Advice To Avoid Excessive Noodling

Herne

I’m a terrible noodler, and can spend hours every day making twenty lots of eight bars, or chord progressions etc that I like the sound of, but never really get to going back and turning them into a complete, ‘finished’ track.

Anyone else found this, or have any advice for moving past it?

richardyot

Noodling is good, because improvisation (noodling) is the key to writing, so the noodling stage is essential.

To create finished tracks, the workflow IMO is to select the best noodles, and to combine two or three of them together into an arrangement. It's not difficult, but you do have to learn to be a bit ruthless and to filter out the less effective parts.

The way I write is to sit at the guitar and jam away, record any ideas that I like and then go through all the ideas later and find one or two that I like, and just use them as the basis for a track.

But it doesn't have to be a guitar, sometimes I open up Garageband or Logic and go through the same process. Noodle a few ideas, select the best ones, and build a track from them.

Basically a finished song is literally a few noodled ideas bolted together.

rs2000

I'm a noodler myself but I heard from users of the OP-1 that forcing you into linear recording can somewhat solve that, you have to record something longer right from the start and think more in terms of "song" than "pattern"

richardyot

Another approach that might help: set yourself a deadline and/or a schedule.

It’s partly my motivation for running the Song Of The Month Club on this forum. Every month for the last nine and a half years I’ve competed at least one finished song to keep up with the club, that’s over 100 songs by now. It works:

https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/61732/song-of-the-month-club-august-2024

abf

I always sit back and try to be an objective listener, listen really closely. I ask myself, as a listener, what would I like to hear next, instead of what should I do next. Then I try to create that. If I'm unsuccessful with that approach I pick a random song from my playlists and copy an arrangement idea. Not notes or words or anything, just an idea like, everything drops out except the bass, or similar.

Someone recently told me if you have terrible writer's block or too many unfinished pieces you should write the worst song you can think of in a style you don't enjoy. Your brain will immediately try to set you back on a better track by thinking of anything BUT those bad ideas. I haven't tried this.

Also plus one for the OP-1 idea.

michael_m

What instruments do you play? Whatever you are competent with, just work on riffing and thinking about where to take it after you have the first one figured out. Write some lyrics and sing them over what you play. Think in terms of structures similar to music you like listening to. Tell yourself you won’t noodle and just play with the intent of not noodling even once.

LinearLineman

Noodling implies lack of intent as @michael_m wrote. Improvising, at least for me, requires putting myself in a particular place and not getting in the way of what might happen next. There are other ways of creating content, some of which are described above. If you have a love for melody, I think, improvising is the way to go.

Here’s the exercise I was taught that changed my world….

https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/27012/how-to-improve-your-keyboard-improvising-100-in-three-weeks/p2

In addition, good or bad, push it through to completion. You might not think it’s the greatest result but you’ll learn something about arranging, mixing, drum tracks, etc and you’ll do better as you go along. Goal setting is a big help.

bygjohn

OK, so these suggestions are coming from left field and certainly won’t work with a lot of genres, or “normal” song structures (though I’m happy to be proved wrong on this).

1) Try to stop separating “noodles” from finished pieces, as if there’s a great divide of some sort. Instead just build up from an initial noodle into something fuller. In other words keep on noodling but “just” expand it.

2) Try to build a setup/patch that you can play “live” and commit by recording straight to stereo. If there’s too much going on to be able to control the whole thing successfully, either automate some elements or remove enough of them to make it work.

3) My own rule is that if it’s not working after three takes, you need to change something. Either remove/alter elements as above, or do something more drastic like completely change the tempo, simplify something or whatever else springs to mind.

4) I heard an aphorism recently that sums up an attitude I’ve been trying to embrace for a while now: “Perfection is the enemy of the good”. If you aim for perfection you might never finish anything. Embrace imperfections. One thing I do a lot is leave something for a day or two and then listen to it again - often the stuff you think is great when you’ve just done it turns out to be less so, but equally often things you were unhappy with due to mistakes etc turn out to be loads better after a gap, and often you can’t figure out what it was you thought didn’t work. I guess this is a variant of the Oblique Strategy “Honour thine error as a hidden intention”.

