Stuck in loops

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#41

I am currently reading Mark Fell’s recent publication “Structure and synthesis: The anatomy of practice” that resonates very much with this perspective:

“I want to challenge a description of artistic practice that sees it as starting in the artist’s mind, and defines success or failure as one’s ability to more or less adequately express the contents of one’s mind. A process ‘limited only by your imagination’ - the main problem with this slogan is exactly what it says: yes, activity is limited by imagination because imagination is limited. Something outside imagination is needed in order to arrive at what was previously ‘unimaginable’.” (p. 21)

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#42

Hehe I was just going to share this link after reading your previous message. I like his approach to this topic and generally agreee.

I got the book but not yet started reading it…

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#43

Use the tools that help you get the job done.
Know how to use those tools.

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#44

I know most of what I have really well. Have gotten rid of about 75% of what I had to eliminate gear paralysis. Probably will shed more. It’s the inability to get out what’s in my head. It makes no sense.

#45

Can you speak more to the difference in translation?

#46

Let’s say I have a cool percussion sequence I wanna slide into a copy of a loop, you know, you create variance, a little something interesting. I wanna do it just so, not by tweaking shit till I hear something that’s kinda what I want.

So I starting disassembling the initial loop to add the bit I want in. Can’t get/find the sounds I want. Can’t get what I want to happen right while trying to program it. Lose interest in frustration. Play the loop, jam it a little tweaking stuff while recording, turn off box not saving the loop, again in frustration.

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#47

So you have two rhythms you would like to synthetize together, but you can’t digest and incorporate them as smoothly / musically as they play in your head?

Is it something you could ever (re)create from scratch if you say, beatbox into a mic and find the right samples or source?

Obviously this is hard and frustrating and I don’t have any easy fixes but these sorts of problems can be fairly universal, so I enjoy talking about the problems I have with this as well :slight_smile:

#48

I’ve got the beat, while listening I hear some stuff I’d like to incorporate into it to make an interesting variation. But I just can’t. Like it’s too complex to figure out. I’ll find an example of something I’ve heard in some other music and post later.

I just don’t know how program it. Futz around and then lose the vibe. I totally get when musicians say you gotta get it out quick while the idea is fresh. Listening to other bands talking about taking days upon days to werk on a track…I dunno how they they do it. Meanwhile I hear of bands doing an entire album in two days, almost from scratch.

Anyways. I’d just like to go deeper than a loop, and finish a track for once. A track that’s more than a loop for 3min twiddling with settings.

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#49

When I have rhythms in my head and can’t lay them down in a sequencer, I try different tempos – sometimes slower, other times faster – and I’ve had pretty good results. I can’t say that it always works, but it’s a strategy.

Recently I’ve been really interested in the shuffling rhythms of two step/UK garage and I get kinda lost in the sauce with swing and “skipping” ghost hits, etc. I’ve never made garage before. Changing my tempo sometimes helps me find what I’m trying to put down. I should try this beatboxing technique too. I’m not a big beatboxer (beatboxist?), but I can see how vocalizing the rhythm might be quicker to translate from my brain than my fingers in trig buttons! That’s a good tip

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#50

Phaelam, I think it’s a mix of mastering your gear, and accepting that you will get close, but never 100% exactly like what it’s like in your head. But as you get better, it will get closer. Sometimes, the part that’s lost in translation might not even be something you know is missing. For example, with drums I always imagined my drums in a certain way, and would tweak microtimings endlessly and be frustrated. At the time, I didn’t know how to correctly use a compressor, how they worked, and they had such a big effect on how we perceive the timing of the music. Somehow I stumbled onto experimenting with compression and learning it correctly, and it made the difference I didn’t know I needed. So keep experimenting, practicing, learning. You will get better! Those frustrating sessions are not time lost, they are valuable. You don’t always have to create an awesome piece of finished music to have a productive session with your gear.

And I definitely agree with vocalizing, that’s something drummers do too and its super helpful. Make voice recordings on your phone to help remember your ideas. To take it one step further, if you have Ableton, you can beatbox and turn it into midi and go from there. It can be a fun technique and lead to cool results.

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#51

It’s too fast to beat box :grimacing:

#52

Record all of these sessions. You can sample and edit or mangle them later. This way you build up a library of building blocks that are your’s.

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#53

I “do” record it before I delete the sequence. I literally have thousands of loops starting back in 1999.

