Truth
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I understand you very well, and I think this is a lack of motivation due to a lack of interest in routine work to finalize a song, which appears due to a lack of motivation to finish song…you get what you get - pleasure from the process and you don’t understand why change the format
try to think in patterns. if you do one pattern well, then you can do another pattern well later… make several different patterns, and unite them by one tonality and idea… and then just combine them to song. I bought digitakt and syntakt for this approach.
Don’t be scared of getting stuff out there.
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Plenty of good advice in this thread already. I’d just like to add that if you want to learn about mixing, get a pdf or whatever copy of “Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio”. This book is a great info package on what “professional mixing” actually entails, and understanding the typical processes and the reasonings behind them will greatly clarify the end game of mixing for you. I seriously cannot encourage reading this book enough, for anyone who is interested to learn about mixing. I’d even go so far as to say that after reading the book, all you’ll ever need after that is hours applying the stuff outlined within.
I too am all too familiar with having a bunch of loops on my hard drive. By last count, I’m well into 4 digit numbers on them loops hehehe!
The trick IME, is to look back on that stuff once you’re forgotten ever making them, and seeing which one of those loops still sounds good to you after all this time. Then its just a matter of fleshing it out into a track, or even a song (yes, I consider “tracks” and “songs” to be different from each other), either by improvising with the pieces in realtime, DJ-style, by bringing elements in and out while moving the energy around by insitinct, or by going with a more “cranial” arrangment process, which can become as elaborate as you’re comfortable doing for the sake of finishing the piece.
Always remember - you are your own worst ciritic. Playing your material to other people will almost always give new insight if you happen to be stuck with a piece
Hey,
I haven’t read all of the answers in this topic (sry) but I wanna say I had the same issue of struggling finishing songs.
I think the best solution to finish a song, at least it’s the best for me, is to rush the structure and relations between musical ideas first. The thing is to avoid looping and to try to develop ideas as much as possible before creating its sounds. Idk if I am being clear… but my point is that sound design should not come first. And if you wanna make it first, it shoud be done before getting into the composition.
The solution for me was to do sound design sessions, in which I am okay to build short loops that I am never making a song with. Then, when I am happy with the sounds, I can move on to a more creative/composing session, where I’ll be avoiding sound design and technical things as much as possible. And the last step is to fine tune sounds and arrangement. These last steps feels very comfortable when the song structure is well established. It seems like the music becomes autonomous and tells you what to do with it. Love that !
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Strange déjà vu:
There is only one way to make it to the finishing line: regular work. Frequency first, intensity later.
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this is the best advice in whole thread. every time ive ever finished tracks, it was during weeks or months when i was just playing with music every day.
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…tripple yeah on this latest suggetion…
…REPETITION MAKES THE HIT…!..all the hits.
the best and most final results always come with the amount of frequent, regular workflow efforts on daily bases…that’s the best case scenario, right there…
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If only it were that simple)
I usually bounce a loop of something i am working on to a friend who is also into music production.
First reason is to hear his critique and his impressions
Second so i have time to take a break from it and continue working on it later with clear mind(and ears)
Third, on my way to store or work, i can have a quick listen and see how i can expand on it, what to remove or add, how to deal with intro outro etc
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Songwriting and music production is an iterative process. When you turn your gear on next time try to identify why you don’t like the way it sounds and fix it, don’t just move on. If you are stuck on a part, just add something that fits and sounds generic and replace it later. If you force yourself to make a single improvement to that track every time you turn your gear on, you will eventually finish it.
In my experience songs rarely ever sound good immediately. You have to tweak them for a while and change them multiple times until things fall into place. I refuse to move onto a new track until I’m done with the previous one. If there was something in the loop that got you excited even for a second its worth pursuing.
Good luck.
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I start my sessions in the DAW, i track VST´s like i would track “real” synth. I.e create a pattern, freeze.
It avoids endlessly tweaking. (I did automations before i freeze.) I cut down to the best parts, then i do the next sound. Once the session is finsished - i decide if i want a hardware synth or FX to improve on the sound i already got. I either layer that recording with the VST, or replace it.
Maybe you only need two sounds - a good and a bad synth, keys and a violin, let them talk to each other. Less is more.
Maybe start with shorter tracks, dont aim for 6-7 minutes - go with 3-4 minutes - build a drum structure with increasing energy.
Make it easy for you. If you nail the easy part, do the next thing. (I personally overcomplicated it myself before i changed to the Keep it simple rule, its a lot more efficient, if the track isnt perfect - no problem - make the next one. )
Its better to have 100 tracks and to pick the 5 which are good, than having nothing.
I did some hardware only tracks in the past, but i found it way easier, to only use one hw synth, and track it - instead of having multiple ones. I am not an octupus, and not as fast as cenk. I use syntakt for drums, but - create some samples from it, which i put into a drum rack, and use round robin to alter between the recorded shots. Its still faster than doing it on the machine itself.
The recall is a important factor for me, it allows to work on session over multiple days. And it allows a rehearsal phase - let the track sit for 2-3 weeks, and then call the session again. Listen to it, and write down what could be better, and how you think you can achieve that. (Letting it sit is crucial, to reset the ears.)
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the thread is a bit older, but i just wanted to say: damn, i really just needed to hear this. thanks!
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I think this is also great advice. From my humble experiences with finishing tracks, shit only starts to sound more like the amazing thing you’re comparing it to at all until you’re doing the last 10%. So don’t let yourself be discouraged too early, you can slowly build the core of a track in many sessions until you have something together that resembles a track.
Once you’re there, you can start to polish elements that are there and spice things up a bit by adding some nice little textures, variations etc. This is where things start to sound more interesting, and often times, this happens rather fast.
But you need to stick with it before and work towards some kind of arrangement and structure. But the good news is that you can do that in steps and allow it to become better over time. Just start to make sketches, listen to them and see what works and what doesn’t, rework arrangements or elements, do another sketch etc. etc. Once you’ve done this more often, it’s easier to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
What helps with this imo is to listen to „pro“ musicians giving examples of how their tracks evolved over time. You‘ll notice that stuff often sounds extremely rough and underwhelming for them too at the beginning, but they identify a core that interests them and keep working to make that shine. I highly recommend Podcasts like Tape Notes or Song Exploder for that kinda stuff. Albums also used to have special editions or B-Sides with demos that often sound as awful as your phone recordings.
I also notice something with music making that I first noticed when writing longer texts when I studied. And I think this might be true for all kinds of creative endeavors: you often only realize that you already have more than enough material once you sit down to write, or in this case, start recording. Until you start doing more than recording just a loop, you will always think there’s nothing there and that writing a track is an insurmountable task, when in reality, you already have enough material and just need to do the work.