Judging your own tunes....

[futures_untold]

yeah man, WIP releases are great for gaining other people's feedback.

Other people have no emotional connection with a tune before they hear it, so their feedback can be highly critical (and hopefully still positive haha).

Pat

[wang]

If I don't wake up with my tune in my head or can't recall quickly recall it upon waking up the next morning, I assume it's bland, forgettable shite and delete it. I wish others would do this, too.

[FSTZ]

wa-wa-wa-wa-waaaaaang!

old wise wang

[cixxxj]

fact is we're dealing with music, and only one thing is certain about it: there's no formula or answers to such questions!! Of course every musician/producer has to question him/herself about what's been in the making. There is a point you can you're satisfied and then release. Maybe best thing is try not to stress too much about this!! Btw, nice suggestions and nice reading other people's experiences!!

[ninjadog]

Anyone else ever whip out a song or at least a kick ass pattern in a few minutes and think to your self it can't be good because I just whipped it out in a few minutes?
Or have a simple beat/bassline and think this shit is too simple I need to add some more elements, then you end up making a mess and scraping it.
Knowing all along that how long it takes to make a song is irrelevant, and simplicity get heads nodding...

[FSTZ]

IMHO... simplicity is good

[Astral]

Another problem I seem to do is keep my WIPs going on loop while im doing other things like playing BF2, constantly on ball for things I dont feel that sit right.

Problem is I guess listening to it a million times starts to cloud my judgement after a while.

[wang]

IMHO... simplicity is good

Yeah!

You can't hide a totally shit idea if your tune is kept simple.

Complexity is often hiding the fact somebody actually has no ideas.

This goes for all kinds of art.

Complexity masquerading as sophistication.

But, trying to tell people is often like

[nowaysj]

My god op, ninja, we are all like the same stupid person.

I just can't get past this.

Some thoughts -

Work on a few songs at the same time (during a weeks timespan, or so). Get the track to that point where you can't hear it anymore, after that first main sesh, then leave it, start on another track, work on that until you can't hear it, then start another. But now, rather than starting another one, go back and listen to the first one. First thing you hear that needs doing, do it. Then close that song, and start working on the second one. So on and so forth. After a while, one or two or even three of these tracks will either progress, or will be dropped for new hotter tracks.

Find other producers that share a very similar taste in music, and share wips. Feedback from random fucks, even if it's highly constructive, can be totally useless. It will show you their point of view, but who fucking cares about their pov if that person's favorite artist is chase & status.

Once you've gotten your track to the point where its roughly done, and hopefully balled up and left it minimal, slap a mastering preset on it, render it out, and put it in your ipod or whatever, and put it in a playlist with similar genre tracks. If your track sticks out like a sore thumb, you've got work to do. If not, it might be time to hit macc up!


And just as a rule of thumb, if you are deciding between adding more, or keeping it the way it is, I'd say keep it the way it is. Don't even think about it, if you can't decide, let this rule guide you.

[redshiftdubdnb]

Anyone else ever whip out a song or at least a kick ass pattern in a few minutes and think to your self it can't be good because I just whipped it out in a few minutes?
Or have a simple beat/bassline and think this shit is too simple I need to add some more elements, then you end up making a mess and scraping it.
Knowing all along that how long it takes to make a song is irrelevant, and simplicity get heads nodding...

mozart wrote every single song in like 1 sitting. with no revisions. not everyone's a musical genius of course, but i think you should go with your gut on lots of stuff. for mixdowns and mastering maybe you should take more time because it's like refining what you already made, but ultimately it's about YOUR music and you shouldn't let other people tell you something is "bad" just because it isn't necessarily what everyone else considers to be standard.

[nowaysj]

Anyone else ever whip out a song or at least a kick ass pattern in a few minutes and think to your self it can't be good because I just whipped it out in a few minutes?
Or have a simple beat/bassline and think this shit is too simple I need to add some more elements, then you end up making a mess and scraping it.
Knowing all along that how long it takes to make a song is irrelevant, and simplicity get heads nodding...

Well the thing with that is, that groovy beat is like 85% of the way to a complete listenable song. But carrying that energy/momentum/spark into the fully resolved song is so fucking hard. So hard that it seems like that remaining 15% is really more like 95%, and where so many fledgling producers fail.

[ninjadog]

Thing is I have maybe 2 songs I love, and I loved making them. It dident feel like I was working hard to come up with ideas, they just kept flowing. The songs pretty much wrote themselves. I guess I'm looking for that same sort of inspiration, and again I know I will never find it if I look because I'd be trying to force it. But I dont want to sit back and wait for it to find me either. There really is no happy medium.
Those songs were more of a hip hop kind of vibe, I can't for the life of me come up with a good original dubstep tune, and I'm not down with copying someone else's either. I definitely feel like I need to change something with my workflow or something. Maybe I will enter the next sample pack comp if I can find some time. Yeah thats it, I need some limitations or something to get my creative juices flowing. I guess I need to over simplify and see what happens. Maybe try to make some tracks when not stoned and try not to think if I were stoned it would all come together, as ridiculous as that sounds.

