Do you get tired of your songs when working on them?

[Hermanus]

Interesting question.

When I feel this way, I move for doing something else. giving some air to my ears...
I pretty like to "abandon" a project for days/weeks/months and once I get back to it, if it still sounds good it will give me the push to keep on.
It is often a good way to achieve a project where you were blocked before.

Yeah sure staying objective and not too subjective means a lot.

Chrissobo13 said it all
Thank you for your precious two cents

[434Live]

I just usually stop working on the song and create a new set. Then I would mess around a bit and if were lucky I would create another song and work on that one a lot. So then I'd get bored of that one and go back to the first one. Or make another new project in total!

[simonlb]

I just usually stop working on the song and create a new set. Then I would mess around a bit and if were lucky I would create another song and work on that one a lot. So then I'd get bored of that one and go back to the first one. Or make another new project in total!

Lately I've found I've done that but then taken say, one or two tracks from the previous "boring" project and put it amongst the new stuff. It becomes a sort of an iterative process, making some sounds then keeping the best ones and putting them amongst new ones. One thing to try, anyway. It's more something I do for "non-starters", like when I've just been messing about with a loop for an hour then don't really know where to take it.

For a more complete track, sometimes putting it "on the shelf" for a few days and coming back to it works, sometimes gritting my teeth and just getting on with it helps, depends really...

[Mark Lane]

This is a really interesting thread and I hope I can add some new perspective on it.

Firstly I remember hearing Billy Corgan once said something like 'show me something once and it might amaze me, show me it again and it will never come close to the same feeling'. Which I think is a good assessment of coming up with a great riff or song idea and feeling it's amazing then listening to it to death while mixing/recording additional parts/mastering etc before you don't feel anything from it.

I have songs which are my all time favourite songs but if I listen to them over and over again in a short space of time I get numb to those bits which I love hearing. It's the same with my own music and I am sure the same with yours.

My habit over the past few years has been starting ableton sets, getting lots of ideas down, sketching out a song and then moving on to another set when I got bored until I had dozens of unfinished sets.

Recently I went back to listen to those sets which I got bored of years ago and I was amazed at how I had shelved such good ideas. I had totally forgotten a lot of the riffs and songs and it gave me that detached feeling that I needed to re-assess the songs. So I went back to work on these songs which were years old and a lot of them are almost finished and I want to release them soon. Now if I get bored with them I remember that someone hearing the songs for the first few times will hopefully get those feelings that I got when I first wrote the songs and when I 're-discovered' them. I think the 're-discovery' test is a good one. Some songs won't survive that test. It does take years though for my theory to bear fruit, so start writing those ideas now and maybe in 2016 you will have a decent EP to release

[Angstrom]

<snip>
I have songs which are my all time favourite songs but if I listen to them over and over again in a short space of time I get numb to those bits which I love hearing. It's the same with my own music and I am sure the same with yours.

My habit over the past few years has been starting ableton sets, getting lots of ideas down, sketching out a song and then moving on to another set when I got bored until I had dozens of unfinished sets.

Recently I went back to listen to those sets which I got bored of years ago and I was amazed at how I had shelved such good ideas. <snip>

I think a large part of being a musician is being able to hold off the onset of boredom, to maintain a state of mind which is conducive to the song. So often we lose that frame of reference which the song fits in as soon as we get bored, then we start to drift. That's why when you come back to the song after a long time you can hear what you were aiming for, and pick up the frame of reference again. You can see the whole picture.

My trick to maintaining focus on a song is to visualise the songs personality as a living tableau. Where is it, who is there, what is the weather, how does it smell, etc. etc. A little mental movie for the song. In fact some songs might have a few distinct scenes like this. If at all possible I'll obtain images which represent those scenes and use them as my touchstones to make sure I am on track and not just wandering in the woods.

[Angstrom]

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[Fat_Stanley]

There was a similar thread to this on the Dogs on Acid Grid forum recently, which had a link to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... VQ8c19unnM

It's the first chapter of an Ill Methodology workshop and as I too suffer from losing my way when I'm working on tunes I gave the video a watch and found it quite insightful. I'd certainly recommend it for people like myself who have a few workflow issues

[Hermanus]

What I Ubber like in live gigs is to take fresh new tracks, even small parts out of some.
I admit it works better with unfinished projects...
The live act gives me a good opportunity for finding good stuff by remixing my own tracks together + enhanced with some live acts.

I have to push myself to do this usually not only when I have to set up a performance act...

[Sage]

If I get tired, then the tune clearly isn't any good. Simple as that really. Generalisations like "The faster you work on a song, the better it'll be" is a load of bullshit; It takes however long it takes, doesn't matter about the style of music either.

[434Live]

If I get tired, then the tune clearly isn't any good. Simple as that really. Generalisations like "The faster you work on a song, the better it'll be" is a load of bullshit; It takes however long it takes, doesn't matter about the style of music either.

It doesnt mean it isnt good, it just means you need to take a break and find more innnovation for the project. I always save my unfinished projects, because at one moment it would sound like crap, and in the next second I reopen the set I think of so many new ideas to put in it. As music makers and musicians we are supposed to have an innovative mind, with creative thinking and a great range of imagination. We dont have to push ourselves to think faster or become a reasonablist or any other shit like that. So if you get tired, and you think that tune isnt good, keep on tweaking it until you find a new sound. Or you could just have a bit of patience and wait for creativity.