Percussive or Harmonic

[tone-def]

I've come to the conclusion that it's really hard to mix the two together without making the track to busy.

If i start a track from the drums and percussion i don't have much room for anything but bass. (you can always make room for bass) But if i start with something a bit more "musical" like keys i'm unlikely to have any percussion in the track.

i hear the same thing across many genres of music i like. It's rare i'll find something with lots of instruments and percussion that i'll find enjoyable.

[AK]

I think the 2 can work well sometimes. I quite like to replace musical notes with tuned percussion and any melody/harmony as such is bought about by a combination of everything but I know what you mean.

[SHAP]

i hear the same thing across many genres of music i like. It's rare i'll find something with lots of instruments and percussion that i'll find enjoyable.

I think jens bond does that pretty well...red robin sometimes too...

[steevio]

i use harmonic percussion.

[oblioblioblio]

yeah I agree with the other guys that you can be harmonic with percussion.

I think it takes a while to get there though. Personally I still treat them kind of seperately but I think with time and attention you can be equally expressive with the 2 in combination. Steevio is a great example of someone operating in the kind of holographic area between the 2.

I think it's a very important place to be looking to get towards. With electronic equipment you can be doing anything you like with sounds or rhythms, and the idea of seperating the 2 in the tradional way... like drums for hitting and pianos for floaty chordy stuff will be getting increasingly silly.

[tone-def]

yeah of course you can get harmonic percussion. In the acoustic world you can get different tones from simple drums (bongo, toms) and you have instuments like the vibraphone and xylophone which have a wide range of tones. Minimal techno is probably the genre that makes best use of harmonic percussion. Maybe harmonic wasn't the best word to use in my first post. I mean when you have a track with short piano stabs played in a rhythmic way with other more "traditional" synth sounds like pads, leads etc it's hard to fit percussion in. Steevio's percussion has harmony, but i personal see his music as an intelligent percussive workout rather than something by Mike Shannon where there are more keyboard sounds driving the track.

[oblioblioblio]

I kinda know where you're coming from, but it's one of those things that's pretty hard to describe exactly how you feel.

I used to only really focus on synthy harmonic and melodic stuff, and rhythm was mostly just this backing track to it. And when I did that my rhythms were boring and flat.

Nowadays I dunno where I'm at, but with polyrhythm there is a much bigger playing field to be expressive with rhythmic decisions and I think my rhtyhms are a bit more interesting in a clunky confusing kinda way.

I guess all you can do is follow your own instinct on things and keep on paying attention wherever possible.

Sorry, not the most helpful reply in the world.

[ArhiteK]

What about Seph for instance? He is really percussive and harmonic and melodic, almost allways. Fase Miusic Sender also, Seuil, Jorge Savoretti...

I think best is not to try to layer sounds by character, description or type. Both very complex sounding harmonic/melodic trax and dry and straight percussive rhythmic tracks can have it's place if that track structure has it's meaning or reason...