the less these types of insecurities and blank periods and crisis affect me.

Take care and good luck with your music!
Gilberto

Sound design with PD can be a never ending task. There's always the idea that you know you can make it sound better, or more interesting, so you never stop fiddling with it. That's sound design in general, really, but it destroys me with PD. Constantly adding more stuff to a patch, over and over, forever until the end of time. At a certain point, you gotta let go, though .

I'm not sure how a person can unlock their creativity. I think something just clicks one day, from learning the one thing that they didn't know. For me, it was really the power of arrays and the almighty $#. When it comes to composition, a lot of PD output seems to be "Click button to make music, click again to stop music." While that's definitely an option, for me it lacks movement, like verses or something. Moving the song along like a composer is what I enjoy in PD, and using the computer like an instrument as opposed to a thing that can make sounds. So, I made an abstraction that lets me trigger everything on beat, on and off, so I can keep it dynamic.

This is already very long, but I guess what I'm trying to say is, keep trying to find whatever your "Click" is, or something? I have no idea.

Hi,
I'm glad to read your post, this site is definitely lacking some discussion on actual musical issues. I'll try to give you my input on this, although it's hard for me to express in english on such a difficult matter.
I have the feeling that most PD users have the same kind of problem as you, but many just don't consider it as a problem. There is no general solution to your "lament", but as Gilberto did maybe I can help you with my own experience.

First I must say I'm not a very skilled PD user ; just as you, I'm ok with control elements and data flow, but I"m very bad at acoustics. But unlike you I don't consider it as an issue. I see PD not only as a tool, but also as a new way represent musical ideas. I'll give you an example.
Two of the things I'm interested in are polyrhythm and free improvised music. A few years ago I wouldn't even have thought of combining the two : I thought you couldn't possibly improvise with several people on a changing tempo, using polyrhythm. When I started to work on a sampler earlier this year, the idea came to me that it was actually possible, and that's what I'm working on right now thanks to PD.
What I'm trying to say here is that what matters is the interaction between musical ideas and musical representation. If you're trying to create purely electronic music using only PD, maybe you should spend some time thinking of the technical ways to create a form, i.e. to represent efficiently the evolution of the different parameters you're dealing with over time. The way you represent things in your patch will have a determining impact on your creativity. The simpler you represent things, the more easily you'll elaborate complex music.
Anyway, I doubt that helps...
Kind regards, and thanks for bringing this to the table.
Lucien

Hi Liam.

Try with an open approach.

For example, take a walk. Just observe your neighbourhood. Maybe a dog is barking. Maybe a woman is slamming a door. Maybe it's raining. Maybe somebody is singing, somewhere. Something inside you will tell you "Hey, that's it, I know what I have to compose now". You just need to learn how to find simple triggers that bang your creativity.

Another idea, for a day in which you don't want to take a walk, is to draw a line, on a piece of paper. Then put some weird events here and there. I mean, do some little drawing, or write some words. A sort of time line for compositional events.

As you can see, this open approach has nothing to do with Pd or any DAW. Forget about those, initially.

I'm not making this up. There's abundant literature that points in this direction. Read about Brahms...he always went for a walk.

- How do you access your creativity on a machine?
- You don't. You access your creativity on an open space.

And finally, read the following blog post, that is closely related to our thread:
http://tropicaltheartist.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/why-a-daw-might-not-be-the-best-song-writing-tool/

Have a nice day

Kind regards, and thanks for bringing this to the table.
Lucien

Same feeling here.

Hi all,

This discussion is getting interesting, thanks you all for posting. But please allow me to disagree with @LandonPD when he writes:

For example, take a walk. Just observe your neighbourhood. [...] You just need to learn how to find simple triggers that bang your creativity.
[...]
As you can see, this open approach has nothing to do with Pd or any DAW. Forget about those, initially.

Sure, walks are nice and you can come up with some interesting ideas on your head while you let yourself think freely, but that's quite a romantic approach to this world of music, don't you think? To illustrate what I think, let me share with you one of my favourite quotations about dealing with algorithmic music:

[...] programming concepts can suggest functions that might not occur to one outside of the context of programming. This is of signal importance in music composition, since the integration of programming concepts into the musical imagination can extend the boundaries of the imagination itself. That is, the language is not simply a tool with which some preconceived task or function can be accomplished; it is an extensive basis of structure with which the imagination can interact, as well.

