Any producer will know the feeling. You sit down in front of your sequencer, fire up a template, and sit there staring vacantly at the screen, as all the ideas disappear from your head. You're stuck for inspiration. What to do? Here's one angle that could get you moving again...Before you start producing a track - in fact, it's best to do this kind of thing when you're not feeling inspired or creative, so that you can get on the case more quickly in times of creation - why not try amassing an army of 'found sounds'?
When people mention 'found sounds' it's often easy to imagine that we're talking about avant-garde, experimental noise stuff. But it doesn't have to be like that - they can provide a brilliant source of ideas, details, glitches, rhythms and more, which may give you the starting point you're looking for.
The most common way is to get hold of a cheap sound recorder and take it out and about. This is a great way of getting atmospheres, background textures, incidental effects that you wouldn't otherwise find. Take it to the subway station, walk up a busy street with it, go into the fields and run a stick along a fence. This kind of technique is something that Eskmo used to awesome effect on his recent Ninja Tune album - the result being that it has a very distinctive atmosphere.
If you don't have the cash for a decent field recorder, then just try using your phone - or even the webcam on your laptop. It maybe lo-fi, but what we're after is ideas more than sound quality. So get recording! Back in the studio, time to get the mic out - if you have one. Get anything you can to make noise - hit things with sticks, slap the cat, make weird noises with your voice. If you don't have a mic - make one! Have a search on line for 'contact microphones' - these things can be made for literally pennies from your local electronics store. You can stick them on anything and they'll record the vibrations; put one on the side of a balloon and blow it up to make yourself sound like Darth Vader, put on on the side of a beer can and rip it up to make sounds like a giant car crusher. You can also just stick one on the wall and record yourself making noises like it was a normal microphone. The world is your oyster.Once you've got plenty of sounds - lets say 15 or 20 minutes worth - then it's time to get busy making them into something a bit more useful. Some, like an atmosphere from a street, can be dropped into a track straight off. Others may want processing, and luckily there's a whole host of plugins to help you out. Try some extreme timestretching and reverb to create sci-fi atmospheres. Or, try using an 'audio quantising' process, such as Logic's Flextime on sounds that have a clicky, glitchy, percussive aspect, to make some crazy rhythms that you can then build a beat around.
Made a crazy metallic weird sound with your contact mic? Stick an autotune plugin on it, to get a melodic riff you'd never have thought about making otherwise! If you have some glitches, try leaving them unquantised and just drop them into a beat, to give a random swing and groove. Any of these tricks can give you ideas to get moving on a track. Or, if you've got something going already, can help you lift it up from the standard beats and bass vibe, into something else entirely. And the best part is - they're unique to you! You can bolster your samples with sounds that no-one else has, and create a signature style.So, next time you're sitting at the computer wondering what to do, don't just give up and load facebook - get started making your own inspiration. You never know where it could lead...
