Commitment issues

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

I had a free day from work today as I do once a week.

As I was fooling around with my synthesizers and my looper pedal, I started wondering why basically my every musical endeavour ends up as a sketch on my looper’s memory slot. I haven’t recorded anything in a DAW for maybe five years. Whenever I have a little free time, I like to ”jam” on my synths but I never record anything (except on the looper).

That leads to one very real problem. I have a bunch of musical ideas, riffs, melodies, sequences but as I never commit to really finish them, I’m doomed to play the same ideas over and over in hundreds of different iterations. They’re perfectly good riffs but I guess I’m afraid of forgetting them as I haven’t made them into a finished track ever. If I only once finished one musical idea, I could move on and get new ones. The state of things leaves me in a state of no musical progress.

When our band was still active, whenever I had a piece of melody, I took it to our band rehearsal and we made something out of it. The other two guys added their ideas to my melody, and magically it started to evolve into a proper song. Same happened with their melodies and riffs. It was very prolific, every band rehearsal produced at least a few proper song ideas and we worked on them to make them whole songs.

As a ”solo artist” I struggle to commit anything to tape. I don’t even start. I’m perfectly happy looping a nice melody, then adding a bassline and maybe a drumtrack and then I feel like I’m finished, time to do something else, like play a video game or read a comic book. Occasionally I do the same on my MPC or one of my digi-boxes. I make a four bar loop that sounds great and then I save it and basically never return to it again.

NGNY has made my GAS manageable. My hobby is no longer buying and selling gear, but it’s not really making music either. I’m really and truly happy with my setup, but all I end up with are short loops and snippets, never anything resembling a full song. I fail to commit.

I have ambitions to someday make an ep. I have a lot of ideas concerning almost every other aspect of the ep except the music. Great songtitles, amazing album title, great graphics. Now I just need the music to go with them.

Does anyone (or everyone?) else suffer from similar issues?

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For what are you using your creations on your Elektron gear?
No New Gear Year 2023 AKA NGNY 2023
#2

What are you waiting for? Do it. Then play it in your shop. Don’t over think it, do it. The time is now.

Yes, probably most do, I certainly do. I think that it can be a struggle but it seems like you are halfway there, you have the title, and imagery in mind, that is a good foundation on which to start.

Work on it whenever you have the time, collaborate with your previous self, grab those ideas from before and imagine that you have a deadline, set the deadline and stick to it, come hell or high water. There is nothing to lose and much to gain, even if it is only experience of finishing something.

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#3

I took advice from a friend and removed the looper from my setup to focus more on playing into the DAW to finish songs. Like you, none of my ideas were leaving the looper. And due to personal beliefs I didn’t want to ultimately record the loops because I think the mind doesn’t like to hear audio repeat so many times unchanged, and that the reason people love old records is because there’s so much organic variation, which otherwise disappears in looping.

Great for ideas but it was a major hindrance. I would just be content to hear my pretty loops and it never went anywhere.

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#4

It’s important to follow your ambitions - so definitely do that, but also there’s nothing wrong with just jamming and enjoying your music - it’s expressive, there’s no ego and you can focus on enjoying yourself rather than worrying about an audience - I wouldn’t put too much pressure on your hobbies - let it come naturally.

My album releases are basically just collections of my jams. I mean sure they probably suffer as a result of that, but I don’t need a second job :slight_smile:

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#5

I hear you Wolf Rami. I think a big part of this comes down to latent talent. This is a skill you have, so shouldn’t you be making better use of it?

I think it’s important not to beat oneself up. What I do, though, is realise that every moment in life is precious. It’s easy to fall in the trap - when you’re humming along, in full momentum, and finishing producing things in life - to think that you can just do this again later, that the circumstances will be the same again later and you’ll be able to do it again. But you might not be able to, for whatever reason.

If I look back on my own creative life it reads like a massive peak and then a trough, so, sometimes you’re in the trough. And that can be against whatever metric you apply to it (not neccesarily life happiness).

So, keep noodling I say. A snowball can eventually turn into an avalanche.

edit: typo

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#6

Yeah, that’s 100% true too. If it’s up to me I’d like to never play another gig ever again. That’s what killed my enthusiasm in the last band. The gigs are allright but everything else (driving at night time, carrying shitloads of gear, herding two drunks/bandmates around) I can live without.

I’m 48 years old, I own a book shop. I don’t have time for bands or gigs anymore.

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#7

I use a recorder mixer on my 1010 Bluebox to capture a lot of stuff when I’m too lazy to open up my computer and DAW then process later. It’s a great time saver for me.

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#8

See I’m the opposite and love jamming in clubs. The pandemic killed live sessions and Sacramento is dead for places to do live synth jams.

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#9

That’s also one thing. I have a Zoom Livetrak L-12, but I still fail to commit. I guess this is the dark flipside of DAWless jams. Not using a DAW has kinda alienated me from capturing my ideas and doing anything more substantial than just ”jamming”.

