Of course you can leave the songs and listen to them later. Maybe there is something in there that is interesting, but the brilliant idea is still missing. There are artists who have 50 projects open at the same time, the artist says it has to develop ... Of course there is also trial and error - there are also bad films or flops that are part of people. If you have too many flops you should change the genre and do what you do best. Sometimes there is a fine line between frustration and joy.
Why do you think that most people don't have time for old-skool, ultra-elitist, 'clever' music? Mostly 'cos it wasn't ever made for them. It was made by (and for) self-regarding snobs to project the notion that their culture/art/music was the zenith of human artistic expession, not least to justify their historic socio-economic privilege... You should also recall that nearly all the great composers regularly 'borrowed' (i.e. stole) popular folk tunes of their time, because they (unlike you) weren't so stupid as to think that only wealthy, educated musical specialists could knock-out a memorable, catchy tune. Listen, until you get your head around your hopelessly elitist, dogmatic, fatalistic cultural nihilism, it's going to do nothing but further alienate you from the living present and destroy all chance of you reaching a balanced perspective and a more positive creative worldview. Besides, you always banging-out the same old tired riff has gotten just too predictable. Last edited: Aug 31, 2021
yo when i struggled to finish stuff one dude told me just finish things no matter if it's wack so you get used to it and doing so really helped me overcome that problem... (for a while at least, because i stopped doing that )
I have only written one bad song and most are very, very good and some fantastic. I have had meh starts but very rarely and few and far between and those just fall by the wayside. I've never been prolific and only wrote when the muse had me in her sights and since I chose not to be in "the business" never had to force anything, had to add filler to fulfill a contract though throughout my life I have only succeeded creatively in any endeavor in which I needed to produce on a deadline, so I guess it would have worked out in my favor. Nowadays my output is way relaxed but the last few songs and compositions I have been very happy with.
i usually keep things which did not work and eventually start all over 15 years later. i do the same with code.
Trash it and free up your hard drive. For every piece of garbage that takes up space only steals it from something good that could take it's place. I'm not saying only aim towards perfection either. Just that once you rode that experience after finishing a track you think is trash and don't have a special hard drive to look back on memories and measure your progress, then just toss it out. You only need to run through the garbage tracks for experience so you can get to the better ones quicker.
I actually just edited my comment before you responded to it but I definitely don't think working on bad songs is a waste of time. In fact it's the heart of your progress. I'm just saying don't keep the trash on your immediate C drive that's in your working PC. If you want to save it to measure your progress then toss it to an external and delete the original to free up space for more music. That's all I'm saying. Without bad music you simply can't get to the good stuff. There is no way to cheat the system.
I don't think about it, I produce so much music that it would be like taking two steps back for every one I take forward if I were to keep focusing on the mediocre tunes. They have their value in the fact that it allows me to keep cranking out music and discover the real diamonds when I get in those flow states, which is often.
Producing crap does have its value but mostly when you are new to a style to get yourself over a learning curve but after that I agree that it's a waste of space and time when you have other stuff to finish.
There are no rules in art. Zero. Do whatever you want and whatever works for YOU. If there's anything that people need to learn, it's that. I work my way because it works for ME.
I make (among other crap) modular atonal drone stuff. A friend of mine recently thought I was making that on purpose to torture him. I found that hilarious. I do it because I love it. Don't care what others think.
If you haven't finished a track in said genre before from start to finish then making crap tracks for experience is all you can do. But if you have already got the hang of what's happening in that style then making crap is slowing you down.
... also If you produce a lot of content (and I mean a really lot) it could lead to decision fatigue by having so many pieces of music to constantly be revisiting and digging through. I used to save a lot of "mediocre" riffs and it was a giant time suck going back trying to decide what I can use, what can be expanded. Even songs that you think are finished (let's be real here, our songs are never finished... you just stop working on them and move on. lol) So yeah, I have multiple reasons why I quickly dump the crap. This is subjective because it takes time to become truly honest and objective about your own music and really decide what is crap or not. I used to get hung up on it and hoard too much crap. I stopped doing that years ago and my "quality" of productions and productivity exploded. Decision fatigue can also rear it's ugly head with too many plugins and other gear. *looking at you 124TB of plugins and kontakt libraries guy*
I like to zone out and improvise over drones sometimes. It forces you to get creative with your phrasing. Funny about your friend. lol
It took me years to get to this stage. All I can say is that you just do the work. The more music you create, the better you get at creating. Try getting into improvising. Man, I have come up with so many killer tracks that grew out of just improvising over something. Record yourself improvising for say 20minutes or so and then go back and listen to it and pick out the good shit and expand on it. Walk away from it for a while while doing other music and go back and listen to it with "fresh" ears and you'll get another perspective, take the good shit out and than dump the crap. I do that a lot. (I do this over about a weeks time. I'll listen to it a bunch of times over the course of a week or so until I'm sure I got everything out of it and then dump what's left) I talked about this, too, in another thread (maybe yours?) Anyway, often times when I'm starting a songwriting session, I'll pick up my guitar and start jamming some chord progressions, riffs etc. just feeling out a vibe, getting a groove going and finding something that gets the hair on my arms starting to stand up. THAT more often than not will turn into a rough diamond (many times multiple diamonds). Then it's just a matter of chipping away the edges, polishing it up and making that diamond shine. I also mentioned that when I'm just trying to get a groove/vibe going, I'm not worried at all about any theory. In fact, that's the last shit I want in my head. I don't want to be calculating anything, I don't want to be thinking about any structure, modes "rules." I'm focused 100% on feeling. I don't give a shit about techniques, theory, I don't care how sloppy it is or sounds. All that will be cleaned up later when It's time to learn what the hell I just wrote. lol There are different personality types and that affects how people create art. I'm sure really analytical types will focus on theory more than someone like me. That's fine, whatever works for them. My advice is to be crazy, break rules, ignore what doesn't feel right to you and experiment with all kinds of stuff. Try bringing in different genres, even genres you don't like. You'll get ideas that you normally wouldn't. Just keep producing as much music as you possible can, but make sure you take BREAKS to recharge often, even just a 10 minute walk will give you a short recharge can help you get a different perspective on something you're working on. Plus it gives your ears a break, which is really important. Sometime I walk away from something for a day or a week because I know that I'm not in the right mind/mood at that time to "polish" up something that I know is a diamond, but I know after a bit of recharge or working on something else, I'll be able to come back and nail it. I do that a lot. Don't confuse this with keeping crap... I'm talking about things I know are diamonds, they just need more work. I'm to the point now where I can just pick up a guitar and start writing pretty much any time. The only time I don't want to do that is if I've been playing too many days in a row without many breaks. That's when creativity dies down and I start feeling a bit of burnout, which is why I stressed taking breaks. As for how many tracks a day. I don't really work like that or keep track of anything like that. I'm more about writing a lot of bits and piece or large chunks in a writing session, THEN figuring out what is good and what I should dump. Once I have a brain dump so to speak, then I'll create tunes out of it all. Sometimes I can write one or more solid tracks outright and other days (most often) they'll be many tracks. If I get in a really good creative streak, I will crank out an hour+ of music and just pick through it all, and like I've been saying, I'll pick out and save the rough diamonds and start polishing them. An hour of music is a lot of material to work with. I do get that a lot of people like to focus on one track until it's done. That doesn't work for me, I've tried it and always go back to what I just mentioned because I come up with too much music to do that. I always end up creating "mediocre" tunes or just burn out when trying to work on one song at a time. (That's just me, you might have a totally different style of working and there is no right or wrong way to create art) I will usually work on a whole collection of music at a time. I write in a lot of different styles, so sometimes I might be just writing all metal, sometimes all blues, sometimes all ambient and sometimes mixed genres. Whatever the mood calls for. I let the music go where it wants to go. No rules, no structure, just fly and be creative. Damn this got long. LOL I don't know if you got anything out of all of that, but that's what works for me. Last edited: Sep 2, 2021
