Do you get stuck on a song often and how many unfinished tracks do you have?

MarcDHall said:
I complete about 5% of projects I have. I have hundreds unfinished.

But its not getting stuck. There's a huge misconception being created, worsened by social media, that artists just sit down, write a piece of music, then release it, then sit down, write another, then release it, nailing everything as they go. I'm sure some do, but they're probably hacks riding on other people's work hiring "engineers" to write patched for them. *
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I'm not sure if you're trying to be offensive or just projecting your frustrations with your particular workflow.
Do you think King Tubby, Lee Perry, Miles Davis worked that way?
Or the BBC radiophonic workshop?
Do you think Juan Atkins or Plastikman did that?
Do you think early rave and garage was made that way?
Or House?
Or Jazz?
Or Blues?
Where does Madlib fit in your scheme of things, with his SP1200 and record player?
Would you consider a Dr. Dre or Kanye West a 'hack' because they work with engineers?
Or what about all those metal bands that often work with engineers from the start because they want the particular sound that guy can bring?

I come from a traditional art and design background where you learn that if 'an idea' can't come to fruition relatively quickly and organically, or at least lead on to new ideas.
It's simply a crap idea. Show, don't tell. If you fail, take your lesson and move on to the next one. In my school days it went like: don't bother showing up to class if you don't have
anything to show (visually) and just have a story to tell. Moreover, don't bother coming back at all if you don't show up more than once. Back then, it made me go: oh shit, slow down! How is this teaching
me anything? But now I know how valuable it was... because it stopped all those pretentious art school kids from trying to come up with their "Masterpieces" (that nobody was gonna care about) and got
them into the habit of relying on their intuition and raw skills more. That, or they dropped out, frustrated and blaming the school.

This may be a bit harsh, and granted it's just one approach to doing things. But what it does, creatively, is keep most of your creative process inside your head.. that's where the ideas live.
Once you put them into your DAW, a sample, patch or bit of MIDI, it becomes way too easy to rely on your machine's memory.. not your own. It's useful in a way, but can also be a total death trap where
you're getting stuck in the technical process, because you rely too much on your technical process for your creativity (if that makes sense).

That's why I've almost completely stopped saving patches and things.. jus utility things.
If you want that awesome bass sound you made a month ago, don't just load it up... re-create it from scratch. This way you learn the sound, like a musician learns his instrument. A guitarist instinctively knows
where to find the warmth on his instrument, or how to make it cut.. etc.

Again, this totally depends on what kind of music you want to make. You're obviously not gonna end up sounding like Hans Zimmer this way, but then he is a classically trained pianist from a young age
and then went through a very clear experimental phase before really striking out in film. He may have a super technical process, but I can bet you that somewhere in there he's found a way to tap into
that intuition/free spirit/ideas on clouds thing in his head.

And you shouldn't take this to mean that skill and knowledge don't have a part. The more knowledge and skills you develop, the more creative weapons you have in your arsenal.
But they're not the end goal.. the end goal should always be what you want your sounds to do: make people move, make them feel, make them feel comfortable or distressed.. that's the thing.
A lot of producers seem to forget that, which is why a lot of electronica nowadays is as formulaic as toothpaste.... and why I see a lot of people with very expensive kits getting completely outclassed
by some high ass kid still working with CoolEdit. It's why a lot of producers (especially in hiphop) start to suck as soon as they can afford gear and studios. Being creative isn't about getting 'good with gear'
it's about getting good with generating ideas and especially getting them OUT THERE.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not attacking you or how you work (I just have a confrontational way of talking... which is why I make music and don't, for instance, work in marketing)..
But then I'm also not the one assuming people (that are often a lot more successful than me) are just plain old 'hacks'.
To me that's exactly how hacks (as opposed to authors) tend to think, sorry to say...and pretty arrogant mistake. I'm not so much reacting to you personally but what you said is, to me, indicative of what I see a lot.
I'm also lucky enough to see and have met a lot of fantastically creative and succesful people inside music and out.. and they all seem have that creative intuition thing and open mind towards what others
are making, and how they do it.. no matter what artform it is. If you think music can get complex and technical.. try making a videogame, lol... still, great games are the ones where they don't let that get in the way of the fun factor...

I guess the long and short of it is... that the most important creative step is picking the right approach for the goal you're after. Don't bring your gun when a knife will do.. haha.
 
