You know, 2500 filles is an achievement in itself. It’s not failure, it’s a performance. It’s art.
On a serious note, it’s a common thing for each and every creative thing : starting is fun, finishing is pain. Which is sad, because it keeps us away from the sweet sweet feeling of accomplishment…
I’ve noticed that the only times I managed to finish anything were when I manage to forget the fear of disappointment/failure… either I didn’t care or I had a deadline, so self-awareness had no place in the process.
Personal anecdote : the first EP I ever pulled out (it was imperfect to a critical degree, but it was finished) after 10years of fiddling around was at a point of my life where I didn’t feel like I had to prove anything (nice job, nothing to complain about). Somehow music became fun, and it lifted the mental block you talked about.
That said, with discipline and method (never more than 4 unfinished song… 48h challenge… getting a gig with a deadline) it’s possible to actually become efficient.
I think Roger Linn stated something similar a few years back, pointing out that one of the big secrets of the music instrument industry is, that no one actually needs a new instrument in order to create new music…
I have maybe 6 unfinished songs since 2004.
The problem is: When you sit down to make a song, your goal is to Discover your own metal variants of melodies and musical phrases …etc= it is an improvisation. You do not focus on finishing a song, i think. You are having fun while doing the process, not by getting a results. I dunno, does that bother you at all ? maybe these songs have such a destiny .Means, they are not advanced enough to be finished or the idea is too young to be released . Sometimes you need to finish a full song in your brain, then start doing it on your pc. …
Ok, lets leave Polaris out of this. Are you sure that you can make that juicy filters in Renoise?
Btw. this is made by the beta version of the strobe VSTi. Deadmau5 uses vsti a lot, ive got feeling that he has his studio because he can. I own some hw but none is present in any of my tracks so i can understand the difference between having fun and being practical :].
@Medievil, you are right, I don’t have a song in my head before I start, I’m just fiddling with the sounds until I’ve made something worth listening to and then the trouble starts, I just can’t seem to flesh it out into a good song structure with proper automation and transitions… I think you’re definitely right about having an idea of a song before you start, or at least focused on the genre hehe… I’ll try that when I boot up Renoise and then I think I need some serious song structure practice so I don’t get caught in an infinite loop of nothing.
Thanks for the input guys! Just wondering how on earth you two can have so few unfinished songs, that’s mind-boggling
There is a lot of artist who starts with experimenting and without any clear idea. You dont have to be a songwriter with a plan to write a song (but it must be great to be one).
To be honest i ve got also huge problem with finishing songs. I lost a motivation after playing one loop over and over again. And i am not very good in variations and transitions so I am not used to like my “finished tracks”.
But there is one popular technique that works very well with repetitious music and can work for you
make your loop full of instruments, a lot various layers - usually 4bar loop.
2)Distribute instruments and their patterns across the whole song.
Why not go through those snippets again and start rendering out a ton of loops with drums, melodies, effects etc, then you have a huge library of your own stuff to play around with and throwing some songs together based on loops is not that hard, since you have most of the distracting things already done. Fiddling with fx, automation and such should be minimal. Once you have the basic song structure down you can do some refinement and once done, there you go, all you did was prepare a big sample collection to source from and ease up the actual song making.
I have maybe 50 xrns song sketches. And maybe 100 or so short audio recordings of brief guitar or bass riffings.
Every so often I go through the audio files and make notes. 95% of the time the riff or chord sequence that sounded so awesome in my head fails to translate when recorded and then listened back some time later. But even a small return on the effort is worth it.
If I can get something catchy and engaging once out of every 20 times that’s a win.
Often these better riffs and ideas get turned into xrns files, where I’ll fill out the arrangement. Some of these xrns files are little more than a sequence of 10 or 15 different bass riffs with some simple percussion backing.
Most are not going to get anywhere. But I’ve gone back to some xrns files and been pleasantly surprised. Fresh ears can do wonders.
I’ve gotten better at pushing through and finishing pieces and releasing them to Bandcamp, etc. I’m now more aligned with generating more output of possibly less-than-stellar quality instead of trying to perfect each track before it goes out, (I still have to really like something before I release it but I don’t fret over small details that in all likelihood only I will notice.)
I try to focus on whatever handful of tracks that still excite me even after some time has passed rather than dwelling over what I could do to fix up all the others than maybe don’t hold up as well.
Working, releasing, and moving on is a great liberator and, for me, a good way to improve my output.
I would love to have a way to create a playlist of xrns files so that I could periodically grab all those in-progress works and listen to them. The next alternative might be to make a point of always rendering xrns files so that there’s always a recent wav or mp3 version I can grab to see if something grabs me.
Having 2K+ files, though, would be quite the challenge : )
Ok, lets leave Polaris out of this. Are you sure that you can make that juicy filters in Renoise? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKi9Z-f6qX4
Btw. this is made by the beta version of the strobe VSTi. Deadmau5 uses vsti a lot, ive got feeling that he has his studio because he can. I own some hw but none is present in any of my tracks so i can understand the difference between fun and being practical.
Are you telling me that if i will make a video about how to do that in Renoise, you will admit that ? Of course not, you will deny by saying : this is not what i meant ,
not that sound …etc. I think it is a useless argument.I know these schemes.
There is a lot of artist who starts with experimenting and without any clear idea. You dont have to be a songwriter with a plan to write a song (but it must be great to be one).
To be honest i ve got also huge problem with finishing songs. I lost a motivation after playing one loop over and over again. And i am not very good in variations and transitions so I am not used to like my “finished tracks”.
