Sound design, this lovely meta level, is a trap. Part of the axis of evil in music production.

 

yo know what lol this lady still has it goiing on, couldn't help but hear the sexual innuendo's as she was talking about her method, i guess food and sex have some synonimy as well. XD not to mention, id still hit that!

 

I use to have that kind of problem too, difficulty to focus, or focusing too much on thing that are not important (or not important yet in that production stage) and losing motivation. I made some adjustment in my life and my workflow to fix that, as music is my main source of income, I had to do something.

First, on the life part, I start to eat more healthy, no more soda and shit like that. Also start to doing some sport, even a little everyday. Also a little quiet time for meditation, even just 10min a day can make a big difference on the long term. The key here is to allow your body to use efficiently the energy you give it, like a race car or a plane, you don't fuel it with cheap gaz. If you're in a healthy body with clear mind, it become easier to keep focus on something.

Then on the production side, I made some adjustment too, the key here is to install some habits (an day habit can be set in a month or sticking to it, but it takes more time to make a bad habit disapear). I made some planing for music production, like daily job, like "today it's sound design day" "today it's discover new plugin day", stuff like that, not production directly but stuff around, it can be learning a new technique, trying a demo or designing drum/preset or organising your sample, but not production. The point is to create inspiration and also some kind of frustration (but not in a bad way). Depend on the time you have but give you 10 minute to one hour each day for that (if you got a job, or kids, it's harder to set and find the time, but again, after the habit will be here, it become easier, small amount of time do the trick).
Then on this weekly schedule, everyday you give you a time for the production part, it can be just 10 min to 1 hour or more, but not too much. During that time you only work on one part of the production, so before you start your session you give yourself an objective and stick to it, if it's to have a good melody, then work on that, even if the drum doesn't sounds that great, you'll make some time for that after. Personnaly I use sample loop mostly for that, they sounds great and like a finnished product so I can build what I want around it, and then take a session to build my own instead.
If at the end of the session you didn't finish but still got inspiration, stop anyway, or add no more that 10 mn. We tend to think that if we lose an idea it's lost forever, but the brain is a really wonderful thing and always come up with better idea all the time (or at least different one). But using a phone or recorder to sing/hum those idea if you want to keep them is a solution (or a pen and a paper). Key here is to not go to the point where you get sick/bored of the song/producing, and it will put your brain in a "waiting mood" instead of a "saturated mood", just like spending a time with a girl, if you get blue ball you get impatient to the moment you'll see her again
And so your brain will work more positively and expect the next session, and probably create more idea, because it will be in a "can't wait for it" mood instead of "that was tiring and I lose motivation" mood, don't know if it's clear

After some time the habit will install themselves and it will because like a automatic thing for you, and your brain will put himself in the right mood.

All the main idea to that is to make music a positive habit instead of a frustration one, there will be some frustration, and sometime you'll think you need more time, but try to never go to the point where it's boring, even if it's create the "unfinished task feeling". It can seems counter productive but at the end you'll be more efficient on each task you do and finish more music.

If you want to dig more in that kind of solution, most of the thing I say here come from a course I take with Mike Monday some years ago, "Start now finish fast". It's full of small tips like that, method and explanation about how our brain works, some tips can seems silly like putting your screen in a position where you have to look up instead of looking down, because when looking down the brain associate it with negativity. Every tips alone don't do much, but it's the accumulation of every step that allow you to climb at the top of the stairs

That was long, hope that help

 

Yep same thing here, it's a catch 22. I hate making music in an unmixed environment. I have spent at least ten years perfecting my template so i can make music on the fly that already sounds mixed/mastered. Minus any tweaks between songs i'm pretty much there, well nearly, if it weren't for the bane of my existence - Latency which can seriously hinder creative flow and cause editing issues especially when dealing with kontakt libraries/midi etc. Despite getting latency down to barely noticable it's still noticeable compared to a completely empty project. It's perhaps that above all that has hindered my ability to finish songs.

I recently started a 'sketch' template, where im only loading a few instruments/tracks and just trying to flesh out the main song and its structure. Get in all the progressions/melodies/counter melodies etc i can then move it to the real template when there is an outlined structure. It's actually working out really well. Finishing more stuff.

 

This is my first posting on this board, but I just had to thank you, 11 Fletcher, for some really helpful info. Thanks for letting me know about Mike Monday, that's exactly the kind of thing I need to work on right now. Cheers!

 

Creating is different from building ... a craftsman can build even without inspiration and his only motivation is the retribution of his work. An artist needs inspiration, and inspiration need motivation. Motivation does not feed itself, it needs external incentives, and this is the big problem of us all, that we create in the shadows, with little or no recognition ... Without the push of motivation also the pleasure of making music becomes a job to avoid...