10 Tips from an ADHD producer on how to finish songs faster

[matthewisgrand]

Waiting on a diagnosis myself
I feel from buying Ritalin from people who have similar problems and have the odd spare box that all my misery will be resolved when I get it prescribed

All the misery of my production problems that is

[licasto2]

I only skimmed the first post so this may have been suggested but I always render VI's and MIDI outboard to audio ASAP and never start to actually mix other than levels and panning. I render all tracks as audio files and start mixing those stems in a fresh project. This method helps me immensely.

[Chandlerhimself]

I also have ADHD. One thing that helped me was seperating the music making process into steps. Songwriting, Arranging, Recording, Production, Mixing and Mastering. Before I would just skip around and get caught up doing sound design before my arrangement is finished. I found it helpful to think of myself as different people and try to finish one part so I can hand it off to the next person. Each person polishes the music for the next person in line. The mastering engineer doesn't need to be involved in the guitar recording, so he just has to wait for his turn.

Another thing that helped was forcing myself to finish. I had the same problem or creating "song fragments", but no finished products. I started making myself finish the songs and I noticed my skills got so much better. When you finish a song it means you've gone through all the steps and you've been able to practice multiple skills. I'm sure if I spent more time, I could have turned some of those fragments into better songs. However the skills and tricks I got from finishing helps me create better music now, which I wouldn't have been able to do before. Right now I only have 1 or 2 ideas that I haven't used yet, whereas before I would have 10-20 and they'd never get turned into full songs.

[gExpectations]

I got diagnosed with add at 38 and it also helped me a lot, because once you accept that its nothing you should change but just work with, you can make your life a lot easier. I started doing similar thing to you: mainly create functionally differentiated work areas (i.e. i bought a laptop just for work, nothing else on there) and also structure them in simple layouts. With that, here is what I do to a similar effect:

I work in BitWig. (1) I created a template that contains all the instruments I want to currently use, ordered by type and deactivated. So I can also start specific Kontakt instruments with 1 click. This template also contains Midi Routings, including tracks for control of Shaper Box, Cthulhu and Chordly (2) I built a more or less consistent toolset that fulfills every purpose and stray away from branching off too much. So, right now I use a selection of Komplete instruments as 'plug and play' vsts, Phase Plant for sound creation, XO for drums and Izotope for mixing, lastly a selection of plugins for sound design (BitWig native, NIs plugs, SketchCassette, Shaper Box rn). (3) Besides Komplete, which is just too good value, i only use plugins that are (a) created in a flat design (b) resizeable and (c) i like to look at. This helps you not only to focus and creates consistency but also reduces the amount of stuff you look at, when you inevitably go shopping for new tools .

These restrictions are of course arbitrary but I want to strengthen your point that creating environments with little hurdles and setting specific ideas (dont have to be the best one, can be random) of how to work, will make you more productive. Lastly, I want to add: thats just how creativity works for all people, you need a preselection of what is possible, else you can't come to a decision -- its just more important for ADD brains.

[gExpectations]

I see alot of people mention differentiating work steps. I generally like the idea, maybe I'll try it in music too. I think you can work chaotically too, if you (a) manage your time and (b) don't get demoralized. I found once I fixed expectations towards myself, working 10h on a small problem wasn't such a big deal anymore -- it was more of a big problem before, not for efficiency reasons but for thinking "oh my god i got nothing done again". Now I just say "well it wasn't what i wanted to achieve today but i still learned a lot". This of course only works, if you don't have deadlines for deliverables or still hit them.

I work quite chaotically in my day job too but only in parts. I do research for a living and my exploration phase is always very chaotic. A lot of tabs, a lot of skimming of different books, a lot of notes. I have strong structure for the rest tho, not an explicit one but still: the task of researching lit, reading lit, writing outlines, ideas or rough drafts, formatting text and finishing text are always very distinct steps. That's also why I write in full screen no menu markdown editors and set text in latex.

A last tip: you don't have to fight your impulse to try stuff but what helps is using a timer. I like using a kitchen timer and say: okay now I want to do x, Ill do it for one hour. That keeps me from starting something and then 8 hour later, I'm still looking at used guitar pedals So if youre really curious what happens if you reproduce the sound you use in Massive or whatever, ill encourage it with a timer I think it can help perserve flow state.

[dermage]

Thanks for all your input people.

I quite like gExpectations template approach. A good idea which I'm using already, but for drums I just had Drumazon/Nepheton there, but totally makes sense to also add eg. Kontakt (WA Triaz) or Atlas there with pre-configured output routings. Definitely should speed up workflow and not annoy in the time of creating!

What I also found out for me, that arranging "live" helps a lot. I have several midi controllers which I can quickly map to channel activation/deactivation, synth filters + ADSRs. I haven't arranged a track initially in the arrangement view since years.
So I can quickly record and adjust the arrangement later. Of course this only works good in DAWs which have a clip view like Ableton Live/Bitwig, but I think more and more DAWs have this (Logic?, DP?).
That way I'm not lost in arranging endlessly, but can better transfer my feeling directly to the arrangement. Even if it's not good, I can re-record or adjust later. But In most cases I leave it like that and work on the arrangement view afterwards to perfection.

[mbird23]

I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD but I'm pretty sure I have some part of it (amongst diagnosed severe OCD) so some of these tips are common sense but what I overlook. Thanks for helping.

[_leras]

Hope this helps.

This is one of the best posts I've seen on KVR. Thanks for sharing this and I hope lots of people get to see it.

Lots of good advice here for all types of people and procrastinators. Not just ADHD people.

[ON BEATS]

This explains why I prefer having just two or three vst's in my setup. I am not sure if I have autism or ADHD but the doctors have never confirmed anything and said I'm fine; I beg to differ.

Anyway, I just read the initial post to a friend on the phone and said to him that if I had 10+ vst's on here I'd never get any music created. It is too much of a distraction, and when I visit studios that have a plethora of equipment/sound libraries installed they don't seem to get a lot done either.

I currently have six vst's installed, with respect to my friend who created four of them, but when I made music yesterday I stuck to the same three that I prefer (Hensive 1+2 and my Drumkit vst).

I mean to use the others but I also want to get things done. Playing around with a new vst is good for the sound libraries so I will give one of the additional vst's a try when I next make a beat. Chances are it will be removed and I'll revert to just two vst's because I have found my 'sound' and know where those sounds are. Also when I want to experiment (which I do with every production), I can flick through all of the other Strings, or Bass sounds, or Percussion etc until I have used them all.

Simple setup makes more sense, ADHD or not I would say.

There is a producer here in Germany that made like 7 albums using Heat Up 2 vst before they released Heat Up 3.

All we really need is one, decent vst, and then some fx plug-ins if needed, because the stock DAW plug-ins that I've tested seem to be fine at a basic production level.