How To Get Back Into A Song

The Lounge General Discussion
#21

Stop jamming. Start working.

Make deadlines. If all you have is 2 hrs a week, well-add it up. If it takes 20 hours to finish a track, that’s 10 weeks. Mark it on your calendar. Make to-do lists. Get it done. Sick of the track? Don’t start another one - go outside, read a book, play with your pets/kids/S.O.

There are no shortcuts. As hobbyist, realize that you are only competing with yourself. No better place to be, as you’ll always finish first. If you finish.

Also, try not to be a d*ck to people around you. That way they will respect your 2 hours a week, and really give you space.

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#22

What seems like ages ago, those of us on The Gas Station over @ Sonicstate, used to swap tracks and do remixes for one another. This peaked in the late 90s to early 2000s before their forum sort of collapsed. Anyway, it was a fantastic way to get a different take on different musical styles and influences from around the world. Public file sharing, outside of private FTP servers, wasn’t really a thing yet so we’d email each other mp3 tracks and convert to WAVs in the worst case scenario. We were able to make it work and the results were eye opening and humbling.

When it comes down to it, we can make this as simple or as difficult as we wish. It is simply whether or not the will to do it exists. I am interested in taking a bash at this. PM me if any of you are looking to do something along these lines.

#23

My technique for chipping away at songs is first to keep an old-school paper notebook with song sections, where I write things in log form for each song- So for instance if I write some more lyrics or change the pattern order I just append the info to the bottom of the log, then cross out outdated items in the log. The OG paper approach keeps “context change” to a minimum, so I don’t just spend 30 minutes first figuring out where I left off the night before looking at notes on my laptop.

Next, I break songwriting into the following steps:

  1. Initial starting pattern(s)
  2. Counterpoint (i.e. differing patterns that work well together)
  3. Lyrical hook (a couple of phrase ideas that work over the pattern)
  4. Arrangement (I have patterns for verse, prechorus, chorus, bridge)
  5. Dynamics (I have the arrangement but also have worked out how the song builds up and tension is distributed and have created subtypes of each pattern that takes tension into account in different parts of the song.)
  6. Final drums
  7. Full lyrics written
  8. Additional Instruments/vocals recorded
  9. Mixing

With this list, I can then spend my 2 hours at night getting a song only from a single step to the next step, a much less daunting task. Also, I make sure that I have songs spread across different stages of completion, so I don’t feel like I’m “stuck” on a certain part of the process and can work on whatever step I feel like I’m in the mood for. Additionally, having these small steps broken out makes it possible to switch between active songs very frequently (often daily) which allows you to listen to your songs with “fresh ears” frequently.

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#24

The hard part for me is when I’ve already invested a ton of time in a song, beyond my imposed deadline, but I kinda, sorta like how it’s turning out. What do I do then? Do I “kill my darling” or just say “damn the deadline, I’m finishing this song”?

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#25

I mean, if you ditch it then the hours are lost anyway so you might as well finish it if you think it has potential! Really like your methodical approach by the way, going to steal at least part of it.

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#26

Pre kids, wife, own business I worked on finishing songs. Now I just enjoy the opportunity to self entertain myself, it’s my therapy.

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#27

Thanks for sharing, much appreciated. I had considered using a notebook and you’ve kind of enlightened me to how to do it well!

Without meaning for this to branch out and grow arms and legs I write the kind of music that would suit lyrics (I’m an indie guy at heart) but I am just 100% dog shit at writing them! Never been good at that stuff. So I think I am often guilty and spending too long on a pattern and over layer it with things to compensate for that lack of vocal part that. I know is inevitable cause I can’t write lyrics! If only I could perfect the Sigur Ros approach to vocals…! That makes me wonder - is there anywhere on the net that folk share lyrics?! ie. they can’t do the music side of things so just write the words?!

Anyway, thanks again - going to try adopting your approach next time I sit down. Get myself a nice notebook and then can get cracking.

