How to start, make, and finish a proper track

Thats it.

I want, for fuck sake, and because its about time now, to make a full track that convinces myself.

Normally I would start some shit, never knowing where im going, just do what goes throught my head. As a result, I'll get tired in an hour or so, so what I have is maybe 1 minute of track, sometimes something decent, sometimes crap, etc, but the idea is that I'll never see myself convinced to put the effort on that piece of audio, and enlarge it to fulltime track (4 min for example), and even less thinking about releasing something.

Reasons of why this happens to me all the time... I don't really know, but surely has to do with stuffage avaliable. I mean, I always have the same fucking beats going on there, that "oldschool funk drums" pack, (winstons, lyn collins, james fuckin brown, etc). I have also some random beats that downloaded from pages on the interbutts, they suck.

I have plenty of VSTi's, but the "big ones", are the ones that I'll don't know how the fuck don't stick to the presets (I don't want people recognizing presets), but at the same time, I don't know how to fuckin use Absynth (to mention one of those "big VSTi's", that requires more than experimenting with knobs).

Also, another thing I always skip because of lazyness/wanttostartriteNOW, is, for example, the "integrated pattern sequencer(?)", and use the piano roll (like for example, any of those 303 clones). Instead I'll go with the FL's piano roll. Anyway, (take Phoscyon ie) has any advantage if you learn use the "pattern thing" that you can't do on the piano roll? Because there are presets (the sequenced ones), that have for example, one note with a certain cut off, another with less cutoff, etc, something impossible to do with the piano roll. The only way I know to change the knobs is press the rec button and move the knobs you want. Im tired of doing this shit, because as you can guess, you don't have total control of the properties of every single note.

Well thats all for now, I'll update with more things that im interested to know/take advices from the pros, and edit the post if something doesn't made sense.

it takes patience and skill

start off by writing your music like pop songs, part A part B part A part B part C Part B. and if you still cant finish a piece writing it like that, your fucked

start by tearing apart some of your favorite tracks and understanding their structure... also good practice is taking 2 tracks you are working on and to try and make them work together.

  stolemb said:

As a result, I'll get tired in an hour or so, so what I have is maybe 1 minute of track, sometimes something decent, sometimes crap, etc, but the idea is that I'll never see myself convinced to put the effort on that piece of audio, and enlarge it to fulltime track (4 min for example), and even less thinking about releasing something.

i'll often spend 1 - 2 months or longer on a 2 - 3 minute track.

write, write, write

delete half of what you wrote

write, write, write

delete half of what you wrote

1-2 years later, with the 14 songs you have, throw away 6.

make a free net release

I say don't think too hard about it. Try making tracks in really short amounts of time and never staying to long on one part, make a full track in an evening. Sometimes it helps to just say 'im going to finish this now' and if you dont like it when its done then drop it and move on, instead of hanging on to the hope that you can make it your best track ever.

Man, i truly don't think you have the patience to make this kind of music from your complaining. I mean no offense at all, just an observation... Not only that, but it seems you don't even program your own drums, meaning your using tired old loops. I am a firm believer in programming your own drums. Thats just me.

Just get it done. You won't like your composition. Once its written then adjust it. Just get it over with, you'll never like it, just finish it.

You CAN like it though. I give you permission. Shit, I like MY songs...

Yeah but thats not going to help him. He's having problems finishing his songs. I think if he just got some data into his sequencer he could always adjust and play with it later. I notice that sometimes I can often polish a turd. electronic music is mostly polishing turds.

  sneaksta303 said:

Man, i truly don't think you have the patience to make this kind of music from your complaining. I mean no offense at all, just an observation... Not only that, but it seems you don't even program your own drums, meaning your using tired old loops. I am a firm believer in programming your own drums. Thats just me.

wtf? I never used a loop, I program every single bit of beat.

sounds to me like you dl'd a crack of fruity loops

and startin pissin your knickers caus eyou couldnt recreate druqks in 1 day of using it

just play about with vsts until you get

sounds that are new or interesting and

then paste them together thoughtfully

and play some synth atop it and voila.

Sounds like wining.

You either make music or you don't. It sounds to me like you're trying to hard to make something. If you can't have fun just fucking around i don't think your "serious" stuff will sound any good. It's like this with everything in life that requires skill: It's not really fun untill you get a little good at it. Iceskating and skiing come to mind, two things i suck at because i got quickly bored and knocked myself senseless whilst trying to learn it.

You need to find your own process for making a track.

Some people like to plan, plan and plan some more before they even make the track...

Some people like to go right into it, playing what their heart feels at that moment and not looking back.

Basically, just have a good time making a track, constantly think "right, I'm the listener, is this part getting boring?.. should I add another instrument here?.. is the starting epic?.. is the ending right?... Is this track the right consistency?.. do these instruments work well together? etc etc"

All of these questions and self scrutiny will really benefit the track..

  TEXX said:

Sounds like wining.

You either make music or you don't. It sounds to me like you're trying to hard to make something. If you can't have fun just fucking around i don't think your "serious" stuff will sound any good. It's like this with everything in life that requires skill: It's not really fun untill you get a little good at it. Iceskating and skiing come to mind, two things i suck at because i got quickly bored and knocked myself senseless whilst trying to learn it.

