Frustrated

[steevio]

As Victor said before, try and do an outline. I work in this way and it does work. even if you just lay out the drum track for 7 minutes, then do a gap in the middle and call it breakdown/buildup. Immediately you will have some sort of structure, a beginning, a middle and an end.

thats just one way of working and it doesnt suit everybody.
i cant work that way, my music has to be live and organic, if i try to build from a structure it chokes my creativity and everything ends up obvious.

i concentrate on rhythm and how each sound bounces off every other sound, when i've got some simple grooves which all work together, i'll switch off and come back to it a few days later with fresh ears, and only a vague memory of what was going on, then press record and record a big long jam live for up to 20 minutes.
i like to supprise myself.
it keeps it raw and fresh, and somewhere in that 20 minutes the whole thing will synergise. then i go in and chop out the 8 minutes or so that really works, and non of it was planned.

but you just have to find what works for you.

if theres one piece of advice i could give, it would always be - get rid of the snare or clap on the 2 and 4. theres nothing better to free up your creativity. for me that is the most restrictive cliche in dance music, and its what makes you get bored with loops.
get rid of the obvious !

ps dont take me too literally, i dont mean dont use them at all, but ive found that relying on the backbeat makes me lazy at finding new ways to give emphasis in rhythm.

[steevio]

These days I force myself to only work on ONE SONG AT A TIME, and don't start a new song till i finish the old one. Simple rules, sometimes it's hard to stick by them but if you want it real bad you can make it happen! Best of luck.

me too.
sometimes you have push through the pain barrier, and keep going.

[fraza]

Learnt a lot from reading these 3 pages. I really like the analogy between tweakers and producers and I also like the "write a 7 minute drum progression" idea. Time also to turn down the forum reading. Cheers

[mason]

If you're using Live, it's easy to get trenched in the Session view playing with loop combinations. Hit record and get to work in the Arrangement view.

Great view points on this thread, thanks everyone.

[dan_g]

hey fred,

try to to put down the tempo a bit. lets say about 125 oder 124. so that you have more space for sounds and drums, like mentioned earlier in this thread.
if i wanted to lay down an electro house kinda track, i would defenetly use not so much reverb on everything. just keep it dry and clean.

usually i experiment with a loop for about a hour. an when the groove, the sound, the feel of the loop is right, i start the basic arrangement and finish it the same or the next day.

just some ideas from my side

greets

dan_g

[monophunk]

i got the same problem, i always try to make a minimal/tech track and end up with an elecro/house song...when i'm producing i feel what i'm doing and dance with it so i think its not so bad if you make something else if you are happy with the track you just made...

[ashwinieminimal]

Smoke some herb man it always works for me. Seriously though time off is a good thing. I havent been in the studio for about a month now and I have this feeling in my gut that I want/need to get back in there and when I do I'll just churn out music.

Wooord, herb does it for me to, bigtime to .
I hardly make something i dont like.

[cryptshell]

Over the years I've met a few fellow 'producers' and I think people generally fall into 2 categories.

1) tweakers
2) producers

I know people with all the gear in the world, full studio setup, racks of hardware, monitors, club speakers, massive space and a lot of software as well.. and yet they accomplish so little. they work on songs all the time, but never actually finish anything. They are too busy reading magazines and always over analysing the gear, whats better best etc. they are too involved in the mechanics of it all, getting tied town with harware vs software issues that will never end. They start a song, get halfway, start tweaking, then they have their eyes set on some new gear that will give them better sound, be that a filter or compressor or whatever. i call these people tweakers.

Then i have other friends who i call producers, they may only work with a laptop with built in soundcard and no hardware besides a midi keyboard that never gets used, and they manage to produce a song every week. of course not every song is a masterpiece all the time, but generally they accomplish a LOT. They don't visit forums everyday, they don't bother with reviews about what filter sounds best and they don't waste their time arguing with people about what setup or hardware/software is best.. they just do the job.

When i started out i was somewhat of a tweaker but soon became frustrated with not accomplishing anything and started getting more disciplined. These days I force myself to only work on ONE SONG AT A TIME, and don't start a new song till i finish the old one. Simple rules, sometimes it's hard to stick by them but if you want it real bad you can make it happen! Best of luck.

@xxmmxx: im definitively the latter, u described me as if u were watching over me everyday producing on my laptop...i got a midi keyboard that lately haven`t been touched, n every other day i start a new one, never been able to just finish ONE...main reason is that after a while my ears get tire and i save the project n start a new one to later come back to the old one and continue it, but i rarely ever dothat really pisses me off, i should concentrate more on finishing one that having 100 unfinished tracks :\ i blame it on the ADD im gonna try to be more organized, working on one track at a time, cuz if not i`ll never finish anything