Right there with you. Took some time off surrounding the holidays with a promise to myself that before NYE I’d complete the track I’ve been working on recently, but ended up spending a significant amount of that time with family (not a bad use of it), then had a day where I expected to be fully productive end up being consumed by a minor emergency.
Now on New Years day, I’ve finally had a day to gain ground.
Creativity is not in short supply, just time.
Yeah, I agree, just from what I’ve seen through my other productive hobbies, finishing is key to not plateauing. I think I find it more difficult because music is so malleable. You don’t have to live with your mistakes like you do when you’re making something physical. And because each bit of recording doesn’t have a material cost like a piece of timber does, it can be a bit harder to value them and make sure they’re not sent to the scrap heap.
Anyway, I guess I’m in, was always going to be.
The gods are pleased 
(I’m still out 
)
I’m in.
I’ll continue putting stuff on Bandcamp but I’d call it archiving more than releasing. It’s fun.
So far I’ve uploaded 2 tracks onto my youtube “channel”, that’s one more track than I did last year haha
This year I’m looking to release a jungle / DNB type EP with 2 - 4 tracks. Or at least upload them somewhere
This year at least 2 or 3. Committed on getting better using Live 11 while travelling and making time and space to create in a continuous daily respectful manner.
Yes. Releasing to the wild in one sense or another. Might try and find the internet’s version of an open mic night, and put some tracks there. Maybe just my own website as step one. Don’t really want to get too caught up in play counts, numbers, etc. from the get go. Especially as I don’t really know if my original electronic music is that outstanding (not that sceptical self-assessment should stop me.) Looking forward to musicing in 2023.
Getting workflow down will be key for me to be productive and not buy new gear. I standardize one DAW, one recorder mixer and one central sequencer than can build drums, bass, pads, FX and leads easier. Then edit and layer voice recordings and maybe find a good female vocalist interested in my projects.
This is great!
2023 is #DepthYear for me, I’ll definitely produce an EP, an album and maybe a few vids for the sake of it.
I would love to release an EP this year.
I have a few ideas about genre and style but I expect those to change over the course of the year.
Most important to me is that it’s something personal and unique. I think to that end it’s important to maximise the number of creative decisions I make, and my current thinking there is that if I make all the sounds myself and combine those with samples from field recordings I’ve made I’ll get something pretty individual. If it turns out crap it’ll be because I made it crap
Actually releasing something takes priority over all that, though. I don’t want to fall down a rabbit hole of sound design and end the year with no finished songs (again).
Already have a new 100% Syntakt EP ready to drop on Feb. 3rd. After that, may start working with my writing partner on some new Radioactive Sandwich material. Otherwise, I’ll just keep cranking out tunes, trying to play shows, and mostly wasting time. Maybe I’ll write a full lenght.
I was there for years. Besides working with my writing partner, which helped with regularly releasing tunes, I’ve struggled to finish shit on my own for a long time. This past year, I forced myself to start just finishing and releasing things. I’m of the same mindset as you that I want to use all my own presets and sounds, so that makes it a bit harder. The biggest part of this for me was to find the workflow that worked well for me, and then forcing myself to say “this song is as good as it’s gonna get, time to finish it and move on”.
As I am nearing the finish line for my next album, I realize that I am becoming hyper critical of my tracks. I like them all a lot, but I keep hearing things that I want to fix or change. I know at the end of the day at some point I just have to say that it’s good enough, and that this is just a case of pre-release jitters. I’m simply too familiar with my own music, and resisting the urge to appease an imaginary critic.
All of that said, I’m really proud of this track. It’s the final song on the album, and quite different from the others. The rest of the album has an early-2000s idm-ish feel, this one is more chill and hiphop-influenced.
Here’s a little insight for anyone worried about releasing stuff and putting their heart and soul ‘out there’, because it’s a vulnerable thing to do:
Last year I uploaded at least an album’s worth of tunes to bandcamp, every month from February onwards. A few of them were more refined songs, but most of it was sprawling jams, or short ideas. I didn’t really care about putting really polished stuff out there, I just wanted to get something online (plus I enjoyed coming up with funny track names and making the artwork, the second half of it with text-to-image AI). For one of the songs that I worked on, I made myself release it in one day. I could have spent weeks fine tuning it, but then I’d get stuck in the weeds and lose some of my creative momentum.
So, just putting anything and everything up online has totally removed the ‘release anxiety’ - I don’t care at all about releasing my music now. It’s very liberating!
My intention for this year is to work on crafting more songs, rather than jams, ie rather than leaving an idea at just an A section, stick with it and create a B and a C, then arrange it etc etc. Now, I could create a new bandcamp artist profile to release these more complete songs, but to me there’s something endearing about seeing all the scrappy takes before the more refined stuff started to take shape.
I hope this experience encourages someone out there.
It’s been so long since I’ve released the stuff that will haunt me till this day., I have trouble relating to the fear.
My bar for releases fluctuates to “as good as that song everyone likes or better” to the more common “better than my ghosts”.
Releasing stuff is a celebration. I think, if done right, you shouldn’t go into it timidly releasing and hoping for the best.
A more suitable response to releasing stuff should be, going full on f*cking rock star. Its an accomplishment- if you can listen to it and enjoy it, there should be others that will also enjoy it.
And if people don’t like it, don’t forget- you’re an artist, giving you full right to utilize the pretentious card and dropping a “you just don’t get it”.
If you roll a twenty on the execution, you’ll get people pretending to like it until they actually do.
Thanks everyone for helping me with your kindness. This is certainly the bright side of the internet. Such a fantastic group to be apart of.
thank you!
At least a Syntakt-Only Album or EP. I have at least four songs that are just amazing as they are and don’t need any other synth added and fit stylistically together (power noise / rhythmic industrial). There are more songs, but those’d need stylistical adjustements.
I am aiming at a 3 song ep. Heavy. Dark.
All digitone and digitakt. 