John Chowning, forword to Curtis Road's The Computer Music Tutorial

That is, you use the computer as a tool, but you also change the way of structuring your musical thoughts inside your head when you start using this tool. I certainly could have composed some of my algorithmic acoustic pieces without a computer (only by hand), but I never did, simply because I didn't think algorithmically back then. Nowadays, it's just impossible, my code is way too complex and involves million of calculations (most of them using random numbers anyway) so that would take a lifetime to do by hand.

My point is: walks are nice, but working directly on your craft is even nicer and, in my view, produces better results.

Take care,
Gilberto

Thanks for your posts. I was counting on this message board for thoughtful responses and you are not letting me down. John Chowning's quote is spot on--a very good articulation of something that all of us must have felt in one way or another. On the other hand, I really like Landon's ideas for romantic stimulation--as any patcher's partner can testify, we could all do with more walks! I don't see these two options as mutually exclusive--there's time enough for both technical legwork and fresh-air inspiration.

I have more thoughts, but will hold them back for now. Keep the words coming!

On the workflow side of things...

I agree with Gilberto - Reaper is great! I used to tweak patches endlessly (still do), never knowing what to do with them (still don't), but I finally accepted that I'm NOT a "computer musician." I've never yet performed live with a laptop. I am not going to think my PD patch is a piece of music. (Mine; YOURS might me, but mine's not.)

When I finally made an abstraction that includes a [writesf~] with the dac/volume, I started recording hours of my noodlings... and I've made more than one piece I've been happy with.

(... also, afterwards, I figured out how Jack works. Even better!)

I've always been nuts for the classical tape music folks, though, and I used to use 4-tracks and reel-to-reels for tape collage. Moving my "song"-bits into a DAW has really freed up the PD end of things, even if the methods are a little retro. I'm happier now to make a terrible patch that makes one good sound, record it, and move on. (in theory - in reality, I STILL micro-manage my patches, and fix them up for imaginary concerts and third parties, when really, no one will ever see them but me. Should never have learned about color changes.)

Sound-wise...

I learned a whole lot from the tutorials on Obiwannabe's site... so much so, that I shelled out the fifty-ish bucks for his "Designing Sound" book. I'm glad I did. I think he has helped some of my sounds sound better. Previously, I wouldn't have used two dozen bandpass filters, because it seemed so inelegant, like "that's not what computers are supposed to do." But damn, if he can make a convincing digital teacup, I ought to re-evaluate my judgements!

A final thought. If I WEREN'T re-re-re-wiring a PD patch right now, would I be spending that time making an album? Or would I just be watching cartoons?

Guys, these posts are all very interesting, I am glad to see so many people discussing these type of things here. But here is a suggestion: what you all think if I move this post from Technical Issues to Off Topic? I know most people only visit our Technical Issues (and that's the most popular section of this forum by far) and I know this post is not completely Off Topic about Pd, but I guess that when we start to talk about music production in general, including but also beyond Pd, then that area of our forum would be better suited. Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Gilberto

@gsagostinho That's a nice quote, and I agree at every level with it. The thing is that there's overlapping. An open approach overlaps a more narrow apprach and viceversa. If you've ever studied basic set theory...think about intersection. These approaches are not black and white, think of them as two sides of a coin. They are not mutually exclusive, they are mutually inclusive. I wouldn't say this approach is better than this one, or this is worse than this other approach. They cannot even have an order, but you can become more aware of the whole process.

@gsagostinho That's probably fine, this isn't the typical technical issue. Maybe there aren't enough categories. Not sure about this. The Off Topic section seems the optimal choice.

@LandonPD Hi Landon, I think there there may be indeed an overlap, but I believe it depends on the sort of musician or composer you are. I will try to use my own work to make my point (sorry for the egotistic example, but that's really the best way I can think of describing how I see this):

My main work is actually done mostly outside Pure Data. I work mainly with algorithmic acoustic music and my main interest is to generate scores only via computer programs (that is, the scores are completely generated by algorithms without any sort of manual corrections or after touches). Also, my work has a generative nature: because my programs use random numbers, every time an user executes one of my programs he gets a slightly different score, and two scores will never be the same. So in order to compose them, I do not think of specific notes, nor melodies, nor anything like that, I simply construct them as pure musical structures. I try to organize abstract musical entities that will later be filled with random information (a simple example is to create certain manipulations of a dodecaphonic row, but not to specify which row you are dealing with). I have been very much influenced by the serial techniques, as well as the process music of Reich and other composers.

