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Never satisfied anymore... perfectionism kills productivity (pg. 2)
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| wrzonance |
I agree with EgosXII.
Deadlines!
That, and trading with friends. Joss Weatherby and I go back and forth working on each other's tracks. It can give you fresh perspective. |
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| owien |
If you felt that by being to much of a perfectionist has stopped you from making tunes then the answer is clear.
The advice thus far from the other members of TA will help you alot.
Focusing on one melody element to the point off self disaster,has now only led you to not making any music at all.
I do this a lot. Only i have learned that by spending time finding other things that make up the song,will then lead me to making great tunes.
So go back to the point when in the beginning the fun came about from playing.
And learn to strike the balance from other areas of music making production. |
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| B_man |
| Another good tip for the perfectionism-black-hole is genre hopping. This will not necessarily cure your perfectionism, but it will allow your ego to calm itself down when you are enjoying a new mode of music. Lay off the trance for a few months and compose some downtempo (trip-hop, chillout, etc), maybe some fake video game music, experiment with orchestrations, write a newbie-ish DnB tune (though DnB is another genre with extreme audio-technicalities that can quickly cause your perfectionism to eat you alive, just like in trance), I could go on forever. Break the mold and you will no longer be trying to forge sonic-sculptures to look exactly like the molds you are used to... you'll gain more experience points as well. |
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| david.michael |
Step 1:
If you've got an idea and you don't think it's total , save it and put it away for a rainy day. Come back to it in a day, or a month, or a year. Listen to it again. You'll either say "wow, I was really onto something here" and be inspired to keep working on it, or you'll say "Jesus, that was amateur" and never touch it again.
Step 2:
If you were really onto something there, finish the effing track. If you get obsessed with getting it perfect and can't finish it, revert to step 1. Repeat as necessary.
Simplified: know when to stop (whether it's a pause, or starting something new and moving on). |
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| psymon.d |
| As mentioned above, deadlines really help. Gives you much more of a professional work habit, making sure you're not spending disproportionate amounts of time on concepts that are going no where, or being needlessly finicky about things you shouldn't be concerning yourself with. |
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| Sean Walsh |
I work as a video game developer for my career, and find that trying to organize my music production in the same way we schedule our games is a really good practice.
There are two concepts, the horizontal slice and the vertical slice. With the horizontal slice, you get 90% of the track laid out to 10% of its final production value, and with the vertical slice you get 10% of the track up to 90% of the final production value.
So basically, you sketch out the sequencing of the track, and then focus on getting one part of it "finished" (say for example, nail one of the riffs and the synth sound/effects used with it). After that, move on to another segment of the track and repeat the process.
Breaking down things into an organized manner like that can often keep you focused and productive. |
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| DJ RANN |
There's a lot of good advice on here but the main thing is to check yourself, and keep doing it. There's no right or wrong way.
You said you can spend two hours on a midi line then get sick of it.
Pete heller's "big love" was written from scratch, sequenced and mixed - basically finished apart from a few tweaks - in 4 hours.
I'm not mentioning it to disaude you...actually the contrary.
Really, you know 30 mins in whether you're on to something or not - if it's not then move on. Forget the midi riff and play a bassline or move on to a nice pad, maybe get another loop going, open up another synth, but basically if it's not coming don't force it, and that's where I find the "deadline" piece of advice although good in some circumstances can be completely counter productive; it puts a pressure on you which can kill creativity.
When composing, unless you really are well honed in the ability to create under pressure I would not do this. It's a rare person (without training/experience) that can truly create something good under pressure.
I think a deadline on the production side (engineering, programming etc.) is nearly essential - over time, it teaches you how to get results quickly and trust your abilities. I'm lucky in that I've worked with some of the top engineers in the world, all different, but one thing they have in common, is that they KNOW what twiddling "that" knob does before they even touch it, so it becomes fluid translation of what they want to hear in their mind to what it actually sounds like, with room for experimentation and/or some beautiful accidents thrown in.
My advice is again, to check yourself. If after 30 mins that midi line is not singing to you, save it and move on. Sometimes you'll find you were tweaking the life out of it and it sounded best in the first 5 mins. Move on to a completely different part and do the same...at some point something will stand out to the point that it's worth pursuing a whole track from it. That's great way to teach yourself to produce creatively in a limited time.
Just my 2c.. |
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| Nick Cenik |
| quote: | Originally posted by 4am
Now when I sit down to write music, I'm such a perfectionist about everything that I end up spending 2 hours on one midi line and then I just quit and don't even end up saving my "work"... |
This type of thing happens to me a lot as well (although, I typically spend more time trying to perfect a certain sound than working on a MIDI pattern); so I understand your frustration. The main thing that keeps me motivated is my belief that since I've been able to have a few 'F*ck ya! Finally!' moments so far, I'll have more as time goes on :) |
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| hundred |
| 1 tab of Lysergic acid diethylamide |
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| Subtle |
| If u focus only on making something better or equally good as your previous works you wont have this problem. |
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| evo8 |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
There's a lot of good advice on here but the main thing is to check yourself, and keep doing it. There's no right or wrong way.
You said you can spend two hours on a midi line then get sick of it.
Pete heller's "big love" was written from scratch, sequenced and mixed - basically finished apart from a few tweaks - in 4 hours.
I'm not mentioning it to disaude you...actually the contrary.
Really, you know 30 mins in whether you're on to something or not - if it's not then move on. Forget the midi riff and play a bassline or move on to a nice pad, maybe get another loop going, open up another synth, but basically if it's not coming don't force it, and that's where I find the "deadline" piece of advice although good in some circumstances can be completely counter productive; it puts a pressure on you which can kill creativity.
When composing, unless you really are well honed in the ability to create under pressure I would not do this. It's a rare person (without training/experience) that can truly create something good under pressure.
I think a deadline on the production side (engineering, programming etc.) is nearly essential - over time, it teaches you how to get results quickly and trust your abilities. I'm lucky in that I've worked with some of the top engineers in the world, all different, but one thing they have in common, is that they KNOW what twiddling "that" knob does before they even touch it, so it becomes fluid translation of what they want to hear in their mind to what it actually sounds like, with room for experimentation and/or some beautiful accidents thrown in.
My advice is again, to check yourself. If after 30 mins that midi line is not singing to you, save it and move on. Sometimes you'll find you were tweaking the life out of it and it sounded best in the first 5 mins. Move on to a completely different part and do the same...at some point something will stand out to the point that it's worth pursuing a whole track from it. That's great way to teach yourself to produce creatively in a limited time.
Just my 2c.. |
this ^^^ |
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| DigiNut |
Yes, there's a way. Deadlines is one way to say it but I prefer to think of it as jams (and I believe I mentioned this in a thread a couple of months ago).
Sit yourself down for exactly 1 hour (2 if you've really got time to kill) and start something from scratch. After the hour it's pencils down. The objective is not actually to finish it, because you probably won't, just to practice belting out as much material as possible in as little time as possible.
Quantity is quality. You're more likely to have one or two kick-ass lines when you're ting them out left and right than you are by spending 3 hours carefully crafting it. Especially if you don't already know exactly what you want, i.e. already have a tune in your head.
It also helps you become less emotionally attached to your brain-children so that you don't need to agonize over cutting material when it doesn't fit or doesn't sound right.
Do it every couple of days for at least a few weeks, and I can almost guarantee (assuming you have some degree of talent) that one night you'll decide that some experiment is sounding great enough to actually make into a track. |
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