I've been having this issue for the past year. I haven't been able to finish a song for a year now, not one. I used to be able to make songs every other week and had a lot of fun doing it. Now, I'm in a slump where I'll begin making a song, sometimes I'll like my progress, but then I'll get stuck and not be able to continue... I think one of the reasons I have this problem is that I started setting my standards too high for my ability and I never feel satisfied with the songs I make the way I used to. I'm just wondering if anyone else has this problem, and maybe any tips of how they got out of the "slump"
[url]http://soundcloud.com/unicqrn[/url]
Here is my soundcloud, as you can see it's mostly just WIP's, some are ok and some are bad (due to laziness).
I don't know much about the type of music you're playing but I know alot of people who can't seem to finish songs and even bands that can't. Since you already know the problem you just have to try to put things together and have them fit your expectations. Try new things and remember that if you don't like it you can change it anytime
Force yourself to start working on the arrangement of the song earlier. I get stuck doing the whole making a loop perfect and then not being able to turn it in to a song thing a lot.
Is no biggie I'm in the same situation. I consider myself a "drummer" but I dab in lots of instruments and I used to have loads of fun making "electronic" music (by that I mean artificial, using virtual instruments and drum machines, not the genre electronic) and I would arrange samples that I thought sounded cool. That was all fine and dandy but I felt like I was cheating just using other samples so I thought if I put in my own synth lines and what-not it'd be a little more legit. Eh well, that was fine for a while but it lost it's edge. I've only completed one song in a year or two that I sent to the (second I think?) facepunch collab album.
I guess it's really a matter of just playing and having fun and if it sounds good while you're making it, then it's probably good enough to become a finished product, even if it only sounds good to you.
Then again, I'm an improv artist so it always sounds good to me until I go back and I'll think "oh I liked what I did there" or "wow what was I thinking there?" so it's really hard for me to come up with a polished finished product.
Regardless, KEEP PLAYING MUSIC!!
I kind of have this. When I start a song I have a solid concept, like im gonna do this and do that. Then when I have some of it done, I get lazy, and start "experimenting" and it all goes to hell. Gimme a sec and Ill post an example.
i take the noisia philosophy of change everything about every 16 bars, it doesn't get boring that way.
I have an entire folder of FLP's that I haven't finished. It's an awful habit..I wish we had a forum for finishing other people's songs because I sure as hell can't.
Fuck for the last 2 weeks or so I've just been doing 1-2 hours work on a new song then scrapping the lot because I know it's not good enough.
Don't scrap songs. Just finish them (length wise) even if you think they're crap. The best way to fix writer's block is, ironically, to just force yourself to write. [I]Anything[/I]. Even if an entire section doesn't fit within in a song, chances are that just getting something down at all will put you in a more creative mood and enable you to revise and edit until it's desirable.
I have the issue all the time. Songwriting (or really, any creative process) is almost never genius falling from the heavens into your hands, or flashes of inspiration that produce masterpieces in one sitting. If you rely on inspiration all the time then you'll never get anything done; you have to consciously put effort into a composition in order to produce something of worth.
You should see my folders full of files that haven't been touched since I last saved them. I've got gigs worth just sitting around and I'm too lazy/scared to get rid of them even though I know they will continue to be untouched.
I just keep making useless shit until I feel satisfied enough to continue a single project.
My plan with the old projects I save is that I will eventually go through them and pull the good parts out so i can use them in other tunes. When I will actually get around to doing that is a different question entirely hahaha.
[QUOTE=KmartSqrl;30730245]My plan with the old projects I save is that I will eventually go through them and pull the good parts out so i can use them in other tunes. When I will actually get around to doing that is a different question entirely hahaha.[/QUOTE]
Sometimes(when I use Ableton Live, doing this in FLS is a pain) I go back to old stuff and bounce loops and such and put them together. It's like ahving your own loop library, pretty cool
I googled, and found this, registered here, to let myself, and you all realize We arent the only ones!
I read this, I hate to say it, but its really good advice, not only if my procrastination will let me actually and accomplish the accomplishing part.
[url]http://www.davidsantistevan.com/2011/05/ideas-are-not-enough/[/url]
Pre-December last year I hardly ever finished songs, except for shitty ones [url]http://tindeck.com/listen/zrkh[/url]
how many projects do you guys have saved?
i have about 320 projects, atleast 20 of them are done and 20ish are just retarded bad
pretty sure I have about 20 ish awesome songs aswell, and the rest [maybe about 30-40 since last reformat and ish] im sure are garbage lol. I lost a ton tho. prob good for me though. I just finished about 3 tonight. Not perfect but I don't hate them.
A lot of times I force myself to finish songs that I have given up on. The reason for giving up is usually that no matter how much time I put in, I can't get it to sound like it does in my head. I figure this is because what I want to do is above my own ability. It is pretty discouraging when you have a great idea, and when you go to execute it that your idea is way out of your league. Most of the songs I put a lot of work into aren't nearly as good as I envisioned, but I still force myself to finish them.
Though there are a number of songs I never finish because I realize at some point that the song sucks and there is no point in wasting my time trying to make it sound good. A bad idea is a bad idea, and you can surely polish a turd and make it shiny, but I don't want to be in the business of polishing turds.
In my latest song, "[url=http://soundcloud.com/brotherworks/a-story-about-space]A Story About Space[/url]" (which I submitted for FP Collaborative Album 4), I had a massive writer's block after making the 32nd bar of the song. It took me weeks until I found out a way to continue it.
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