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#10

Also I read something once in one of those motivational books, if you want to do something ‘someday’ - do it now. Someday is something you can take to the grave with you.

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#11

Yeah, I love the playing. There’s basically nothing as exhilarating as standing on a stage and playing the songs you and your mates have written and seeing people enjoy it. The adrenaline and dopamine levels are sky high. That’s a feeling to kill for, but it was all the other things involved with gigging that killed it for me. I ended up being the mother of two grown up dudes as I was the only one sober as I was the only guy with driver’s license in our band.

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#12

ALL the time.
Currently getting over it and working out some tracks for a completed ep.

I find that you just have to start trying stuff.
Not everything will get completed, but somewhere in there you’ll get in the flow and you wont want to quit, the finished product will fully materialize and give you encouragement and focus.

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#13

Ditch the looper. Doesn’t your MPC record as long as you want (if you’re dead set against a DAW and multitracking)? If so, record layers of ever changing stuff instead of short loops. The changing background, like when playing in a band, might inspire new directions. And because each recording is much longer (maybe each being the length of a song), you can take bits and pieces to form a full song later on. Go back to thinking like a band, except you’re every member layering stuff in the studio.

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#14

Also:
I love Elektronauts! I bloody love you guys and gals.

This forum is the complete opposite of every other forum and social media in existence: supportive, nurturing, understanding. And I really really enjoy reading about the world and things happening through you people. Living in a small corner of northern Europe doesn’t feel so isolated anymore. This is like a window to all kinds of different places and lives.

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#15

To be all-round you need to be able to discipline yourself every once in a while to lay down tracks, and never let go the enjoyment of jamming and experimenting for fun and results. My advise is that if you find it too overwhelming to record track-by-track, just record your LR output. Get better at jamming in real time and then just edit the LR file. I have put out a lot of releases (even vinyl) using this approach cos I would never have the patience to start recording multitrack. Sometimes I do track by track cos I have an important release proposal and the effort matches the retribution. But usually just record the physical outputs into an 8-in soundcard while jamming, and then do some edits.

The good thing about Elektron is that these machines have a superb internal mix, so if you take some time to fine tune your mix in the machines, the LR recording comes out very usable. It’s just advisable to have the kick in a separate track for sidechain compression. I really prefer using audio outs than OB cos I like the sound more and also using the machines’ effects and compressors. The Ableton mix of OB recorded tracks always sounds lamer.

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#16

I know the feeling of not finishing real songs or albums and just record loop based music or just loops most of the time.

But as i read your comment i thought about which image of myself i would appreciate more shortly before i die for example.

  1. Me in my room playing music and “jamming” for a long time
    or
  2. Me in my room playing music for a short time and then sitting in front of a screen for a long time moving the mouse back and forth, listening to one piece of music very often mixing around and then listening to the finished project.

And don’t get me wrong, i like finishing music and listening to the outcome. And of course i like the part when i get postitive reactions from people who like what i crafted. But if i’m being honest with myself the jamming part is the most fun. Just a thought that came to my mind.

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#17

Thanks for the kind words dude. I guess what would really benefit me would be a week or two off from work and time to do my things. One day a week is fine, but I usually just get started on whatever I set my mind to. And as there are so many things I love (video games, movies, reading, taking a long walk with our dog etc.) I usually can only fulfill a couple of my ambitions on one free day. Even though we don’t have kids, life seems a lot like accomplishing things nowadays.

When I was younger I watched movies, finished games and read books for enjoyment. Nowadays it feels like it’s a ”to do” -list that I need to accomplish. I have to watch this and read that because I only have this one free day. That’s kinda shitty about adulthood.

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#18

The year is almost over, but it’s never too late to join! I used to take 4-5 years between albums and now I’ve written and completed 203 songs by doing one song a week (for the years of 2016, 2018, 2020, and doing it again currently)

The big thing is having the accountability and encouragement from other musicians. I now understand that if I don’t have a deadline and some accountability, I never get anything done.

I’ve professionally coached some musicians/artists to help them get some projects done, let me know how I can help you! Don’t let your creativity collect dust on the shelf!

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#19

The struggle is real @Wolf-Rami, going through it myself. A bunch of patterns with no real direction. I don’t have much to offer other than you’re not alone and I thank you for sharing as you put it way better than I ever could have. I’m watching this thread!

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#20

Yeah that’s a valid and extremely important point of view too.

Maybe I shouldn’t stress so much on not accomplishing anything every time I sit in front of my gear. The best part truly is the jamming. That was also probably the best part in playing in a band. Fooling around in our rehearsal space/studio and coming up with crazy ideas. By myself it’s perhaps not as fun, but still good fun.

I guess one factor that contributed in us ever finishing two albums was that my bandmate was really really into recording/producing and all that stuff. He was always one finger on the rec button and spent dubious hours editing our jams into something coherent. That’s one of the reasons our band worked. Now I need to learn to be that guy too.

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