Why do I have trouble finishing my songs?

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Etienne1973 wrote:
Kelvin92 wrote:So you start out with putting markers on the grid? For example intro: bar 1 till 17 , chorus, bar 17 till 33, etc etc ?
Exactly. For the whole song/track first structure.
Interesting, because this is something that definitively doesn't work for me. :shrug:

This is a common subject on KVR forums. So, instead of writing, I'll put a link for a song I like a lot. A 4 bar loop repeated for 4 minutes without get annoying. Taking instruments in and out, clever filtering use and some little arrangement tricks. So simple, yet, works like a charm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycLRYLsLZk8

It may not be related to your style, but you get the idea.

Most of time, our amazing loop is already a song. We just don't see it yet.

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thecontrolcentre wrote:Another option ... don't start a new tune until you finish the last one.
I started my first loop in 2002. Still unfinished. :oops:

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Kelvin92 wrote:Yes I really enjoy making it, but sometimes it is really frustrating because I have/had so many unfinished projects, that I wished that everything I start, I also finish.
We all do, but sometimes there's just not enough material for whole track and we have no inspiration to work with that idea at that moment, sometimes opening old idea sparks new inspiration, sometimes some ideas are bigger than us and we should grow to finish them, sometimes we just don't have enough knowledge to pull it off, so everything comes in time.

As advised try to work arrangements out, I know you work in Bitwig so that should be fun in clip launcher view, make one scene for every section, try out different variations, jam on top of everything and all that fun stuff.

There's always some things we are overthinking or overdoing, especially in some EDM genres that rely heavily on sound design and production, one needs lot of confidence and discipline to pull track trough, but we go opposite way, we want our 4 bar loop to sound like finished record so that gives us confidence it's worth something, wrong approach.

What helped me is learning what I got, every single preset in my synth, I even went that far as making separate banks with my favorite sounds in different categories, so I could in matter of seconds find some good place holder sound that actually might even be the sound for the track and so on, all that made me going from composition to arrangement quite fast, than afterwards revisit some of my decisions.

What kind of music you do?
This entire forum is wading through predictions, opinions, barely formed thoughts, drama, and whining. If you don't enjoy that, why are you here? :D ShawnG

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Having a release schedule helps me get focused on finishing tracks. Without one, why would you bother? (other than for fun). Book some gigs ... then you have to finish some tunes. ;)

Another option ... don't start a new tune until you finish the last one.
@ thecontrolcentre
I don't play gigs haha. I just love to produce at the moment, but i'd like to see some improvement since im stuck for a while at this proces. Now and then I can make something longer, but not finish it.

@ vurt
do you get ideas for other tracks while not finishing the first one?
if so, go with it. get each idea down, at some point you will move past it. when you start having less fresh ideas (ie new starting points) and ideas will start coming for the parts you already have as you learn more.

if all else fails, add all your parts in to a sampler and mash it up in to one track
Sometimes, yes. But when that happens I get stuck too haha. I tried that also, but it's like some big f*cking hill my mind need to get over, because when I go back, it's the same story, i can not finish it.

@ dark virus
nteresting, because this is something that definitively doesn't work for me. :shrug:

This is a common subject on KVR forums. So, instead of writing, I'll put a link for a song I like a lot. A 4 bar loop repeated for 4 minutes without get annoying. Taking instruments in and out, clever filtering use and some little arrangement tricks. So simple, yet, works like a charm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycLRYLsLZk8

It may not be related to your style, but you get the idea.

Most of time, our amazing loop is already a song. We just don't see it yet.
Thanks man, yeah maybe I overthink it, thinking that it needs to be extreme complex or very special. Will play with this, it's not the style I produce in, but can try it.

@ Zexilla
We all do, but sometimes there's just not enough material for whole track and we have no inspiration to work with that idea at that moment, sometimes opening old idea sparks new inspiration, sometimes some ideas are bigger than us and we should grow to finish them, sometimes we just don't have enough knowledge to pull it off, so everything comes in time.

As advised try to work arrangements out, I know you work in Bitwig so that should be fun in clip launcher view, make one scene for every section, try out different variations, jam on top of everything and all that fun stuff.

There's always some things we are overthinking or overdoing, especially in some EDM genres that rely heavily on sound design and production, one needs lot of confidence and discipline to pull track trough, but we go opposite way, we want our 4 bar loop to sound like finished record so that gives us confidence it's worth something, wrong approach.

