getting fed up with getting nowhere in my tunes

[gnu23]

Rather than deleting stuff, pick a set of tools from what you have and write a fresh tune using only those plugins. Works for me ...

This is where I am right now. I'm in the process of stripping my process to minimal.

[ulrichburke]

What I do is get a tune that's similar to what I want to write and break it down. Listen to what it does and when/why it does it. Then do one with your own tune but the same happenings in the same places, listen to it back and, if necessary (and if you're like me it surely will be!) work on the Happening Spots (like 'drops', changeups, etc) individually so you get yours sounding the way theirs do. Audacity's great for helping with that, you can separate the stereo track into left and right and hear what's happening on each side separately, so you can hear how the panning works. And you can put a part of the track on repeat, so you can work on making yours sound like theirs.

Treat the first few attempt as practices. What I do, using MIDI, is when I've got a few tries down, I put all the bits I'm proud of together in one file, listen to them and then put in bits BETWEEN those bits, so you know the Happening Spots are in the right places and sounding good. It's easier working on the melody/melodies when you know what they're leading up to (the Happening Spots) are in place and working, you know what you're constructing the tune TOWARDS. Then polish the bits till they sound good leading up to the Happening Spots and, if you can't think of a full-stop ending, repeat the last phrase a few times and do it as a fadeout. You can do fadeouts in Audacity too, put the whole thing in there as a wavefile, select the ending and choose FADE in the effects menu. Might have to repeat the FADE command a few times to get it sounding right.

All the above's a constant learning curve, don't forget, so don't blame yourself if it doesn't sound right the first time, you can just work on the bits till it does. Or, again, just keep the best bits of that track and combine them with good bits from other tracks. MIDI's perfect for doing stuff like that! You can just copy/paste from the other folders with the other tracks in.

Yours harmoniously,

Chris.