Finishing a track

The Lounge General Discussion
#10

Hi Yentz,

there is a simple tip:

Start with Pattern 5, then use Pattern 13 for the next buildup.

Typically a Techno track features two build ups.

So when you constructed pattern 5 and 13, copy pattern 5 to the left. (A1,A2,A3,A4) copy pattern 13 to the left and right. (A6,A7,A8,A9 etc) A14, A15.

Now, remove elements from your copied patterns. Copy some elements from A5 also to the right, till you replace everything with elements from A13, which was your 2nd buildup.

I.e. make the melody a bit more sparsely /or remove it completly from A1,A2 ,A3

Introduce more rhythmic /melodic elements between A6 till A13.

When you removed elements, then think about how to transition in an interesting way from each pattern. Think about how dramatic this transition should be.

Now use the OT Arranger, and repeat the patterns as needed, so you could time your transitions.
Begin with slow transitions, i.e. repeat the patterns 4 or 8 times in the arranger, then try out what happens if you transition faster.

Normally you use a section to highlight a certain element.

Experiment with breaks, i.e. is the single element that is running still interesting for the listener.

So each Bank can have 4 “Kits” err Parts. As the pattern stores which part it uses, you can have an “intro part”, “middle part” (where you merge A5 and A13 build up) and for example a part where you setup sampling /experimenting duties.

Per project, you can have 8 arrangements, that would mean 8 songs, no need to switch projects.

I would love to hear other approaches.

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#11

Thanks, this is a very good idea. This kind of structures is straight away and helps keeping focussed and not loosing myself in new ideas.

:+1:

Sorry I was thinking about a kit but writing a set. I am on the couch and on Aspirin complex right now. :zonked:

#12

I finished way more when OTB but that was more down to how difficult I found it to make things sound “pro” and gave up! When ITB it’s much easier but you have to be careful not to get sucked into the whole black hole of tweaking for the sake of it.

#13

@Sternenlicht

thanks, that seems to be a good idea to get a track organised from the beginning. Will try out this method myself …

#14

I think a lot of people, including myself, struggle with the same issue. I also agree with others who say that it’s better to just keep things simple. I came to this conclusion myself, recently.

We start to think that everything has to sound like it could be played in an arena with thousands of people. But that’s not realistic, nor is it the goal for most hobby musicians. For example, most people who play guitar are content with their time just playing, and don’t have this pressure to make their jams into something that sounds like a world class recording! They just play.

I too have fallen into the trap of trying to make my music sound pro, with lots of layers and changes, but it becomes super tedious and tiresome, and I don’t believe a person can ever achieve the production value that a computer can easily achieve, by using a few pieces of hardware. It’s a trap because you get caught trying to perfect all these little things, and forget about the simplicity and immediacy of hardware, which is what probably brought most of us to hardware in the first place - like someone who just grabs their guitar and starts strumming just for the simple joy of it.

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#15

Everybody’s different but creativity is universal.
I make music the way I paint > No plan at all > NO FIXED GOAL = TOTAL FREEDOM !
On the way I’ll build out structures offcoarse and eventual goals show up in the distance now and than- many of these disappear again and some cristallise. Sometimes everything just gets stuck - like water in a stilstanding pool and everything dies, but sometimes the water finds a hole to suddely continue it’s journey .
When I become to entangled in a specific system of working, the enormous energy that comes with creativity disappeares. :astonished:

#16

The question is: how is your approach to finishing tracks, how can someone do it in an artistic manner?

#17

Artistic Manner ??? What do you mean ?
The track or painting tells me when it’s finished - sometimes that never happens. :slight_smile:
I always had problems with the word “art” because it can be defined in a million ways.
What I like with the Elektron-instruments is that things are never really finished… I can change or add stuff as long as the memory isn’t full and not one session sounds thesame with all tweaking and live-sequence variations. But I do have a sort of " now it’s finished " feeling sometimes - that is when I feel it’s ready to use in a live-set.

#18

To the OP:

I think you’re confusing hard work with proper tools. To me, it sounds like you’ve got the tools and you know how to use them. And you have a desire to finish things. But you’re struggling, and you’re looking for an answer that’s outside of yourself.

But you’re never gonna find it there.-

Finishing something requires hard work. Inspiration is not available on tap. You alone can finish your track. No additional gear will make this happen for you, no tweak in your workflow will enable something that isn’t already there.

You need to sit down and get the job done, if finishing is what’s important to you. There are no short cuts or secret formulas to this. You need the hours and the dedication and you need to endure when it gets hard, and resist the temptation to look for a fix beyond your own dedication.

But you should also ask yourself - is it important to finish stuff?

Because I agree with vos, there are many ways to approach creativity and the end result is only as relevant as you decide it to be.

