How to finish tracks? The story of my (music-making) life...

[antic604]

I stumbled on an interesting blog-post that perfectly describes the struggle I've been having for the last 16+ years, i.e. getting stuck with a perfectly produced, great sounding ...loop; that I can't make the song of off. Might be interesting to others as well:

 

https://quantizecourses.com/2016/07/how-to-finish-tracks/

[thanosp81]

I stumbled on an interesting blog-post that perfectly describes the struggle I've been having for the last 16+ years, i.e. getting stuck with a perfectly produced, great sounding ...loop; that I can't make the song of off. Might be interesting to others as well:

 

https://quantizecourses.com/2016/07/how-to-finish-tracks/

As cosmosis had once said, this is one of the most difficult tasks of music making. Everyone can hum a melody, making something out of it though is something completely different and it takes a lot of concentration and discipline.

What he suggested in simple terms was to do an exercise. You have a loop rdy? It doesn't matter whether it's good or not. Work only on that loop, nothing else, until you get a complete track. It doesn't matter if it's total crap. The important thing is to have structure and duration. After 3 or 4 completed tracks you will find the whole process easier.

 

That's what he said.  

[recursion loop]

Thanks for the link!

 

But I have the exactly opposite problem - for me it's relatively easy to write a full track haivng an intro, build up, climax and stuff but polishing the sounds and the mix, making a proper bass, compressing and equalizing things is a disaster. I have more or less passable understanding of the techncial side of things but when working on a tune I quickly lose the judgement on what sounds good and what sounds bad.

 

Saving song templates and short synth loops somehow helps

[antic604]

I guess my previous (Amiga times) approach worked the best for me - basically I wrote music in an order you hear it in its final form: I'd start with intro, then slowly build up other elements, then add breaks and then put climax at the end. In final stretch I'd maybe shuffle some things around, but very rarely. Each step somehow was giving me an inspiration for what needs to come next. Also, technical simplicity of writing music on Amiga allowed to quickly nail things down, so it was impossible to fiddle around with effects or patches for hours, which is incredibly distracting

 

I need to try that approach again - try to get the overall structure and arrangement of the track down and only then start fiddling with the details...

[antic604]

As cosmosis had once said, this is one of the most difficult tasks of music making. Everyone can hum a melody, making something out of it though is something completely different and it takes a lot of concentration and discipline.

What he suggested in simple terms was to do an exercise. You have a loop rdy? It doesn't matter whether it's good or not. Work only on that loop, nothing else, until you get a complete track. It doesn't matter if it's total crap. The important thing is to have structure and duration. After 3 or 4 completed tracks you will find the whole process easier.

 

That's what he said.

 

Well, Billy has the advantage of being a real, professional musician with years of experience as a session guitarist in various pop, funk & jazz bands and you can (could?) actually hear it in his music, when  he'd often describe the general musical idea he had for particular piece and how he realised it by building the rest of the track around it.

 

If you haven't already, check his thoughts in here:

https://cosmosis.bandcamp.com/album/synergy

https://cosmosis.bandcamp.com/album/contact

https://cosmosis.bandcamp.com/album/psychedelica-melodica

[Filteria]

I guess my previous (Amiga times) approach worked the best for me - basically I wrote music in an order you hear it in its final form: I'd start with intro, then slowly build up other elements, then add breaks and then put climax at the end. In final stretch I'd maybe shuffle some things around, but very rarely. Each step somehow was giving me an inspiration for what needs to come next. Also, technical simplicity of writing music on Amiga allowed to quickly nail things down, so it was impossible to fiddle around with effects or patches for hours, which is incredibly distracting

 

I need to try that approach again - try to get the overall structure and arrangement of the track down and only then start fiddling with the details...

I never (and I seriously mean never) managed to finish a tune that I started as a loop. Working with a loop that you start fiddling around with limits the creativity because you can't really let the track take YOU to places..Also hearing the same loop over and over kills the mood for me. I suggest you go back to the old way of working.. creativity first, mixing etc comes second. Leave the small details for last.

[jivamukti]

I never (and I seriously mean never) managed to finish a tune that I started as a loop. Working with a loop that you start fiddling around with limits the creativity because you can't really let the track take YOU to places..Also hearing the same loop over and over kills the mood for me. I suggest you go back to the old way of working.. creativity first, mixing etc comes second. Leave the small details for last.

My experience is that a good loop will immediately give inspiration to further material, and so help you get out of the loop. Conversely that inspiration is a convenient indication of quality.

 

I agree with mixing being a separate step of the process.

[onkelbibber]

When I started making electronic music almost 10 years ago i used Reason 3 and didn't have problems with that. Then there was a break for a few years where I started using ableton every once in a while. I struggeled using that DAW in general to that time because i never constantly used it. By that time i always had a lot of unfinished loops and never finished anything.

 

Then 4 years ago I had a lot of free time and suddenly finished one track. That was the point from where i was able to finished one track after another.