What helped me is learning what I got, every single preset in my synth, I even went that far as making separate banks with my favorite sounds in different categories, so I could in matter of seconds find some good place holder sound that actually might even be the sound for the track and so on, all that made me going from composition to arrangement quite fast, than afterwards revisit some of my decisions.

What kind of music you do?
Yeah I use Bitwig, but not it's clip view haha. Im a arranger view guy, it feels like clip view slows me down. But maybe it's worth a shot to try it again and see what happens.

Yeah exactly, like what I said in this post, maybe i overthink it and overdoing it, that's something I also do besides producing, overthinking stuff. Also im trying to keep my favourite synth's, samples and other stuff in a click away for easy producing.

I like to produce in EDM, but not strictly one style. I like progressive, electro, tech house.

Hoping one day to achieve something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpjcm1F8tY8

or this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6agp_W-rqgQ

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For the given genre, yeah, there's no benefit of clip launching approach, if anything, I think making tracks like this are not that complicated as far as arrangement goes, it's breakdown/drop thing, they are sometimes so disjointed, some of the guys mix&match their different drops and breaks, one of my friends is making that and I'm his go to guy for honest take on it, so yeah, whole approach is polishing few bar loops unfortunately and without wall of sound, you barely have anything exciting, genre is heavily influenced by production aspect and layering sounds.

Watched interview where famous guy talked about this, sometimes he work fast, sometimes it takes a year for one track, everything depends how he feels about it, he tries what works best for the track, sometimes have few different versions of same track and so on.

Don't force it, open up old projects, if something inspires you, work on it, if not, wait for better times, thing with genre like this is basically you really have not much or your drop works or not, your few bar loop is 50% of track, next few bar loop is other 50%, some genres rely on story telling, this really is about two things, break&drop, so yeah, layering and fatttening two sections is actually thing you do most of the times, you are probably just uninspired with your loops.

Try to collaborate with someone, that could speed things up.
This entire forum is wading through predictions, opinions, barely formed thoughts, drama, and whining. If you don't enjoy that, why are you here? :D ShawnG

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Kelvin92 wrote:Why do I have trouble finishing my songs?
Short answer: You have only learned to make those loops or drops or what ever.
Next thing you need to do is to learn how to make full arrangements from those.

Just look for a song that you like and is the same genre, and copy the arrangement from that. Also look for how does the song evolve etc, is it obviously built from one idea/loop or is there a story or what.

Copy until you know what to steal and make it your own ;)

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In Germany we have the saying "aus den Augen aus dem Sinn" which means "out of sight, out of mind". If you move a not finished song away with the idea to finish it later, is this often only the begin for another piece for the trash. So the most important rule: if a song was started it must be finished in the next days/weeks. Instead of starting another new song with "this cool idea I had last night", put this idea into a new block for the current song. The goal is to collect pieces of ideas for the current song and make later the decision which parts are interesting enough or which parts can be deleted because the idea was too boring or doesn't fit with the mood of the song.

If there are too many different interesting ideas, it makes sometimes sense to save the project under a different name for a different song or a different version of the song. Why not have a "bonus version" or something else? If you are completely unsure, let others help and let them pick the version they prefer ;)

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I think the answer might be to just do it.

There is a writing exercise every November on the Internet called "NaNoWriMo" (National Novel Writing Month) where participants spend the month of November, 30 days, writing 50,000 words of a novel, approximately 1700 words per day. The focus is to write words ... literally, and the participants go so far as to encourage one another to write complete nonsense if they get stuck and focus on the simple act of WRITING instead of considering what to write. They approach writing as if it were walking somewhere, that it is the physical action of moving fingers across a keyboard to create blocks of text, and not an effort to create some kind of a masterpiece. There reasoning is that through the actual physical activity of writing SOMETHING, you will eventually come out of it with text that you can go back and edit to create a novel, and that this is easier than it is to try to write something perfect from the beginning.

These people who participate in NaNoWriMo are ... different. They do different things to reach their 50,000 word goals. Some of them will literally use a special word processor that will start deleting their text if they don't type for a certain period of time. Yes, you heard me correctly, it's called "Write or die", and will actually start deleting words of your text if you just sit there and stare at the page too long.

