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How do you decide what's good?
Bit of a philosophical one - but i'm looking for any advice / wisdom on critically judging your own music.
So you create a nice groove or hook or whole track. You get excited about it while you're making it.
You go to bed.
You listen to it the next day. Mmm - it's not as good as you thought. Or is it? Is it just you've heard it too much?
What is "good"? How to do you tell? Etc etc...
I went back and listened to some old tracks i'd made recently - and some which I'd kind of written off as 'early learning' failures I reassessed as quite good. But then on other listens of the same track, depending largely on what mood i'm in, I might decide it's weak material.
Basically, then, my question is: how do you decide what's good?
Comments
I think Is easy get lost with objetivity, especialy when you spend a lot of time dealing with your stuff. Maybe is good idea take a break every hour for 10-20 minutes and go out, have a walk and back again. If a think most of the time sounds me good, I feel like I'm in the right direction.
I get where you are coming from @Matt_Fletcher_2000. Interested in hearing all the replies.
Post it and see the response. Look at comments if there are any. Then make your own decision.
@Flo26 is right on- post it and now it's "done," move on to the next. I obsess over small details constantly, then once I post it that all goes away, for better or for worse.
Aside from technical and tunefulness considerations 'good' is generally in the ear of the beholder. I've discovered tracks I created that I thought were terrible were loved by friends, and stuff I thought was great they hated. I then uploaded the tracks everyone hated to Soundcloud and everyone on there loved them.
I think once you're happy with the technical aspects of the track (mixing, audio quality etc.), song structure, beat and general tune (if it has one) then it's a good idea to get a bit of feedback from friends, places like this and Soundcloud type sites.
I used to have multiple Soundcloud accounts as a bit of an experiment. They ranged from a 'good stuff' account, into which I put the stuff I was most proud of and worked hardest on, right down to a 'random rubbish' account where I put absolute noise and tosh. There were then a range of accounts in between these. The one that attracted the most followers and 'likes' was, you guessed it, the rubbish one. Which says more about the audience on Soundcloud, but that's the thing - before deciding what's good you need to find out what your target audience thinks is good too. No good playing a dance track to friends that don't like dance music - you're not going to get an unbiased response.
In the old days when I played with bands we'd test new material out on a live audience and get a reaction that way. Nowadays I guess it's more of an online thing.
Thanks all.
I think leaving it for a while (couple of days, few weeks even) and then coming back to it to make a more objective judgement is often a good thing to do.
I just came back to the nub of a track, that i'd pretty much ditched a couple of weeks ago, and I really like it. I think at the time i was just tired and jaded. I find sometimes the whole thing is quite tiring - depending on what mood you're in!
Probably just echoing what's already been said, but...
Just create as much as you can, finish a track and then start the next one. While you're in the thick of it it will be impossible to judge it objectively, so don't worry too much about it. With passing time you will be much more objective, and when you look back at things you did a year or two (or more) ago then you will be able to appraise them much more honestly.
From my own experience as a visual artist rather than a musician I found that it took me a very long time and a lot of work just to find my own voice and do something original, but the moment I did the reaction to my work was much more positive and I developed a following. Having had this experience I was able to come back to music and be patient with it, I know it doesn't necessarily matter if the work I do now isn't all that good as long as I keep on gradually improving and trying to find something original to say. Eventually the breakthrough might come, but in the meantime the main thing is to learn and to keep pushing. YMMV of course
After years of producing original music, I'm just very recently getting to the point where, no matter how much work I put into a piece, being able to throw all my work away when it simply sounds forced the next day. I've always recognized when the magic happens and things click, but what usually happens is that the musician in me gets overzealous and overworks a piece to the point where the listener in the end is put-off.
Yeah, totally agree.
Asking friends for opinions is almost useless too. You won't get a truly objective response. Maybe ask people you don't know. They would be less likely to soften the blows.
