How To Get Back Into A Song

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

Title isn’t particularly good for this one but hey ho…

Managed to steal my usual 2 hours or so on a Saturday night to do music and once again, I’ve built the foundations for a tune but ran out of time to finish it. I realised as I was shutting down the laptop that I have dozens upon dozens of these half finished ideas that I never return to or, when I try, I can’t find the groove/enthusiasm to finish it.

Now, three quarters of these ideas are probably dog shit but every now and again I come up with a hook or a melody I really like and so I’ll make a quick 2 minute long structure to stick on MP3 and listen on my commute. I just never go back to it to actually finish it properly! I’m a hobbyist so I get a lot of joy out of these sessions I have but I would love to get a few tracks together as a finished piece.

I’m sure this is a fairly common thing but just wondered how you guys get through that brick wall. When you feel you’ve hit gold do you drop all else to power through and finish things? Or do you have a way or routine that you go thorugh to get back in to something? I have thought about proper note taking when on the train to work but not sure it will help with getting back into things!

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Turning Ideas into Compositions
#2

I’m in the exact same boat you are.

I think I’m going to start now pushing through to an acceptable finish. I think also I have to be realistic about what acceptable finished means: no one’s paying me for a Grammy in production.

If a flash of inspiration occurs in the meantime I’ll take note of it thoroughly but leave the other details until after what I was doing.

Way way too many things I’ve lost track of or motivation for due to time used for other things Ive lost track of or motivation for. Nasty, unproductive loop.

I’ve recently finished up a project that had a deadline. Amazing what can be done under pressure.

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#3

Jamming is fun and the most important thing is to have fun with music. But if you want to have something more, then it is just work, work and work to get that. There is no other way. But it gets easier when you repeat the song process so that is a big plus. You could try to make that process to suit your own style?

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#4

So much work. Ive recognized and appreciate how further I’ve gotten in my development after this work, sure.

But it sure as hell ain’t jammin.

#5

Agree, set a goal (track time or structure) and don’t ditch the song until you hit your target and you run out of ways to make it better. Try to be organised and clean as you work so when you inevitably figure out a way to make it better, you can revisit the arrangement further down the line. I’m pretty bad for messy projects in Ableton but trying to improve…

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#6

Moments of inspiration are fun and easy. Sometimes you get lucky and finish the idea quickly. But for the most part, a satisfying finished track is just work and takes time. I make my living as a musician, but electronic music is my hobby and I love it. I also have a ton of jams in various states of completion. I typically set aside some time to load up all those random jams and listen for an opportunity to develop it further. If I can’t think of anything, I load up the next one and listen… I also try to be cool with the thought that some are just never gonna get finished.

Good luck!

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#7

I do understand that part of your issue is a lack of time (in one go), nevertheless on the topic of how „to get back to it“ try this:

Next time you sit down at your laptop, pick one of those half-finished ideas - ideally for the first few times one you don‘t rate so much - and use your two hours to FINISH IT with what‘s there, i.e. it should have a beginning a middle and an end, transitions between the parts that you can live with and enough instrumentation to be considered music :slight_smile:

What‘s important here is that you set the target for yourself to finish it in the time you give yourself for it and then label it as such when you are through your time slot - no matter what.

It doesn‘t matter if you hate your result at the end, wrap it up and store it in the „FINISHED“ folder :slight_smile: if you keep doing this, you will improve in finishing and you will learn the bits that you are currently lacking/unconsciously dodging that are needed to go from a sketch up/idea to a full track. Plus, you will build the confidence that you CAN finish.

Good luck!

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#8

Hand off the fragments to one of us to remix and add to and we’ll send them back to you for proper finishing.

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#9

Stop procrastination!
Great advices in that book :

Music Habits
The mental game of electronic music production
Finish songs fast, beat procrastination,
and find your creative flow

By Jason Ward

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#10

Time

Not enough time for music? Bullsh*t!

This has been a long time coming and it’s time we had a one on one sit down.
I’ve been spending years telling people how they can make some serious strides in their music making. While many feel that initial boost of energy and motivation, a large percentage start telling me why they can’t do it. Since whatever you say to yourself and others ends up being the truth in your reality, it seems extremely counterproductive to allow anything but thoughts of what is possible into your mind.
Your excuses are largely laziness. This is not to say that you are a lazy person in general, as many of you have very busy lives. Where laziness comes into play is in changing your routine and better managing your time for your creative endeavors. Let me explain.
Your brain is usually running on autopilot. 90% of the things you do today are things you did yesterday, and the day before. This of course includes breathing and heartbeat, but also includes very deeply ingrained habits. Your brain relies on these autopilot habits to conserve energy. Any type of new challenges that require a new set of thinking skills is going to be rejected pretty fast to free up energy resources.

Your big excuse: not enough time
Well, of course you don’t have any time. You have a busy life and you are spending all your music making time doing one or more of the following:
Reading about making music
Watching tutorials about making music
Listening to music instead of making it
Staring at your computer screen
Listening to an unfinished idea on eternal loop, but not engaging further
Making more unfinished loops because it’s the only song writing skill you have mastered
Succumbing to anything that makes for a good distraction
These are some of the things you do, and then complain that you put a ton of time into your craft and get nothing out of it. Duh!
You have plenty of time, what you don’t have is the willpower to get off autopilot and start using your brain properly.

