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Anyone Got Any Advice For How To "Separate Yourself From Your Music"???

First off, just incase any of you don't know what I mean by "Separate Yourself From Your Music" I'll just briefly explain it. Basically what it is, is the ability to, as a music producer, play back your own track that your working on, but be able to be in the right mindset so that you forget about the fact that it is your own track, therefore giving you a better idea of how good or bad it sounds.

So does anyone have any pieces if advice on how to do this??? It's one of the hardest things to do in music producing in my opinion.

Re: Anyone Got Any Advice For How To "Separate Yourself From Your Music"???

quote:

Originally posted by MIKE333ACE First off, just incase any of you don't know what I mean by "Separate Yourself From Your Music" I'll just briefly explain it. Basically what it is, is the ability to, as a music producer, play back your own track that your working on, but be able to be in the right mindset so that you forget about the fact that it is your own track, therefore giving you a better idea of how good or bad it sounds. So does anyone have any pieces if advice on how to do this??? It's one of the hardest things to do in music producing in my opinion.

Every guy likes the smell of his own shit.

It's hard to be objective.

Here's what happens with me;

1) Lay down a beat and think, wow this is really groving
2) Get the main ideas down and think this is super special - this time it really is
3) Get almost finished, some days later
4) Suddenly realise it was shit all along


Here's my tip for being objective. The next day after perhaps a long studio session, listen to some recent pro tracks - thats when I usualy find out how bad I am.

One thing to realise is people tend to suffer bias in all sorts of ways. People think thier infant is showing signs of super ability as a singer / footballer / maths freak. People tend to think where they live is better than where you live.
People tend to think they are much better cooks than they are - especially those that apply one favorite ingredient such as balsamic vinegar, or parmesan chese to every dish so it all has the same nasty twang.
People tend to think thier taste in holidays is unbeatable - me I would never ever enjoy a cruise or a trip to Las Vegas for example - far to manufactured and depressing.

Same with making music - we tend to suffer dreadful bias.

You see this vividly with those cinematic trance breaks which dont at all go with the flow of the track. Just booooring.

Re: Re: Anyone Got Any Advice For How To "Separate Yourself From Your Music"???

Take a break. Let the track sit for a day or two or three and don't do anything with it. Then listen to it and see what you think.

I would say be cautious about taking the "compare to the pros" idea too much to heart, because I think that is one reason we have mountains upon mountains of music endlessly and boringly copying a certain aesthetic or "sound" down to every detail. But it can be useful with the right mindset and in the right dosage.

Re: Re: Re: Anyone Got Any Advice For How To "Separate Yourself From Your Music"???

quote:

Originally posted by Vector A Take a break. Let the track sit for a day or two or three and don't do anything with it.

That break needs to be at least a week or so for me in order to listen to it somewhat objectively. As soon as I've been listening for a couple of minutes I jump back into biased mode.

dont be to hard on yourself either because you will end up not making anything.

apart from waiting a week listen to similar tracks that you like how are produced and compare & contrast with yours, try to get that level of precission.

Don't look at your DAW.

Don't loop what you're working on.

Flip back and forth between your track and a pro track and listen for the difference.

The last and most important thing:

You're first impression is the most accurate. If you keep listening to your stuff you'll keep convincing yourself that its better than it really is until you come back to reality and listen to it objectively.

weed

or

listen to it with other people in the room

I absolutely fucking hate listening to my music with friends. It's either sitting in awkward silence for 7+ minutes, or they talk through the whole thing and ruin the whole point.

weed, though, I'll second that

Re: Re: Anyone Got Any Advice For How To "Separate Yourself From Your Music"???

quote:

Originally posted by Richard Butler Every guy likes the smell of his own shit.

