first off, who the hell am I to tell you how to make music?!
I’ve not even made that much myself and after over two decades still making my first baby steps to being a Real Artist™
but like a lot of things, despite that, I feel I have a good grasp of how to make music. The way I want to at least.
Who said I was humble again?
how to make music:
find something that makes a sound. If you are nowhere near anything, use your body - your voice is a good start. We call this ’live singing’.
Now stop reading this stupid post and make music.
but it sounds awful!
keep trying!
if anyone tells you to shut up, tell them to fuck off!
Some people have no idea how to be supportive, my own mother used to tell me to shut up when I was trying to teach myself guitar age 17. So I moved away as far as I could about a year later.
You’re still here
Maybe I didn’t say it loud enough
GO AND MAKE MUSIC. (also have fun doing so)
then come back to read the rest of this, okay?
Right, now you’ve made some music and you’re a real musician now, we can compare notes
Oof that’s a nice accidental pun.
I like to avoid clichés, do you?
Some people like to lean into them, for a sense of familiarity, and that’s fun.
I’m only talking about making music here - someone once described Jimi Hendrix as a cliché (!) and they can just do one.
What I’m saying is that I like to try to see if I can avoid doing something like having a four bar loop with one chord per bar, because as cosy and delicious as that is, challenging yourself is fun and can have great results.
What about a three bar loop? Five? What about different numbers of chords in each bar? What about abandoning the concept of a bar altogether (it helps if you don’t include them when making your sound engine, which now that you’re a musician is your next task - don’t worry, you have twenty years to complete)
You can also play with well worn paths and jam them up in other ways.
which leads me to
I’ve long loved doing cover versions, or at least trying to recreate specific genres. You always learn something for sure - but more importantly I feel it stretches you out like dough - makes you more pliable, pulls you into unknown territory.
Do you like it too?
music is math
We recently had a huge debate on mastodon about how music is really maths wrapped up in audio loveliness.
I think we can all agree that I WON that debate. case closed 🤭😀
So, one of the things I’ve found is that combinations of euclidean rhythms (any) make great beats. I didn’t invent this, no. You just need a series of pairs of numbers and some percussive sounds. Boom.
interstellar
A cliché that I DO love is seventh (or ninth) chords.
Phil (interstar) explained them to me.
You start with one note, add a minor (or major) third, which is 3 (or 4) semitones I think or you can mulitply the frequency by 1.2 which is what I do (See how its all maths right?), then you add a major (or minor) third (which takes you to a fifth cos 3+3=5, mmm math) then you keep alternating between them as much as you want until I guess you’re holding down all the notes?! lol
Anyway, they’re truly scrumptious and lead me to overdose regularly on deep house attempts.
The major third is x1.25, but not really cos ALL YOUR NOTES are out of tune! yes you heard me you western equal temperment nutters. You’ll have to stick to the octave (double or half) which is a highly underrated interval. (interval is the gap or distance between two pitches)
other things
I try to look for movement and variation, so yeah throw in a bunch of lfos. how about you?
notes
try to have as few as possible and remember that scales aren’t real. If it sounds good it IS good.
sounds
well we’ve covered some on this blog already, and will continue to do so in other posts
shoewave
Absolutely soak everything in chorus and reverb. then add more.
or just a teeensy bit.
or pipe it through a leather brogue for that oak-y timbre (obscure Boosh reference)
enjoy it
This is sometimes overlooked. If its not fun, make it so! be silly, be indulgent
read all of the oblique strategies cards
nuff said. Although I don’t think I’ve read all of them, I probably agree anyway. Do NOT use them to produce mega-pop bands - simply boost early career artists instead.
look
just try.
Bukowski said “don’t try”, but what did he know he was a drunk filanderer. Maybe he also said “just do”, which would make more sense.
amounts
less is more. You don’t have to do much.
rhythm, melody, chords, warren g
listen to loads of different music
sometimes it can spoil it by being analytical about what is happening in the music.
what I do now if I hear something I really like is quickly check in on how the music was constructed, then go back to normal listening for enjoyment.
always remember
what you think is in your music (from a technical perspective) isn’t what people hear.
they hear energy, vibes. emotion
which leads me to
the most important thing, in fact the only thing thats important when youre making music is how you feel when you’re making it. What are you transmitting to your audience? a sense of verve, at least? (no, not the band!)
well that’s my attitude anyway. i think its why rock stars used to take a lot of drugs - so they could max out on vibes - although you can do that without drugs - in fact, they’re not recommended. By The Verve, or anyone really.
reread the last point
while others may not agree, emotion is the most important thing in music for me. it doesn’t matter what you do next, do that first.
Then continue to make music
this is a lesson I learned the hard way:
Don’t stop!
bonus item
okay, so far that’s been very vague and handwavey. And deliberately so.
There is one way I think you can think about music from a technical perspective.
What is magic? One way of looking at it is when someone doea something and even though it happened you have no idea of how they did it.
Music can be magical in this way.
A lot of the time you can tell - oh here’s some notes, here’s a beat, a chord progression, oh they changed the filter cutoff there, or yup thats that classic sample/sound/whatever.
Which is fine and not necessarily <bad>
One way I think you can say wow is when you have no idea how they did that - like you wouldn’t even know how to recreate it. Could just be one moment. Could be a vibe, something you can’t put your finger on. Could be “I don’t know how they got away with that”.
So if you find yourself listening to music on a technical level (which I don’t really recommend) - you can seek magic.
How to create magic? hmm, be live as possible, explore different techniques, jam hard, I dunno.
I try to seek rawness and character by building in imperfections. This is usually a result of laziness too, so double win.
I love that I forget how I did things a lot of the time as it gives me this feeling and all I have to do is keep rolling forward.
I’m very lucky really. Come to an AlgoRhythms we’ll help you get into this thing they call music.
another thing I learned the hard way
Be patient. This doesn’t just apply to music. Keep chipping away slowly at your own pace. Publish your music where and when you can and keep going.
let music be rubbish, applying pressure will kill energy and creativity. It will come to you, like a cat when it decides now is cuddle-purr time.
Never rely on friends to be fans. Friends can be quite useless and negative.
As for finding an audience - that’s something I’m still working on! Send any tips via email/masto (links in header) and I’ll add them here:
Absurdist schyzotisticoball says:
Make friends with other artists around you that match your vibe, and organize tiny events !
If there is already a collective doing that, ask to join them, if there isn’t, create it
Throw a party in the forest, your grandma’s garden, the basement of a police station,it doesn’t matter.
What matter is that people love party, so you will meet cool people, and people will meet you and your music in the process. More friends, yay !
It is more rewarding and more meaningful to have a community of 10 local people than 1000 strangers who liked your work on whatever plateform (and they are probably bots anyway)
updated on: 21 / 1 / 2026