Perhaps you’re struggling with this, because completing a track is not as important as you’d like it to be, whereas just making the music is all that matters.

I myself prefer to finish things, but I have friends that do quite the opposite, and there are days when they are happier than I am.

3 Likes
#19

When is a track finished?

There are two perspectives that might be of interest:
first… the artist … and second … the audience.

If the artist wants to please the audience, he may consider, what the audience is expecting. Will it be a more or less a mainstream like track to listen or to dance to, or something vanguard and extraordinary. To please the audience, the expectations should find a way in the structure and mood of the track. If this is completed, the track might be called “finished”.

If the artist ignores the audience, he soon will play alone on stage, but if he embraces his audience, he will generate a great experience for everybody.

If there is no audience but the artist himself, well, there is no rule.

Hope my post was not too obvious or trivial :wink:

1 Like
#20

This is a great point, I always stride to finish what I start and in the end it comes down to hard work and hours spent. Some parts feel like a chore. Working with an OTB setup can be a bit slow when you are trying to get a full song going and not just one repeating loop.
I arrange all my songs on the MNM and use Song mode once I have enough material going. Takes a while to sort things out but once I like it I just sync to my DAW and record each track one at a time, after that I do some automation add a few plugins maybe multitrack some parts.
Sounds boring as hell but making beats is not all glory. In a world of hype and marketing we are all led to believe otherwise. Keep your eye on the prize and give it your all!

#21

I posted about a similar issue I was having a while back. I’m constantly changing my workflow and changing my goals and expectations. Perhaps the process isn’t fixed or static. As natural beings we have to evolve our ideas and methods. I recently realized that like a few people have mentioned in this thread - perhaps nothing is ever done until you feel like hitting the stop button.

All my best ideas happen spontaneously, when I don’t feel like I’m “working”. I was getting worried because I have like 30 or so ideas on the go right now. Some are 1 pattern, some are 8 patterns. None of them are “finished” but do they really need to be ? I’m not trying to put out a record, just entertain myself and maybe some friends or loved ones.

My latest goal is instead of finishing them, why not just organize them ALL in the banks in an order that flows. I could play them like a DJ set if I wanted to “demo” them to friends or family or something. I leave 1 pattern between each where I “blend” elements from the two ideas together to form a transition. Then I can start at any pattern and move forwards or backwards in the set jamming and having fun and just being spontaneous. It’s open ended until I hit the final pattern LOL >>save project — new project<< heheh

wow typing this was therapeutic
peace -ooo

1 Like
#22

We could have 8 arrangements in a project.

So there are 16 banks.
Each bank has 4 parts.
So every 4 patterns we can have a new configuration (when we would split this evenly.)

Per song we could have 2 banks, with 2x4 parts. Of course its possible to reuse patterns, but that is maybe not what we want, probably the outro is resembled bye some elements of the intro.

In a pattern we could use one chord.

A typical chord progression can be seen here:

http://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/common-chord-progressions

https://autochords.com/

Most of the chord progressions are 4 different chords before they are repeated.

Well you might not do actual chords, but if you think in 4 harmonic shifts, before you resolve with the 5th pattern…

I found that i already have a lot of material within 5 patterns, when i filled the current tracks with stuff, if i play everything at once, it just gets to busy.

#23

Well I used to release records ages ago. Back then it was pretty clear to me how to make a track to get it in a form that is more or less finished. I played live as well and it was pretty clear how to do this as well.

I was using a sequencer nd hardware later just software and bounced my instruments for use in live (before vsti integration).

Now I am confused on how to best do this using the electron gear.

I don’t think it is very well thought through to say the instruments are not for me if my approach to making music is different than just jamming along (my preferred style of music is not that good for jamming anyway) as I really do like the sequencers for a lot of reasons (i.e. I do believe I can make really awesome baselines for example which I never could make like this with a daw, I don’T like staring on a screen all the time etc).

I guess I will have two approaches. One for jamming and one for finishing where I record the audio into live and take it from there (mixing, adding variations etc.)

Thanks for your help!

1 Like
#24

Just finished reading the “Making Music” book Ableton released this year. Here’s the last chapter (apologies for formatting):

Fail Better

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

— Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

Problem:

The closer you get to finishing the track, the more you realize that it’s a

failure. It will be impossible to turn this into something you’ll be proud

of. Why bother finishing it at all? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just

abandon it and start over on a completely different project?

It’s depressing to realize that you’ve made something bad. It’s even more

depressing to realize it while you’re still working on it but after it’s

beyond any hope of salvation. But in this situation, there are still valid

reasons to keep going and finish the track anyway.

Solution:

Most producers have started far more tracks than they’ve finished. It’s

much easier to give up in the middle of a project and move on to

something new than it is to see a project through to the very end.