I can only tell you that if it sounds good to you, it is good. The subjective lens through which you view your music should depend on the purpose you're creating the music. Are you trying to push yourself beyond what you're currently able to do? Are you trying to create a new synth patch to impress your fellow musicians? Are you trying to create a hip hop loop? What about a trance track to try and make it onto Armin Van Buuren's "ASOT" show?
One thing to keep in mind is when you ask other musicians for advice, most of the time these days you'll get a friendly helpful sort. This audiobus forum seems to have a lot of friendly and helpful users and is relatively drama-free. On the other hand, if you go to other forums, you'll sometimes run into pricks who are biased against (input popular music genre or certain synth patch here).
For instance, many of the users of one forum I used to frequent consider anything with a Nord Lead-styled multi-saw lead (aka a supersaw) as crap. If you make a trance track with said supersaw lead, even if you can mix as good as Bruce Swedien, it's automatically crap. Another forum I posted once to back in late 2009, I asked "how to make a dubstep bass like datsik and excision", and bam, I was automatically called a troll and ganged up on. I didn't know they considered post-2008 dubstep as crap. Lol.
The thing to remember in the end is, if it sounds good to you, it is good.
(I'm assuming you're talking about making music rather than mixing tracks to form a cohesive whole. THAT is more of an objective technical topic rather than the subjective one I assume we're talking about here.)
Thanks again everyone...
Yes - i'm talking about making music
... a single piece of music I guess.
Going back over old stuff is really useful actually.
I've just today gone through lot of my old half finished Gadget tracks and most is kind of average and I can see why I'd left that project and moved on.
But in amongst that i've found 2 or 3 tracks (really just at the looped parts stage) that I think - wow - great groove or great hook or whatever. I'm thinking - "don't waste this!" Either bring it into another project (annoyingly tricky in gadget actually) - or "build this into a complete tune, it's got legs".
There are a couple of other tracks that are basically finished - but i've not got round to mastering and publishing - and i've thought (with the persective of leaving it a few months) - yep - that's done - publish and be damned.
I think I value these self-judgements more now because of the passing of time. I'm not "in the track" in terms of making it. I'm more of an objective listener now.
So that's good.
Asking people for opinions is tricky - I agree. Sometime I think they are saying "Mmm - I don't like that "type" of music - make something of this other "type" - and that's not all that helpful. But other comments (on this forum actually) are really good because they are specific i.e. - need more structure, or this part jars or whatever... And that's really useful for fine tuning.
Problem is you/we don't have objectivity when it comes to your own stuff. It's subjective.. And we get attached .(I don't mean you personally)
It's hard to say what to do. Best is to try to "forget" it and listen to it with somebody else's ears, if possible, there is this thing of identification with one's creations.
Or just post it on SC and see what people think, as if it mattered lol.
Frank Zappa once said: if you make music and it sounds good to you, then it is good:-)
I'd recommend something similar to what's already been mentioned. No matter what you make, don't immediately trash it, but save it and listen back to it at a later date. What I'd also recommend is actually keeping that material and listening back at different stages. Even opinions on one's own work is subjective and could change based off many factors (emotions, environment, audience, etc.). It's good to explore what you think about something in multiple contexts, and sometimes looking at the same thing at many different times can help.
@soundklinik I KNEW I got that phrase from someplace. :P I couldn't remember where.
Good input all.
For me (me, me,) the key question to answer is: What are you doing it for? Match the judgment to the purpose.
More specifically, as regards Is this any good? I agree more than anything with the 'put it in a drawer and come back' school. And then also @richardyot's reminder to be patient. I see every failed piece, bit, loop, track, chorus, hook, rhyme, beat as a step to the one that's over the next hill and my other work has proven to me that that guy in the future is just begging you to keep on, keep improving, keep learning, keep practicing, keep absorbing, keep playing, keep writing.
And then, you know, don't stop, er, believing etc.
For all of that, things like the Song of the Month Club, for those of us in our separate dungeons, is invaluable, because the exercise of completing SOMETHING by a certain stroke of the clock (even though nothing is ever finished) is an important part of the discipline required to bend self-indulgence to that original purpose (whatever it might individually be).