Making time
Yes, I know, there are only 24 hours in a day. I totally get this. Here’s the thing, whose life is it? If it’s not yours to control, then whose? You need to take that power back. I’m not saying neglect your family or your job. I am only asking you to evaluate your non-essential time.
How much time do you really spend on the following?
Email
Facebook/twitter/G+/Instagram/Pinterest
Your mobile phone
Television
I’m going to bet that if you were to take a notebook and for a couple days write down every time you stop doing one thing and start another, you would be shocked how much time is wasted. It’s pretty easy to do. Part of your list might look like this:
9 am wake up
9:20 get out of bed, go to restroom
9:25 drink a glass of water
9:26 check email
9:40 check Facebook
10:30 answer phone
11:05 eat
11:35 check email
11:44 check Facebook
12 noon - check today’s To Do list
And so forth…
Your day might be drastically different, but this information could be life altering.

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#11

I’ve been there, every time I was making music it was completely new jamm and grove.
It changed when I bought RYTM - I thought that I need to finish some tracks to justify this expense :wink:

I choose some best parts from my library and started working. And there is a lot of fun in the process but working on arrangements and mixing it’s sometimes closer to work. I ended up with 5 tracks finished in the first half of the year and few more in progress.

To comfort you after finishing a few tracks your habits will probably change.

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#12

Tremendous responses from all!

I was thinking about this some more when out walking the dog yesterday and I reckon 4 or 5 years + ago I was probably averaging 3 or 4 times the amount of time on music stuff than I am now. Writing tunes is like playing an instrument. The more you do it, the more you excel at it so it’s only natural that I’m finding it tougher in that department.

So while things in my life have grown (promotion meaning more work hours, a dog to walk twice a day, kids and their football/drum lessons, etc, etc (EDIT - I make this stuff sound like a chore, it isn’t!)) there are a few things I can change immediately. Not watching Netflix for two hours every night with the missus being one of them! To be honest, with the amount of reality TV she is obsessed with she’d probably love for an extra evening or two a week to catch up!

I do like this suggestion though! Be pretty cool if there was somewhere that anyone could share half baked ideas for remixing/sample fodder. I also had a thought once of doing an X minute long medley of, say, 7 or 8 of my favourite “ideas” and letting you guys decide which I should focus on and to not do anything else until it was finished!

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#13

Dropbox or google drive work well enough for this!

Cool idea, a few folk on here have threads where they put up sketches and get feedback, maybe start one of those?

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#14

I just need to get the finger out I guess :joy:

Could actually do with rearranging and tidying my project drive anyway. Needing some serious maintenance. Especially the Maschine projects I have.

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#15

I have a lot of unfinished scetches as well and no satisfiing finished composition yet. But for myself I found out that when I am forcing myself on finishing a track I get bored listening to the same thing again and again. It works better to leave the Sketch alone for a while and listen later - days or even many months later - with fresh ears. Still I want to come up with finished compositions at the end. To do so I need a concept, a definion, what “finished” form. For me that Definition is at the moment: bringing my recordings in a Form that I enjoy lo listen to -with no need to sell it or to be entertaining for other people.

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#16

Actually i´m thinking about changing the way i make music a bit. I have the same problem, never “finish” a track (or rarely).
I have a good opportunity to work with muting/unmuting sounds/tracks through my setup, so i am on the verge of trying out a few sessions where i just jam away merrily and hopefully i can multitrack record everything, to work out the kinks afterwards. Perhaps do a few takes and then save the best one.

This way all i have to do is think about how i want the track to sound and be ready to mute/unmute at the right moments. It would be possible to create “finished” tracks out of a funky loop.
Also i need to work out how to twiddle as many parameters as possible at the same time. Or maybe i twiddle different ones each take and then use the modulated “stems”.
Haven´t really thought it out 100% yet but i will give it a try.

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#17

I dunno if this is the same, but for me, the problem is usually that if you spend too much time listening to what you HAVE done you start to get really attached to it and then everything you do sounds like it doesn’t fit, or makes it worse. But basically what’s there isn’t a tune yet, So it is WORTHLESS and you MUST DESTROY IT. So that you can make it in to an entire tune… Just reminding myself of this has helped me start finishing things a bit more often.

:wink:

in the same vein as mbang above, a good starting point is to arrange what you have out to song length with parts coming in and out, so you can see what’s missing - whether you do that live or by copying an arrangement of a tune you like, it’s much easier to hear what’s left to do when it’s song length.

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#18

Yeah, i totally get what you mean.
The more i work with a track, the more i f**k it up. Usually when i work really fast the end result is better. Sometimes i have a kickass groove going and wake up the next day just to find that it´s not so good when i try to drag it out into a full track - like, when i break down the groove and then build it up again into the track it really loses momentum.
What to do?
I think i´ll start from the other end - get the groove going instantly from the start of the track, perhaps only mute hihats and rides n´ sh*t and drop them in after a brief intro or something. Then i have to figure out how to build the rest of the track with all the good elements already revealed.
What would YOU guys do?

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#19

I can’t contribute anything meaningful for lack of time (and ideas) right now apart from this: this discussion is as old as affordable music gear and yet, it always ends up being sort of sterile. Not here though, already good experience shared, and I already bookmarked the thread.
Boy, do I love this forum :heart_eyes:

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#20

I think with experience comes craft, but how do you get experience if you never finish anything…

I think it is personal for everybody how to approach this and that is what the outcomes make more interesting. I have this but when I feel the vibe and set my mind/ time to finish the darn thing I can get some nice results. truth is no track is ever really finished as it is all flexible as … loop manipulating gets boring with too much repetition.

U could try to divide the segments for some more structure.

so 20 minutes brainstorm, 40 minutes structuring and then 1 hour finishing the track topping off the cherrys on the cake and leave mastering for another day.

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