I’ve realised that these days I approach music more like a painter than a musician now.
It’s all colours, not notes.
Obviously, the notes still matter. Chords, melodies, rhythms and structure are the foundations of a song. But when I’m actually writing and producing Most Epic Dream, I don’t really think about the finished piece as a collection of individual performances anymore.
I hear colours.
Textures.
Depth.
Movement.
Light and shade.
I’m increasingly interested in what a sound makes me feel rather than how impressive the part might be on its own.
Music as a Canvas
Every song starts with an outline.
The chords, rhythm, melody and structure give me the basic shape of what I’m working with. They’re important, but they’re not the finished picture.
The interesting part comes when I start colouring it in.
A synthesiser might create a huge wash behind everything.
A guitar might provide something sharp and abrasive against it.
The bass might be incredibly simple, but provide the dark colour underneath the whole arrangement.
A piano might only appear for a few notes because that’s all the picture needs.
And sometimes the most important colour is no colour at all.
Space matters.
I’ve become increasingly comfortable leaving holes in arrangements rather than immediately reaching for another instrument to fill them.
I Don’t Need to Know Everything at the Beginning
Seeing music this way doesn’t mean I have some perfect picture in my head before I start.
Quite the opposite.
I usually know the emotional direction I’m heading in, but I want to leave enough room for the song to surprise me.
That’s part of the fun.
You add something you weren’t expecting and suddenly the entire colour palette changes.
A guitar sound pushes the track somewhere darker.
A synth makes something unexpectedly beautiful.
A vocalist interprets a melody differently from how I imagined it and suddenly the emotional centre of the song moves.
Those moments are worth following.
I don’t want to be so committed to the original sketch that I miss a better painting emerging underneath it.
Every Part Has to Serve the Song
This connects directly to one of the main principles I’ve developed with Most Epic Dream:
Every part must serve the song.
That doesn’t mean every part has to be simple.
It means every part needs a reason to exist.
If the vocal is carrying the emotion, I don’t need three other instruments competing with it.
If a guitar has the melodic spotlight, the synth might need to become texture.
If the drums are busy, the bass will often become simpler.
If the bass starts moving, perhaps the drums need to give it more room.
I don’t want every musician shouting for attention at the same time.
A painting doesn’t become better because you use every colour in the box.
Neither does a song.
Some Sounds Are Colours to Me
Certain sounds have very definite characteristics in my head.
Not necessarily literal colours like “this synth is blue” or “that guitar is red.”
It’s more instinctive than that.
Some sounds are cold.
Some are warm.
Some are metallic.
Some feel distant.
Some feel enormous.
Some feel claustrophobic.
Some feel damaged.
Some sounds seem to create light around them while others pull everything into shadow.
That is often how I make production decisions now.
I’m not necessarily thinking, “I need a particular frequency here.”
I’m thinking, “This section needs something colder.”
Or wider.
Or darker.
Or more fragile.
Then I find the instrument, effect or texture that creates that feeling.
The Picture Changes With the Vocal
Collaboration makes this especially interesting.
When I send music to a vocalist, I already have an emotional picture of the track.
Then somebody else steps into it.
Their voice brings its own colour.
Their phrasing can change the mood.
Their lyrics can completely alter what I thought the music was saying.
Sometimes the finished song ends up somewhere I couldn’t possibly have planned when I wrote the original instrumental.
I like that.
If I wanted complete control over every detail, there wouldn’t be much point collaborating with anybody.
The unexpected contribution is often where the interesting stuff happens.
Knowing When to Stop Painting
One of the hardest things in production is knowing when to stop.
Modern recording gives us effectively unlimited paint.
Another guitar.
Another synth.
Another percussion layer.
Another effect.
Another harmony.
Another clever little detail that nobody asked for.
Eventually you can paint over the thing that made the song interesting in the first place.
I’ve become much more comfortable removing things, but I also don’t have some profound artistic test for deciding when a track is finished.
Quite often it is closer to:
“I don’t hate it anymore, so it’s probably OK.”
That sounds flippant, but there is some truth in it.
If I keep working on something simply because I can, eventually I stop improving it and start changing it.
There comes a point where another hour of tweaking a synth sound, moving something half a decibel or adding another layer isn’t making the song communicate any better.
Sometimes muting a track improves a song immediately.
Sometimes a section feels bigger when fewer instruments are playing.
Sometimes a melody becomes more powerful simply because I’ve finally given it some empty space around it.
And sometimes I listen through from beginning to end, nothing annoys me enough to reach for the mouse, and that’s as good a sign as any that it’s time to leave the bloody thing alone.
Restraint isn’t a lack of ideas.
Sometimes restraint is simply knowing when you’ve done enough.
Technical Perfection Isn’t the Picture
I care about production quality.
I care about performances.
I care about getting things right.
But technical perfection isn’t the final objective.
Emotional authenticity is.
A slightly imperfect performance that has the right emotional colour will nearly always interest me more than something technically immaculate that leaves me feeling nothing.
The same applies to sounds.
Sometimes something distorted, broken or slightly ugly is exactly what the song needs.
I’m not trying to make every element beautiful.
I’m trying to make the finished picture believable.
When It Stops Being Separate Instruments
There is a point during the production of a song that I love.
The individual instruments stop drawing attention to themselves.
I stop hearing “bass”, “guitar”, “synth”, “drums” and “piano”.
They become one thing.
That’s usually when I know the picture is coming together.
The parts are still there, obviously, but they have stopped behaving like separate objects and started creating a single emotional landscape.
That’s what I’m chasing.
Not the most complicated arrangement.
Not the cleverest chord progression.
Not the largest number of tracks.
A picture.
Something with depth, contrast, movement and enough empty space for the listener to find their own way into it.
I might see completely different colours in a Most Epic Dream song than somebody listening to it.
That’s fine.
In fact, that’s probably the point.
I can paint the picture.
What somebody else sees in it belongs to them.
If you want to hear what these colours sound like, spend some time with Most Epic Dream. Don’t worry about identifying every instrument. Just close your eyes and see what turns up.