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-- Letting go.
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Letting go.

When you've been hammering away on a short loop, half a track or even a near complete track but its just not working out, how long do you wait till you decide to stop and start something new?

Its one of the things I struggle to do, I've been working on it but I always have a tendency to keep working trying to finish what I started.

Lately I have a couple of tracks which are 50% done and for one reason or another its not working out. The tracks have idea's in them that I like and its the part of why I would like to finish them but after a while you loose the feeling and drive to carry on with that project, and only fustration and anger builds, and so you feel the urge to start new things

How long do you guys normally wait? hours? Days? Weeks? Its been a few weeks so I'm starting new stuff and training myself to let go alot sooner.

ok heres something i've learned over some time.

one of your abilities as a producer, you have to identify quickly whats going to work, how its going to work. everyone's different and different things trigger creative workflow. you build that with experience ofcourse, perhaps it could be taught to be formulaic, but you have to find this stuff out on your own imo. lately, ive been completing tracks atleast, the majority of them in a day or two. you need to have visions... or something like that.

i believe there were threads made of this topic with multiple pages.

set yourself a schedule. There are nifty project programs people use for real world projects that involve many fronts. I use this for a lot of things were the project can last a month and I need to finish on time.

quote:

Originally posted by MSZ ok heres something i've learned over some time. one of your abilities as a producer, you have to identify quickly whats going to work, how its going to work. everyone's different and different things trigger creative workflow. you build that with experience ofcourse, perhaps it could be taught to be formulaic, but you have to find this stuff out on your own imo. lately, ive been completing tracks atleast, the majority of them in a day or two. you need to have visions... or something like that.

Identifying what works, read that a few times before, will def keep this in mind. I may have seen that other thread, will search it out.

quote:

Originally posted by Mad for Brad set yourself a schedule. There are nifty project programs people use for real world projects that involve many fronts. I use this for a lot of things were the project can last a month and I need to finish on time.

Interesting, might look into those, thanks man.

One week is my limit - if I have to force myself to finish something (as opposed to everything just flowing out naturally) I know it'll never work out.

No set time limit. I pretty much save everything I make, excepting those few times when I just delete all my files and start over.

But when something fails to come together quickly, I shove it off into some out of the way folder. Then months or even years later, I take it out, blow the dust off, and suddenly I figure out how I want to use it. One of my favorite parts of production, actually, rediscovering my old incomplete stuff like that, listening to it with fresh ears and making it work.

This is where I'm pretty lucky as a producer -- I don't start a track unless I'm absolutely sure it's going to work. I've only abandoned maybe 3 or 4 projects since I started producing 3 years ago.

The only downside is it takes me a good 2 or 3 weeks just to come up with an idea that'll work. I've got a good ear for melodies but not a good system of creating them, so I wind up improvising on guitar, piano, noodling around in FL for hours at a time, for days/weeks until I stumble upon something that sounds nice. I develop that into a collection of melodies, harmonies, countermelodies, etc. until I have a solid formation. Once I know how I want the track to sound all I need to do is put the form together and from there it's just a technical process.

I like the different takes in the way some of you work, thanks for sharing.

a combo of maping a track out so i can hear things work once the boring part is done i then come back to it and have some fun try things out.

or work in a compleatly different style and bomb my way through it from start to finish then mix it down

quote:

Originally posted by Mr.Mystery One week is my limit - if I have to force myself to finish something (as opposed to everything just flowing out naturally) I know it'll never work out.

I will start looking like a Mr.Mystery fanboy soon but once again, I agree whole-heartedly, i am just the same, the few productions that i have made which i have been proud to stand behind, is the ones that have been flowing on naturally without feeling the pressure,I cannot remember going back to an arrangement to finish it because it wont work

i work on tracks for as long as it takes for them to be finished as long as im not tired of the elements and im stilling enjoying it. once im tired of it or its becoming a pain in the ass, its garbage, finished or not, its just to toss it. actually i should have done that to alot of the finished tracks too. if id been listening to them for a few more weeks i could have avoided a few shit tracks out there. but thats part of the learning curve isnt it? my only advice is that as long as you have fun the result might be good. and if its not good, well who cares, u had fun. its therapy man.

2-3 hours

If I don't like it when I listen the next day I bin it. Deleted, 100%.

Re: Letting go.

quote:

Originally posted by music2dance2 When you've been hammering away on a short loop,...

I rarely start from loops because that approach seems backassward to me - sorta like writing a random paragraph, then trying to figure out how to make a book out of it. I realize that this approach works for some people, but I tend to come up with the main idea or hook and a general idea of the arrangement (roughly the equivalent of a storyline in a book) and work my way down to the details. IME, it's much easier to avoid getting lost or sidetracked when you have a general road map.

If/when I get stuck or uninsipired with it, I set it aside and turn to something else. I don't have a set rule for when that happens, but as soon as I realize that I don't like the direction it's going and I don't know where I want to take it, then it's time to forget about it for a few days/weeks/months, focus on something else, and come back to it with a fresh perspective.

