Gruber

Pico-8 Music Tutorial #61 – Feedback and Workflow

Added 2020-11-09 15:00:04 +0000 UTC

Hey everyone!

This tutorial has been on my mind for a long time. It’s a complex topic, I’m still working on the language, so your ideas are welcome!

This is all part of a larger theory that music composition is a process guided by feedback loops. Whatever the style, whatever the tool, composers use feedback loops to interact with the music they’re making. Generally, the process is:

start with sound
listen <----> edit

Every tool has its own unique feedback loops. Writing music in Pico-8 has entirely different feedback & workflow loops than writing music using pencil and paper. Whatever your toolset, I believe one of the goals should always be to make these feedback loops as tight as possible as a means to make the process more an extension of yourself. If I can maneuver more quickly throughout Pico-8, and generally know how my edits will change the sound, I’ll be able to explore more pathways, more quickly, and arrive at my destination with more confidence.

In a sense, ALL of my music tutorials have been about tightening feedback loops.

But I share these tricks primarily to demonstrate these ideas. Personally, with feedback loops as a framework for composing, my improvement will always be based around these questions: