Cannot Finish Anything

[Habanc]

Sorry for the brick of text, everyone, if you don't read it I don't blame you (tl;dr at the bottom):

Something has been bothering me as of late. I know it's been brought up before, but it helps I guess to actually put these feelings down too. It seems the more and more I get into a song, the less and less I care about finishing it. Like, my mind keeps telling me "Who wants to spend hours of mind-numbing existence looking at the screen listening to these damn beeps and boops looped over and over, when you can feel that rush again when you start a new one?".

I used to finish near everything I started a few months back, excited and pumped for near 100% of the production process. Then for awhile I had to step away a bit for final exams. Now, coming back, it's hard to finish anything (I think I've done one, out of atleast a dozen). When I finally come down to my studio and fire up the DAW in the morning, I load up my recent project, and by day 4-6 I'm already like "Oh jeez, this thing again?". And the feeling just keeps building every day.

For instance, I wanted to try minimal house just for the fun and experience (Which I have discovered I am not good at), and after noticing it could sound decent with "Becoming Popular" I decided to download the acapella and work with it for the lulz. Now... Hearing Rarity's singing just makes me want to close down FL Studio. Maybe my problem is that I move slower than molasses when making a track? I can spend hours looping a section over and over, hoping to tweak things to make it sound better, and inevitably each loop makes it sound worse and worse to me.

Some people tell me they make songs in hours or a day or two. I like to take my time and explore possibilities, and yet when I try to do that it seems to be killing me the most.

It feels like the rush of the first few days into a song is too great compared to the next 9-12 days. Almost like an addiction, I guess (scary that I say it), starting out is fun and then afterwards it just sucks and then you want to do it all over again. Like, deep down, I keep prodding myself to finish it, even if it isn't my best work, but solely so I can just do it... But then something goes wrong or I just snap and leave it to rot, and wait a day or two before some new gets me going and I repeat the process all over again. And it's really starting to annoy me because I loved back when I could be excited about a track from start to finish.

Sorry for the brick of text, but I wanted to voice this and get a few opinions because I recently agreed to collab with a friend for Remix War V, and I really, REALLY don't want to bail on him after a few days in. Kinda scared...

tl;dr I feel growing apathy about finishing my tracks after a few days in. I don't know why or what to do.

[soultensionbenjamin]

Im the same way dude

[colortwelve]

I'd venture to say that maybe the issue here is creative stagnation - I know that when I get inspired to make a track, I'll sit down and make it in three to four hours, then spend the next 20+ hours on it working on the mixing and tweaking things here and there. But when I'm not inspired, I'll try to start something, get an intro done, and then ask myself what the fuck I'm doing and throw away the project completely. I understand the frustration, in a sense, and all I can really tell you is to at least lay down an entire track's structure in one sitting if you want it to be finished in the foreseeable future. I find that if I can set out the bare bones of a song, from beginning to end, it eventually finishes itself, in a sense - each listen through will bring another minor tweak, maybe a melody, maybe a harmony, maybe a tweak to the structure itself, but what drives the process at that point is having something done and wanting it to be finished. So maybe don't go charging into your DAW every day, but be ready when inspiration strikes, and spend some of your spare time coming up with idea for song structures so that things fall into place more smoothly when you have an idea.

[Ed Viper]

Hey guys, I know this isn't the faces thread, but I'm gonna post this here anyway.

<---that's me

Yeah I rarely finish anything. The main thing is, don't sweat it. If you start to worry about it all the time, you'll go into making a song with the mentality that "I HAVE to finish this."

Frankly, "No, you don't". I can't tell you how many projects I've thrown away because I just didn't feel it after a while. It takes me a long time to finish songs (when I do), but I have noticed that I never get tired of the songs I do finish. I'm always into it 100% the whole time. Eventually, you'll just start work on a track that's really, truly inspired, and you won't be able to put it down.

This is really just a phase you're going through. All musicians go through it multiple times. I just got out of a similar funk, so I really know where you're coming from. Just don't sweat it, man. You'll pull through.

[Thyrai]

I had the exact same problem up until about 2 or 3 weeks ago. Just keep pushing your way through - and don't look at unfinished stuff as 'failures', but instead as practise. It's incredible how much you learn without even knowing you learned something!

Some people tell me they make songs in hours or a day or two.

Speed comes from lots of experience. Don't worry about how long your projects are taking!

[prettiestPony]

Two thoughts:

1. Watch the video linked here. (Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVQ8c19unnM&feature=player_embedded). His basic strategy is to divide your production time into two different modes or methods--with one, you do nothing but concentrate on learning more about production, tweaking sounds, programming synths, finding new samples, organizing samples and patches in your folders, and all that. With the other, you focus on composing or creating a new song while using the fruits of your earlier labor. The idea is that you'll use the "learning/tweaking" time to develop routines, methods, and such, so that they'll be right at your fingertips when it's time to be creative. That way you can spend less time obsessing over finding the right sounds when you're in the middle of a track, because you'll already have built up a personal library of awesome sounds and you'll have them organized such that you can get to what you want easily.

2. I also have some advice similar to colortwelve's. From another post I made on MLR some time ago that was directed toward a beginner, but is, I think, relevant nonetheless:

The best advice I have is, once you start getting comfortable with the basics, don't let yourself get stuck on making 4-, 8-, 16- or whatever-bar loops that don't go anywhere. Make full songs! Or near-finished songs. Even if they're horrible, even if you don't know "where it should go next", keep doing it anyway. Don't spend hours and hours trying to get EXACTLY the right sound, EXACTLY the right synth--not even "exactly the right melody/rhythm"--until AFTER you've laid the framework for the rest of your track, and you know roughly what happens when, roughly what the overall intensity "arc" is. Promise yourself you'll come back and fix whatever it is later; maybe even write yourself a memo, if you need to. But, get a rough outline in place NOW, while you're still creative and in the zone, even if you change that overall outline later. Think big picture first, small details later. (It's really seductive to focus on small details too much with electronic music, because we can tweak nearly every aspect of the sounds we're creating.)

Not to say you have to make a fully developed 6 minute track out of every little thing you start on. If something is sucking beyond all redemption, or if you just feel like fooling around for fun, or if you want to experiment with effects and synthesizers to figure out what all those knobs do (which is indeed a good idea, as long as it isn't interfering with creativity), there's no real reason to kill yourself over it. But if you don't get into the habit of structuring songs preeettyyy early on, you'll regret it later. (At least, if you're anything like me. I still have to struggle to take my own advice on this matter, and I still don't feel like I have an amazing grasp on musical structure.)

[Habanc]

Thank you, everyone, for your help. I'll admit it's heartening to know this is common.

Perhaps Colortwelve is partially right, stagnant inspiration and creativity. Maybe, more so, it's my own choice on how to use what inspires me. I'll assume this happens to other people here, but a greater portion of my inspiration comes from - and is about - non-pony sources rather than pony-related ones. It's kinda natural, since more of my life is spent outside the MLP universe rather than in it.

There's alot that does inspire me from day to day life, whether it be from the news, my own personal life, or even a book (Dear god, 'Brave New World' was huge). But, I can't always draw from that because I really do want to make pony music, kinda my way to give back to an awesome community.

[Ed Viper]

(Dear god, 'Brave New World' was huge).

I can see we're going to be good friends.

You got any of the guys here on skype? There's a skype name sharing thread somewhere around here, feel free to add anyone. There's always at least one person on that you can go to with questions : )

[Habanc]

I do have maybe 20 or so people from MLR on skype, but yeah, maybe I should add a bit more since I talk only a few of them (And really only a few times a month).

Thanks!