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Analysis paralysis (constant tweaking)
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Just venting some self frustration. I have a few starts to some tracks, but get stuck in an 8 bar section or keep tweaking MIDI velocities, CCs and other myriad of setting to get things sounding just right. Struggling…but thinking committing to audio and moving on will help.
Anyone else?
Comments
Get one full track of SOME instrument, whether it’s the sequenced drums/drums, bass, a rough synth or guitar track with all the chord changes…it can be a one-take thing that gets replaced with more precise playing eventually…just get something complete so you know you have more sections to go and the incentive to complete another instrumental track. Then it’ll pile on.
Someone around here broke that logjam for me some time ago. It was a post about learning to firmly separate composition, arranging, and mixing/mastering phases. (I think of tweaking as falling under mixing / mastering.)
It can feel like you're compromising by not perfecting as you go, but you're not!
When you're composing (I call it "expressing ideas") you're maximizing that flow while you have it. Ideas spark other ideas and those ideas will fit together so much better than they will if you break out to tweak things then try to come back to develop related ideas. I have developed the habit of just going and going generating ideas until I run out of gas. I'm free from worrying how they'll eventually sound and even how they'll flow together at this stage, so there are few hinderances to creativity.
Once I've run out of ideas I focus on arranging them into something that I think will be good to listen to. Now, when you think about it, a lot of tweaking and perfecting parts individually is silly because it all changes based on what else is going on at the time. That perfectly tweaked loop will sound a lot different in context than it does on its own. Again, I resist the urge to create in this stage, at least until I have things pulled together. However, when things are arranged, another round of creativity might be inspired. Suddenly you can hear that new bass part, drum part, etc. that the thing needs. It's a different kind of creativity, but it needs to be treated like that - a separate phase, followed by another round of arranging.
Only now is it time for tweaking as you mix and focus on getting everything to sound right together. And it's funny because, at least for me, I spend way less time tweaking and perfecting this way.
All that said ... a huge disclaimer. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination someone you should listen to based on experience or success. I've not put together more than a handful of things that I would even share with others. I only do this to please myself. I'm just passing along what has helped me break out of paralysis.
For awhile I was participating in a challenge to put out one finished piece of music a week. The only way I could manage that was to rigidly stick to the above. It worked. Of all the meager output I've ever done, those stand up the best.
Sorry for the long post ... I'm just passing along some ideas that have helped me a lot.
Guilty. The 8 bar loop constantly playing kills my much needed distant perspective to carry on. The Remote Transport loop assignment thing in Helium helps me with this. I always assign a loop to silence. I also love that the assigned loop regions can over lap. If you’re committed to your tools already, I would suggest stopping your transport/loop more frequently, or if in a DAW, looping a section outside of your region so that it incorporates silence. This has worked for me at least.
If it’s of any consolation, my best writing and arrangements were before i knew how to mix, when I had a patch bay of external gear. I steered into laptop music cause I wanted to learn to better mix and polish my sounds. But since then it seems I’ve only been polishing turds, heh-heh.
Thanks for your comments. There is some good advice in all of them I will take
I have the opposite problem. I can jam out new material for hours every evening but can never get motivated to pick out the best bits and organize it into a composition.
I tend to work in short bursts and each time I come back a piece, if it doesn't connect on the first playthrough, I bin it. I'm not talking about the whole piece (although there comes the point where that's apt too). I'm talking about new parts, changes to the arrangement, and broad brush stroke mixing choices; anything really that changes the feel of the composition.
I find the only time I can truly trust what I'm hearing is when I'm experiencing things with fresh ears. It either moves me, or leaves me feeling flat. It's not an analytical process, it's what you feel in your gut.
^this
This is one reason I like NS2. I can just duplicate the 8 bar loop out to 64 or more bars and then just mute the midi parts for different sections to build an arrangement without muting the track output. So the parts will always be there in place on the timeline if I need them, just muted. Like this:
Over the years, I've discovered that creating certain types of music, like IDM or glitch, almost requires burying your head in the piano roll/automation editor. So it helps to find a DAW/environment that you enjoy burying your head in.
For years, I manually chopped audio in Sound Forge, instead of messing with MIDI, Recycle or Acid, and it stuck with me after all these years. It's not always fun, but it's the workflow that I'm most comfortable with. And after a while, you create your own little signature tricks.
Thanks everyone for the comments - will try to use this advice tom "break out of the loop/tweaking rabbit hole"
The only thing that works for me: always be recording. Audio and midi both, all instruments, all channels. If lightning happens, the bottle captures it and then I can worry about mixing and/or arranging it.