creative paranoia

*sigh*

yeah, i spent the whole night working on the Zombootie remix last night (Gobs couldn't make it over to work on tunes so it was just me). on the plus side i've got a ton of really great ideas crammed into a 3 minute long track; on the negative side i'm starting to second-guess myself. i think there might be too many ideas now. the plan was to depart from "traditional" musical structure at every opportunity but still maintain a danceable vibe. i wanted a schizophrenic, manic feel reminiscent of Mindless Self Indulgence or even Square Pusher but more dance-oriented and wrapped up in a fidget house aesthetic. however, as one of my instructors at Harris put it: there needs to be a balance between unity and variety in any creative work. on the one hand you don't want too much unity or it becomes boring and predictable, on the other hand you don't want too much variety or it becomes chaos. the key is to strike a balance where there is a predictable pattern but there are deviations at strategic moments designed to surprise and excite the listener. i'm not sure if i have achieved the balance i am looking for and i don't want to settle.

i don't know, i'm going to keep plugging away at it and work on the transitions between ideas... if i can stregnthen those transitions perhaps everything will take on a better flow. another issue is that there is no breakdown in the entire track. i took the inspiration for this from some really banging techno tracks i've heard where the beat is pretty much relentless through the entire track (with maybe a bar break here and there). i'm not sure it works in this scenario though... perhaps i will play around with that idea as well.

to add frustration to the issue, my computer is groaning under the strain of this most recent track. i've got some ideas on how to technically implement similar ideas in the future so that i am afforded more flexibility when editing and also putting less strain on my processor. ideally, i will be farming out as much of the audio manipulation to the VariOS once it's set up but that presents it's own set of problems as well. what would REALLY solve the problem is a new computer, but there is no way i will be able to afford one any time soon.