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Not knowing how to make music. (pg. 3)
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| Kysora |
| quote: | | Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox Look guy, I hate to break it to you. But 2 years is NOTHING if you don't have any prior musical knowledge. Is that the ONLY time in your life you've exhausted any effort making music? Maybe you had piano lessons when you were younger? Got a music degree? |
I've been at it for a bit over two years, starting from the first track I made. I was never serious about music production until about a year ago.
I think it's pretty fair to say my tracks don't sound like they were made by a deaf man. |
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| Nightshift |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mad for Brad
people progress at different rates. Years mean nothing. The fact that you suck and you have been doing it for 7 years is your deal and has little to do with the poster and his issue. |
harsh, but true. |
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| Rodri Santos |
| To make a good track and get it signed is about 1-2 years , no matter how fast you make your first good track, what matters is if you are going to make more like it on the future and you have the potential to become a professional producer in 3,5,10 years but someday. |
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| -FSP- |
Your learning method is flawed if you have been doing it for some time and nothing has come out of it. I was in your position a year ago, though I could make a song after 90 tries, I was just doing it for fun. Then I really had the drive to actually finish things, looked at my workflow, looked at the process of how I made songs, and now I'm better because of it.
As cryophonik said, making music is very intimidating. I would like to add to what he said about technical and musial aspect, I think there is an innate aspect too. Though it fits the 'musical' set, I do feel that you have to learn about the timbre of each instrument in your song and know where and how they work. Words cannot picture this though. Certain textures of sound work better for certain situations. I cannot fathom how I do it, or how any producer does it. It is a very esoteric art that cannot be taught, but learned through observation and trial and error.
You are going to have to spend more time on the sequencer though, I guarantee you that. |
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| IceColdWater |
That's really true , most of the times when I can't think about something melodic , I just stop thinking , and do some other stuff.
And then viola, a melody will just pop up , kinda magically. |
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| Rodri Santos |
Studio work is not like office work. On the office you work for 8 hours and expect to do some amount of work, when you sit in front of your computer you can do nothing in that 8 hours or make a full track.
Inspiration goes and comes again , don't punish yourself being a lot in front of the computer if you see you aren't making progress stop doing that. |
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| cryophonik |
| quote: | Originally posted by Rodri Santos
Studio work is not like office work. On the office you work for 8 hours and expect to do some amount of work, when you sit in front of your computer you can do nothing in that 8 hours or make a full track.
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Good point, but my approach for avoiding that pitfall is to always set some goals for each session whenever I'm in the studio, which is very similar to the way I work. My day job is a scientist, so my typical day consists of analyzing data, writing very long reports, and juggling numerous projects - it requires a lot of organization and planning - not too different from the way I treat music production. I keep a notebook handy at all times and almost every time I sit down in the studio, I make a short list (usually from my much larger "musical to-do list") of what I want to accomplish and I put a number next to it to prioritize it (i.e., 1=highest priority), numbered consecutively.
If the creativity is flowing, I'll skip the technical tasks because I really have to capitalize on the creativity when it's there. If the creativity isn't there, I'll usually skip those tasks (unless I'm working under a deadline, which is rarely the case) because trying to force it is usually a waste of time for me, so I'll just work on technical tasks, like processing vocals, programming synths, finding the right drum samples, etc. Honestly, this is the only way that I've found to keep myself productive these days. |
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| Subtle |
It can take over 100 hours to complete a track, many of the tracks you hear have that amount of time spend on them.
Or you can strike lucky and do a whole track in 4 hours, but you have to be aware that it can take months.
I have a couple of tracks that took 3-4 years before completion. |
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| Richard Butler |
| quote: | Originally posted by Subtle
It can take over 100 hours to complete a track, many of the tracks you hear have that amount of time spend on them.
Or you can strike lucky and do a whole track in 4 hours, but you have to be aware that it can take months.
I have a couple of tracks that took 3-4 years before completion. |
Thats me^. I'm often a bit surprised when people on forums say 'hey check this finnished tune - it took me 8 hours'.
Take tonight , I have a list of to do jobs and one is to make a snare as good as the one in this track below (a mate who remixed a track of mine), and I know just making that snare could take an hour although brad will say it should take 2 minutes I suppose. Then making a nice couple of crashes and booms and reverse cymbals - about 45 minutes, and so it goes. Samples I use but they inevitably need modifications and just scrolling them takes me a while.
Snare is in the early intro - awesome.
http://soundcloud.com/darzh-liebek/...h-liebek-mashup |
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| Mad for Brad |
| quote: | Originally posted by Rodri Santos
Studio work is not like office work. On the office you work for 8 hours and expect to do some amount of work, when you sit in front of your computer you can do nothing in that 8 hours or make a full track. |
For most professionals, it is eerily too similar. You start your day , you end your day, You job is to be creative. That is your skill and that is why you get paid. |
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| Rodri Santos |
there are some things that don't need any inspiration, you can focus on mastering, mixing or things that are more about practice and knowledge , if due to my work i had to produce 8 hours a day it's what i'd do, generally i haven't got many problems but some days i advance more on my track, i have been working 3 days on a track, the first one i had the idea but writing the track and the whole process scared me a bit so i made bassline and some minor melodies.
Second day i wrote all the melodies and mode some arrangements and this morning i was particularly inspired and developed all my ideas and set the current track to a 70% done.
I can't see how you can need years , in 3 days i did 70%, i know i will need ironically 7-10 days to finish that 30% and possibly other week to correct minor details after listening to the track hundreds of times and being still unsatisfied with something.
But a whole year it's too much, you can make in 8 hours something catchy but will have some technical loss for sure , i believe that people who say "i did this in 8 hours" but a week later that should be slightly better :)
Well Armin van Buuren says that his hits where the tracks that less effort supposed for him, i believe this because his music it's pure commercial crap and keeping things simple and generic is what make a track successful on this kind of tracks.
About the snare it's simple , i think adding some white noise to a clap should do the trick, it sound so soft to be a real snare. |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by cryophonik
Good point, but my approach for avoiding that pitfall is to always set some goals for each session whenever I'm in the studio, which is very similar to the way I work. ... |
This is true for me, as well. I always have a list of goals in mind, when I start a session, of where I want to be by the end of it. I will develop strategies, sometimes ahead of time, about how I will organize my efforts on a loose time-line. I pretty much know how long certain tasks are going to take so without necessarily 'scheduling' I can usually achieve my objective.
What I've found is that about 90% of creativity involves ideas I've had well outside the studio that I've given thought about how to implement. Once I sit down, it's relatively easy to get to task and start working a song out. |
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