Struggling with finishing stuff as a beginner, and looking for honest feedback?

lscarl

New member
I have a huge problem with finishing anything, I've never been able to get over this issue. I'l come up with a basic idea (drums, melody, bass line, lead) and then from there I struggle with adding to it. I'll sit on the same track for weeks until I hate it, and just bin it. I honestly don't know how to progress part this hump, so I'm basically stuck in this beginner phase. Any tips, ideas, advice, etc on how you guys overcame this hump? I'll include a rough draft of the latest thing I've been working on. All honest feedback is welcome! Thanks in advance!

WIP by lscarl | Free Listening on SoundCloud

It's nowhere near finished, and I feel like I just keep getting further from the finish line.
 
I've been dealing with the same issue. I've got a number of snippets of songs floating around, but I never seem to ever actually finish them. It seems a common recommendation is that you do whatever you can do to just finish as many tracks as you can. Everyone wants to create their masterpiece with their first track and it is just not going to happen. You gain more experience and get better faster by just finishing tracks, from start to finish, and then moving on to the next one. I would recommend just trying your best to finish all the ideas you have in your head in to finished tracks, because it is hard to progress until you start doing that.

I just realized after writing this that I assumed you are a total beginner, like me. I apologize if you are a more experience producer, as this might not apply in that case and you might need other forms of inspiration.
 
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It's interesting you say that, because I was reading Stephen King's (the successful author) book "On Writing," in which he talks about his thought processes about writing. In it he describes his formula that he repeated for years and years to become top tier.

It was :

1. Read a lot of other people's books
2. Write a lot

Translated for music it would be:

1. Listen to a lot of other people's music.
2. Write a lot of music.

Translated for Neurosurgeons it would be:

1. Read a lot of other neurosurgeons books.. Listen to teachers
2. Hang out with the best neurosurgeons
3. Work on a lot of brains

#2 was an extra one and it relates to the Achilles heel of many producers because many of us want complete creative control.

But something seems oddly accurate about how these people got really good at what they do.

The fact is, no one ever became a professional NBA player playing by themselves. And no one became a professional NBA player by only playing with the kids on his block. You gotta hang with the best to be the best, hence, collaborating, finding producers better than you, watching vids on youtube (there are tons) and picking their minds.

There is no magic pill to get better, to get unstuck, there's no sudden breakthrough. Instead, there's just gradual progress, repeatedly.

"Just do it.... repeatedly"

If Nike can sell billions of shoes with it then you can solve all your problems with "Just do it." It's simple, it's powerful, we instantly get it.

We would like to think our most challenging problems are deeply complex and pervasive in ways we can't completely crack, but that's just our ego trying to save face. The reality is we suck and we would get better if we would "just do it," and each time you "just do it," you'll suck a little bit less, and eventually you'll suck so little, you'll actually be good.

So, "just do it."

With the caveat that you remain sensitive to your own rhythms and use them as best you can, that you push past pain more than you think you're capable.

I've found I can only produce a beat every 2 weeks. When I finish for the next 10 days for whatever reason I only have the wherewithal to make 8bar loops, then around day 12-14 I choose one of them and in a single day I finish that song, no matter what finaglry or odd music-smithing i have to do.

I've really just set the bar so incredibly low it would be impossible not to make it into a song.

Hope that helps.

-Nathan
 
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Einstein said " Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration! ".

Actually this is from Thomas Edison, but it's still a good quote - in simplified terms, while you might get a nice loop going in a few minutes, it takes quite a bit of work to extend that to a full track/song. Loop the same thing for 3-4 minutes and you only have a boring-ass beat.

Also, what was said about listening to a lot of music: I personally think this is the basis for any kind of truly new music. If you only listen to trap and make trap beats, there's a good chance your beats will only ever be bland derivatives of what already exists.
 
I've had that same problem, I get into a song and then it never sounds like I want it. You just have to understand that creativity comes and goes, even if you have all the knowledge to produce well. Listening to my tracks over and over until I get an idea to change or add something is another tip I've learned. I will listen to the same track for hours on end thinking of ways to progress something or add or take away something at certain times.
 
