the J effect

Have you ever had the thought of struggling to write a peace of music, because something is missing? You’ve put together a piece of work that features 20 to 30 different tracks and you can’t figure out what is the one thing which would fit in? The answer to this problem might be simple: You focused on the wrong thing.

As a friend of mine often uses to say: “Less is more.” And if you think about it, he is probably right. Nowadays we aren’t limited by technology. Your possibilities to create songs are endless thanks to DAWs and more plug-ins than you could ever use. But did Depeche Mode need hundreds of effects and plug-ins in order to write timeless masterpieces like “Enjoy the Silence”? Did Bands like Led Zeppelin need more than vocals, a guitar, bass and drums to write songs that will remain in our hearts forever?

No, they didn’t. And this is why you shouldn’t focus on quantity in writing either and instead concentrate on the quality of the things that are essential to your song. Daft Punk created their third album “Human After All” with just guitars, a vocoder, and a drum machine. And everybody knows Robot Rock. This album even became essential to the Electro House Genre.