Finding inspiration the Poptones way

Poptones: “We like to experiment and challenge ourselves as musicians.”

Stuck for ideas or craving a creative spark? The Copenhagen alt-rock band share their tips for igniting your next song

We are Poptones, a Copenhagen-based alt-rock band, who are releasing our second full-length album on 26 September. The album is called Pure and is the result of us giving in to strange ideas and following our intuition. It’s about being open to experimentation with new instruments and ways of composing as Poptones, while still holding on to the root of our music: the blend of chaos, beauty, and the space in between.

Our strange ideas have especially been about different ways of doing improvisation. We like to experiment and challenge ourselves as musicians, but have often felt that improvisation ends up being something ambient that evolves into something louder and then fades out again.

That can, of course, end up as a beautiful piece, but we wanted to look into how improvisation could be used more as an idea generator for more typically structured songs.

We were asked by Songwriting Magazine to break down some of our methods, which we’ve listed below:

Read more tips for getting started

The UNO Method

We use UNO cards as a tool for structured improvisation. Basically, we each draw a card and start playing guided by the specific characteristics of that card. We only focus on the colours of the card and we include some of the “special moves” cards.

Here is a description of each of the colours included in a deck of UNO, and our added musical characteristics:

Red = FIRE
Extreme, much information, cuts in sound

Green = EARTH
Static, grounded, tight, constant

Yellow = AIR
Floating, rising, small molecules, airy

Blue = WATER
Waves, dynamics, liquid

+2
Do twice as much of whatever you are doing in the specific colour

Reverse
Turn your instrument around, reverse it, and then play the colour

Skip
Skip a turn: Don’t play

The UNO Method is inspired by our experience performing John Zorn’s Cobra (also an improvisation game), which we recommend checking out as well. Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies has also been an inspiration. But sometimes it’s just more fun to make up these games yourself, adapt them to your own situation, and try them out.

Improvise and edit

Record free improvisations, then edit the different ideas into a song on the computer. This can be heard on both Eyes Closed and maybe even on a hidden track that’s only on the vinyl.

Poptones: “Improvise with metronomes in your ears, each set to a different tempo.”

Playback to another track – continue after it stops

You play a track on the speakers and then improvise on top of it. When the track stops, you continue. We tried this with some ambient stuff from Grouper’s A I A: Alien Observer album. It worked really well to create some of the background elements in our music.

Improvise within a defined genre

Decide on a specific genre and artists that you associate with that genre. Improvise freely around it.

Play the first thing that comes to mind

You do a round where one person starts a pattern, which everyone then imitates on their instrument. Everyone then plays the same pattern in unison. After 30 seconds, the next in line makes up a new pattern and everyone imitates that. This continues for a while until you end up with a bunch of different rhythms and patterns. This method can really create some intuitively cool rhythms.

Improvise with focus on different aspects of tracks

We have found it useful to improvise with the goal of creating background sounds for a track and then fit them into another track. Basically, just free improvisation with a special focus on textures. Inspired by Alan Belkin’s text A Practical Guide To Music Composition and a presentation on the subject by Mija Milovic.

Metronomes

Improvise with metronomes in your ears, each set to a different tempo.

Examples of how we have used these methods:

In Eyes Closed, we used a version of the method “Playback to another track.” Eyes Closed originally only existed as a structured improvisation piece, which was also how we recorded it in the studio. The studio version consisted only of us as a trio, but we wanted to experiment and include other instruments. Therefore, we invited some really talented musicians to improvise on the recorded improvisation. We then entered a DAW-based post-production process, editing and arranging the new improvisations, which later became the final version of Eyes Closed.

The instrumentals in the chorus of Say Something Now are taken directly from an UNO improvisation. Anders (drums) and Simon (guitar) both drew the red card and had to play with extreme intensity and with much musical information. Mads (bass) drew the green card with the “turn around” sign on it. So he had to play with the bass turned around, with his right hand on the fretboard. That turned into Mads having to play something very simple, while Simon and Anders went crazy. We have a video of the exact moment it happened on our Instagram.

Poptones new album Pure is out on 26 September. Find out more about the band at: instagram.com/poptonesband • x.com/poptonesdk • youtube.com/poptonesband5454

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