A thought here about seeking the opinions of others. As you develop your skills, you want to hear what people think; this helps you to grow. But if you are truly talented--something different from skill--you don't really care what other people think because you have the ability, the talent, to know when you got it dread on right.
I have a little bit of keyboard skill, but no talent. I could play the same piece five times and I wouldn't know which time I nailed it best. But as a talented cartoonist, I can draw the same thing five times and know exactly which time I got it dead on, and which times I didn't. I feel absolutely no need to ask anyone; most people wouldn't see the difference anyway. But I know, and that's what defines talent for me.
My above statement applies to me and my talent as a guy who draws comics. In no way am I suggesting that anyone on this forum is not talented, and I'm sure you are all much more skilled than me. Run your music by everyone, but trust your heart to tell you when you've accomplished something awesome.
This is my dilemma exactly! How do I know what I do is any good. i like it, but as has been pointed out in real life my taste in music is somewhat "odd". I don't have any advice beyond what's already said, but there were some comments I found helpful. Not least Flo26's comment about posting things that are different or interesting in some way. I suspect that I might need to bear that one in mind in the future :-)
In the "good old days" (in 2011) when I started there was a lot more feedback, comments and likes on soundcloud and forums (all positive!). Now - pretty much zero. Personally I do conclude some things from that, namely that some/most of my output just doesn't grab anybody in any way. I posted a work in progress track in response to Facebook's ios music group and that was pretty much the repsonse (heavily implied "Muzak"). Of course there are loads more people making ios music now - and I find the bar in terms of quality a lot higher than it was.
Comes back to being "interesting" and moving outside of comfort zones and developing....
In short: I enjoy it (a lot), but I might be a lot more selective about sharing in the future.
I like that bit very much. "What does your heart tell you?" The Tolkien Doctrine
I mainly try to make stuff that sounds like crap, so... No decision necessary.
There are people here, like the OP that Id ask. Bummer that we can't always ask ourselves, but there are the Others to ask.
I have a strange inbuilt thing, like JG says putting it in the drawer, that happens in a day or less: I forget making it, I don't know the guy that made it. Always have been this way, and a lot of the time it's a good surprise and a lot of other times it's utter shit.
"You don't really finish songs, you abandon them." — PJ Harvey
you try to have good taste- then make sounds that sound good- use the Force-
I agree. If you are doing your own thing, then only 'you' can tell when you hit the mark. If you are going for a genre specific sound you might want to get some opinions from those involved in that genre.
Personally I just do my own thing outside any genre so feel it would be pointless to ask others for advice. I just keep tinkering until I feel a track is ready and, yes, a lot of ideas and tracks will be thrown away. That's just the nature of the beast.
Good question @Matt_Fletcher_2000. I would suggest you ignore other people's opinions as they will only respond with bias and almost random temperament. You could ask yourself how do you know what is good when you hear other people's music? Even your most highly regarded artists and their output can leave you cold at the wrong time.
So, you listen and listen and develop your ear for what you find interesting and inspiring and then hold your own music up to the same standards. Although this sounds easy enough, it will take your whole life and you will change your opinions regularly. But at some point you will look back a little and find something you did that continues to please you.
Ultimately I think you are looking for confidence and that comes from practice, knowing that others are going through similar and not being afraid to screw up and start again.
The harder question is "How do you know when something is finished..", but then, I think the PJ Harvey quote above comes close to nailing that one.
Thank you @Clam: this:
"I can draw the same thing five times and know exactly which time I got it dead on, and which times I didn't."
hit the nail on the head for me. I know what you mean (in regard to graphic design for example).
I'm trying to get better, when it comes to music, at being able to really indentify when something is 'just right' (within all the subjective structures of what 'just right' means to me - as discussed above). Or at least which of these 3 different basslines fits best with this track, or which synth patch etc.
I think this more technical skill probably comes from listening to a lot of similar music to the type you are making and thinking really hard about how it's put together. Plus a bit of music theory helps I think.
Takes a long time and there's always room for improvement IMO.
I like that, though in my case 'dispose of them' would be more appropriate.