hating your own music.. or how to finish a song?

[mwa]

hey,

i've got a question.. how many of you guys start something with a really good idea, only to come back to it a bit later and just hate what you've got down so far?

i find myself in this situation nearly everytime i sit down to work on anything, and i'm frustrating myself more every time.

what do you guys do if this happens? what should i do? keep at it and try to finish a song no matter how much it's pissing me off, or scrap it and try something new?

thanks,
elp

[no_barcode]

hey,

i've got a question.. how many of you guys start something with a really good idea, only to come back to it a bit later and just hate what you've got down so far?

i find myself in this situation nearly everytime i sit down to work on anything, and i'm frustrating myself more every time.

what do you guys do if this happens? what should i do? keep at it and try to finish a song no matter how much it's pissing me off, or scrap it and try something new?

thanks,
elp

All the time. I've found that blaming the failure of my creative inspirations on whatever host application I happen to be using, tends to make me feel better. Though that doesn't seem to help the song get finished.

[[decipher]]

i know this situation so well. but for me its the total absent of self-confidence. i start with a good idea and some motivation. after some time maybe something does not work out the way i want and i hit safe, close host and just hate myself for beeing untalented and stuff ;'(
maybe patience and fresh ears will help you finishing a song. some times when i load a saved project i listen to it and try just to do the first thing that comes in mind. the first ideas of what might help the sound to be finished. without much real thinking. just feeling the unfinished music. strange stuff...

[mwa]

that's how i feel as well.. like i'm untalented and completely uncreative..

and i blame cubase too.. :p

i'll try to just keep at it though..

[Caleb]

I find this happens with me more with lyrics than with music although there have been a few notable occasions.

Personally I tend to either reengineer or dump the things I don't like (unless I'm being commissioned that is).

In the long run I only want to go the distance with things I'm not going hate listening to in the future.

I find more often that I have what I think is a good idea and have no idea how to follow-through to completion. Eg. Wow what a verse but I just cannot find a chorus for it.

This leaves around 100 unfinished songs on my computer.

The other is - love the music - needs lyrics - but I just can't find the right lyrics for it.

Caleb

[taji]

Happens quite a bit. Less so now (I've been doing this one way or another for 20 years). I play guitar and I remember it taking me about 3 years to get to the point that I could play any song completely (cover or otherwise). I guess it was about 7 years before I wrote my first complete song (many fragments but nothing finished).

Here is some inspirational blather:

1. Go on faith and try to finish it anyways. Everything I've ever done has been less then what I imagined it could be. Still it turned out alright. Someone asked Frances Ford Coppola how he knew when one of his films was finished. His answer has always inspired me: "I never finish a film, I abandon it". He's never been satisfied with any film he's ever made. This would include the Godfather Trilogy, Apocalypse Now, The Conversaiton, etc.

2. Save all your failures. About two years ago I was working on an electro folk song that used vinyl pops and clicks as the drum beat. It never worked right so I abandoned the project, but I saved the cakewalk project file off to cd rom. Last march my wife wanted to do a film and enter it into the StockStock film festival (www.stockstock.org). We decided to do a glitch video and I pulled out the old project and used the vinyl noise section as part of the sound track to the video. We entered the film into the festival and it was accepted. Who would a thunk? (Even so, I still hate the bass part on that track as it's horribly mastered. ).

I could go on and on with "don't compare yourself with others", "be patient", "give yourself a break", blah blah blah , but you get the idea .

[NAD]

hey,

i've got a question.. how many of you guys start something with a really good idea, only to come back to it a bit later and just hate what you've got down so far?

i find myself in this situation nearly everytime i sit down to work on anything, and i'm frustrating myself more every time.

what do you guys do if this happens? what should i do? keep at it and try to finish a song no matter how much it's pissing me off, or scrap it and try something new?

thanks,
elp

How true! How true....

[rokkon]

i know that well..
to you guys with low self-confidence:
do you know that situation when you abandon all your projects because they are simply bad junk to you, and then you go to a (self-confidence boosed) friend and he shows you proudly his newest tracks.

First you think "damn that cool, such an talented bastard", but then on a second thought you realise it's actually pretty cheap shit, much worse that the stuff on your hd, you'd quickly abandoned it if it came from yourself.
Yet still it's a cool tune, and the weaker things in it can always be worked on later.

happens to me all the time.
Maybe it helpes to set different goals: instead of trying to make a good tune, just try to make a tune at all. (trivial stupid advice, i know).

When you really have finished something, you're usually pretty proud of it, no matter how good it is, just because its been *you* who made it... and that proudness crawls into your sense for reality and manipulates it in a way so you really like your work, no matter if it's good or not

[Hink]

hey,

i've got a question.. how many of you guys start something with a really good idea, only to come back to it a bit later and just hate what you've got down so far?

i find myself in this situation nearly everytime i sit down to work on anything, and i'm frustrating myself more every time.

what do you guys do if this happens? what should i do? keep at it and try to finish a song no matter how much it's pissing me off, or scrap it and try something new?

thanks,
elp

This is as common as the cold, I got more unfinished songs, sometimes I scratch my head and say "when did I do that?". I find I'll never be satisfied so I try to look at things less critical and I keep a log of the things that bother me. Sometimes I hear something from another artist I like and say I like that, but if I did I wouldn't...so I try to think like that. Does that make sense?

Then now with the net it's easier but before I would give out copies to friends. If they didn't mention the things I worried about I rethink and often leave well enough alone...it works for me...especially with my bad singing...

[NAD]

Sometimes I hear something from another artist I like and say I like that, but if I did I wouldn't...so I try to think like that. Does that make sense?

No.

[Warmonger]

For me, not finishing songs right away is just part of the creative process. I usually can get about a minute of music, and then having trouble coming up with a B section. Rather than really worrying about that, I'll start on a new A section. I'll keep coming back to the first song to see if I still like it, and if I do, I'll force myself to put in a B and be done with it.

My problem isn't a lack of self-confidence. It's usually just that the second part of music that I write doesn't quite fit with the first as well as I like, so I have to scrap it. If this scrapping process repeats too long, the A will probably get stale and I'll have to abandon the song, but with just the right amount of time, I come up with my best results.

I'm almost always working on at least a couple of songs at the same time, and so keeping one kind of filters out the crap. It's not the most efficient workflow, but it works for me.

[Robert Randolph]

I solved this problem for myself, I write a song first... practice it to death then I play it all once by myself or with a buddy... that's it.

it's done, it's finalized, it gets stashed in my "to be released" folder...

that's when I actually get time to make music

[crazed one]

I just say f**k it and work on something else. If a song happens, it happens. I can't force my creativity. If I do, it ends up sounding like shit. I have about 70 tracks or so on my HD and backed up that aren't finished. Sometimes I get a tune in my head and go back and finish a tune.

[CypherOne]

I just say f**k it and work on something else. If a song happens, it happens. I can't force my creativity. If I do, it ends up sounding like shit. I have about 70 tracks or so on my HD and backed up that aren't finished. Sometimes I get a tune in my head and go back and finish a tune.

yes.

[Spirograph]

All good points and I've been there, done that as well. Here's something that I've found, though: don't throw anything away, no matter how bad it sounds at the time! I've had quite a few pieces I thought were garbage that turn out to be some of my best works. If you have the space for it, keep it, even if you use it for a starting point for a better song. Also, I date all my work so I know roughly when it was done. This keeps the song rather open ended instead of naming the song from the beginning (another approach).

S-graph