Anyway, the point of bringing this crazy thing up, is that it might be useful to think of creating music in a similar way. Instead of focusing on quality, perfect songs, and ending up with something like writer's block where all you do is sit around not actually getting anything done ... maybe it's better to just MAKE MUSIC. Even crappy music. ANY music. Set some kind of a goal, maybe a song a day, maybe a song an HOUR, maybe a song phrase every 5 minutes, and just DO IT. Don't plan in advance, don't overthink it, don't try to figure anything out .. just turn on a microphone, pick up a pan from the stove, a spoon, and start banging on the pan to make a song while you free think some stupid lyrics. Or load a VST synth in, map a midi keyboard to it, and hit record and see what the hell comes out of it. Just. DO. SOMETHING.

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Or you could just do what the Beatles did with their "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" song. The song just stops. There is no outro.

You can call your band "We Don't Need No Stinkin' Outros". Or Something like that. And then you could do a quadruple-CD release. :D :lol:
ah böwakawa poussé poussé

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Zexila wrote:Watched interview where famous guy talked about this, sometimes he work fast, sometimes it takes a year for one track, everything depends how he feels about it, he tries what works best for the track, sometimes have few different versions of same track and so on.
@2:00

https://youtu.be/oAhpz2P6AKU?t=2m00s
This entire forum is wading through predictions, opinions, barely formed thoughts, drama, and whining. If you don't enjoy that, why are you here? :D ShawnG

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I really appreciate you guys for giving so much advice. I will try some tips and techniques you guys have giving me. Hopefully soon, I will be making FULL songs like a treadmill. :hihi: And if somebody wants to collab or something, feel free to message me :D

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el-bo (formerly ebow) wrote:Wise old Chinese proverb: "Don't start composing vertically until you've finished composing horizontally" :tu:
Even wiser and even more old proverb, originated from one of the most faraway countries in the world, Tristan da Cunha, says: "Start your composing whatever point its most inspiring for you, continue to the direction, which keeps up your insterest, backwards, forwards, vertically, horizontally - even use your Live´s session view for composing, as a ultimate makeshift, if nothing else helps". :borg:

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I have the same problem, lots of "bedroom producers" do, as shown by a quick google search. I think it's a combination of inexperience, lack of external pressure to finish songs, and the freedom to work on whatever we feel "inspired" to do at the moment rather than what actually needs doing.

I think the most important thing is to just force yourself to break out of the habit of making loops. Humans are habitual creates, but we also have the capacity to break habits. Easier said than done, of course. There are lots of techniques for this, many have been suggested here, but the most important thing is to "just do it".

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thecontrolcentre wrote:Having a release schedule helps me get focused on finishing tracks. Without one, why would you bother? (other than for fun). Book some gigs ... then you have to finish some tunes. ;)

Another option ... don't start a new tune until you finish the last one.
Now when I read this again, I participated for fun with 2 remix contests, but then I managed to pull it off to create a full song, maybe because of the time limit? When it's a original one, then I haven't finished one yet.

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Avoid the internet, forums, and specifically time spent admiring gear/tools. Learn to use the gear you have.

For myself I think maybe 2% of my original ideas make it to a finalized song. Keep in mind my perspective is from basic pop, not EDM.

I just counted 68 songs that I have shelved. Some recent, and some up to 10 years old. All of them in various stages of production. If it's an old song that was shelved, it had better be just the basics with good composition...guitar, drums, bass piano sans dated techniques, synth sounds, arrpegiator patterns etc.

They get shelved for the following reasons:

1. Cant get good lyrics
2. Got a hook or even chorus, but difficult to write a verse that works with the chorus.
3. Can't find the right vocalist to fit the song.
4. After spending some time, I think the whole production sucks canal water, but instead of deleting everything why not just shelve it and come back to it in a few months for a fresh listen?
5. The main sounds are based around a gimmick, such as an arp pattern or unique sound I perhaps found in a Reaktor .ens, and I'm trying to build the song around this gimmick. I stop and force myself to translate or strip it down to basic guitar/piano/bass drums. Does it still work? If not, shelve it.

Often times, after just a few hours playing over and over, I have listened way too much to a hook/chorus with specific sounds, that I think is very cool. But then I come back with fresh ears another day or week and it just sucks. Shelve it. Maybe in a year your ears or mind will be in another place with a totally different perspective.

With that said, I think there is a point where you really do have to push yourself to complete a track. But IMO, it should be a track that is close to completion. In this scenario, ask yourself what the real stumbling blocks are for you. Lyrics? Composition? Song structure? Tracking? The mix? What issue is blocking it from being finalized? There is a fine line between pushing too hard and not hard enough. Maybe ask friends or even collaborate?

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