30 tracks in 30 days Bitwig Challenge - the results

[bboonz]

Hey guys,

Some of you might remember that I started a 30 day Challenge about a month ago - in which the goal was to create 30 tracks in 30 days (http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 9&t=445517). Thought I'd update you with the results and some lessons from the experience.

The 30th of September was the last planned day and I'm really excited to report that WE MADE IT! 30 tracks finished before 20pm every day. It was really an amazing and challenging experience - both from a personal as well as a producer perspective.

Here are some findings along the way:
* The challenging part was the need to deliver daily. It made me (I think) sleep pretty badly and on those days it was difficult to be creative and deliver. Then in the end of the day you have to put something out that you're not satisfied with.
* On the other hand - it was a lot of fun. The combination of a creative process limited by a certain timeframe creates boundaries that make it both challenging, fun and help you stop messing around with minutiae.
* The feedback and response is the thing that keeps you going. It is also something really looking forward to on the end of the day.
* The learning curve was steep, really steep. I think I've learned more these 30 days than in the last year. Every day you complete the whole process from the beginning to the end so you learn every part of creating a track.
* With the rapid workflow of Bitwig you can get quite far in one day. During the process I switched from 1.1 to 1.2 and you can save a lot of time with the track grouping, and the templates. I've made a list of 40 bugs/ wishes which I will try to address when I have some spare time.
* So in the end 30 tracks were finished. I'll choose 4 of them to further improve the next weeks/ months and try to get them released onto an EP. I think this is a better strategy than to write 4 tracks in a whole month.

I've made a 2 min compilation with music and screenshots of the project along the way so you can see how the projects change:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8XG98aRP-g

Full length tracks:
https://soundcloud.com/flaes/sets/30-days-of-tracks

Really curious what you think. Feedback, tips and questions are of course much appreciated!

Have a great BWS day

Cheers,
Bas

[Michael L]

Congratulations on your achievement! Gutsy thing to do. And great video, hearing the variety over the month.
Thank you for sharing your findings; i never thought about doing something small & imperfect every day as a learning strategy. It obviously worked because IMHO the last five tracks are way more interesting as a group than the first five.
If you did a track every other day would it have been better scheduling & better sleep?

[bboonz]

Thanks man (:
Yes, a track every other day would have probably been easier. But I did like the fact that there were no 'off-days'.
The first weeks were very challenging but after that I found some tricks dealing with it:
* Better eating (more vegetables and salads)
* Limit on the alcohol
* Set an alarm every morning at the same time
* Just accept it when you wake early. Start on a track and just sleep when you're tired after a few hours.

Also (in my personal experience) you're better off working 6 hours on a track rested than 10 when you're tired.

[lehtiniemi]

Well done, impressive!!! I also like the observations, they seem to somewhat apply to everyday work as well.

When Bitwig 2.0 comes out with the network collaboration, it would be nice to do for example 7 day challenges with random partners, two totally different people working on same songs for 7 days, 7 songs.

[takaii]

Ive hears its more important working on quantity and make many tracks than trying to perfect one track. To accept a track suck to make newer track better instead with experience and training than doing one track as good as possible. Because its easier to make good tracks if you finnish many tracks than working on one many many hours

Do you feel the same as what i wrote after this 30 days challange? That quantity will make better quality at end then trying to make a quality track?

[Scotty]

I listened to the tracks early this morning and had some definite favorites. Obviously my comments reflect my own biases. I tend to prefer atmospheric textures and sound design so when you veer in that direction the music catches my ear. It would have been interesting to hear a greater range of tempos, keys and some shorter track lengths in places.

I am interested on the workflow you develop as you work with different song files and pull the various clips and signal chains together as you make your EP. I hope that you can document some of this and come back to us to report what you learn and how your workflow evolves. This is why I bought Bitwig as I thought it would be a good way to pull together some of my less structured doodles. I have a lot of unused material in Cubase and it is not easy to pull it apart and reorganize it into new songs. Bitwig should excel in that application.

I'd love to see your buglist and product suggestions for Bitwig. I hope you share that soon.

You have a ton of content here and I am impressed with the effort. I think you'll be drawing from this pool for a long time. Keep us in the loop. I like Lehtiniemi's suggestion. If you are inclined to release some of the project files it might be interesting to see what a larger Bitwig community would do with the material.

Congratulations on this achievement and thanks for sharing. - Scotty

[bboonz]

Ive hears its more important working on quantity and make many tracks than trying to perfect one track. To accept a track suck to make newer track better instead with experience and training than doing one track as good as possible. Because its easier to make good tracks if you finnish many tracks than working on one many many hours

Do you feel the same as what i wrote after this 30 days challange? That quantity will make better quality at end then trying to make a quality track?

Exactly. An analogy I like is the following:

Suppose you're a professor at a University teaching to 150 really smart students. You and your students have 2 hours to come with a perfect business plan. You could do the following: spend those two hours discussing together and come up with 1 idea. The most likely result you will get will likely be shit because everybody will advocate only their own idea and discard others' ideas.

On the other hand if you split those 150 students into 50 groups of 3, let all the groups come up with their own idea, present them and together vote on the best idea. The result will probably be far, far better.

This analogy is of course not 100% applicable to this situation, but I really like the first quantity, than quality part. Although normally you shouldn't let everybody hear all the 'bad' tracks

[bboonz]

I listened to the tracks early this morning and had some definite favorites.

I'm curious which ones you like. Would be great if you can share it

I am interested on the workflow you develop as you work with different song files and pull the various clips and signal chains together as you make your EP.

Yes no problem.
One thing that comes up right now is that for every track I made I exported the drumloops, the kicks and the basslines. So if I'm working on a new track and didn't want to spent to much time on the drums, I'd just throw in the loops, check which ones sound good, and then just copy paste the tracks from that project into the new project.

I'd love to see your buglist and product suggestions for Bitwig. I hope you share that soon.

Yes will do. I'll first contact Dom about which ones I should send in, so I don't waste time on bugs/suggestions that are already known.

You have a ton of content here and I am impressed with the effort. I think you'll be drawing from this pool for a long time. Keep us in the loop. I like Lehtiniemi's suggestion. If you are inclined to release some of the project files it might be interesting to see what a larger Bitwig community would do with the material.

Thanks man. Yeah I like the suggestion of Lehtiniemi's as well. I'll see if I have something that's shareable. Or maybe I'll share a project if it's more developed. Will let you know.

[SpaceTraffic]

Hey Flaes! Kool idea and great result! A lot of dopeness! Peace from Sweden

Q

[bboonz]

Hey Flaes! Kool idea and great result! A lot of dopeness! Peace from Sweden

thanks man!