What are your bad music, writing habits?

[estevan carlos benson]

I find myself often writing overbearing chords progressions that fall right on the beat. The best word I can use to describe it is "plodding". I do it too often. It's annoying. I realize that I really need to unlearn it and develop better habits. How about anyone else here?

[H20nly]

my worst habit is when i starting thinking of a beat to sequence or a verse to scribble down and then... i don't.

[dj_blueprint]

spending too much time on the complimentary sounds and not the main one. Getting the main concept down is the most important thing.

[mbird21]

Not able to decide what scene for a track i like best, im way too obsessive! its not unheard of for me to nearly 10 versions of one breakdown with different style

[agent314]

Writing tracks in D major ALL THE TIME

[estevan carlos benson]

Writing tracks in D major ALL THE TIME

Ha. Wow. Maybe that can just be your thing.

[Warrior Bob]

Writing tracks in D major ALL THE TIME

At least they'll mix well!

For me it's the good ol' VI VII i chord progression. It rules and I cannot stop putting it in everything I write.

[mbird21]

LOL funny for me im always around a minor scale, just seem to always go directly to it, for me the major scale is not what i like, minors just got more deeper feeling to it well least to my ears lol

[estevan carlos benson]

LOL funny for me im always around a minor scale, just seem to always go directly to it, for me the major scale is not what i like, minors just got more deeper feeling to it well least to my ears lol

I'm also always in a minor scale with lots of tritones. I just can't play a major scale without thinking it sounds stupid when I do it.

[mbird21]

LOL funny for me im always around a minor scale, just seem to always go directly to it, for me the major scale is not what i like, minors just got more deeper feeling to it well least to my ears lol

I'm also always in a minor scale with lots of tritones. I just can't play a major scale without thinking it sounds stupid when I do it.

Equally mate know exactly what you mean, maybe it means im a depressive person LOL i dunno just i like songs with the deeper darker chord progressions, that said, John Lennons Imagine was written in C major if im not right, so have been some legendary songs wrote in it i cant fault that just not for me but then i dont have 2% of the songwriting skills he did obviously lol

[J Roach]

Equally mate know exactly what you mean, maybe it means im a depressive person LOL i dunno just i like songs with the deeper darker chord progressions, that said, John Lennons Imagine was written in C major if im not right, so have been some legendary songs wrote in it i cant fault that just not for me but then i dont have 2% of the songwriting skills he did obviously lol

The opening of Mozart's String Quartet No19 in C Major is one of the greatest uses of dissonance ever. Worth a listen even if classical isn't your thing because C major never sounded like that to me before, so dark and deep. But yeah, again.. skill thing going on there

Bad habits.. procrastinating over random details and fiddling about with settings etc when I should be pushing on and actually getting something done.

[admiralsnackbar]

I find myself often writing overbearing chords progressions that fall right on the beat. The best word I can use to describe it is "plodding". I do it too often. It's annoying. I realize that I really need to unlearn it and develop better habits. How about anyone else here?

I've been struggling with this same problem lately. I think one of the frustrations I have with recording into a DAW (particularly a loop-oriented one) is that the software "steers" me away from having passages come in 1/2 or 3/4 through a bar relative to the rest of the piece. When I listen to my pre-DAW stuff, it's clear to me that this was a strategy I regularly used to add interest/dynamism to songs. I think the effort of having to parse compound time or polyrhythms or X intuitive musical expression became too much of a puzzle for me at some point, however, and I've slowly allowed myself to become complacent and my arrangements to become, as you say, "plodding."

The amenities of modernity (speed, precision, control) are undeniably seductive, but sometimes I just miss writing into a dictaphone intuitively and focusing more on organic structures/arrangements than sound-quality and how handily a progression agrees with the grid.

[UnCL0NED]

I find myself often writing overbearing chords progressions that fall right on the beat. The best word I can use to describe it is "plodding". I do it too often. It's annoying. I realize that I really need to unlearn it and develop better habits. How about anyone else here?

Maybe you don't need to unlearn!

Next time you do this, shift the chord progressions and the beat away from each other, so that things start falling in between (move one of the tracks back or forward in the arrangement view). Not 1/4 bar or so, but maybe 1/6 bar or something. Use it to your advantage. You might be surprised what cool grooves and cadences you can achieve with this trick.
Another cool way to mash things up after you've done your "plodding" is to put the part into a clip. Press record in the transport bar, loop this clip and start playing with the beginning and end markers of the clip while recording. then cut out the pieces in the arrangement view that you like and build your song from that point on...

Just saying: Use your weaknesses to make better stuff!
Get writing and stay creative

[lunabass]

opening facebook for "just a quick look"

[Theo Void]

My worst habit is starting a track w/ shitty (filler) drums just to get the bass and melody going, then arranging and finishing the song and instead of going back and fixing the drums, I'll say fuck it and throw a compressor on it or I'll just forget about the track.