I’m working on my second album as Big Stitch. (Regretfulnot is my first.) I’m following a general approach that I’ve outlined here and here, which is inspired by (and personally coached under) Alex Joyal’s approach. Over the past several weeks, I’ve been jamming out ideas — brainstorming possible elements for future album tracks. As I documented, I used Loopy Pro to jam ideas. It was the first time using Loopy Pro. I really enjoyed the software (really, really). I discovered that live looping is a highly fruitful way for me to generate and develop ideas.

Possibly too fruitful.

Alex coaches me to be quick, light, and nimble when generating ideas. Get in a flow, but don’t stay in the flow too long. Then get in the flow again. Lots of little flows; fewer long flows. I spent decades teaching and facilitating people on how to brainstorm ideas as a professor and consultant. I know this!

Do I practice it when it comes to jamming music ideas? Sometimes! But not usually when using Loopy Pro. More often, if an idea pops into my head or I realize I have five minutes to pick up an instrument (at which point I take out my phone and press record in Voice Record Pro).

I find live looping really gets me in the flow. And Loopy Pro, specifically. (I tried hardware looping pedals and the friction was so high I couldn’t get in the flow.) But that results in me trying out so many ideas and adding so many elements that I wind up with many, many minutes of real-time recordings (if I remember to press record) and, worse (but not!), tons of audio clips.

Here’s an example of three pages of clips I came up with around one idea (that you can listen to here).

Those tons of audio clips take a good amount of work to export from Loopy Pro and into a desktop DAW. (Something I hope Michael, the developer of Loopy Pro, addresses with the coming desktop version.) I developed a semi-automated method to handle the export-import process. But that still leaves me with the “problem” of having so many clips to go through to identify what I think of as the main characters of the possible track.

I finished doing all that for the 15 track ideas I’ve come up with. (I archived several other ideas, too.) So I deleted clips that were clearly not fruitful (really bad playing or boring) and then color-coded (green, yellow, red) to indicate how cool the idea was. Sounds productive, right? Well, it still results in many, many clips to then start arranging into a coherent and compelling song structure. It was daunting enough that I realized I was dragging my feet a little (and, yes, on hiatus to move).

I mentioned this to Alex during our most recent meeting. He is a big advocate of exporting audio after every major work session (i.e., don’t bother if the tweaks during a session didn’t change the overall vibe or change possible decisions). For the most part, I do this. I should do it more often. However, sometimes I don’t leave enough time at the end of the day. With Loopy Pro, one of the processes I enjoyed most was creating a live mix of all the loops I came up with, which served as a way to export the audio from the session.

To be clear, this isn’t technically what Alex advises for brainstorming. He suggests turning the record on at the start of a session and recording everything–“mistakes” and all. Sometimes I did this. But often I forgot to or just didn’t (would I really go and listen to an hour-long continuous recording?! …oh yeah, my jam sessions shouldn’t be so long…).

Anyway, when I mentioned to Alex that I was feeling overwhelmed by all of the audio clips I had for each possible track–that there are just so many that it’s hard to know where to start sometimes–he remembered that I had done the live mixes in Loopy Pro. He suggested that I use the recordings of those live mixes as the first draft of the arrangement for the track.

Duh, right?

But I hadn’t thought of that. I was just thinking of the raw clips I recorded as Lego blocks to build the arrangement from. I knew the live mixes often weren’t “great” or were pretty random and sometimes even left out the coolest ideas (remember there were lots of clips, fairly disorganized, so who knows what clips I’d launch during the live mixes!).

But it was worth a try. And let me tell you, it made a significant difference. I’ve now used the live mix recordings to kick-start a couple of tracks, and it was a huge boost. Before I was staring and then many tens of clips (literally over a hundred in a couple) and being overwhelmed. But using my live mixes as a reference track, I was able to quickly search out the clips that I could hear in the mix and re-build the track using the clips. Did it result in a great song structure? Nope? Did it always include the best ideas from the jam session? Nope. But did it ensure rapid progress and a workable draft to start changing? Yup. Will I continue to do this in the future? Absolutely. So much so that I think I can do less work in the import-export process to identify and organize clips.

I had thought that doing the live mixes was to a) have some fun learning Loopy Pro and, more importantly, b) give me something to listen to decide whether it’s worth continuing to work on. But I hadn’t thought of it as a way of jumpstarting the arrangement process. Now I know it’s a great way to do that. The only downside I can see to it is that I had intended to think too hard about doing a “good” live mix, now that I know it’s the first draft of the arrangement. That could lead me to over-organize within Loopy Pro and overthink the live mixes (i.e., redo them until I think I’ve done a “good” one).

But I don’t have to worry about that until I work on the next album!