But what most producers don’t realize is that each stage of the musicmaking

process is itself a thing that requires practice. We get to be

better sound designers by designing sounds. We get to be better drum

programmers by programming drums. And we get to be better song

finishers by finishing songs. Because of this, the more songs we start

but don’t finish, the more opportunities we miss out on to practice

finishing. And as a result, we might continually improve at various

aspects of the early stages, but we’ll never improve at actually getting

things done.

If you realize very early that what you’re working on isn’t going to be

successful, you probably have time to change directions and make things

better. But if you’re very late in the process of making the track before

realizing that it’s not good, it might be too late to fix it without

completely gutting it (which is essentially the same as starting over). In

these cases, forcing yourself to finish—no matter how painful—is often

better than giving up. You’ll not only get practice finishing, but you’ll

also get practice failing, in itself a valuable skill to learn in a subjective

and unpredictable business like art. The better you get at finishing, and

the better you get at coping with failure, the better your chances will be

the next time you begin (and, hopefully, finish) a project.

If the track is really as bad as you think, maybe there is a natural end

point that’s earlier than where you’d stop with a track you were happy

with. For example, it might not make sense to get your new track

professionally mastered. And it might be a good idea to not share it with

the public. Maybe it just goes right back into your Scraps and Sketches

folder, to be pulled apart for use in other tracks later. But the important

thing is that you actually finish the arrangement, if for no other reason

than to practice, improve, and experience how it feels to finish.

#25

I found this very helpful.

1 Like
#26

Can someone comment on their usage of scenes together with the arranger?

I sliced up some FX , and trigger now with a scene different samples.

So for transitions i switch to a fill pattern, and then set the scene in the arranger, which should be played. With this method i can reuse the fill pattern 16 times, without repeating the played FX. I.e. a swoosh or drum roll used for transitioning into the next part.

What are your ideas for build up / downs=?

#27

Wholly #@$%@#% this was extremely useful for me too.
Not fully finished watching his videos, but after only seeing he first 4 steps, I’m already seeing some patterns and pitfalls that I’ve been allowing myself to get caught in. Going to try and increase my focus with my session tonight and see if I can finish off one of the MANY half finished tracks I’ve been jamming out lately.
-peace
Walter

1 Like
#28

The most important thing is: The machines are instruments. You need to practise, rehearse, spend time with them. Only then are you ready to record, and just like a conventional artist, you might need to record your track or parts of it many many times…

Here is what works for me:

  1. I have in mind a ‘dj set’ type of setup: a few banks full of single patterns that are ready to be unfolded into full tracks on stage.
  2. I continuously improve these tracks, with my audience in mind who wants to have fun. Style is house/techno.
  3. I don’t think about stuff. I have a large library of sounds and I just try to find what fits together nicely.
  4. Early on I find it completely okay to scrap the pattern over and over again but keep the sounds and restart. It’s important to keep the tracks simple, so that the musical ideas can really shine through. Good tracks are seldom complicated.
  5. Once a pattern sounds good, I start to focus on performance mods and scenes. I find myself playing with buildups and drops at that stage. This feed back into previous stages, until everything sits together compact and nice. At this stage you will understand exactly what sounds are needed. Don’t overthink it, just add, remove, replace. I realized it’s vitally important to properly phrase tracks. Make the listener aware when 4, 8, 16 bars have passed. This makes it also much easier for you to actually play the track.
  6. DON’T FORGET TO TAKE BREAKS to relax your ears. Smoke, do laundry, cook, go outside.
  7. Then play the track in one piece. Just like with an instrument, rehearse it, in particular the difficult parts.
  8. when you’re ready, record the track into a DAW. I like that step because it captures spontaneity, means a certain commitment and still allows you to cut the track and rearrange. Again, keep it simple, stick to the rules and only break them when doing so consciously.
  9. Then add whatever is needed in DAW. I like irregular crashes and snare hits in my tracks, and I use the DAW to add that. The core idea stays the same, but a DAW gives me the freedom to add and modify elements to support the overall dynamic. I usually start with setting markers where the main drops or most energetic parts are, so I have a grid to stick to when creating and releasing tension.

When your intuition tells you to do something, do it, and do it quickly. If it says: cut out that part or add something there, do it immediately.

6 Likes
#29

good conversation and ideas!!!

For me I found out the fastest way to finish a track is multitrack recording live jam … and mostly leave as it is. Most times this will also conservate that special feeling what do you had, when you started producing the track. I found it also important to multitrack record the track as soon as possible. If I working to long on the machines, I start to change to much … such as, maybe try new hihats or a new bassdrum or a new synthtone etc etc etc … so thats the start of “never get it finished” … just record the audio and work with the audio in your daw for mixing and arrangement details.

For me the hardest part to get finished is the mixing process and I found no real solution for that problem.