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#54

In a not too dissimilar place, I’m going to start timeboxing myself, I’m going to start watching Beat the Clock attempts and perform similar DRASTIC reductions in time and work on my intuition/confidence, and with the built up trust, start seeing about moving up to 45 minutes max.

I’ve always been a deep dive and attention to details nobody notices sort of person (looooove more photorealistic oils and pointillism, theater costuming with thousands of hand cut flowers) but while I love the manual hands-onnery, it becomes difficult to share time-based media like music or video.

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#55

I’ve been checking in on this thread because I relate to a lot of the discussion. I too have folders upon folders of unfinished loops/ideas and struggle to turn it into “finished” material.

It feels like the goalposts keep moving in terms of what that “finished” material even means. When I was growing up, the answer was clear — an album. Artists made albums, and that’s how you connected with them. You bought their CD and it was a big deal because maybe you hadn’t heard from them in years.

Now there are so many more ways to connect to an audience, and I’m not sure which ones really interest me or what to think of them. Do I still aim to make an album and put it on Bandcamp? What about the other streaming platforms? Should I stick to one-off tracks? Do I need to incorporate video somehow? Do I need to make a Tik Tok account?!

I know this is mostly aimless handwringing, and in my day to day I mainly just focus on continuing to make music and let those strange questions sort themselves out. The most important thing is the music, after all.

But I’m still not really “finishing” things, so I still think a lot about this stuff. I’m sure the answer is for me to just keep my ass in my chair and focus on a single song/project for longer than I usually do, but… I still don’t want to make a Tik Tok account.

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#56

Amazing! What a resource! (and also, I get the tone of frustration you’re putting out, too)

I’m struggling to even start tunes at the moment. I’ve had phases of being more productive so I know I can do it. I’ve always struggled with arrangement and finishing tracks. Some other tactics come to mind:

  • plan out at track before you work on it. Write it out, without listening to it. “section A, section B, section A again, some part I don’t have yet, section B twice…”. Then do the work. Then leave it for a bit. Then review.
  • a less strict version of the previous idea is to loosely sketch out the journey (e.g. “this is the intro to a film, it can only be 1min long”) and using a DAW, or mutes and jamming, jam the arrangement, or move blocks of tracks around on the screen, almost collage-like, 'til you’ve met the brief. (e.g.2: If it’s a “12” mix for a club", turn the volume up, give yourself space to dance around and follow your mood.)
  • find a musical partner (or a band) and trade ideas. I used to make loops for my band. They’d take my grooves and turn them into songs. It was magical.

Reprising what I wrote elsewhere on the forum, and what I tell myself and my kid a lot: making art is a constant swing between expansive, criticism-free creation and contractive, critical editing. Back and forth, back and forth, 'til it’s done. Whatever “done” means. Aim to work in only one direction (create or edit) in any one session.

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#57

I don’t think it matters whether you make a loop, a single, an EP, an album, a concept album, a film score… Make what you feel like making! If you make a series of tracks that you feel should be listened to together, then maybe an album/EP makes sense. If you made a one-off thing and you feel like the track stands well on its own, cool, release a single, or maybe you make dance music and the audience is DJs, who don’t typically consume albums for finding their dancefloor tools.

I’m totally with you on my wanting to make a TikTok account. I can’t stand that shit.

I find myself stuck in loops and not finishing full tracks pretty often, and I’m thinking of turning this into a positive. Maybe I’ll grab all those loops and stitch them together into a big mashup set kind of thing. Is it a song? Probably not. An album? Maybe not that either, but hey, it would be a piece of music I created, and I think that’s something.

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#58

I hear that. My buddy would give me shit for tripping out over a micro change in a sequence. Kept telling me to just listen to the music and stop focusing on all the little details. But I can’t help it. I love that shit.

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#59

I can totally relate to this. I’ve found that the times I’ve been able to overcome this happen once you learn your instrument enough to move beyond programming and into playing. This is easier on some machines than others. The SH-101, for example is all right in front of you. It’s so fast to move from a plucky lead to some fat PWM bass. All the sliders are staring you right in the face.

Other machines, like the Octatrack, are amazingly powerful, but can require more planning and button pushes to get where you want to go. I think the key is to be super organized and intentional. Lay your foundation and then paratice, practice, practice. Back up and save project alternatives if you’re scared you’ll mess up your work. You can certainly get to that point of effortless groove with the OT, but it is maybe a little harder to get there.

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#60

Or just press a whole record of locked grooves :wink:

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