[ninjadog]

Once you've gotten your track to the point where its roughly done, and hopefully balled up and left it minimal, slap a mastering preset on it, render it out, and put it in your ipod or whatever, and put it in a playlist with similar genre tracks. If your track sticks out like a sore thumb, you've got work to do. If not, it might be time to hit macc up!


And just as a rule of thumb, if you are deciding between adding more, or keeping it the way it is, I'd say keep it the way it is. Don't even think about it, if you can't decide, let this rule guide you.

Those are really fucking good ideas brah.

[atlanitca]

ah definatly get this all the time, after i while i start to really dislike my own tunes and only notice the bad points lol

[iambullet]

Thing is I have maybe 2 songs I love, and I loved making them. It dident feel like I was working hard to come up with ideas, they just kept flowing.

This, I definitely know. For me it's all about the mood. Most of the time I want to make music, fire up my DAW, turn knobs and leave with a piece of shit. Then once in a while, I really feel like I remotely might have an idea or something, sit down, build stuff and it sounds nice. If that happens, it's crucial to get feedback from others because sometimes you think you made a masterpiece but it sounds like shit to everybody else. Feels a bit like acoustic autism, you just do stuff you want to hear but nobody else probably wants.

[tripaddict]

Judging my own tunes is remarkably easy for me.

I fucking hate them all.

+1

[Mad_EP]

Great Thread!

Most of what I do has been covered already... but for some reason, this all reminds me of something Tom Waits once said in an interview:

"..you have to tell the songs, "He's strong enough to make it--but you, you'll never make it. You little shit, you'll never make it." And some of them you say, "Oh! I'm sorry, we'll fix you up, we'll make you ready. We'll try." And you fix him up and you look at him and have to say, "You're still nothing, still a little piece of shit, and you're not going on my fucking record." You have to talk to the songs that way. It scares them, but some of them really get it together."

[Basic A]

Great Thread!

Most of what I do has been covered already... but for some reason, this all reminds me of something Tom Waits once said in an interview:

"..you have to tell the songs, "He's strong enough to make it--but you, you'll never make it. You little shit, you'll never make it." And some of them you say, "Oh! I'm sorry, we'll fix you up, we'll make you ready. We'll try." And you fix him up and you look at him and have to say, "You're still nothing, still a little piece of shit, and you're not going on my fucking record." You have to talk to the songs that way. It scares them, but some of them really get it together."

Dude that was fuckin epic.

[Mad_EP]

mozart wrote every single song in like 1 sitting. with no revisions.

That's actually not true at all. He wrote some things without revisions, but other works he labored over intensely. For instance, his "Masonic Funeral Music" he actually wrote down the theme on a card to have with him during the writing/orchestration of the full piece because he didn't want to screw up. It is a simple melody and certainly one he could keep in his head, but he was so serious about it that he "took notes". He definitely did do a lot of the groundwork in his head, but the idea of him writing out everything perfectly in one sitting is a myth. The movie Amadeus is a fun movie, but quite liberal with the truth. Shostakovich was another composer who did a lot in his head before committing to paper as well... but again, he was hardly someone who could write every note perfect without a single revision either.

A lot of composers tended to burn their sketches and early drafts of pieces. They didn't want to leave a trail of imperfection... on the other hand, many of the drafts we do still have today, were because the composer had something else that they possibly wanted to re-use later (ie - a theme that didn't work for the piece at hand, but might work for a different piece in the future).

[Mad_EP]

Great Thread!

Most of what I do has been covered already... but for some reason, this all reminds me of something Tom Waits once said in an interview:

"..you have to tell the songs, "He's strong enough to make it--but you, you'll never make it. You little shit, you'll never make it." And some of them you say, "Oh! I'm sorry, we'll fix you up, we'll make you ready. We'll try." And you fix him up and you look at him and have to say, "You're still nothing, still a little piece of shit, and you're not going on my fucking record." You have to talk to the songs that way. It scares them, but some of them really get it together."

Dude that was fuckin epic.

Yeah, I find that most of what Reverend Tom has to say is quite epic. It becomes even more epic because it is true. I thought I was a loon cos I treated my songs like lil' living beings like that.. talking to em, abusing em, trying to whip em into shape (I did the very same as a cellist - screaming at my left hand or cello during practice sessions)... then I find out Big Tom does the same. Not really the team you want to be on when trying to prove sanity, but as long as I am being carted away... at least I will be in good company.