My process (in terms of sequence of events at least) is variable from week to week, but I am holding myself to doing all the recording in 4-track mode on my Zoom H4n, which has already been enlightening to say the least.
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Polish Village, Chicago, IL
My process so far:
1) Start making sounds on Operator, usually bass first, then experimenting to find other stuff. Once I've found sounds weird enough, I'll start working on what to do with them... I hope after enough experimenting I'll be able to hear something in my head and go from there, but for the time being it's fun twiddling the (virtual) knobs and seeing what happens.
2) Pick a key. I've been going through the Greek scales PDF to find weird tonalities. This week I settled on one that is entirely ambiguous as to major/minor, despite being officially major it has an augmented 2 and a flat 6...
3) Mess around with scales, arpeggios, motives, sculpt a melody and derive the chords from it. I suppose something more interesting could come from starting with a progression, and in the future I'll probably experiment with that... for the moment, just experimenting with the weird scales is enough to keep it from being too generic
4) Figure out a BPM/beat pattern that works with the sounds. If I start with a beat, it usually ends up getting tossed out because it doesn't fit...
5) Structure-- how and where does it start, how and where does it end, and how do I get from A to B and make the journey interesting?
I might just try reversing these next week, see how that works...
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Pittsburgh, PA
In general, I do a bunch of little loops that seem to work together, starting (often) with beats, and then on Saturday, I'll do an event recording, triggering those loops in session view, to end up with an arrangement, which I then edit down on Sunday. (That's where I'm at now.)
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Pittsburgh, PA
Started with a beat in mind, added Max for Live's Humanizer in front of it and might interfere with it more. Added an uninteresting Analog line and a potentially atmospheric Electric (piano) line, and just tracked some bass loops (drop D). I kind of want to take a left turn on something this week.
I'm hearing that we may get anywhere from three to seventeen inches of snow this weekend, so I hope the power stays on.
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Helsinki, Finland
Beginning of the week I just toy around with my synths, record 1-4 bar loops to octatrack, and then try to arrange something out of them on sunday. Trying to keep this as stress free as possible.
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Pittsburgh, PA
Based on some suggestions from a producer meetup I went to this past week, I'm going to use convolution reverb instead of Live's built-in, and use some M4L Humanizer in front of Impulse...and possibly some LFO. Might do some side chaining to avoid sending too much hat to the reverb...but I'm undecided there. (I'm definitely pulling down the hat levels.). Time to add another couple of electric piano lines, maybe.
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PDX
I start with a simple beat first and work around that. I hate metronomes. Then I start messing around with my synths. Designing patches on the fly, sequencing the arpeggiator, recording some chords to the midi sequencer... It's just a massive quilt of educated guesswork of what will and won't sound cohesive.
Eventually, I'll have a massive blob of sound I need to record into Ableton to add additional samples to, chop up, EQ, compress, and serve out.
This week was wildly different as I used no instruments, just prerecorded samples.
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Pittsburgh, PA
Tracking phase: "I'll don't have enough material for a decent track. Better record some more parts."
(Arrangement phase, recording triggering clips in Session View.)
Editing phase: "How am I going to fit all these parts in?"
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Melbourne, Australia
i just plonk a few things down. then listen for a few days . then add sections and add more and more as the sections go on.
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Melbourne, Australia
This week: making a SuperCollider patch that is similar to my week 2 one, using less reference material, to solidify my understanding of the syntax in this rudimentary way.
Screen Shot 2016-01-30 at 3.10.44 pm by Vincent Giles, on Flickr
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Pittsburgh, PA
^ That's seriously cool.
My process today, until I ditched the Max For Live Feedback Network plugin/effect/instrument: edit, edit, crash, try restarting, crash, try restarting, crash, try restarting...oh, that worked! Edit, edit, crash, try restarting, crash, try restarting, crash, try restarting...oh, that worked! (Repeat.)