Quite to your own astonishment I don't actually like the way my shit smells. At one point I became vegan and noticed my shit no longer smelled and that was honestly one of many reasons I continued to not eat meat anymore. I don't care about slaughter houses or any of that crap I just always feel a thousand times better/energetic when my protien comes from vegetables. Plus I use to have very seldom hemhroid flare ups and since I stopped eatin meat that stopped too. My insomnia also improved like 10 fold. People have no ideal how animal protien fucks with blood acidity.

Anyways I would think if anything its the complete opposite for some guys. I've always been hypercritical of every aspect of my tunes and will usually have a list of things I hate about a track before I even finish it.

ps- Quickest way to seperate yourself from your music is to just post it.

i find i'm my own worst critic. Most good artists are that way. If you are convinced at any time you are awesome, you will stop growing. That isn't to say you should just trash what you do, it just comes instinctively because you know you can do better and you usually do. Honestly, i can't think of any really good artist that isn't this way.

I look back at the few EDM tracks i did , i mean looking back, if I stuck with it , i would be touring living that lifestyle as I was rather good but at the time, i never felt like i was where I wanted to be. And with the stuff i'm doing now, i feel like i can do better. It takes some time before i can listen to anything of mine and not think it is meh.

I find if anything , it is hard to be objective the other way. ie , stop trying to make it better and move on. If you like the smell of your own shit, as Richard so eloquently put it, odds are you don't have the ability to know when you suck and when you need to haul ass.

Some of the biggest composers, when they are testing the locked picture, are sweating bullets. Because they are never completely satisfied or sure. It could of been this, or that. You have a serious issue if you are completely assured that you are awesome. And all it can take is one person in the group, who knows nothing about music to say, hmmm that was weird.

For tips

take some time off
be realistic, would anyone buy this ? I mean not your friends, would this be the track people would have to play or just filler. of course i think if you are starting , that will just depress you.

Maybe take time, compare it to a track you really like, and write down what is different. GO thru each part. like bass and drums, the mix, the production .....

Whatever your creative medium, the answer is always the same: leave it alone for a while and come back to it later.

I find i dont really have that problem, my problem is making music that i like, I rarely make music that I like, 3/4 of the time I think its generic or just plain boring, sometimes I would release a track that I didnt quite like and people would always tell me that something was missing and everytime I release something I like and can listen too the majority of people seem to like it, so I dunno trust your tastes and if youre not sure enough about something then scrap it.

tips:

try not to listen to your own music unless its within the sequencer until its done. this will give you more the initiative to change things that you dont like or dont work right away.

work on multiple projects and switch off between them when you become tired or creatively dry from one of them. this especially works if youre working with different genres.

quote:

take some time off be realistic, would anyone buy this ? I mean not your friends, would this be the track people would have to play or just filler. of course i think if you are starting , that will just depress you. Maybe take time, compare it to a track you really like, and write down what is different. GO thru each part. like bass and drums, the mix, the production .....

Will do.

quote:

Originally posted by Looney4Clooney i find i'm my own worst critic. Most good artists are that way. If you are convinced at any time you are awesome, you will stop growing. That isn't to say you should just trash what you do, it just comes instinctively because you know you can do better and you usually do. Honestly, i can't think of any really good artist that isn't this way. I look back at the few EDM tracks i did , i mean looking back, if I stuck with it , i would be touring living that lifestyle as I was rather good but at the time, i never felt like i was where I wanted to be. And with the stuff i'm doing now, i feel like i can do better. It takes some time before i can listen to anything of mine and not think it is meh. I find if anything , it is hard to be objective the other way. ie , stop trying to make it better and move on. If you like the smell of your own shit, as Richard so eloquently put it, odds are you don't have the ability to know when you suck and when you need to haul ass. Some of the biggest composers, when they are testing the locked picture, are sweating bullets. Because they are never completely satisfied or sure. It could of been this, or that. You have a serious issue if you are completely assured that you are awesome. And all it can take is one person in the group, who knows nothing about music to say, hmmm that was weird. For tips take some time off be realistic, would anyone buy this ? I mean not your friends, would this be the track people would have to play or just filler. of course i think if you are starting , that will just depress you. Maybe take time, compare it to a track you really like, and write down what is different. GO thru each part. like bass and drums, the mix, the production .....

