I think this is really good advice for the kind of music you want to make: New Wave/Post Punk. If you listen to almost any 80s track, you will notice how few changes there are made concerning the specific elements. The drum pattern usually stays the same with maybe some fills. All synth melodies mostly stay the same throughout the song/a part. No noodling and knob twisting whatsoever. All of that came with more club oriented electronic music that was less focused on tracks.
But the music still works and is great. Why is that? Because it’s still rock music at heart that follows a classic structure. Or if there’s no discernible movement/change in the structure, all of the basic elements that are there are just pretty strong and you barely get tired of hearing them. And sometimes there subtle changes you barely recognize that keep things interesting. Lastly, the best songs/albums have interesting themes and atmosphere, transported through vocals or some samples.
That being said, I think a lot of 80s New Wave also sounds a bit too stale and repetitive nowadays imo. I feel that’s because their attraction was that the sounds and instruments were quite new at the time and they‘re also made to work fine as dance tracks too. But nowadays we have absurdly well produced dance music and are used to a variety of electronic sounds and sampling, so these elements alone don’t carry a track for 6 to 8 minutes.
However, the genre just has a great vibe that’s timeless and there are a few middle of the road solutions that you can apply to your songs. At least that’s the conclusion I drew for my music: 80s New Wave/Post Punk stuff seems to flow out of me as default, but I find a lot of music from the tim underwhelming and actually don’t know too much of the canon.
- When recording a part with hardware, choose 1-3 parameters that you manipulate throughout the recording. It could be subtle changes like playing a bit with oscillator shape or LFO movements, but also more drastic changes like opening the filter - depends on how big you want the impact for the element to be on the structure. Think of it as „what could I realistically do live“, that will limit you from doing too much. But if you’re doing that just to one element at s time while recording, you end up with a lot of variation without it sounding overwhelming or too produced. More like a band where each member plays one instrument and plays with that instrument‘s knobs, in tune with the other members.
- After you jammed on something, let it sit a bit. See if there’s any melodies stuck in your head. If you find yourself with some sort of earworm, chances are people can also listen to that for a long time without being bored. Or watch for other moments that make you feel excited when listening back. Double down on these and maybe remove stuff to let them shine. Also when producing, maybe try to cut everything down drastically to make the track shorter and see whether it makes the track more focused and lets the element shine more. Or whether you feel like that should have gone on for a bit longer to get into the groove. I think this is also something where advice from people who generally like your kind of music can help, they will tell you that it’s good but maybe a bit too long/ending too abruptly.
- Look for themes that fit the music or can give it direction. Could be lyrics/vocals, but also field recordings or speech samples. These elements can also inspire each other. For example, I had a speech sample give me the inspiration for lyrics and title. You could also think about possible colors you feel like your music sounds. Or think of art that could go along with the music.
These are just some conclusions I have drawn for myself and they‘ve worked quite well. Bare in mind I have only finished five tracks so far, so I basically don’t know anything other than how I managed to do that.
I think another thing is to take a step back and see if finishing stuff is really what you want to do. It sounds like that’s important for you but also destroying you a bit. Finishing stuff is not that much fun, at least for me. And you start to hate your stuff. But that’s part of the process I think, you should just be clear that this is what you want to focus on for now. Because it’s also totally fine to just noodle and have fun, collect loads of interesting loops and call it a day. We tend to pressure ourselves into having to produce something finished and that’s also a bit expected if you tell people you’re making music. But it’s also totally valid to just jam and zone out. There’s a good thread on the here by @Wolf-Rami where this is discussed at length. It helped me decide that I have to finish stuff, because it was my own choice and not something I sorta defaulted to.