Oh. You opened a door here, dear.
If I look at my way of making music the way I consider my work, it’s… vertiginous!
I’ve just figured it’s time to apply my job experience to my music nonsensical way of wasting my efforts!
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Yea I think so, I recognise a lot of what you’re saying.
Bridges are hard, I normally only get them by accident, and rarely when working with hardware. There’s an art to creating contrasting changes that actually fit in a song whilst enhancing it - or maybe I just need to read up on more techniques.
Never struggle to end tracks - so many ways to handle it, and I can often confidently mix into other tracks too - but yea starting tracks can be tricky. When working with hardware I’ll often be creating a complete arrangement and then working out how to build up to it - sometimes it ends up being obvious but this can be a roadblock - especially when considering an audience that might have to endure 2 minutes of your build up before they get the payoff you designed - on a number of occasions I’ve messed that up, even with multiple recordings I sometimes listen back and realise the start ruins it - and it’s hard to correct that. I can often just stop a track dead on the beat and it works fine, but it’s rare that I can start a track that way.
This is complicated by the fact that if you’ve been listening to the track a lot then you have lots of expectation and baggage as a listerner that the real listener won’t have - they don’t know what’s coming. This is where I get into that situation of listening back to a track the next day and realising it’s terrible, even though it sounded fine when I was working on it.
It’s funny because this is like the opposite of @Pablo76 - I wonder if genre plays a part
My 2 tips.
- Organise a gig for yourself - that focusses the mind!
- Borrow an experienced partner, who can come and show you how to get your tracks over-the-line.
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Was wondering about that (genre) myself… Could be one reason. I mostly do minimalist house stuff around 120bpm.
To me it’s obvious by your description, that our workflows differ a lot. For example: I totally ignore song-structure and arrangement when writng stuff in the beginning. Most of the time I just fill a pattern with ideas and variations.
Only when I get to the point that I feel there is too much going on at the same time I start breaking things down into parts. Song mode makes this a pretty simple process for me now.
I use Audacity for recording those progressions in song-mode, and sometimes live tweak and improvise a little to practice performing. (Remeber you can always switch to pattern-looping in song-mode if you want to jam on a certain part for a bit longer.) No arrangement work in the daw at all.
I’ll just record another take when I am not happy with the parts changes, which gives me even more live-practice and is a lot of fun.
If I am stepping into too many traps/want too much/produce “errors” I’ll just sit on my hands during recording and let that song-mode arrangement play out on its own or try to automate stuff I tweaked live before.
There is a lot of reasons it sometimes becomes a struggle to finish a “song” for me. I was only mentioning one of them (creating a good ending), and how I deal with it in my first post.
Sometimes I find it hard to create a good bass-line for my chord progression, or I hate the mix, because I managed to muddy certain sonic spectrums by “overfilling” them, I could go on.
I also often feel that I could develop songs further forever and ever. Committing to a final state by recording it and calling it done is therefore hard because I never “get to show” what else I could have done with it. I sometimes revisit old stuff for this reason and make “updated versions”.
Fresh ears and listening without prejudice to my own stuff also becomes a problem (i.e. impossible) regularly when I work on something for too long. It helped in the past to bring in a friend (doesn’t have to be a musician) and show what I got so far. There is always some valuable feedback to get.
One thing I hear a lot then:
Changes come too quick, give the (first time) listener some time to grasp what’s going on, before moving on or drowning everything in modulation and fx. And I realize, that this is due to my impatience wanting to move along, because I already listened to the part a hundred times.
I took away that, one: A certain amount of repetition is good and necessary. In graphic design this is even an important principle: “Repetition works.” Has probably something to do with our brain always trying to find patterns… And giving the listener something stable to hold on to and tag along with.
Two: Keep it simple. Maybe I can discern all those layers because I created them, but the virgin listener is quickly overwhelmed if you do not give their brain some time to wrap around what’s happening. Having only 5 or 6 tracks running is oftentimes “better” than blasting a wall of sound with everything you got. But you can still work up to that, like a lot of rockbands do.
Recording what I got and listening to it somewhere else (outside the studio, in the car, at a friends place…) can also help to give me some kind of cleaner/clearer perspective on the wip-piece. Different stereo, different surrounding, mood, setting. No chance to make immediate changes also helps to let the impression settle.
Lastly: I melted my setup down to DT&ST and couldn’t be happier. Both run into a DJ-Mixer for some live shenanigans and the sum leaves through an OTO Boum for that “analog warmth and drive” which I configured as a limiter and never touched again.
Option paralysis was a real thing for me for a long time, and I found myself sound-designing for weeks without actually writing a single melody or beat. (Still have a Minitaur, MM2 and Streichfett I boxed for the moment, but also got rid of an OT, a Blackbox, a Neutron, a KP3, a Keystep, a Circuit Rythm and even a Peak.) Less is more.
Superlastly 
Ask yourself/ I tell myself: What is the main idea/theme/riff I built this song on? Did I bring that across? If yes: Goal achieved (even if the execution sounds too simple for myself), stop meandering into side-branches and call it done, get some feedback.
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No we’re the same! At least when I work with hardware anyway, that’s my approach. Breaking it down to get a start I sometimes find challenging - I try to learn from the genres I’m working in - i.e. if I’m doing a progressive track I know I can warm up with a pad for a couple minutes. But otherwise I trip up a bit sometimes with how to bring everything in.
The number of times I’ve developed a track until it’s changed… into another track… multiple times.
The listening without prejudice thing I find easiest with 24 hours between listens, and listening to the track first thing in the morning, before you listen to anything else - its like a sensory attack, it will bring out all the weaknesses.
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I’m on the other path, started off with the subH and then got the “other mothers” - still an indulgence!
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Yup. I’m pairing up the SubH with the Syntakt right now!
The SubH is the most frustrating, yet rewarding synth I own.
Like, what can you do with this beat? its got a weird groove I love, but its like its own thing.
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@Fyzion
In the meantimen, maybe you’d like to participate here?
https://www.elektronauts.com/t/fragments-show-us-your-half-baked-stuff/
Your “confession” here kind of gave me the whole idea to create this thread, because I could relate strongly 
Keep it as is and use it as an interlude maybe?
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Oh, cool idea.