Using non musical influences

A question I quite often get is what inspires me as a guitar player and composer. It seems most people who ask this question expect an answer consisting of a list of guitar players and other musical input. There’s no doubt such direct musical influences can inspire you. And I think they even shape your musical vocabulary and identity to a great extent. That’s how it works in any art form, you pick up little bits and pieces from your colleagues and use them how you see fit. But while this direct inspiration can be seen as an important part of every musician, the phenomenon of indirect inspiration is something I’d like to write about for this month’s blog.

I remember reading interviews with my musical heroes back when I was younger. The same question about inspiration came up quite often as well and some of my heroes answered the question with abstract answers like nature, love, life in general, etc. And while this sounded cool to me, I didn’t understand it at all! How can nature tell you what awesome riff to play, right? That was not the way I wrote music. I approached composing as throwing in a certain style riff there, doing a certain passage there, use that riff there and so on. An approach that on an obvious level only makes use of direct inspiration.

But as I grew older and got more experience writing music I began to realize the power and influence of indirect inspiration. Basically everything that happens in life influences your creative process, whether you want it or not. And as I began to realize the impact of this phenomenon I also began to see its beauty. As an artist you have the opportunity to poor your feelings into the work you create. This is not only an extremely rewarding experience for the artist, but it also makes your work stand out as honest and pure, which in turn gives your listener a very rewarding experience.

But how do you capture this abstract energy and transfer it to the calculated world of music? I think it’s a life long journey to really master this conversion. I feel like I’m just getting the hang of it really and I try to be really conscious about it when I’m working on music these days. I think the real challenge lays in interfacing abstract and concrete. Feelings, emotions, intuition, they’re all an extremely abstract thing. While composing music is a very mathematical and calculated craft. In other words, you have to find ways to let these 2 opposites interact with each other. This subject is obviously too big to really cover in a blog, so I’ll try to list some tips & tricks to get you started.

1. Get away from that computer! Almost everyone I know writes their music from behind a computer. And while it’s do doubt a great tool for recording and even getting creative, it can also be an incredibly stale and sterile environment to get the creative juices flowing. Just try and and write music at a place that actually inspires you for example.

2. Start small! Let’s say you’re out in nature, a desolated, sunny mountain top with pine trees all around you. This experience will definitely put you in a certain mood, this mood can be used to inspire you. But there’s no way you’re going to just write a complete song from this experience alone. So start small, try and sing a melody that fits the vibe. Fool around with some chords and see which ones match the vibe. Start tapping a beat and see what comes out. It’s all about finding these smaller building stones that you can build an entire song around by using your craftsmanship and taste.

3. Listen! Everything around you, everything you experience, everything you feel, influences your experience of music. Whether you’re listening to, playing or writing music. You could think a simple E minor chord will always be the same chord, with the same emotional values. But the reality is that the way you perceive this chord will be different when your external circumstances change. This is obviously a simple example, but it basically goes for everything in music (and probably life in general). Experience can’t exist without reference. Change your point of reference and the experience will change as well.

4. Practice! Dive into life and consciously experience new things or things that always fascinated you. See how they influence your perception of music and try to see if you can find ways to let these experiences guide your creative process. Like any skill it takes time and practice to develop.

5. Forget about theory! While studying theory is a great way to expand your musical knowledge and musical skill, it can also put you in a place of extremely boxed and linear thinking. Don’t forget the purpose of theory, it’s there to help you, not to hinder you! In other words, try to have an open mind, judge and trust your creative process from a place of feelings instead of thoughts.

There’s obviously a lot more to say about this subject but I feel this should cover enough for this months blog. I hope it was an interesting read. And again, if you have any suggestions on what I should cover for next month’s blog, be sure to contact me and let me know!

Thanks for reading,

Tymon

Exivious 2.0

As most of you guys know, Exivious is back in business. Besides rehearsing our asses off right now, we also started the writing process for a new album. For this months blog I’d like give you guys some insight into our composition process and how we’ll approach the new album.

Our debut album was basically a collection of my best ideas from over 6 years. That’s a pretty common thing for debut albums from young bands. I had a clear vision of what I wanted the band to sound like and with a lot of experimentation, I ended up finding specific composing tools and tricks to actually realize this vision. An approach that made extensive use of trial and error.

This will be very different for the new Exivious album. The idea is to write a new album in a couple of months, which should be possible now that we have a basic sound to work with and a much better understanding of how the kind of music we make works. We’re starting from scratch which presents the opportunity to change our approach to composition. Holding on to the things we thought worked well and trying new things where there’s room for improvement. Because yeah, being the ruthless self critics we are, we think there are quite some areas for improvement.

