How long do you pursue a failed idea?

[SODDI]

I just beat my head up against another failure for two weeks. All my fault, my lack of skills, no other person or software to blame. Yeah, I learned stuff, but that isn't quite as fun as working something through to its end.

At this point, my "Abandoned" folder is far larger than my "Finished" folder.

[Tricky-Loops]

Failure is an experience. Experience makes you better...

From failure you can learn much more than from success...

[V0RT3X]

I relate to this. I actually have a folder of ableton projects with 53 unfinished projects that i started and abandoned. I call it the Junkyard


Before i had this folder I probably had about 200 or so projects trashed gone forever. I figure by keeping my junkyard folder i'll be able to go back and salvage ideas or whatever if i want.

I am not really a musician, i think of myself as more of a sound designer/Programmer than anything. It's been like 10 years so far of me just going back and forth with music production and honestly i am starting to hear a bit of a difference each time.

Don't feel like a failure if you are constantly learning new things all the time. Only feel like a failure if you keep doing the same thing and don't get the desired result you want.

[4damind]

Only some minutes My best friend is the "delete" key and it doesn't take a long time for the decision to delete some tracks or the complete project.
It's the most important thing I learned, that if the first idea/patterns/bars are not giving me this "wow, this will be a great track" feeling it doesn't make sense to invest more time.
Often the sounds are good but the arrangement is bad, so I remove only all midi events and try some different stuff with the sounds.

This is a typical "trial & error" workflow. You try some stuff and if it doesn't work, you start again based on some earlier stage which was great (sometimes only the selected presets/programmed sounds).

Because my production-law is that every track must be finished, I have no place for unfinished snippets with failed ideas. My unfinished folder has not more than 2-3 projects... some started only because of demoing some stuff, others with a good idea but where I'm not sure if I will finish the track.

[Sendy]

Often it's a case of backtracking to the point where you made that ONE wrong decision which has put the whole song out of whack. Though sometimes it's true that there's nothing worth saving. And sometimes there is some good stuff in there, but it's so helplessly tangled up with the shite that it just isn't worth the effort.

Definitely, learn to be ruthless with that delete key.

[ariston]

If something doesn't click, I drop it immediately. I can do this because: when something clicks, it'll go on clicking all the way to the end. I know I can depend on that, and since I don't make music for a living, I'm not obligated to take the tortuous route of working on material that I know to be Suck-City just to make a deadline. You can't polish a turd, as they say.

I prefer the spontaneous way of making music. Used to be different: I used to belabour the finer points of my compositions, fretting the hows and whys and wheres in the long hours of the night, back when I was of the youthful opinion that complexity=good and simplicity=bad. I've since learned that, usually, simplicity=hard as hell and complexity=brainfuck.

One of the strategies I tried along the way was: if something's bad, then enhance that badness, make it as bad as it can be. Create the failure of failures, the epitome of awfulness. Very liberating, you should try it.

[morelia]

I've had poor tunes sitting in limbo for years. I usually like to write lyrics and sometimes after a few years they pop into my head, I record them and that is that. The songs sucks but it's finished. I feel like I have to see the idea through. That said, I do occasionally go through my work in progress folder and if anything is just not working I'll delete it and move on. I did that a couple of months ago. Had a folder with maybe 8 songs in it. I think I just deleted 3 that were full instrument arrangements but not mixed and had no vocals. After they are gone I never look back but it's hard to hit that delete button.

[ATS]

I read somewhere that you should always be working on music even if it is bad songs. Keeps you sharp, and the more idea you come up with the more good ideas you will end up having.

[keyman_sam]

YOur failed projects will one day be an inspiration for you when you have developed better music, do better things.

One day this shitty music you made will inspire you again. Then you will use some part of it as a sample, or as a hook or develop the idea using the skills you have acquired.

Till that day, wait. Put it aside never delete anything. I wish I had all my 'junk' from when i was 13 years old. THere's some solid gold hidden there, I could swear.

[V0RT3X]

I read somewhere that you should always be working on music even if it is bad songs. Keeps you sharp, and the more idea you come up with the more good ideas you will end up having.

Yah i've learned so much from my mistakes that i think it really helps.


I don't think i actually started finishing songs and starting my 10,000 hour thing until just last year so i know i still have a ways to go. This is mostly cause I never really took the concepts as serious as i do now.

Music is not something you can just wing and expect something incredible to come out unless you are super super talented. I am not really one of those super super talented individuals so i gotta up my game and work hard at learning everything i can.

[Bronto Scorpio]

I like the advice Autechre Sean has given in the "Ask Autechre anything" thingy a few weeks ago:

When you record jams are they multi-track/channel or 2 track?

nah it's almost always 2 track

if an element sounds bad then i try to learn what i did wrong and not do it again, bin the track (trust me you do that enough times you start to learn)

When I get stuck or notice that something doesn't turn out as I wanted to, I'll often try to go into a completely different direction with it.

Cheers
Dennis

[Zombie Queen]

All my life, I'm afraid.

[Tricky-Loops]

I'm always thinking there might be some time when I re-discover an old project and make suddenly a great song out of it - in most cases this isn't the case but I cannot delete old unfinished projects, either. To get deleted, it has to be exceptionally bad - but if there are some good sounds in it, I rather keep it...

[camsr]

I'm always thinking there might be some time when I re-discover an old project and make suddenly a great song out of it - in most cases this isn't the case but I cannot delete old unfinished projects, either. To get deleted, it has to be exceptionally bad - but if there are some good sounds in it, I rather keep it...

Make some samples from the sound in question, a few, and carry on. You might find more enjoyment from using a sampler than a synth!

[jancivil]

There is a part of my personality that doesn't allow this, a brutal project manager that puts their foot down. I had one project sometime I think in 2011 with one really nice section and some later sections that were just rubbish and I probably tossed a couple weeks away trying to make it work, but I wasn't a well person. The nice bit, which had tons of potential, used an instrument that was just not going to cut it, just some holes in it I couldn't disguise or find a path around.

I'm grateful for this thread as I did abandon one thing I went to look at tonight, as something that didn't rise to an ideal I had of it but it's such I can simply cut one section right out of it and it's so going to work, just not as envisioned as a whole. This is key, also, to know the value of a part.

I finished something the other day that had a real botch of one night work I thought was genius but the next day I just tossed those tracks, no worries. It's a matter of not being attached, not fall in love with details or lose the forest for the trees.

There is always failure at some level, there is no shame in failure, the thing to do - someone years ago taught me this, someone much more mature - is know when to cut your losses and a sort of Zen thing of not being too attached {for instance to details, you can have a little gesture that by itself is wonderful but forcing the other things, or the whole to it is a mistake}. Everything has to be a learning experience.