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#28

I suffer from mental blocks and ‘the wall’ frequently. 100’s of unfinished 2-3 min pieces, some of which could be release material (and occasionally some have been released). I can add a few things I’ve learnt over the years:

1.) Walk away from it when you get ear fatigue - don’t force things if you’re not in the right frame of mind, just keep it ‘fun’.
2.) Try copying - verbatim - a favourite track. Just drag an mp3 into your DAW and analyse the bits you like - you’ll learn how to arrive at a similar sound and the process might lead you down different paths.
3.) This is a good one (for me): dig out an old ghetto blaster or cheap set of speakers - connect this to an aux out of your mixer and flick to listening on this. You could even try positioning it away from your desk (imagine the track is playing on the radio in an ambient/background kind of way). Sounds crazy - but you get a different perspective and notice stuff that might not be sitting right in the mix. It’s good to sketch out the main arrangement when listening on these speakers, then jump back to the studio monitors when you want to get into the detail.
4.) If you DJ or know somebody that does, construct your better tracks into a rough workable 4 minute dub and play it out - you’ll definitely get a buzz and instantly hear what’s working.
5.) Extract all the wavs from your unfinished song audio folders and gather into a library - the best bits can form the basis for your own signature sound collection and the process will give you clarity about how you’ve been working.
6.) Have days when you strictly do not create songs - just create patterns, patches and record long sections of live tweaking. Come back to this another day and pilfer the best bits.
7.) Group all your sections on your DAW (or mixer with sub groups). Group drums, percussion, synths, fx, vox separately and try soloing each - sample sections off and process them to give you a different take and ideas for arranging. Loads of artists self-sample in this way.

Hope some of that helps!

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#29

LOL lyrics are the worst. But then when I actually look at the lyrics for all my favorite songs from other artists those also seem super cringey to me, it’s just that those other artists somehow manage to sing them with such conviction nobody notices how dumb they are :slight_smile:

Right now, my approach to lyrics is simply to grind them out by putting in the hours: Force myself to stare at an unfinished page of lyrics for hours until I figure out how to make them better. Hopefully, the process will get faster over time.

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#30

Yes, but does it really “mean anything” if you don’t somehow drag some finished songs out into the streets, where any random person can poke at them with a stick?

#31

In that case, get it right. But don’t whine about never finishing anything! lol

#32

That depends on how one would define “mean anything”. I work hard to enjoy a nightly jam session, means a ton to me.

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#33

I’d love to chime in with some words of advice, but I’m pretty much in the same boat as far as creating a structured song goes, perhaps less advanced than yourself - I never do any type of recording/mp3s etc to listen back to, maybe eventually when I’m settled.

Maybe if you take your shitist song and just say to yourself right let’s structure it like a record and commit to MP3, but try go the whole way from intro to outro

#34

Maybe this doesn’t just work for jazz, so take what you have as the exposition, then:
Play it in different ranges.
Use imitation.
Use Stretto.
Use retro inversion.
Change the pace.
Use Diminution and augmentation.
Throw in some syncopation.
Sloppy transitions…

The list goes on. Basically, plagiarise yourself.
At the end you have 10 minuets of cacophonous shrilling that you can summarise in 4 minuets.

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#35

It takes discipline. It’s not easy to step outside yourself and listen to your song with the ears of another. There’s a phrase writers use - “kill your babies” - meaning you’ll have to cut some of your favourite bits because they work in isolation but don’t serve the song. Sometimes the baby you have to kill is the very idea that started the song in the first place, which can be counter-intuitive, but the song has outgrown its origins. Other times the baby you have to kill is a bunch of stuff that has grown around the original idea, stuff that sounds OK but doesn’t really elevate it. In which case you need to strip it back and start again.
Killing our babies is hard, which is one of the advantages of being in a band. It’s easier to distinguish the necessary and unnecessary in someone else’s work.

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#36

I also think it helps to have a good understanding of your own moods. There’s a mood in which I’m not feeling very creative, but I’ll spend that time exploring niches of the machine, improving my technical knowledge for future use, or designing sounds. There’s a mod where I really feel like playing a physical instrument, so I’ll record bass or shaker or melodica or whatever. There’s a somewhat anxious “shit I have to finish a song!” mood, where I have the necessary urgency to kill my babies, edit and progress the song without looking back too much. And rarest and most precious, the truly inspired mood, where words are tumbling out, and I can improvise vocal takes for any number of tracks. They’ll need heavy editing later, but the raw material is now there, the hardest part is done. If I’m in that mood, I have to make sure I use it, because it only comes a few times a year for me.
Know your moods. :slight_smile:

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#37

Last one, I promise: You’ll never finish a song unless you have to. Impose a deadline. Make it accountable to some outside entity; promise someone a song, or book a gig. As the day edges closer, you’ll feel the necessary anxiety, the urgency you need to stop dawdling and really work. You’ll take stock of your output so far, the product of hundreds of hours of noodling. You’ll realise you have a carefully-hoarded pile of trash, and panic. Then you’ll make something a lot better out of it. :slight_smile:

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