I often find myself getting stuck in a rut where I can only seem to produce a short loop of an idea. I have problems extending that idea beyond the initial loop. Once I manage to somehow find myself beyond the loop and have some sort of arrangement, I find it difficult to describe how I bridged the gap between the loop and that arrangement. When I move on to the next song, I get stuck at the same point. This results in most of my projects being short loops of ideas ... and full songs being very rare.
So, the question I put to you then is this: when starting a new song, how do you personally move beyond the initial loop idea to something that is more fleshed out?
Thanks in advance for the ideas and suggestions. I appreciate them all.
Need to refresh my memory and build some good habits.
There are definitely benefits to writing with a piano sound, as it allows for many types of expression from the same sound. You can hold down chords, while playing more staccato, percussive melodic or bassline work. This is not possible with a pad with long attack, for example. That being said, you can use keyboard splitting to combine sounds in a way that allows more options. I am currently in a composing/writing state, and am using a summing stack (Logic Pro) made up of four instances of Equator, allowing a huge amount of expression and options. Once I have all the music mapped out it will be time to record, and work out which of those four sounds will remain, and which will be swapped out.