Sorry mate I think I made my point too subtly. I'm not saying people that work with engineers or collaborate are hacks, I'm saying that people that hire ghost producers and call them "engineers" are hacks. The reason I bring that up is that there is more to writing 3 minute of music than writing 3 minutes of music. If you know what I mean. Using other people's expertise is a way of getting extra time into your track without have to spend that time in the production of that track.

Again I think someone turning around a track in very little time and getting things bang on is a myth that's leading to people putting pressure on themselves. Even the greats that can bang out a great session have spent decades practicing on there own. You wouldn't consider that wasted time. Even if those practice sessions never resulted in a release.
 
Also, on a related point, we live in a golden age of music production. We all have access to technology beyond the Beatles wildest dreams. The downside of that is saturation. Now, I refuse to add to the noise. I will release things only if I think they have something at least vaguely new to say. You can call that pretentious if you want.

If I was in this for the cash maybe it would be different.
 
Hey, thanks for clarifying. I guess we agree more than you'd think at face value. Definitely about the ghost producer thing and putting in time. It happens more often than you'd think, and no credits going anywhere.
But it's not new.. the music business has always been shady, like in the 50's and 60's even the mob got involved. Pay for play has always been a thing since radio started playing music.
The music business not being shady as fuck, would be like the internet without porn.

Again I think someone turning around a track in very little time and getting things bang on is a myth that's leading to people putting pressure on themselves

If people put pressure on themselves... it's themselves doing it, right? It's not Mozart's fault he's Mozart and we're not.
You put pressure it like it's a bad thing. I need to keep a bit of pressure on for myself to perform creatively. I don't really believe that ultimate freedom is all that good for creativity.. and definitely not mine.

If I'm not limited in time and means.. then yeah, everything becomes a possibility. And it becomes easy to wait for someone to come by and fix up my snares, or my mixes.. because they're simply better at it.
I get extremely lazy and self-indulgent that way... and so do my ideas. At the same I become my own worst enemy because like any creative I have the tendency to shoot down my own work a lot.
One pressure I don't put on myself though, is that what I do has to be 'new'... it may not be new to me, but it could be to someone else. Or new to me and nostalgic to someone else. It doesn't really matter, I
just want to entertain people and primarily myself. Old isn't bad... old is tried and tested. Old means people will have a frame of reference and comfort with it, which means you have more freedom to play with it, you can refer to ideas and concepts instead of constantly have to establish every one yourself.

If you think about it that way, a large part of electronic and dance music is more about the old than the new.
People keep referencing those same old sounds, 303, 808, 909, juno, prophet.. precisely because of that effect.
Old Rave and House sounds carry along that context, mood and frame of reference.. people have their own attachments with them.
You can use them sincerely, ironically, straight up, completely messed up... all depending on the effect you're after.
To me at least, that's a much more interesting game to play than just going: "here's something new you haven't heard before, weird innit?"

Then again, I'm a huge populist that way. Ideas are worth nothing until you put them in action, bring people along for the ride.. god forbid, make them enjoy it.
I guess that's cause I have an art academy background and got surrounded by kiddies who all thought themselves to be the most original artist since Picasso,
and thought they had something interesting to say because they could drop a few names of people that said something interesting once. "oh yeah... like that's totally like Duchamp.. literally"

I try to stay far away from that in all my work, and especially my music.. I think it has served me well so far... so that brings the circle back around: it's all personal approaches and what works for one, can't work for everybody. Still though... 'new and original' isn't all it's cracked up to be, and not what a lot of people are really after with music, even if they think/say so. In any case, since I started working from that
place of comfort I've never been stuck on anything creatively... projects have turned out differently than I originally intended, but usually for the better.
 
I used to get stuck a lot before and not progressing with the song.. but I eliminated that (bad) habit, instead I never start another track until I finish the one I'm working on right now.
 
im feelin you i get stuck a lot sometimes, for me it means that theres something i dont like in the mix try to change things in the mix or move on
 
It's important to finish tracks....it's also very important to not flog a dead horse. Getting better at writing is in part knowing which one to do and when.
 
Well, I've got a folder with around 10 tracks that I don't wanna work on right now, but plan to finish in the future.
Also I have about 5 tracks in progress that I AM working on daily. When I get stuck I usually take a break somewhere between 15 mins and a couple of days, 'cause in my opinion that's the only way you can regain your focus and vision.
 
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