Well, you keep adding instruments, adding instruments, beat change, build (could add a riser, it never seems to top off), and ... more instruments... where's the payoff? This thing should have exploded already. At 2:20 I have blue balls. Come up with something different, or maybe add a drop and then bring it back heightened somehow. This isn't really my genre, too much, so I won't add more, but that's my main thing with the example track. It just never climaxed. Build a "chorus" of sorts, a hook you can use to climax, and then maybe even bring it back before the denouement.

Beyond that, man, I don't know what you're sweating. Maybe it's just "artist's syndrome," and you're too worried about how it will be recieved. I don't think you're doing anything wrong, and I don't know why you feel you're so far from the end. I suppose (I didn't use studio headphones to listen to it) maybe there's some more mixing and mastering to do, but I think you might just feel like you need to go bigger than you do. Sounds good, man, keep it up!
 
This gonna sound brutal, but it is something to consider:

If you can't finish the idea you're working on... or if it takes a huge effort to bring it home.... then... maybe... you're working on the wrong idea?
Assuming of course that your skills are on the up and up, you're using the right tools, etc.. If those are lacking, you'll never get to where you want.. or it'll be unnecessarily hard.

Take me.. a long time ago I really wanted to imitate my heroes Photek and Source Direct... bare but super intricate drum 'n bass, look it up.. it's still deadly. After a while I could make those basic
sounds and breaks.. that's not hard. But all my shit sounded lame, it never had that 'thing' that puts the average Photek track completely over the top. Later on I realised that
I don't have a talent for the kind of methodical, hyper detailed workflow those guys used for that sound. I was trying to make the wrong music. I was also usually in a really relaxed and happy mood
when making music, so keeping my mind in that cold and dark place all the time didn't work for me either.

In a way that was great because I stopped trying to 'get' a certain a sound and started to do interesting things with the sounds I could get and ideas I could make work well.
 
i think exposing yourself to more music will help create ideas when you're working on a song. If you listen to a lot of music (and as mentioned earlier, a wide variety of music), you'll be able to pull ideas from a huge mental catalog. If you only listen to music for a few minutes everyday, you'll find yourself struggling to pull ideas to piece together your song.

Find a nice working balance in discovering new music, and working on your music.

...and really utilize these Feedback forums. There are a lot of good tips specific to the song posted. It's like a treasure cove of case studies right here (built by us) on this forum.

And localspace, damn thats so true. ("...so keeping my mind in that cold and dark place all the time didn't work for me either. ")
It could be a myth, but i think thats how that dude killed mozart. He had him work on Requiem and paid up front to incentive that he actually worked on it. Mozart became so damn depressed from writing deathly sad music that he got sick and died. (its in that mozart movie on netflix)....could be a myth, but shit man, I wrote a sad tune for about a week, and man, I was borderline suicidal after that shit.
 
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It is a myth.. I heard that Salieri and Mozart, while not the best of friends, got along professionally at least. But yeah that movie is definitely about that effect.
Einstein did die trying to formulate his 'theory of everything' though.

It's why I mentioned Photek.. rumour has it he went kinda crazy because of the obsessive way of working he had. I don't know what's true about that.. but he went undercover for a while
and when he came back his music was really different.. much more casual.
 
damn, well its a romantic-ish story for the books lol (selleri or whoever should've went for mozart wife when he had the chance, ...lol, jk.... but who knows whats accurate in that movie) ...

and shit interesting, metalheadz has a lot of good artists but ya, definitely on the darker side.
 
lol as long as nobody goes crazier than GG Allin, I think we're safe. That guy was on the next ...10 levels.
 
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It's why I mentioned Photek.. rumour has it he went kinda crazy because of the obsessive way of working he had. I don't know what's true about that.. but he went undercover for a while and when he came back his music was really different.. much more casual.

Was just listening to Modus Operandi a while ago and wondered what happened to him :)
 
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i had the same problem, its good to get yourself in the habit of finishing your work but im super guilty of not myself, alot of the time ill be looking through old stuff from a few years ago thats unfinished and maybe find a synth i can work with or something like that, i do that all the time, a good rule is to never get rid of stuff youve made, even if its shit hang on to it. trust me.
 
Photek does scores for television and commercials these days. He does the score for How to Get Away With Murder.

Awesome, good to know he landed alright! When I started to get into making beats, Photek was one of the producers I really looked up to.
His stuff was on another level, drum-perfection. I spent so many hours trying to get my breaks to sound that sharp... never even got close to it.
 
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