What is Gribbleschnift?
Still unsure of what the genre involves? Gribbleschnift is not the polished, shiny music you're used to - it's a totally different animal. It's not about nerdily spending hours mixing and mastering things and prioritising a sandpapered smooth product over style and originality; it's about throwing things at the page, seeing what sticks and creating some entertaining chaos in the process. It basically sounds like this: -
https://on.soundcloud.com/x93c4UF7ZqfSo8uDA
Here are the parameters of the genre: -
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If there aren’t drums fucking everywhere and it doesn’t sound like two or more songs are playing at the same time, it isn’t gribbleschnift.
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Gribbleschnift is a sample-based genre. If you’re bothered about that, it isn’t the genre for you. There is no plagiarism in gribbleschnift. Want to rip off substantial chunks of other people’s songs? Feel free. If you’re the type of person who wants to make everything from scratch or even worse actually learn an instrument, gribbleschnift isn’t for you.
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If you rigorously mix and master your songs or are bothered about the fine details like things looping properly then gribbleschnift isn’t for you.
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Gribbleschnift should sound chaotic. It should also involve repetition. It’s about layering things and creating an interesting texture.
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It should be listenable even if weird and chaotic. It’s music, not noise.
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Gribbleschnift should take you on a journey - but not one with sign posts and maps, one where things just randomly turn up unannounced and you think wtf is that doing here?
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These are not hard and fast rules, more the general spirit of gribbleschnift.
The Gribbleschnift Philosophy
Gribbleschnift is about achieving balance between listenability (the schnift) and chaos (the gribble). The perfect gribbleschnift song should leverage the gribble to emphasise and contribute to the schnift. It's all about creating surreal, noisy, psychedelic music based on two main pillars: "drummyness" (layer upon layer of polyrythmic drums) and parts where far too much is going on and you think "wft is happening here? This is overwhelming". Sometimes the drummyness is all the way throughout the song, sometimes it's at crescendo moments. Everybody interprets the genre in their own way. The golden rule of gribbling is don't sound like any other gribbler. Originality is key.
Contact
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