Finishing tracks is hard?

The Lounge General Discussion
#41

”Creativity is not prescious” - Perhaps it is not, but ”being in the moment” can be. We all know of that one ”gloden take” a vocalist records when we leave the tracking room to go to the toilet, and come back hearing a vocal delivery that never comes again exactly the same way, no matter how many hundred takes you re-record after that.

IME when making (as in PRODUCING) music, the most important skill is judgement, which includes knowledge of ”what to keep and what to redo”. Music is not same as sports, its not just about the technical performance… sometimes it can be very fragile and ephemeral.

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#42

You are right, creating opportunity which allows you to be in the moment is very precious. That’s where the magic happens…

#43

Yeah but I can totally understand the intent of your earlier post. This is why bands practice etc… you can certainly coax more accuracy, intent and precision from yourself by rehearsing. Just make sure to know which take to keep!

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#44

my guess: Ubud

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#45

While electronic music of many types certainly shirks a lot of “tradtional” muisc’s tropes, it still relies on many of the same basics. I’d wager a lot of bed room/project studio producers, like myself, have very little technical knowledge about music.

I don’t think most people are willing to, at the least, critically analyze a song they like and try to discover what about its structure and evolving elements makes it interesting to them.

The myth of the DIY, homebrewed dude in his bedroom with nothing but raw passion, an 808, and a 303 and making infamous Acid tunes (or what other similar image you like) has people believing its “just that easy.”

Music, I’ve found, is very similar to writing (which I teach). Everyone can read, so there is kind of this assumption that one some level every one is a “writer”. SImilarly, everyone can listen to music and know what they like, they can sit down at a piano and fumble through stringing a few notes together into a pleasing phrase—they might even be able to do it on beat with a metronome or a percussion recording. But that doesn’t make them a musician.

FWIW, my tunes are usually mediocre at best. My taste outruns my talent by leaps and bounds. I think I can make a listenable mix to share my music. It sounds alright next to a commericial track, but obviously not as polished. The real problem is most of my tracks end up being fairly boring.

I’m working on learning a bit of theory and more about song structure and energy in song writing.

And like writing a really good piece of music typically takes quite a while to germinate. The songs of mine I like the most were either magic from the first loop (rare) or are ones I spent months putting away and coming back to.

Epsecially in eletronic music its all in the little details—you’ve got to be willing to think about timbre on both a micro and macro level in regards to structure and energy.

Its a process, a long one, people are impaitient. I wish I had more time.

PS: And don’t give me an sh!t about how you don’t need theory—at the least an understanding of rhythm, call and response, and time signatures is needed. especially in dance genres (its all about rhythm!).

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#46

Yep. In fact i gave up on this for a long time because I have very little musical education and I realised that this is a big problem. Most of the best electronic musicians have a background in music and can play at least one instrument. Starting without that background puts one at a huge disadvantage.

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#47

who are they? anyway… i found out, that most of the tracks of today i listened in advance to see and hear how they are made are basically simple in structure (from the big stars) - and successful! Astonishingly these are the tracks i don’t like very much!

But i don’t have the motivation to create a super-dupa-track, i’m not able to do this because my tracks are far to dark and strange and i see making ‘music’ as a hobby with no ambitions, so finishing isn’t really a priority although i have plethora of tracks on my Elektrons considered as finished as they are.
Sometimes i have the problem to create and arrange something, but like from a magic hand, i have to break with the flow and sweep to other priorities - because they are more important (meeting friends, a time-consuming job with steady education, and many other things far more to mention here). Therefore i ending up with many ‘unfinished’ tracks considered finished - i wont go back then, just moving forward

of course i like artists like my beloved Jeff Mills - i don’t like everything from him i have to say - but he is constantly moving forward - and take a closer look at his tracks - they start somewhere in between … i remember an interview with him where he said about his way of doing tracks is making many patterns and finally ending by the one he loves most - and exactly this special pattern is the track with minimal variations

other artists like the Ozric Tentacles (not pure electronic music) have a magic feeling and a good grooving structure for tracks - with harmonies, tempo-, melody- and rhythm-change all over - and they have knowledge in music-theory, playing different instruments - they have a degree of quality and complexity i will never ever reach, but i don’t mind - i don’t have a musical background, so for me it is more like discovering the basics in harmony if I’m seeking for that, sometimes by pure accident

if i have to give an advice from my perspective and experience i would say

just do it and give up perfection

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#48

I think you should tell the world its finished and not let the world tell you its not…

Thats the way its meant to sound!

Create your sounds… Work out a loose arrangement… Mix and record at the same time … slam it to 2 track. Done. Finished. Next. (Use a mixing desk… Its tactile and you can sculpt the track as you go.)

Dont fret.

If it sounds shit… really shit… do it again and edit out the shit part(s) in real time… its exciting

Its only music.

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#49

Personally, I found finishing tracks using hardware sequencers was 20 times harder than with a DAW.

Developing a small idea to a full track in a DAW is easier, you see it visually how all the parts fill the arrangement.

With hardware, you have to think a lot in terms of bars, program changes, and plan transitions.

But using hardware leads more to improvisation which is a different way to make music, different to writing tracks. There is space for each one and for those who prefer jamming/improvisation there is nothing wrong sticking to it and not “finishing” tracks.

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#50

Very good approach.

#51

I think there should also be an examination of what it means to produce finished tracks. For some that means a jam session has been recorded, for others it means painstakingly making sure every detail is correct in a daw before bouncing it down to a audio file. “Finished tracks” probably falls somewhere within this spectrum for most individuals.