Usually, 1 out of 10 ideas might be in a state where I take it to a sort of a raw arrangement, and another 1 out of 10 of those gets a final track. I noodle around for weeks to find that one idea, that keeps me motivated to make it a full track.

Its good to be not focused on one style, so you can switch from working on a club track back to something more relaxed or something inbetween or pure experiments, which I like to do sometimes. I often just try myself as a producer to see if I can archive a certain sound or in genres I dont really know what to and just go by gut instinct.

Also, I have dedicated sound sessions. Creating sounds for my synths, or little percussion loops and fx, then come back to them when I need them for for a track.

I finish like one track in 3 months, but thats ok with me, as long as I know I just dont made "anything" to have a track out, and I know I took my time to really turn it into something I can be proud of. Its not a big thing to make a "default" track in some hours, but another thing to be proud on your work / art.

quote:

Originally posted by Coyke Usually, 1 out of 10 ideas might be in a state where I take it to a sort of a raw arrangement, and another 1 out of 10 of those gets a final track. I noodle around for weeks to find that one idea, that keeps me motivated to make it a full track. Its good to be not focused on one style, so you can switch from working on a club track back to something more relaxed or something inbetween or pure experiments, which I like to do sometimes. I often just try myself as a producer to see if I can archive a certain sound or in genres I dont really know what to and just go by gut instinct. Also, I have dedicated sound sessions. Creating sounds for my synths, or little percussion loops and fx, then come back to them when I need them for for a track. I finish like one track in 3 months, but thats ok with me, as long as I know I just dont made "anything" to have a track out, and I know I took my time to really turn it into something I can be proud of. Its not a big thing to make a "default" track in some hours, but another thing to be proud on your work / art.

This is pretty much exactly how it is for me as well. Come up with little loops and ideas. Eventually, something sticks and I lay a basic arrangement. More than likely, I'll get stuck and move on. More loops and ideas. Something else sticks. Then every few months one of these goes all the way to a finished tune.

And like others have mentioned, of every tune I've finished, the arrangement and main ideas of the track have come together very quickly (usually within a few sessions, of course I'll take much longer on the production and mixdown side of things).

If I start struggling to know where to take a track or feel its missing a special element that I just can't come up with, I have to abandon it. When it starts to feel like hard work, frustration kicks in, ideas go out the window and I end up pissed off, left with a 50% finished tune, wondering why I ever thought it had potential to begin with.

I've incorporated the Swedish House Mafia/Laidback Luke style of production in that they make and finish songs in 4 hours. I can't do that, I can finish songs in 6 when it used to take me 12-36 hours. I usually try to power through the first two hours making a loop and if it works, then i just finish it from there. LL makes his loops in 1 hour, and does the rest. I'm not LL so I take 2 and cheat sometimes, I go 2 1/2. If the loop doesn't work in that time, I just toss it.

quote:

Originally posted by tehlord 2-3 hours If I don't like it when I listen the next day I bin it. Deleted, 100%.

This might actually be a smart idea in my case. I've got so much unfinished crap that I keep going back to when deep in my mind I know I'll never finish any of them.

Sometimes a good old system crash can be beneficial, also to help clear out the VSTs and FX that collect like dust on old furniture.

quote:

Originally posted by tehlord If I don't like it when I listen the next day I bin it. Deleted, 100%.

I save everything...I did go back about 6 months ago and delete a bunch of old projects and stuff. I made a list of projects I thought had potential and the ones that sucked got deleted. Still left me with like 20+ ideas tho

If I'm stuck in a loop cannabis helps me focus on pulling melodies out of my head

cannabis? another drug thread? whats wrong with creative people.

Cannabis or not the melodies are there it just helps when stuck in loop mode for hours on end.

Take a walk and if when you come back the project still doesn't feel like it has potential, save it and start a new one.

I may be one of the few producers that does this, but I prefer slowly grinding out the nuances of a track instead of the like it or toss it approach.

There is a difference between cranking out tunes, and polishing a single tune to become something that becomes a 'masterpiece' for yourself. The most important part of creating good music is the polishing process.

It's important to constantly listen to music and tracks that you find are truly masterpieces and simply amazing, note the element of that piece that made it so special, (ie. the mood/atmosphere, the haunting strings progression, the dirty 303 acid piercing through the mix) and say to yourself, what 'special element' can I add to this track that will make it unique.

For example, in my last production, I used a vibraphone sounding synth to give the piece a 80's space sci-fi feel while overlaying it with a piano that is delibaretly not quantized to give it a very human feel to it.

I do crank out random tracks for video productions here and there, but the ones that I always go back and listen to are the ones where I've spent a month working on, and not the ones that popped up overnight.

Sometimes a track might just need a day or a week's break, but try to find that special something in each track you produce to allow it to shine

For me its never any longer than 2 hours.

If i am working on something and it doesnt "feel right and/or its forced" then if it still feels like that after 2 hours i completely delete it and go take a break.

doing this means i delete a lot but the ones i dont delete get finished 100% of the time and they tend to be better than anything before and by better i mean more creative, flowing and interesting.

Mark

I always save everything.

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