Half finished tracks

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Daniel Carroll

New member
I NEVER finish tracks and I mean never. If I have it's because I rush through the arrangement JUST to finish it then get lazy about the technical side. But doing it this way leaves the track not done properly. I have lots of projects that have an intro break and drop that's it. I think that's the point where I realize the song isn't sounding the way I want so I abandon it. It's driving me crazy that I can't make a track the way I want. Anyone have tips on finishing tracks? I think I'm a perfectionist I look at every single detail and if it's not 100% I'll discard it. I really need help with this as more than one occasion I felt like giving up music production because I can't get the sound I want. I don't want to give up though.
 
Daniel Carroll said:
I think that's the point where I realize the song isn't sounding the way I want so I abandon it. It's driving me crazy that I can't make a track the way I want. Anyone have tips on finishing tracks? I think I'm a perfectionist I look at every single detail and if it's not 100% I'll discard it. I really need help with this as more than one occasion I felt like giving up music production because I can't get the sound I want. I don't want to give up though.
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You kind of allude to the answer to your question. How well do you feel like you know how to get things to sound exactly as you imagine? Personally, I've found that experience with sound design can help with this. The ability to deconstruct a sound into its basic elements and construct your own sounds helps develop your ear for that sort of detail.

A potential exercise might be for you to recreate a preset patch using the same plugin. You can literally load up 2 copies of the same plugin in the same project. Select a preset that you like with one, and start tweaking each parameter one-by-one, until you finish recreating it. That should be a fairly easy task that lets you experiment and learn about what each parameter does to a sound. You can take this exercise a step further by recreating a patch using a different synthesizer (one that functions works the same). Being able to do this should help you focus on what specific details you feel are lacking and give you a better grasp on how you can manipulate synths & samples to get what you want out of them.

FWIW, this knowledge spills over to recording, producing, mixing, & mastering audio.
 
I'd say you have two enemies to deal with: your perfectionism and your follow-through.

What if someone told you his house is always a mess, and every time he starts cleaning, he can just never finish? How should he finish? He just needs to decide to do it. We muddy things when we're talking about creating art, but it's the same principle. Choose not to let excuses get in the way.

Perfection is the enemy of progress. Perfection is the enemy of good. It's far better to finish a good track than to never finish a track since you can't make it perfect. Do the best you can, then move on. If you haven't published it, review it in a few months. Whether or not you can edit it later, your next tracks will be a little closer to perfection, and fifty songs later you'll be a lot closer to perfection.
 
Yeah as painful as it is you just need to grind through and finish something. Even if it's not brilliant. You'll learn more and give yourself more satisfaction by finishing up a piece. Something will click in your brain and then you'll get past whats hindering you.
 
used to have the same problem for ages but i found a way to help solve it. try make the sounds you need before you even start a track, that way youll have half the work already done. once you do start the track then lay down the most important ideas first then leave the small stuff like arrangement, mixdown and background sounds until the end. when in the arrangement stage split the project into separate sections, do the main part first copy paste it then the section in the middle, then the intro and outro. once each part is made shuffle the sections into the right order on the timeline then focus on transitioning one into the other
 
Lock yourself in your room/studio and only leave once you have finished what you started, it might not sound as good as you thought it would in your head but slittiest you finished it! and with more practice and finishing tracks comes better productions.
 
That's so funny man, that's my biggest problem as well. I have dozens of unfinished beats. I think the best approach for me was
 
whoops, post got cut off. I was going to say that the best approach for me was to limit myself to just a few instrunments and then focus on making each part simple and bringing it together as a whole as opposed to trying to make really complicated melodies or chord progressions with single instruments.
 
practice making beats in a certain amount of time, say an hour for example. keep doing this until you can see a noticeable difference in the work you can get done in an hour. By the end of the month youll get better results but more importantly youll have a finish line in mind.

Just my 2 cents
 
Set a goal for yourself when you want to release it to the public and work on that one song until you think its good enough. Just takes some patience.
 
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