For myself since switching to completely otb, finished is once I’ve recorded to my tascAm. I’ve enacted that so I don’t keep going back and re tweaking patterns, sounds, etc. When I was ITB I would have 4 or 5 different version of a track going and was overly obsessed with making perfection. But in a DAW this is easy to do.

On the other aspect that came up, Music education.
Since the rise in popularity of making music on the computer many tools have been created that do things automatically for individuals. Autotune, programs that don’t allow one to play out of scale, etc. this has given people the idea that making electronic music is easy.

But education in theory, scales, etc is important if one wants to write good music. Understanding the constructs and paradigms of how music work is instrumental in creating. Knowing why things happen is fundamental for being able to recreate ideas, how to progress a piece, and what sounds good or not good when played together. Even if one is attempting to make more experiment music know the boundaries one is trying to break is important.

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#52

Thank you for saying this
Didn’t click until you said that

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#53

I appreciate this perspective. Sometimes it feels like musicians try to outdo one another with expressing the importance of “off the cuff”, “just record the 2-track of the jam and publish” approaches. Of course there is a lot to be said for spontaneity and not producing a track to death, but I feel the argument appears a little one-sided in these discussions. It’s not true that the opposite - careful execution and attention to the tiny details by means of editing/revision - makes for lame music. Simply not the case. And it’s also not true that music that has been painstakingly produced is always going to sound that way!

A bit off topic, but I feel the same goes for when the discussion gets to the specifics of sounds and how they’re recorded. I hear a lot about how quantization, step sequencers, the editing ability in a DAW, etc. can kill the organic nature of music. True, it can…but also true that some music that’s 100% locked in rhythmically and intonation-wise can also be very moving! There simply is no one better way.

And of course, we’re all shooting for different things here. Many here and on other forums openly express that they’re just hobbyists, and that’s of course great and fine! Many are also serious artists/performers/writers, etc. We’re not all going for the same thing.

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#54

Yeah, and recording music is not as important to all of us either. For some, playing / jamming can be just as rewarding, sometimes even more so.

I am reading a book called ”irresistible”. It deals with a multitude of topics, behavioral addictions etc, but it also has a section dedicated to ”goals” and how pursuing and attaining goals is a somewhat modern phenomenon and has vstly increased in the past 30 years. For some people, goals can also become an endless prison, where they feel miserable if they fail to reach their ”goals” but feel equally empty once they reach their goals, and immediately need to set up new, even more demanding goals, rinse and repeat…

Do whatever works for you, and above all BE KIND TO YOURSELF.

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#55

The way I work right now, I’m finding the Octatrack encourages me to rehearse a song/composition until I’m 85 to 90 percent happy with it, then just record a stereo mix (a bunch of times). I like to play with different takes in DAW keeping in mind how my choices might affect performance (definitely not all music makers need consider that aspect, obviously). It’s definitely much harder, more time than in ITB for me, yet closer to the centre of the work I’ve wanted to do for awhile. Finishing tracks, arranging takes on the computer has been slightly quicker since I’m adding very little sound design wise in the DAW, so the reward for improvisation and long rehearsal is a quicker “outro” process. I’m okay with that at the moment. My only issue with finishing tracks currently is simply time considering other engagments in my life.

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#56

It’s hard but I’ve learnt that finishing is a good way to learn, no matter how crap the piece is.

For example, loading the Digitakt up with some random sounds can be cool, and get great results but maybe sometimes you realise that all the sounds you use will be tough to mix and gel together, so instead of wasting time trying to flog a dead horse just whack it into a quick arrangement (can be 30 seconds long if you want) then stick it into a folder for your ears only.

You might be disheartened finishing tunes that you think suck but if you’re smart you can review where you went wrong, and in this example you can think next time I’ll carefully select the right sounds and have more intention…I’ll come up with a plan!

Remember you’re not alone too, I found this the other week when I went from finishing my first track of the year after only 2 weeks (a big deal for me) to then lying in bed the night after thinking I’ve wasted all this time and money and I suck at everything

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#57

I finish a track by playing it live and recording in one stereo track.
Later on I only master it in Ozone.
No wasting time on arrangement :slightly_smiling_face:

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#58

I can never finish ITB tracks as I jump from project. OTB makes me more focused to capture everything I need before moving on.

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#59

A lot of good advice in this thread. Personally I’ve come closer to what i want to do sonically by actually learning to use Ableton as an “instrument”, just actually be quick enough with it that it doesn’t feel so much as a computer program. I think the most important parts are learning your tools, and as many have said, just finish stuff.

I have so many songs that are nearly finished, but somewhere in the progress of making them, I totally lost my way, and they end up sounding worse after days of meticulous editing than they did when it was just a melody and some badly recorded clapping.

I guess the thing I’ve realised is that when working on a song, I have to accept that at the point I am right now, I’m probably not as good as I would like to be at producing to get exactly what I have in my head, and I sure as heck won’t become that good by working on that particular song for ages. Finish tracks and move on. You don’t have to release them, and you can go back and fix them after you’ve grown if you want, but there’s something to be said for iterative practice when it comes to production.

And as someone with a bit of music education, It’s not a bad idea to understand some points about harmony and form and all that jazz. But not actual jazz, that’s just silly.

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#60
  • Lower your standards. Your ‘inner critic’ will be very hard on you. Silence him and finish to the standard you’re able to NOW. The more tracks you finish the better the standard will become.
  • Remember you’re not here to entertain yourself. You will be bored to death of your tunes before they are finished. That’s ok, it’s ok for you to be bored. Think about the people who will hear your tune for the first time.
  • Make a spreadsheet. Write notes. Break down the work remaining on a track to a list of jobs and just work your way through the list.
  • Once a track reaches a certain point, it’s work more than creativity. So do the work and save your creative juices for the next new track.
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