Almost every day, I spend some time making music. Usually in the evening, at night...
When I plug in my instruments and activate my set-up, I have the feeling of crossing a threshold, of entering another dimension, where thought, imagination and bodily sensations are determined by listening.
A space of both freedom and creative constraints.
Some days, I go back to what I recorded the day before. I listen again, modifying the mix, track levels and effects, correcting and rewriting certain tracks, until I hear something that matches my vision, my musical idea.
Other days, I go in a new direction. I choose one or two instruments, and go through my sound banks until a particular sound stands out, which I can nuance and refine with personal adjustments. I choose one or more treatments - reverb, delay, multi-effect - and build up the sound color of the improvisation to come, just as a painter prepares the palette for his gouaches or watercolors.
Then I press the “record” button on my DAW, and lay down the first notes of an idea, letting myself be guided by the sound and its harmonic wake, and a rhythm, a feeling that gradually falls into place.
I resist the temptation to play too much, to fill the track. I lift my hands from the keyboard, and let silence sculpt the sounds.
Then it's time to record a second track. Often, I copy the first track and shift it, to create multiple sonic accidents. The choice of sound, complementary to the first track, is obviously decisive. Sometimes I go over it again, often several times. You have to find the right blend, like a chef with his ingredients... Premixing and coloring the different effects foreshadows the composition to come... Spatialization and movement in the stereo spectrum are decisive... I like my music to move, breathe, move, take flight, wind...
Do I need a third track? What complementary sound should I choose? I find my bearings visually on the notes of the first two tracks: should I slip in between what has already been recorded, in the gaps of silence? Or dare harmonic superimpositions, here and there?
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"Lila" (score). Walter Marchetti (1964)
Listen, listen again. Then comes the pruning phase. You have to create emptiness, silence, let the notes and sounds breathe and live their own lives...
We always play too much... We tend to fill up, to overload.
You have to clear the air, erase, following the intuition of critical listening.
Then comes the moment of mixing: fine-tuning of levels, dosing of effect returns, spatialization planes, movements across the stereo spectrum are all essential phases that transform the raw material of the recording. This is the moment when all the recorded material makes sense and blends into an organic whole.
It takes me a lot of listening and trial and error to reach this point of balance. Does it meet any objective criteria? In part, no doubt. But it is undoubtedly intuition that leads me to stabilize a final state beyond which any further modification would be to lose or deteriorate this fragile balance.
