As I said in a previous post, I find that my process of making music is building up, then tearing down.

Now, when the final music ends up having pretty sparse instrumentation, it doesn’t mean that it takes less work. It often ends up that way only after being built up to the point of saturation, and then carefully letting the excess fall by the way side to leave only the essential notes. Maybe because I’m still developing my craft, but I am not at a point where I can get straight to the essence.

Today I was playing mandolin and acoustic guitar for the last song for Marc Gunn‘s upcoming album “Happy Songs of Death.” It’s an uptempo folk song in E minor — I really love fast folk songs in minor key. It just hits the spot for the rocker in me. So I was banging on my acoustic, busily strumming to add to the momentum of the song — only to realize that it’s too frantic. Marc is an accomplished autoharp player and he is already strumming his massive instrument busily. To add something equally busy is counter-productive.

So I supported the rhythm by adding tracks that accentuate the strong beats in the groove, but is otherwise laid-back. If I mute the driving autoharp, the song would fall apart. But because the these supporting parts are sparser, it somehow makes the whole track feel bigger.

Consider a piece of music to be like a box, and you’re placing balloons in them, which represents notes/parts. If you put just a few balloons in, then each balloons can inflate to big sizes, filling up the space. If you put many balloons, each of the balloons will be small.

Similarly, if you want big sounding record, then you have to hit the right balance of having enough parts to cover all the bases, yet, make them be sparse enough so that each of the notes have room to really vibrate, expand, and bloom.

Now, sparse doesn’t mean less work. It requires different kinds of skill. I was playing this slow arpeggio — which are among the hardest parts to play on an acoustic guitar, as you have to cleanly finger each note, hit them all perfectly, and let the notes sustain. Particularly, the last bit is important — an arpeggio with notes fading or cutting out prematurely simply sounds dry and ineffective.

In any case, I managed to add to the driving momentum of the song by doing everything except strumming busily along with it. It took some experimentation, and what ended up in there was a lot less than what I played, but the result was well worth it.