Thankyou very much for this advice and also for all the other bits of advice you have given me in my other threads. It's been a great help to me.

Thanks to everyone that has posted in this thread. There's been some great advice so far, keep it up.

when I think im almost at the finish line with a song I leave it for at least a week or two, enough to kinda let me forget about certain aspects of the song and to try and detach myself from it.

Upon first listen after that break, I will open the sequencer, put headphones on, minimize the project so I cant see the arrange page and hit space bar (play). I'll only leave the page minimized for the first listen. i dont want to see the arrangment, tracks, etc.

I used to leave the arrange page open but I found i was pre-empting what was about to happen in the song because I was able to visually see it. In my head I was kinda saying "oh thats right" before the part even happened cause I was reading it on screen. Therefore I wasnt giving my mind a chance to hear it as a normal listener, which is hard enough to do when its your own stuff. Leave a song for a couple weeks then give it a try, it works wonders for me!

cheers,

quote:

Originally posted by Looney4Clooney i find i'm my own worst critic. Most good artists are that way. If you are convinced at any time you are awesome, you will stop growing. That isn't to say you should just trash what you do, it just comes instinctively because you know you can do better and you usually do. Honestly, i can't think of any really good artist that isn't this way.

Absolutely.

I find that a lot of my stuff never gets beyond the sketch stage, because once the initial enthusiasm stops and I start listening to it critically, I convince myself it's crap and not worth the bother to finish.

quote:

Originally posted by madmuso Upon first listen after that break, I will open the sequencer, put headphones on, minimize the project so I cant see the arrange page and hit space bar (play). I'll only leave the page minimized for the first listen. i dont want to see the arrangment, tracks, etc. I used to leave the arrange page open but I found i was pre-empting what was about to happen in the song because I was able to visually see it. In my head I was kinda saying "oh thats right" before the part even happened cause I was reading it on screen. Therefore I wasnt giving my mind a chance to hear it as a normal listener, which is hard enough to do when its your own stuff. Leave a song for a couple weeks then give it a try, it works wonders for me!

Yeah, that is a good exercise. Reminds of this bit from an Autechre interview:

quote:

"There's nothing better than turning the screen off and just going analogue," stresses Booth. "You're not looking at data representation and so you can drift off and just listen. We do this a lot. When we're putting things down and mixing things and are trying to make things sound right, the screen has to go off. It's an illusion that totally pollutes what you're thinking and what you're listening to. Yes, you can be in the zone when sitting with a laptop. You absolutely can. But you just want to listen and not interact with the device. The worst things are the timeline sequencers where you can see on the screen what's coming up. That really f**ks with your head when you're listening."

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr04/articles/autechre.htm

quote:

Originally posted by Nightshift tips: try not to listen to your own music unless its within the sequencer until its done. this will give you more the initiative to change things that you dont like or dont work right away. work on multiple projects and switch off between them when you become tired or creatively dry from one of them. this especially works if youre working with different genres.

I would not follow this advice...

quote:

Originally posted by BritishLizard I would not follow this advice...

good.for.you.bro.

these are things that work for me personally so i thought i'd share them.

You can only be so objective about your own tracks and your own style, so ultimately you can't separate yourself from your tracks, nor do you need to IMO. Do the best you can, let other people determine if they think it's good enough, and always strive to improve knowing that creating music is a journey, not a destination, pardon the cliche. First and foremost, make sure that YOU are satisfied with it by listening to it subjectively. All the other advice still applies here, e.g., take a break from it and revisit it later with fresh ears and perspective, compare it to reference tracks on both creative and technical fronts, etc. until YOU are satisfied with it. There's no need for you to try and determine how another person will perceive your music.

Ketamine

haha he said separate yourself from your music, not separate yourself from the universe.

but like, music is the universe, man.

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