Where do you start with a new tune?

electrogrimey

Where do you get your ideas for a new track? This is interesting as making dance music is so far from writing a song with a guitar, so I wonder how different the thought process is.

Do you search through tracks looking for a sample, or come up with a synth line in your head? How do your tracks start?

jtsuited

never ever ever ever ever start with a kick and bassline. i see it written everywhere that you need a good foundation blah blah blah.

but when you're building a house you don't just build a foundation and design the house around that. If you do, you'll just end up with a sh1t looking house with a good foundation.

start with some chordal ideas, and develop the timbres and ideas. Then start thinking about what kind of foundation you'd like.
You can fit a house/techno/electro drumbeat around pretty much anything and it'll work so leave that til you actually have an idea of what you want your track to be like.

Anima

For me it seems to be either I find a nice chord and then develop a bassline for that with some other things that fit, or else I get a nice bassline and delevop the rest from that. All the musical elements first basically. Then the drums and things like that come later.

Jev/N

I'm not that experienced but I would say it depends on the genre you're trying to produce

Neurojazz

Starting with a kick and bass is fine also

I usually start with a track previously made and then strip out any progressive content and loop to 16/32 bars.

Then keeping the kick/bass going i'd then adjust bass drum and the bass pattern, or drop a new midi pattern in (cut from previous tracks yet again) and adjust and re-pitch to what felt right.

Then start changing the sounds i had creatively and once a few tracks were working well together as a whole i'd keep doing detail work until the loop was solid and not annoying.

THEN i'd start writing - usually by duplicating the whole lot multiple times and chiseling away parts until things worked together (usually at this point i'd roughly know what to mute and leave in etc...)

If you listen to most the SC music i post you can hear previous sounds from tracks but it's all been shifted in a way to sound different.

This method makes remixing easy also. You'd pick a track from your portfolio and boil it back down to fundamentals and work from there.

jiltloop

I usually start by building up a patch on a synth by experimenting and and trying to get a certain sound, then when I have a sound that I like I'll play around on the keyboard until I get a melody that I like, then try and get a bass line or pad or chords to match and if its all working, go from there.
Sometimes I'll also start by constructing a beat and writing a melody or bass line that fits in with it.

Quiggers

start with an idea, be it a sample, a melody, a bass line. just dont open up a DAW with no idea planned out, you'll waste hours and end up frustrated

Rockshamrover

I think this is one of those situations where there's no wrong or right way.

You do what you do.

It is interesting though to hear how people get their inspiration.

It usually starts with a sound or a nice sounding chord sequence for me.

I also have to be in the right mood.

paulelectronica

I write electronica and what I usually do is I create an arpeggio and then add some pads over it and build from there.

Dramatik

For me personally it depends on whether I've got a melodic or bassline driven track in mind.
If I'm going for a melodic track I usually start with a simple drum track just for reference which I come back to later. Then lay down a chord progression that I think sounds nice, then work out a nice bassline from the chords I've used.
For the more bassline driven tracks I start again with a basic drum track then work on the bassline. Sometimes I even just randomise a pattern till I hear a part of one I like and just mute different notes till I come up with somthing interesting. Then I usually tend to use more stab like sounds and one shots over so the focus is kept on the bassline.

Kenny DNK

I have to agree with jsuited, it tells you in nearly everything you read that you should always start with your percussion and bass, I totally disagree. I find that doing it this way is time consuming and slows creativity for me. I usually start fiddling about with a sound while playing notes and chords on the keys till I play something that "clicks". So much easier then to create a bassline/percs around this.