just so happens this was posted today and has some good insights on the topic
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Why not make a workflow to a project where you don’t need to finish any track? I just mix my loops and slowly add components to the groove. No need to dive in my computer, no need to create tracks, or go any unnatural road for me.
Just make loops, mix them and slowly add a brick a day, to slowly build a house.
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This ^
If you have loops, you have songs. Introduce your elements every eight bars, open a filter or two at the climax, remove the drums and some other elements, wait for a few bars, bring it all back in and slowly fade out or do whatever you like at the end.
It won’t be perfect but it will you give you an idea how to make it a song. If your first song is 1:30 that’s totally fine and approriate.
And the most important thing: Kill your babies.
If you have a good idea but don’t know how to make a perfect track with it, make an imperfect track and move on, you will learn so much along the way!
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Techno Formula
- Make loop
- Mute drums
- Snare role
- Unmute drums
- Repeat
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Come on man it’s way more than that…you forgot add stabs.
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This is me as well. Not a single thing. Lots of great sketches but nothing complete. I’ve been focused on live performance for the last 3 years. COVID screwed my first show and haven’t had anything since. It will change though.
There is a commitment to release something this year thread:
I signed up last year but didn’t get anything. This year’s the year though. It can be yours as well!!
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I’ve never finished a hardware track either. Been making music for 15+ years myself. I have written many songs on guitar and in a DAW, which is most comfortable for me, but can’t seem to finish anything pattern based. I love sequencing and coming up with ideas with Elektron gear but it’s always quick ideas, unless I get them into Ableton, they always stay a single pattern or two. So I get where you are coming from completely!
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You know what gang, this is actually a support group. I say get back in there, wrap up the first song you come across, and post it here, even if it’s a loop. Then another. We’ll push each other and celebrate each other’s accomplishments.
I posted this elsewhere, but reading this thread made me push myself to wrap this up. Its from 2020, and I have no idea how I got the synthetic sounds, nor why I labeled it Anniversary, but it’s done. 1 down, 432 to go.
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Primal Scream sampled themselves and ended up with one of the biggest hits of the 90s 
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I’m a serial track starter with tons of 30-60 second snippets. I seem to enjoy that mode of
operation, but it brings no end product.
I don’t have much interest (or free time) to polish things and end up with a track that anyone wants to hear. I’m ok with that, but have always wanted to make some sort of mixtape comprised of bits and pieces of my snippets.
Maybe that will happen.
Maybe not….
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…one of my FINISHED songs is called “looptrap”…
but it’s not about loops in music at all…it’s about loops in life…
while stuck and lost in a music loop can be as awful as stuck and lost in a loop in life…
at least sometimes, i guess and can imagine…
but hey, in that specific example, i wrote the chorus line also ten years before it finally ended up in a song… 
so, there’s still hope and all good, if u, even after all those lost years, still feel the lust for finally finding a way out of the looptrap…
focussing on one gadget is a good first step for a turnaround…
be aware of the SONG EDITOR in ur mpc…
that’s the place to go if u want to see ur loops finally crossing some finishline, finally start making sense in some bigger picture…
aaaaaaand if it’s still not happening, even after another year, start to consider, all this might be not for u…and move on in life…
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May I suggest a subtle reformulation of your objective: every day for thirty days, sit 30 mins in front of your gear and write something. Once you’ve come across a good idea, stick to it and try to finish it into a song. 30 days to do all this, not 9 months. Not producing, only writing and recording.
If you’re stuck in the process, find here below a few decent book references to accompany you during your journey:
- Making Music, Dennis Desantis
- The Process for Electronic Music Production, Jason Timothy
- The Organized Songwriter, Simon Hawkins
- The Ultimate Guide to Programming Drums, Chris Nothdurfter
- Music Habits, Jason Timothy
- Creative Synthesizer Technique, Adam Holzman
Also, if you don’t have any favorite sounds list yet, it’s time to set it up before writing any songs because sound design / finding sounds and songwriting are not entirely compatible activities: both require their dedicated time and one may break the flow of the other. The great thing about songwriting is that it will force you (to get) to know the gear you already have.
EDIT: all the tips in this post are from those books, the only original thing being myself being able to confirm to you that they do work 
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Venus Theory did a good video on this, this week.
Art is never completed only abandoned.
I pretty much never go back to stuff so I just put it on SoundCloud as soon as I get bored of it. Most of my tracks are 1-2 minutes but that doesn’t bother me.
I recommend you start doing the mission brief challenges. The expectation is usually only for 1 or 2 minutes of rough and ready music and you have a time box to motivate you.
It’s done a huge amount for my production skills.
Edit: another thing that springs to mind is that I don’t have the skills to make a 6 minute track that isn’t super boring. If that was my mission I could wait a hundred years and never complete anything. I shared some loops then some 1 minute jams, now I can make 2 or 3 minute tracks. One day I will get there but it’s a journey that can’t be made in one step.
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Concur on both
- reading to discover others approaches, known obstacles and how to unblock them
- figuring out the best way to improve flow, including, amongst others, splitting sound design and writing so writing flow is not interrupted by sound design (or preset selection) an vice versa.
There’s a free book from Ableton called “Making Music (74 creative strategies)” by Dennis DeSantis, that I found particularly useful.
Free pdf version of the book - https://cdn-resources.ableton.com/resources/uploads/makingmusic/MakingMusic_DennisDeSantis.pdf
A selection of chapters online - https://makingmusic.ableton.com/
I finish stuff all the time. I just don’t know it’s finished yet. Lol. I have yet to really compose something from my imagination. I have songs but just haven’t brought them out of me. But I can say I am pretty close to being the most comfortable with using the OT I’ve ever been.
So I would encourage you to do that. Stick with just one main piece. I’m glad I did. I can improvise remixes of a song I load in or of one of my random recordings. It’s getting pretty fluid.
Have you read my list of book references ?
Haha, I did scan your list for that book and totally missed it 
. Thought it was worth highlighting that one that I found useful however (versus another that I found too narrow in approach)
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like others have mentioned, the battles in mission briefs are great for focusing efforts. jamuary works the same way, acting as a forcing factor to motivate folks to produce something. i don’t have the same problem as you, mostly because i don’t assume any of my music is perfect or good. it’s fun to make. i learn as i go. try to build a practice of practice, a routine, and it’ll get easier. i found it got way easier to churn out tracks after doing two things:
- practicing every day or at least frequently
- focusing on shorter song lengths, like 2-3 minutes, and song structure
just having a basic plan for a track’s structure, even if you don’t know what it is or where it’s going yet, is a huge productivity boost.
it is always worth highlighting, it is a very handy reference 
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I have no recommendations, just validation of the original poster’s experience and the general vibe of this thread. My experience has been an inverse relationship between the hardware I own and the songs I compose. Nearly everything I have ever done to “completion” has been done in Logic. Like others here have noted, nearly all that I have done on my groove boxes and standalone synths, have stayed there, either as snippets or presets. I don’t seem to know how to bridge the gap between creating something interesting in a hardware box (which I think I have done) and getting it into an overall composition or “song.” I did do that regularly in Logic before expanding my hardware gear during the pandemic.
I don’t regret buying the hardware, although much of it is redundant, and I do from time to time contemplate downsizing as others do here, so I can get back to focusing on making music with my main controller, and maybe just 2-3 synths, instead of constantly jumping back and forth between boxes to re-learn how to use them. I probably won’t do that though, because I also like all my choices. I’m a mess! Kidding. I am grateful to be able to have so much fun with too many choices, even if they are ends in themselves, and not so much means to an end (songs).
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