So in my own case, there is very little that listening to the nature or life around can bring. A walk in a park can be as inspiring as being locked in a traffic jam. As long as I am able to concentrate in thinking about musical structures, I can work, and information from outside tends to affect me very little (actually, it can in fact take my concentration away from these musical structures).

But certainly this is a very specific approach and I do understand that people have all sorts of different workflows. I just wanted to share how I see this.

Take care,
Gilberto

PS: thanks for the input about moving the post, I will do it straight away

And Liam, here is another interesting approach: use sounds created in Pure Data, but actually do so by using someone else's object/library/astraction. This here is a cool example using Maelstorm's [cz-osc~]: http://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/8395/a-simple-song-made-with-pd/2

Cheers,
Gilberto

I didn't know this quotation from Chowning, it's very interesting. Actually it's close to what I meant by ideas and representation. In the very case of PD, what strikes me is how the two can actually interact. As you improve with PD, you progressively learn to represent your ideas in a more and more efficient way. For instance, let's say you build a sequence. If you're a beginner, you'll probably use a counter and [sel] for each step. It will work, but if you're trying to do something complex, i.e. deal with many parameters independently, you'll end up with a messy patch, and you won't be able to have a good representation of what you're doing. As you improve, dealing with arrays and lists for instance, patches will get simpler and will allow you to build more complex structures. In other words, as your representation evolves, your musical ideas refine, and vice versa.

Lian in you first post you said your wife used the term pre-music, which is quite interesting, it made me think of what Deleuze said of the young Cézanne : he had a "pre-colour" period, before the colour could free itself. I often have the feeling my music is in a "pre-sound" state, but I don't know if I'll be able to free the sound some day.

Actually my advice is the following : don't be afraid to sound bad. The best musicians don't try to sound good. In my opinion, good music is not about good sounds. Beauty is not something pleasant.

The best musicians don't try to sound good. In my opinion, good music is not about good sounds. Beauty is not something pleasant.

This is absolutely spot on.

the BIG problem with PD, in my opinion, is that there is no native way to set up state saving.

If you could patch a bunch of stuff, and then press a single button to save the state of all your sliders and number boxes and whatnot, and then be able to easily manage all those things as 'patterns' or 'songs', it would be downright ecstatic.

Miller has said for years that he wants to implement this, but he never has. Ironically, he keeps spending time on stuff like the data structures, which are clearly a dead end and barely anyone uses cos they're clunky at best and ridiculous at worst.

If PD had a simple, fairly user friendly way to save and recall different settings of patches, it would suddenly open the door to far more complete and coherent productions.

meanwhile we all just hack away using stuff like SSSAD which is OK, but not ideal.

And here is an example about beauty vs. sounding pleasant from the music that I deal with the most: almost all pieces by Pierre Boulez which have been written from around the 1980's are easier to listen to, and have a very sensuous and attractive kind of sound (such as Dérive 1 or Sur Incises) but are compositionally poorer than any of his early masterpieces (Structures 1a, Le marteau sans maître, Piano Sonata No.2), which are tougher for the listener, rougher in sound, etc. I also would take any piece of Xenakis or Stockhausen over those late works of Boulez any day.

@mod I don't understand you, what is wrong with using a message containing several sends, such as [; myReverb 1.0; delayFeedback 0.8;, delayTime 250; structureB bang; soundPlayerA 0( which can be banged by an [loadbang]? Doesn't that initiate or change the state of almost everything in a patch?

Take care,
Gilberto

@gsagostinho I totally agree about Boulez. Beethoven did the exact opposite : he evolved to the harsher sounding. I think the best example is Boulez's choice of composing his livre pour cordes for string orchestra and not for string quartet.

@mod Maybe you should just make sure you have a simple access to every parameter. There are several ways to do so ; as for me, I use the "receive symbol" (not sure it's "receive symbol" in english) of almost all the GUI I use, so as stated by Gilberto a simple message box can set many parameters at once, and it appears visually on your patch. Maybe your problem is that you'd like to be able to store a set of values you've found playing with your patch, but it's not really a problem. You can store in real time all your values, then save any given combination (in an array or a list or a text file) so you can access it any time.