Compositional Distillation

That's a fancy way to refer to taking out the excess when making something. Recently. I've been working on a song that is supposed to be the greatest thing I've ever written. At least, that's what I always call the stuff I'm working on. It's a progressive thing; aim for the best, and you'll get better. Eventually.

Anyway, it starts off kind of hard. The drums are in full force, the main melody is playing, and I'm establishing the basics so that I can destroy them later on. After a few bars, everything but the chords drops out, and the distant echos of drums fill the track. Slowly, brushed cymbals and shakers are introduced, and the drums grow louder. And then, the main percussion kicks back in, along with a strong bassline and harsh synths. Three sections of this follow, with stutter edits and percussion-driven change-ups slowly changing the track into something rather dynamic.

Another section, similar to the intro, with a stripping of previous embellishments and an adding of lighter sound effects and metallic percussion. I left the song here (the sun was starting to rise) and headed for bed. A few days later, I revisited the song, with a lot of ideas about how to make it even better.

And this is where it all turned to crap.

My drive to add a lot of things crowded out my drive to make the track seamless; that is, my desire to make sure that all the sections flow together in a typical fashion. Hence, the track became a mash-up of many elements that sounded terrible when placed one after another, even on top of each other. And I... I was heartbroken. I thought it was going great! I mean, it was, wasn't it?

Yeah, for a while. So I thought to strip out some things. Better said, distillate. Keep the essence of the song intact by evaporating all of the murk it sloshes about in. Concentrate the main elements and feel into juice that is poured into a pitcher, added to water, expanded every time it's played. Refreshing, yeah?

Distillation is a lesson learned, I suppose. I didn't think I'd learn it while making music.

So, here are the three iterations. First, the work in progress that I was so happy with. Then, the version in which everything, including the kitchen sink, was added until it fell apart. Last, the finished piece, cleaned up, edited, and marked with my seal of approval. Enjoy.