Yeah, that's the main thing really, enjoying the process...

If you really do want to make music but you're finding it too hard/boring, then try a new program to use once in a while if your bored of the existing one, or even use other peoples material elements (drums etc)... to put a track together, your first tracks won't be good enough to sell anyway, so it's not like you have to care about copyright.

Also, maybe get into recording new sounds with a microphone?... make sample packs that are consistent so they could form a whole track... check out http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/ for free samples, http://www.kvraudio.com/get.php for instruments / effects / sequencers etc.

  joshier said:

Also, maybe get into recording new sounds with a microphone?...

this will grow some good ears on you and really expand/blur your musical boundaries

1. get minidisc recorder off ebay for $50-ish, plug your @home headphones into its microphone input and record yourself banging on crap.

2. dump the sound onto your computer, open it in Recycle, chop it up, export slices to wavs (or save as .rex). note in your head: "does this sound like a kick, tom, snare, hat, ride?" and build percussion kits that way.

3. find a real kick, snare, hat, and ride that you like and look at them in a frequency analysis type thing.

compare to the noise versions that you made.

do some EQ cuts and / or adjust pitch in your samples to get them closer to the drumkit you like

4. make fat beats

-----

this will break you out of the practice of needing other people's samples so your kits don't look like:

roland kick

amen snare

roland hat

etc.

-----

Act II

5. pick 5-7 notes you like in an octave, call them "my very first scale." only play these notes in each octave, and you can crap out near-melodies.

a. pick bass sound or synth to run these notes through.

b. pick mid-upper range sound or synth to run these notes through.

6. compose

a. delete

b. compose

c. delete

d. WATMM

e. compose

f. compose?

g. WATMM arcade

h. compose

7. read this blog: http://www.em411.com/show/blog/79

a. read it again

b. make EQ cuts

c. realize you EQ'd poorly

d. read it again

e. repeat a - d twenty-seven times.

8. give up EQing and compress the shit out of it

9. post it on WATMM

10. retire

Its not like I want to rush myself or something and release tracks NOW and have the monies (well OFC, but you know what I mean), I just see myself overally not improving.

Now this is an example of "track I do and get bored of it and sounds crap to me" that I don't see myself continuing:

watmm__you_got_so_many_users.mp3Fetching info...

i dunno, its a pretty good start, look into learning to mix maybe, a big big part of how to make you're track sound good, to you're ears and others, is how its been mixed. you're tracks a good basis to work off and i dont think the problem lies with you're composition or programming but all you're sounds are bunched together in a big mess sonically.

eq, compress, read some mix tutorials, get those sounds seperated and phat in there own frequency spectrum and that track could sound prety good.

Finishing a track is a lot simpler than it appears. Just change something...slow down the beat into half time or something and add reverb over some melody. Or you can drone out into noise. There are a lot more options to end a track than to start them, I think.

When I first started making music I couldn't not finish a track. I made dozens of CDs of mostly terrible and strange music. Finally I started to have some quality control in my music and it wasn't just a self-fulfilling excercise like befroe. I find it strange that people starting out can't finish a track....? When I started I didn't really care how nice it sounded as long as I got it done.

Heh Bubba69 is speaking the truth in my case, i did the same stuff. A billion albums in the beginning, far less when I started caring too much

  stolemb said:

Its not like I want to rush myself or something and release tracks NOW and have the monies (well OFC, but you know what I mean), I just see myself overally not improving.

 

Now this is an example of "track I do and get bored of it and sounds crap to me" that I don't see myself continuing:

 

watmm__you_got_so_many_users.mp3Fetching info...

That sounded ace! Shouldn't think it'd be a problem continuing that. Maybe you could chop the shit out of it and start gradually resequencing it whilst making the beats faster as they go along. Dunno. It's good anyways.

  welcome to the machine said:

i dunno, its a pretty good start, look into learning to mix maybe, a big big part of how to make you're track sound good, to you're ears and others, is how its been mixed. you're tracks a good basis to work off and i dont think the problem lies with you're composition or programming but all you're sounds are bunched together in a big mess sonically.

 

eq, compress, read some mix tutorials, get those sounds seperated and phat in there own frequency spectrum and that track could sound prety good.

Yeah, thats the main thing that makes me get bored of continuing things.. when I start to add a considerably amount of different stuff at the same time, it sounds like shit, messed up etc. Thats why I wrote this:

http://forum.watmm.com/index.php?showtopic=18615

Beat programming can tell if I continue a track or not also. If after an hour or so that I've worked on the first beats, and they don't sound/etc good and doesn't flow well with the bass/melody to me, I just can't continue things (the thing I attached its a clear example of that).

That sounded ace! Shouldn't think it'd be a problem continuing that. Maybe you could chop the shit out of it and start gradually resequencing it whilst making the beats faster as they go along. Dunno. It's good anyways.

lol im glad u liked.

but my 5.1 says it sounds ugly, and I don't like the whole thing at all, it sucks.