Advice for finishing tracks and not scrapping ideas?

[changler]

Hey guys. So recently I have been working quite well. However. I get to the same point in most tracks. I can get a solid groove going. Even a main 32 bars before the crushing self doubt and questions creep in and I struggle to trust my own ideas. Does anyone have any advice or methods for pushing past this point and developing and continuing the track. Any goto techniques for over coming the self doubt and believe in yourself more.

Thanks.

[fragments]

Basically force yoursel to finish. I try to get a an entire basic arrangement down before I get carried away w anything else. To me getting down where the track is going in the first session is the most important thing. After that I can come back to the track wo feeling ive lost the vibe.

Also...I hate to advocate drug use...but a three beer buzz helps me get arrangement down...gets rid of those "I suck" inhibition s

[legend4ry]

Stop saving your project files.

Thats what I did, now I only save tracks what actually get to a decent stage where all it needs is a mix down.

My tracks now are always natural ideas what come fast and have little room for doubt. I like this sound, ohh the drums could go like this - maybe the sub line can go like... *some time passes*

Oh, look I got a tune.



Basically, this video shows what I mean perfectly.

[JTMMusicuk]

best advise i can think of is stop playing your track on repeat over and over and fucking over....only listen to your track while your writing new parts/sections
don't get obsessed with mix down and technical ****** bits when getting through the first stage of the writing process, try and get a solid 2 mins of music before you get to that

[Simulant]

Stop saving your project files.

Thats what I did, now I only save tracks what actually get to a decent stage where all it needs is a mix down.

My tracks now are always natural ideas what come fast and have little room for doubt. I like this sound, ohh the drums could go like this - maybe the sub line can go like... *some time passes*

Oh, look I got a tune.



Basically, this video shows what I mean perfectly.

That makes a lot of sense. I have a ton of old project files that are going nowhere. I thought they were a good idea at the time, and thought that I may "some day" work on them and make them better. But the cold hard truth is that they're probably rubbish, and that I should just work on new ideas.

[ftwgmorm]

I wanted to respond to this thread but I made it to the half and then scrapped it. (I'm serious)

[JTMMusicuk]

I wanted to respond to this thread but I made it to the half and then scrapped it. (I'm serious)

[nowaysj]

Most songs rely on two things, a hook, a recognizable phrase or small series of sonic events that stick in the mind, and changeups, little events at the end of 2, 4, 8, and 16 bar sections. That's it. If you get stuck in that writing a section, like totally stacked up with sounds mixed and everything, but have no where to go with it: Simplify your process, write the hook (can be drums, a musical phrase, whatever) focus on getting a basic song structure in place, like the full toon, and then start writing into that structure, really paying attention to keep things moving by little tensions and releases at 2, 4, 8, and 16. Songs write themselves like this.

[ftwgmorm]

Most songs rely on two things, a hook, a recognizable phrase or small series of sonic events that stick in the mind, and changeups, little events at the end of 2, 4, 8, and 16 bar sections. That's it. If you get stuck in that writing a section, like totally stacked up with sounds mixed and everything, but have no where to go with it: Simplify your process, write the hook (can be drums, a musical phrase, whatever) focus on getting a basic song structure in place, like the full toon, and then start writing into that structure, really paying attention to keep things moving by little tensions and releases at 2, 4, 8, and 16. Songs write themselves like this.

Yes.

[Harkat]

great thread

I've also noticed as someone said that playing your tune over and over (even if it is cus you're satisfied with it) makes it a bit shit

like, it makes me add lots of complicated elements in the first 8 bars for no reason because in my mind the loop's been playing for half an hour already, but it won't feel like that when you just put the tune on. because of that the energy fizzles out and you've got nowhere to go after 24 bars or something

[nowaysj]

Yes.

[Crimsonghost]

Like said above, don't save a bunch of "ideas". Go through every saved song you have and start purging. I have one session I call the "riff farm". Basically if I get an idea or if the song is going nowhere I'll just bounce to audio or midi and drop it into that track for later reference. It also fun because the tempo of that farm track is constantly chainging so I might have a part that sounds crap at 174 sounds awesome at 140. I'll aso do weird stuff like drop an amp sim or melodyne on the master. Anything to get ideas going, and it usually works.

I guess what I'm getting at is do something weird. It's good for creativity.

[Mad_EP]

I am a huge fan of cannibalizing tracks that can't stand on their own....

..BUT I force myself to finish the track, or at least flesh out the idea first. Once I have the main gist of it, if it isn't great, but one element is (ie - some random KILLER hi hat pattern), then I bounce that bit out and use it for something else.

And the way I keep track of all this, is once I let the zombies start chewing at the bones, I rename the file with an "x" at the front of the title, so I know it is fair game for pillaging.

[xtcvsmistycold]

Hey guys. So recently I have been working quite well. However. I get to the same point in most tracks. I can get a solid groove going. Even a main 32 bars before the crushing self doubt and questions creep in and I struggle to trust my own ideas. Does anyone have any advice or methods for pushing past this point and developing and continuing the track. Any goto techniques for over coming the self doubt and believe in yourself more.

Thanks.

plan the track out first in writing, structurally at the very minimum

makes it so much easier to write fluidly

[nowaysj]

You do have to develop some strength to do this ^ though.

You have to be able to realize your vision with your audio tools, and that isn't such an easy thing. But it is possible to learn, to get better at through exercise.

==

I like your idea re recycling there, EP, I never really do that - what I do do though, is in flstudio if you've recorded audio into an audio recorder, and then drag it around throughout the project a copy of that audio is stored in a folder. I've got thousands of files from this stored in that folder. And they're usually like a bar of this or a few bars of that. I can just scroll through that folder finding all kinds of goodies. It makes the process of reusing pieces really easy, effortless, you don't have to do anything, only go back to that folder and pillage. Like if I went through the trouble to record the audio, I thought it was good enough to be used, and so is probably useful.

But I'd like to go back to old songs and take out whole sections the way you suggest. Also another suggestion that has been made around here is just taking two old failed projects, and combining them. Just smacking them together, and then dealing with the seam, blending them, mixing them with components, etc. I think you end up with pretty interesting and unpredictable results. I do save my song files with genre and tempo codes for this reason, like: hh 90 Beat Master, or 130 130 Matta of Facta (a joke for the snh).

[Simulant]

That's one of the things that makes Bitwig Studio so good - tabbed projects. You can have several projects open, and just drag and drop parts between them. Midi clips, audio clips, whole tracks etc.

[nowaysj]

I've very much wanted to do that in the past.

I bet you could do that in flstudio by opening flstudio as a vst within flstudio and then dragging parts back and forth, but it is still clunky compared to what I imagine bitwig is doing.

[ThisIsSovereign]

The taking whole parts of one project and working it into another is a really good idea. I was watching The Widdler's stream on twitch.tv the other day and he did this to great effect. He had two tribal'ish tracks with similar vibes and he was saying how he knew he had no idea where else to take the second track so he took everything but the sub-bassline and kick/snare from the second track and threw it in the first one. Put the first tracks's sub, kick and snare under it and it worked perfectly since the two tracks had a similar feel. Instantly had a track that had a nice switch-up halfway through.

[Simulant]

I think that Deadmau5's tune Strobe was actually two tunes joined into one, I read it a while back.

[soronery]

multiple ideas in a single tune is something that is sorely lacking in today's electronic music.