Minimalist Music Production: Do More With Less
Take a more minimalist approach to your music.
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We explore Minimalist Music Production, a conceptual approach to music that lets you strip down your compositions for greater impact.
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In visual art, minimalism refers to a movement that arose in the 1960s as a response to post-war Abstract Expressionism and had a major effect on contemporary culture. Without being overly elaborate, minimalist art allows the audience to access the core idea or concept of the work.
Minimalist Music Production
In music, several movements follow a similar thread to minimalism including Musique concrète, Postpunk, Synth Pop, and various forms of electronic music. These musical styles are defined by taking a “less is more” approach to songwriting and music production. So how can you apply these principles in your modern workflow? Let’s find out.
What is Minimalist Music Production?
In the recording and production of any style of music, we can use a minimalist approach in different areas to achieve a finished article that allows the listener to connect with the emotional content more easily without being distracted by technicality. This puts the emphasis on simplicity to show the audience the intention behind the music for a greater overall impact.
Possibly the greatest thing about applying minimalist principles to your music production workflow is that it is open to interpretation. This means that there are so many different ways to apply the concept in your creative process rather than one prescribed way of thinking. It could be taking a minimalist approach to your arrangement, melody writing, or giving your overall production sound a more understated feel.
Naturally, introducing a new approach to a creative workflow doesn’t happen overnight. Although you might experience those eureka moments along the way, it will take time before you decide whether or not it works for you. Remember that minimalism is not literal, so don’t think that you have to suddenly change your wardrobe to black and start writing very sparse techno music.
Minimalist Music Production: Setting Limitations
Whether you exclusively use stock DAW plugins or a studio filled with vintage synthesizers, there are ways to set limitations to increase your creative output. For example, if you usually flip between your five favourite instruments for creating melodies, try focussing on using one instrument and exploring its expressive parameters more deeply.
If you usually spend ages selecting individual drum samples and browsing through preset libraries, try using a single drum machine plugin for your drums and a simple monosynth for your leads and basslines. Instead of using presets, start building sounds from the init patch, so you can develop your own unique feel of the oscillators, filter, and envelopes.
The most effective way to set limitations or creative boundaries is to timeline them, as this provides case studies for monitoring your own progress. This means selecting a set number of instruments for a particular track, EP, or album so you can focus on the musical aspects in a more intuitive way.
Minimalist Music Production: Songwriting
Every song has a point where the intensity is highest, and each section has a focal element that holds the listener’s attention be it a vocal or melodic instrument part. In most musical styles, the vocal is the primary point of focus, while the other sounds are there to complement it in one way or another. However, what about styles of music without vocals?
Well, in many styles of electronic music, we find what is referred to as an ostinato. This singular repeating group of notes becomes the main theme of the song. It could be a lead, bassline, or chord progression that variates slightly throughout the song, or a melodic part that arrives in the main drop of the track.
This is particularly evident in electronic dance music, where groups like Faithless became internationally renowned for creating songs that traverse dance floors and radio waves with unmistakably simple yet timeless melodic parts. Of course, writing songs around a main instrumental riff or hook is nothing new to music, and it means your lead vocals don’t have to do all the work.
Minimalist Music Production: Construction Time
Although one artist’s creative process may be vastly different from the next, the resulting arrangement is connected to a familiar thread that can be followed throughout any of the songs in a particular genre. This means we don’t have to reinvent the wheel to take a minimalistic production approach. Instead, we can strip the song down to the bare necessities.
You can do this by analyzing the individual sections of your song and deciding which is the main focal element in each. Remember that your song is like a story that flows from one point to another. As you add more elements to the mix, the song increases in intensity, but do those 50 extra guitar parts help or hinder the song in terms of being understood by the audience?
By only using the sounds that are absolutely necessary, you’ll generally have more space in your mix to wow the listener with spatial and textural effects. What’s more, your job of mixing generally becomes easier with fewer carefully chosen sounds rather than a load of sounds fighting for space.
Minimalist Music Production: Less is More?
Contrary to what you might think, taking a minimal approach to music production doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be utilizing fewer tracks in your DAW projects. The idea is that instead of 3 interlocking guitar or synth parts, you’ll be using 3 layers unified into one part. This is also evident when we look at how some artists approach the live performance of minimalistic styles of music.
You’d expect that playing a kick, a clap, a hi-hat, and a few floaty sounds would be a rather small-scale operation. However, if you look back at the live setups of artists like Minilogue and Jan Jelinek (aka Farben) you’ll find the opposite is true. The reason for this is that because the soundscapes allow the listener to focus clearly on each individual element, the artists want more control.
With expanded custom control surfaces, loopers, hardware synthesizers, drum machines, and effects pedals, you have precise sound manipulation tools and the ability to change the arrangement at will. The result is a more detailed sound with more thought behind it and music that you can hopefully listen to for many years to come.
More about Minimalist Music Production:
- Read about Improvisation
- More about Music Production
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One response to “Minimalist Music Production: Do More With Less”
Faithless getting some love! I really appreciate articles like this where we can step back and say “less is more”. Find your main elements and make sure they are supported by everything else.