For our debut album I used to deliver fully composed and arranged songs to the rest of the band. Basically I would create a complete production with programmed drums, bass, synths, guitars, everything. Michel did the same for the 2 songs he wrote. Sure, the rest of the band had quite some freedom of coming up with their own parts (besides the improvisation which is completely free of course) but overall they were still based on my programmed ideas. For the new album we have a different approach in mind where the entire compositions are more of a band effort, or at least the arrangements. Michel and I will compose core ideas that we’ll base entire songs around. Sharing those ideas in an early stage with the rest of the band to really shape them into songs with the 4 of us. It’s a new approach for us and we’re really excited to dive into this process.

I have started the initial composing process, which basically consists out of writing chord progressions. Not much in the sense of traditional and functional harmony but more of a modal voice leading approach that gives me really specific chord voicings with an integrated melody. These harmonies and melodies will be the heart of the new songs. After this initial birthing process we’ll dive into arranging these chordal ideas into full songs. Giving them a basic structure, tempo, rhythmic interpretation and overall arrangement. I assume this is something Michel and I will do together this time around.

After this process is completed it’s time for one of my favorite parts of writing a new record: decoration. This is basically finding the final parts, riffs, melodies, everything that makes the songs the songs you’ll hear on the album. Again, except for the improvised parts which will obviously be improvised. What makes this process so much fun is how loose and creative it is. The pressure is off, the basic structures are there. Imagine coloring a black and white drawing.

Over the next couple of months I’d like to share the writing process of one new song with you guys. Making short videos showing you the progress we make. This should be fun to make and watch!

Thanks for reading,
Tymon

My Musical Future

For my first blog I thought it would be interesting to share some of my future plans. It’s a rather self indulgent topic, but then again, this is a personal blog so I guess it makes sense. Especially since my departure from Cynic, all options were open. Cynic was as much of a full time commitment as a band gets so not being a part of that leaves me with a lot of time on my hands. The first obvious thing to do was bringing back Exivious, but besides that, I have three really exciting but different projects lined up!

Exivious

Exivious is finally going to be an active band! As much as we wanted to get gigs happening, write new music, give it the attention it deserved, we just couldn’t due to other commitments. Time to change that! Touring plans are in the works, the writing process for a 2nd album has started and we can’t wait to go out and share our music with the world in a live context! This band will have my full priority, as I always intended.

HEKZ

A new band consisting out of Bart Hennephof (Textures) on guitars and vocals, Yuma van Eekelen (Pestilence / The New Dominion) on drums, Robin Zielhorst (Exivious / ex-Cynic) on bass and me on guitars and vocals as well. A hell of a lineup if you ask me! First priority: recording an album, a bone crushingly heavy, intense, dark and very atmospheric album. This project was born for two reasons. The first being we knew we wanted to put our musicial minds together and creative something awesome, the 2nd being I always wanted to release a really heavy album. All 4 of us come from an extreme metal background but at the same time we all grew into many different styles of music. And for me personally, I never released anything as heavy as where my musical roots are. I’ve always wanted to do something like that but the circumstances had to be right, I feel with HEKZ they are. The challenge with this project is to combine musical depth and intelligence with heavyness!

Tymon & Noora

Obviously, this project still needs a name. It’s basically a collaboration between Noora Häkkinen and me. Noora is an incredibly talented singer/songwriter who plays piano as well. She composes and records her own albums at home, in Finland, under the name Noradrenaline. I stumbled on her about 2 years ago when I was searching for a singer for Exivious album 2. While we decided to keep Exivious all instrumental, Noora and I kept in touch and we would now like to find out where a collaboration would take us. Like me, Noora has a very distinct approach to music which is very much her own. I suspect our musical voices will bring something really special when being combined. Stylistically it could go anywhere really, we both love so many different kinds of music, we’ll just start working and see where we end up. One thing I know for sure, our music is going to be a nuclear explosion of emotions. Looking very much forward to start working on this album!

Ambient Project

Again, a project that still needs a serious name. With this project I plan on writing a very different kind of album than most would expect from me. Very much sound based as opposed to the way I usually compose, which is note based. I intend to mainly work alone on this project but also having some friends contribute parts here and there. Some keywords: airy, light, hypnotic, spacey, floating… but of course all with a typical twist in there that will make it a little more complex than your usual ambient album. It’s not that complexity is a prerequisite for me in music, I just think I’m not very good at writing simple music. All in all, another project I really look forward to realizing!

So for everyone who assumed to not hear from me again after my departure from Cynic, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I plan on being more productive than ever before!

Thanks for reading,
Tymon

ps. If anyone has suggestions for future blogs, please let me know at tymon.kruidenier@gmail.com