left write wrong

I was working on a tune with Steve Surly, of Narcisse Blonde fame, and we got to discussing the use of ideas and hooks when writing “dance music”. I have a habit of trying to cram lots of ideas into a single track – mostly because I get bored easily.

Of late, I’ve started to write stuff that introduces a new hook or riff or idea, and then doesn’t bother to justify it or fully explore it. For example, I just finished a really bassline / fx driven thing that’s about 6:30 long and has a gigantic pad + melody that appears over the end and outro. The track never comes back to full steam with the melody though.

Steve was saying that I should try and keep those ideas to seperate tracks and double my musical output. It seems to me that if every riff had to be the centerpiece of a track, things would get boring fairly quickly. To use the above example, I like the idea of a track that has a melody fill at the end, both as a setup for more melodic music, or just as a brief interlude before going back to more techy / bassline business.

As a DJ, things like that help the flow of my sets, if I use them properly. And I’m by no means saying that *every* track should be structured like this, or that Steve’s wrong and I’m right. There’s always room for 6 minutes of basslines and good drum programming – but there’s also room for 8 minutes of thematic transition, or 4 minutes of hihats, and so on and so on and so on.