Pretty much exactly nailing down my long-ish explanation.deastman wrote:I know from personal experience how tempting it can be to work in vertical mode, which inevitably ends with a useless 8-bar opus. Staying in the horizontal isn't fun, and it takes enormous discipline.
And well, I even sort of love all those 92276293 8-bar patterns that I've created over the years. Just that almost none of them ever made it into a real song, simply because moving on was close to impossible.
Hence: If you really want to finish a song, try out everything that moves you forward horizontally. Because that's the direction each and every song takes. Vertical "movement" is about producing (and partially somewhat about arranging), but nothing to help you getting a song done. Of course there's quite some "grey areas", so YMMV.
And well, seriously, I should really stick to what I'm posting more often...
- Sascha
P.S.: I sometimes truly miss the 4-track-recorder days. Back then there was almost no way to work but horizontally.