5) If you get really stuck, Oblique Strategies are actually really useful, even if you just remember one rather than drawing a card, or using an app (which is what I use). There have been a lot of OS apps over the years, but this one is currently available:

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/oblique-strategies-se/id1104927011

yellow_eyez

Great thread - I like Richard and lineman’s views a lot, and good call by rs for the op1! Interesting idea abf and bygjohn has some knowledge too there. I’m inclined to try it myself as a noodle

jwmmakerofmusic

Well, it depends on your genre of music, but for EDM, Trance, HipHop and its subgenres, the idea is to start with an 8-bar loop (or 4-bar loop or 16-bar loop, or you can go experimental and try 11-bar loops if you really wanted to). Add in everything you want to happen over the course of the piece you're about to arrange.

This is what I call "creating the seed". Do as much or as little layering as you wish. (HipHop beats require less layering in order to make space for the rapper to spit. Trance is more about layering a lot of moving parts to keep things fresh and evolving).

Then what you do is you duplicate the 8-bar loop over and over again until the piece lasts as long or as short as you want it. Then you subtract parts from various sections, add parts in various sections, add variations to the melody by editing the MIDI, add automation, etc, until you get an arrangement. This is about the simplest, least nuanced way I can break down my creative process. My creative process is a lot more nuanced and can be a bit more chaotic than what I explained.

Pop music/vocal music arrangements sometimes are different and might require two "seeds" (8-bar loops) - one for the verses, the other for the chorus. I usually create the bridge section/middle 8 "on the fly" when it comes to that section, IF required. (I usually omit the bridge in vocal pieces.)

Right now, I'm doing a more experimental Trance piece with four-five distinct sections called "Scarlet". The piece starts in C# Minor and will end in E Minor with a couple sections being in Eb Minor. So, you're not necessarily strictly beholden to the standard song form for whatever genre(s) you produce, but I would say study the standard song forms of the genre(s) you produce first and produce within those confines to learn what makes the genre tick. THEN, you can break whatever "rules" you wish.

...I was at a baseball game and downed about 3 pints, and my edible is kicking in, so I'm rambling on and have no idea if I'm even making sense, rofl. Some could say this rambling is akin to noodling around, but with words, lol. If you have any questions @Herne don't be afraid to ask me. I don't bite too much, lol.

Svetlovska

Luckily, I have never been competent enough to noodle. I just set things running, add things, mess with things, and stop when the piece is done. Always recording, Keep chipping away at the stone until everything that isn’t the track has gone. Happy accidents. But then, I’m making semi organised noise, not music. So there’s that.

sigma79

Mine in theory ( actually completing a track since 2019 )

Will be to make a looped beat and just trigger samplers over beat.

When it might sound good or an ok collection of sounds, to start.

Start to arrange a song by adding longer sections of midi and drum, altered drum patterns.

Switch on the swam instrument side ipad ( if needed )

Vip8888

Ben Levin recently posted a good video on this topic, worth a watch:

lasselu

@Svetlovska said:
Luckily, I have never been competent enough to noodle. I just set things running, add things, mess with things, and stop when the piece is done. Always recording, Keep chipping away at the stone until everything that isn’t the track has gone. Happy accidents. But then, I’m making semi organised noise, not music. So there’s that.

A perfect description of my workflow...

tpj

Limitation, constraints, flow, always be 1 press away from hitting record.
Even if it’s just a stereo audio record.
You will not regret it.

MrStochastic

Maybe you have too much advice here already and I agree with everyone’s suggestions but can’t help adding 2 more cents:

I also love noodling. After all, unless you’re playing composed music or recreating someone elses songs or improved music, (all good things) what else can we do?

The iPad and computers in general make it so easy to record our noodles as audio or midi that it’s easy to accumulate everything we do and then get overwhelmed by it.

I think it’s analogous to mining raw ore and looking for the precious stones or metals buried in there (if any).
So I think it helps to have, as I think Stravinsky said somewhere, an ‘appetite for discovery’. Or as Howlin’ Wolf sang: ‘Smokes like lightning, shines like gold’.

Then after finding your gems, to figure out a form or a plan to put them into. 🤓 Studying the form in other people's music of any type Is a worthwhile practice I think.