Here is how I work now:

I always start with a kick, bassline and snare loop. Then start experimenting around with synth, loops and crazy effect chains to get something nice and interesting. So I end up with maybe a 1-4 or 8 bar loop i really like. Once I have that I often create a simple intro or build up before it. This gives me the right feeling of how this loop will sound in a complete track. By having this i already have a few elements i can play with. I take these and change them to get the next few bar. What really helps then is closing your eyes and listen to what you've got so far. Imagine you are standing on the dancefloor having a lot of fun enjoying the music and dancing and now try to figure out what you would like to happen in the music in this situation. Do you want it to become stronger, more loaded with sounds or do feel that it's time to go down a bit and get more emotional or maybe it's already time for a break?

 

Of course you can change everything afterwards. i.e. on my latest project i started with a great bassline and a pretty nice drop. This part is now located in the end of the track.

 

mixing and making everything sound good is something i do on the fly. Of course when the track is almost done I start to polish things here and there, sometime for hours. changing some sounds because they are rythmically good but just don't work in the whole mix. compressing, thinking about my stereo field and so on. I do these already while working creativly bot i redo this again and again in the process and especially in the end.

[antic604]

@Onkelbibber - good advices there, thanks for sharing

[Padmapani]

What really helps then is closing your eyes and listen to what you've got so far. Imagine you are standing on the dancefloor having a lot of fun enjoying the music and dancing and now try to figure out what you would like to happen in the music in this situation. Do you want it to become stronger, more loaded with sounds or do feel that it's time to go down a bit and get more emotional or maybe it's already time for a break?

i agree, but often run into the problem that i intuitively answer the question with "more energy, more stuff" almost all of the time. appropriately i never have problems adding layers and progressinv towards higher energy parts of a track. in contrast, transitions to calmer parts are always hard work and i have to be very careful not to break the flow too much.

[antic604]

i agree, but often run into the problem that i intuitively answer the question with "more energy, more stuff" almost all of the time. appropriately i never have problems adding layers and progressinv towards higher energy parts of a track. in contrast, transitions to calmer parts are always hard work and i have to be very careful not to break the flow too much.

 

That's very true!

 

Some other stuff, that always bothered me:

- the transitions always needed to be smooth, e.g. the new parts couldn't just enter abruptly, they somehow had to be 'announced' or 'signalled' which obviously is great for flow, but at the same time undermines the energy and surprise factor of the track, not to mention it's challenging technically,

- I always somehow felt and required from myself that my next track needs to be 'better' than the last one - longer, more sounds, more complex, more emotional or weird, etc. which is destructive for a creative process, because in reality the quality of your output (and to be frank, your assessment of your work) is changing over time and even between the days, so it's practically impossible to be 'better' all the time - this results in quickly scrapping off the ideas that were good, but 'not good enough' for the track to be better,

- time - there's always to little of it, be it because of family & work commitments, or simply because people need to sleep - who ever thought this was a good idea!?!!

[recursion loop]

In fact when I stopped overthinking this I started actually finishing my tracks. Before that it was an endless recursion loop of "this is not good enough, that it not thought-out enough". My first completed psytrance track took me more than a year to finish (If I discount my another poorly mixed half-assed effort which has been finished and self-mastered  when I was dead drunk but was surprizingly liked by some people here).

 

I still don't consider myself good enough and sometimes i feel that my next track sounds worse than the one I've made right before that - this used to frustrate the hell of me but I now stopped bothering about this, it is counterproductive. 

[Padmapani]

@antic

i know all of those points very well.

 

 

Before that it was an endless recursion loop

so are you thinking about changing your artist name now that it's different?

 

i always have one "best track i've ever made" and cannot create anything that's even close. then 5-10 tracks later a new one easily pushes the last one from the #1 spot. i took me a while to realise that there will always be another track that's better than the previous one when i just keep producing

interestingly though most of those best tracks are ones that i'll start after months of making no music. maybe because there's less pressure to "compete" with the track before it?

[recursion loop]

I noted that other people often like my tracks which I consider to be nothing special and ingore the ones which I consider to be my best. So  this "I can't top myself" syndrome probably happens to anyone who makes some music but it is yet another thing which has to be just ingored. Actually it think the only way to make better tarcks is just making tracks, they will eventually become better.

 

Btw, do you post or publish your music somewhere?

so are you thinking about changing your artist name now that it's different?

Actually I am, but for other reasons.

[Padmapani]

Actually it think the only way to make better tarcks is just making tracks, they will eventually become better.

 

Btw, do you post or publish your music somewhere?

exactly.

 

no. since i got new monitors i've put off doing a proper mixdown until i've gotten used to their sound. now i tell myself that i'll do a proper mixdown of all of them at once with fresh ears to get a consistent sound, once i've got enough good tracks to actually send them somewhere. in reality i'm probably deluding myself to justify skipping the most boring part of production    . i just realised that this is strangely relevant to this thread