*_jߍyrope

jrp@hub.kliklak.net

Music worker @ Echo Coordinate, Berlin (composer, audio engineer, in performance arts/dance, conceptual+free music, instrument & radio maker, label maker). I don't just so follow back.

Homepage:: https://jayrope.com

2026-09-25 22:03:16

*_jߍyrope

jrp@hub.kliklak.net

In my current music-for-theatre production I've to work on a lot of sound-alikes again.
Almost all directors today use their #Slopify during their own creation process.
They find sthg. somewhere, admittedly at least with a taste for the hidden, non-slopped.
They come prepared. Then they pass this on to you and it's your job to take this as working hint on how to recompose, rearrange.

Anyway, so you analyze, get tempo, rhythms, melodies, harmonics, bass lines, solo instruments, athmospheres - and when you're really hooked on your own copy of that original you end up with sthg stale ...
- the actual work only starts:

You've to find your own way to stay "on topic" and "on style".
You don't play uprite bass, but there is a prominent one. There's no budget for a colleague playing. You get yourself an uprite bass. You play, half-decently. That goes for many different instruments eventually.
And then they want a different length and arrangement, several times because at 2:37 there is character apearing and ... and that later on get's shifted to 8:51 or sthg ... etc etc.

I usually go through the whole process of analysis, but a big problem with that is, that most of my imagination budget is almost used up already by the time it gets to my own music making.

How are you fellow colleagues dealing with such a beast?
What are general rules of thumb for you to escape the inevitable drought of mind and inspiration?

Thanks for any insights, and pleas feel free to pass this on to colleagues.

#composition #soundalike #inspiration @Philipp von Neumann @David McMullin @Robert Logan @ghostmeet @disquiet @eric st-laurent

- - -

2026-09-26 21:16:31

Morten Mosgaard

mosgaard@uddannelse.social

@jrp I have been working hard to create another flow of collaboration, where I get a word earlier in the proces.

Before receiving any audible directions I draft up something like 20-22 sketches (Can be everything from sounds to instruments and small pieces of music). This can be send around, so I can kind of push to the audible ideas of the creative team.

But let’s be real; most of the opportunities are you as a composer coming in late and make what they ask for. I’m really bad at that.

2026-09-27 18:56:56

Robert Logan

Cognessence@social.linux.pizza

@jrp I feel you on a lot of this, though I think I've been fortunate with how the two opposite sides of making sit next to each other. Oddly, having a lot of boring or constrained work creates so much more appetite for my "own" music afterwards, and that is an energy exchange I'm really thankful for. Ofc, I don't want to overstate that, since I'm aware it might be luck in how particular jobs have arrived...but it's been true often and long enough that I've started to trust it.

That said, I completely recognise what you're describing, and I've actually just run into a new version of it myself (a client of two days ago is sending me AI-generated versions of songs they want reproduced from scratch. In a lot of ways it cuts against principles - almost enough to refuse - even if the underlying mechanics of the doing of it aren't new; often in docs I've been asked to make uncomfortably close to a reference, even very well-known ones.)

I feel you on the re-arrangement side too: getting something to a workable place only to have a director decide a moment needs to happen somewhere completely different in the running order, sometimes more than once. That part alone can eat a lot of the energy you'd otherwise spend on the actual composing.

One thing I've found useful, at least for the analysis-fatigue side of it, is to make the process interesting for myself even when the exterior result has to stay simple. For my own sanity I might keep a lead melody diatonic and close to what they've asked for, while putting something somewhat more involved harmonically or structurally underneath - so there's a straightforward surface that satisfies the brief, with a bit of chromaticism or some other compositional problem "hidden" lol.

It's one way of keeping a small area of authorship inside an otherwise depressingly repetitive and prescriptive task. Overall though, all I can say is that I understand those feelings, and have to remind myself of worse jobs I could be doing when too many of these arrive at once. 😄

2026-09-27 20:18:56

Hans Hafner

wonshu@mastodon.social

@jrp @ghostmeet we don't go in to make a sound-a-like. We look for the one or two elements that make up the basic "approach" of a piece and then we just let our imagination roll and take it wherever we want.

So far this has always worked great and was much more a homage (I frequently get asked to take some Morricone piece as the blueprint, complete horror for a lowly composer such as myself ) than a sound-a-like.

1/2