20 years+…no tracks. no sense in starting now.
considering closing up shop, maybe THAT will be MY year end goal. 0 gear
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I am in the same boat the past several years. I finally have my workflow and recording process more streamlined to make it easier for me to complete tracks. I have a bunch of stems that I need to organize into a set of tracks.
Don’t feel bad and most musicians cannot earn a living on their craft alone. I think a song structure can follow some path like this:
Intro-Verse-Chorus-Verse 2
Chorus
End
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Hit render I say. It extracts the sounds from the production process and gets you listening to things. Chuck it on your phone and listen to stuff with your headphones on going for a walk or whatever, in the car. Everything you do, just render it, render it for 8 minutes. It creates a library of files and component parts, and it can help to start piecing things together. And you have the old files for tweaking later if u need. Also, get out of session view.
But I’m guilty of this too. My own internal drive will kick in for whatever reason sometimes, and voila, I’ll have something finished. But it’s very rare.
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Thank you @sacguy71 !
My only goal this day is to feel confortable playing keyboard and being able to use 3,4 scale fluently. I mean by that, having real pleasure playing and hearing me.
This way I can “solo” things for 10, 20 minutes which is the best for me to achieve some chillout and being able to unlish my feeling in the keyboard.
And I discover that after 10 minutes of playing, sometime I feel well enough to record it to the DAW.
I put aside Elektron box those day, this is the best way for me to do “glorified pattern” 
But will try to see how to add them later in the process.
I have already done it, but I need to find the secret sauce to not put too much on Elektron, not too much on MPC and not too much on keybaord jam
Lots of time I don’t have energy to do Keyboard, DAW, Elektron MPC, so I choose a target and I commit.
For me musc heal my mind.
It cost me a lots also with buying stuff, but it’s a hobby so that’s fine
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I can recommend overdubbing. Imo best method to record longer tracks. I prefer not to use the word “finish”
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Well, I mostly know what I still have to do. It’s more like I‘m getting tired of actually doing it. It just feels a lot like work, and I don’t want to spend all my music time with „work“. But yeah, I guess I just need to do it and then move on, will be worth it. Thank you for the confirmation.
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Sometimes when I get home from a long, hard day at work, I pop a microwave burrito in or heat up a frozen pizza because I’m too tired and just want something to eat. We’ve all been there I’m sure.
Other times I’ll steam and season some nice basmati rice, chop and cook some fresh vegetables (seasoned to taste with some sea salt and fresh cracked pepper), I’ll split, butter, season, and wrap a potato and get that going in the oven, then I’ll marinate and pan sear a nice cut of pork chop or maybe dry rub a choice fillet.
One way is easier than the other, takes far less work. One way gives me a microwave burrito. The other way gives something much more desirable, but it’s more work.
Both ways are valid and will sustain you. I’m hungry now.
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For me, music activity alternates between periods of:
- practicing songs that I want to learn from scratch or to play differently than they were meant to be;
- capturing my ideas because I feel inspired and transforming them into songs.
I always play through the blackbox. This way, I am ready to record on the fly, no matter which period I’m currently in. I do not make music every day, unless I want to finish something and it is actually comforting to know that this approach does work, even with a small daily footprint (eg 15-30 mins).
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Most of my projects rarely get further than loops or a few changes, but I have made a few full tracks.
Arranging is an art in itself though.
Btw. is there something like a workshop thread here? If you have specific questions while producing something like e.g. “not sure where I should remove the bass for a while, do you prefer A or B” and then upload a file. Would that be in the spirit of “current sounds coming from your gear” or where would you put that?
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Yeah I saw that, but I’m not making Hip Hop 
.
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Great, thank you!
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If you have 10 years of loops, putting up a track is probably a matter of minutes. Drop loops in Ablewig or Bitleton, jam with them for 5 minutes, then make quick edits for 10 minutes, done. Now post it here.
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This
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Don’t know if this has posted yet, but:
Take a track that’s similar and just rebuild the arrangement with your track. Probably the best method imo
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I wonder how many of your loops can be put together together into a progression. If you make it work sometimes songs that are loop based but dramatically (yet effectively) change halfway through is really satisfying. So maybe consider taking some loops of similar BPM and getting them to the same BPM and use the creative juices to find how to transition.
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I know it’s perfectly valid to do that (and I do :P)
I just long for the ability to completely sketch out a track end to end and not arrange entirely in Ableton.
Maybe I need to sketch more on an acoustic guitar first to get that linear flow down
I wouldn’t ever do that as my only process but I figure it might help my process.
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