But there is one popular technique that works very well with repetitious music and can work for you
make your loop full of instruments, a lot various layers - usually 4bar loop.
2)Distribute instruments and their patterns across the whole song.
Start making changes etc.
I did not say that someone Needs to be a songwriter to write a song. I compose music since a long time, despite this, I do not have minimal musical knowledge in the field of chords and musical literacy { i even dont know what the hell ami playing, which chords, notes …etc} .Just follow your intuition. It is that easy.
@majed: great, great post!
I think Roger Linn stated something similar a few years back, pointing out that one of the big secrets of the music instrument industry is, that no one actually needs a new instrument in order to create new music…
People always forget that the holy J.S BACH wrote his emperor of 2022 BWV compositions using only a god damn paper and a pen lol …can you believe that …
People always forget that the holy J.S BACH wrote his emperor of 2022 BWV compositions using only a god damn paper and a pen lol …can you believe that …
Yes, more like just over a thousand (known), but who’s counting? I also believe that Bach could score using just paper and quill.
Why not go through those snippets again and start rendering out a ton of loops with drums, melodies, effects etc, then you have a huge library of your own stuff to play around with and throwing some songs together based on loops is not that hard, since you have most of the distracting things already done.
+1 And don’t forget to grab SliceMatewhile you’re at it
Do you have many unfinished songs and if so why do you think that is?
definitely not 2500, but a significant amount surely , playing around with sounds there are just too many options to explore it is often hard to focus. In the past I’ve wasted years not finishing tracks due to perfectionism, now I focus on the play element and creativity seems to flow natural, without forcing towards some ultimate result. Also keep in mind you can revisit tunes and make variations, you don’t necessarily have to go from ex to the next all the time. Perhaps you’re a top-down arrangement kind of tracker, lego’ing in the note events ‘offline’ opposed to a more ‘realtime’ performance based songmaker? You could try experimenting with looping the pattern ideas you have now, hook up parameters (track volumes / effects etc) to a midi controller and record the master audio. I.o.w jam . Even if you wouldn’t want to release these jam recordings, often they can break open the status quo of just a loop and offer different ideas/paths to take.
Someone on another forum once posted a video of John Cleese talking about creativity in a similar thread about not finishing work, perhaps worth watching;
Also at least a couple of hundred i guess… tho most of em i dont consider as unfinished tracks in a way… but more just experimenting with things… and when something is cool then i save it with the idea that i maybe would open the project again later to see how i did a certain thing… But obviously those projects stay unopened 99% of the time \o/
Are you telling me that if i will make a video about how to do that in Renoise, you will admit that ? Of course not, you will deny by saying : this is not what i meant ,
not that sound …etc. I think it is a useless argument.I know these schemes.
I did not say that someone Needs to be a songwriter to write a song. I compose music since a long time, despite this, I do not have minimal musical knowledge in the field of chords and musical literacy { i even dont know what the hell ami playing, which chords, notes …etc} .Just follow your intuition. It is that easy.
People always forget that the holy J.S BACH wrote his emperor of 2022 BWV compositions using only a god damn paper and a pen lol …can you believe that …
If you make that video you will create the best promo video renoise can ever have :-D.
But really… I dont want to argue, i would love to know that renoise instrument can sound like strobe. I would love to know that i can work in a box and have result like with commercial vst.
My WiP (Works in Progress) directory is currently sitting at 24 unfinished. I don’t know if there’s any issue with not completing a large number of works. I’d rather release a few good quality (or at least that I’m comfortable with) pieces of music that a glut of shite.
btw. does anybody here smokes weed before / during composing? just curious…
Ive got feeling that this habit made finishing songs much harder for me than before when i wasnt been smoking.
The dark side of it - i dont enjoy making music without it.
I was just cleaning up my storage and figured that I have a massive amount of unfinished songs/loops, more than 2500 I guess it’s fair to say that I struggle to finish songs, I really need to fix this as there’s quite a few that deserve some sugar. Truth is I always get like a mental block at the arranger and automation, for me these things are a bit cumbersome to be honest to a degree where I just go njahh…
I’ll throw up some tunes open for collab at some point and I’ll be looking for people who enjoy arranging and automating haha…
Do you have many unfinished songs and if so why do you think that is?
Heres a piece of wisdom that took me many, many years to arrive at, I hope it helps…
If you find that you spend more time starting things, falling down the rabbit hole of detail in crafting the sounds along the way … and this means that you end up with lots of unfinished works then consider this; what gives you more pleasure… starting/experimenting or finishing a tune?
Sometimes I need to finish tunes because it’s my job to deliver something to someone who expects a completed work. But most of the time I spend simply using the tools, the instruments. We are a student of our own muse forever. Don’t let this become a negative for you, it’s quite the opposite.
To paint it slightly differently; what is the purpose of finishing a piece of music?
btw. does anybody here smokes weed before / during composing? just curious…
Ive got feeling that this habit made finishing songs much harder for me than before when i wasnt been smoking.
The dark side of it - i dont enjoy making music without it.
I find it indeed a Lot easier to finish stuff since i stopped smoking weed…
.Means, they are not advanced enough to be finished or the idea is too young to be released . Sometimes you need to finish a full song in your brain, then start doing it on your pc. …
I guess it’s fair to say that I struggle to finish songs, I really need to fix this as there’s quite a few that deserve some sugar. Truth is I always get like a mental block at the arranger and automation, for me these things are a bit cumbersome to be honest to a degree where I just go njahh… 