Loads of unfinished ideas?

JACKAL & HYDE · Post by **JACKAL & HYDE** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 5:55 am

.......

Mr-Bit · Post by **Mr-Bit** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 7:01 am

Me too I have 100's of unfinished idea's I felt that they were weighing me down so I archived them and wiped the slate clean.

I also had the problem of my setup and work method (untidy and allways changing) was making it hard to revisit these ideas because I would forget how they worked and they would inevitably not playback as I remembered ,frustrating.

I have since got rid of all my hardware and am now developing a more fixed but flexible work method to combat this problem.With places for spinoff's and unfinished idea's ect... Live is helping allot.

Good thread I may have to open the dreaded unfinished buisness folder.

Let the mashup begin.

Clique · Post by **Clique** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 7:20 am

www.rapidshare.com

www.sendspace.com

www.megaupload.com

Some free file uploading sites.

kpa · Post by **kpa** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 5:28 pm

http://www.tubesnow.com looks good for this idea. Everyone could just join the maillist and then upload their own 'Selfcontained sets' and people could download them. Seems simple enough (but when is anything every really that simple).

We would need some sort of user agreement saying that the files are creative commons licenced (i think thats right) or something, so that they can be used commercially.
Also on a slightly less ineresting, but needed point, there should be some standard catelogueing system, so that you have a general idea of the type of file you are downloading, rather than just pure chance.

I have a website, www.cryptomnesian.com that i can run subdomains from, but i dont know about ftp access etc, so the tubesnow.com could be a better bet.

kpa

benlowther · Post by **benlowther** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 5:32 pm

Ok, since this was my idea I think I'll get this rolling. Gimme till Wednesday night and I'll get something uploaded.

monoschall · Post by **monoschall** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 7:13 pm

i used to suffer from the same - mainly it was due to lack of a good setup (only had cubase with a monotimbral synth and a crappy drum machine) - so everything sounded pretty crap and I had to imagine how it might sound!

but it's not a bad thing - shows you've got too many ideas! Taking the time to get ideas done is a major step forward - working on arrangements, sound design and so on. Getting feedback on those ideas/arrangements is a big help too.

Poster · Post by **Poster** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 7:17 pm

+300 unfinished businesses living on my HD..

might be fun finishing other peoples tracks..

benlowther · Post by **benlowther** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 11:17 am

Here we go then. Really simple one to start with, just something I was pissing around with a few weeks ago. It's literally a bass loop with a simple arp pattern, in a self contained Live 6 file with midi and audio.

So do your worst and let's see what we come up with!

http://rapidshare.com/files/42284986/Fo ... t.zip.html

funky shit · Post by **funky shit** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 2:06 pm

But hey you can always improve and improve and improve on a tack, you could spend forever on it.. sometimes you gota just finish it, listen, remix, listen, remix again, and may remix again. after that just leave it... because you can spend forever!!

I also noticed that you can get more done while sitting on a desktop computer sorrounded by your gear. Enviroment and mood does have a large affect.

If you have a shit load of old projects, and you just wana get something done, delete them, o remove them from your current machine and just think of it as a beginning og a new era. Helps!

obscurityknocks · Post by **obscurityknocks** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:28 pm

This always used to be a big problem for me too, but something that really helps me is to go through some of these sprawling unfinished sets or fragments of mine and just record them to listen to on my mp3 player on the go:

I found I had TONS of stuff from the past few years, so one night I just sat down, and set up each set or fragment as a short song that would show off all of the ideas that were there, with the stipulation that it had to be done fairly quickly, and with no fussing over the "perfect" arrangement.

If there was a more developed track, I would just go through and do a quick arrangement of it and record. If there was a project with just a few Sampler or synth patches and maybe a beat, I would just fade in to the beat and make it a little 1 minute "in-between" song.

When done with this I was actually amazed to see all of the good stuff that there was--a lot of which I forgot about because I never finished and moved on. Sure some of the tracks were boring after 1 minute and didn't progress, but they maybe had a killer patch or beat that I came up with that could be used later.

All you're looking for is to get down the basic ideas and shape of the track, or the one beat/patch that's good on the Live set.

Once you've got these, you'll have a little album or two of stuff that you can listen to for a while, and can see what holds up, what doesn't, what's worth working more on, what isn't, and how you could make stuff better. It really is one of the best things I've done. You'll also see how you've progressed (?) over the years, and remember some production tricks you may have forgotten.

Can't tell you how helpful this is as inspiration/reality check/etc. to have your stuff available to listen to immediately without having to go in and load a Live set, etc.

By the way, to speed things up, I often played the set live in the Session view and taped it live using Audio Hijack (mp3 Streaming audio recording program for Mac).

Stace · Post by **Stace** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:39 pm

funky shit wrote: If you have a shit load of old projects, and you just wana get something done, delete them, o remove them from your current machine and just think of it as a beginning og a new era. Helps!

Thats what I do, but if there are certain samples, Synthlines, Basslines etc that you can use in other projects I render them out before I get rid.

Sorry Benlowther I forgot to say good idea, I like having a go at my mates tunes sometimes.

polyslax · Post by **polyslax** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 4:07 pm

popslut wrote:On a bit of a tangent, I've found that the first 90% of a tune requires only 10% of the total energy to create.

The last 10% requires the other 90% of the energy.

The hardest part of making music isn't learning to program sequences, or record instruments or use fx and stuff.

The hardest part is learning how to finish.

++ Agreed... in fact this is very similar to something I said:

polyslax wrote:Compared to the fun and relatively easy work of creating cool loops, finishing and mixing a track can be a lot of work and tedious testing and repetition. I would suggest rolling up your sleeves and finishing off a track, by brute force if necessary. You won’t learn anything about how it’s done and what you’re capable of until you actually get in there and do it. Will you make some horrible mistakes and write some terrible songs along the way? Absolutely! This is how you will learn your craft. Just remember, even when you think you’ve written your masterpiece, there will be some, perhaps many, listeners who don’t relate to it. You need to be able to accept their criticism and move on.

Keep an open mind, experiment, do stupid things, trust your instincts, use your ears and your heart. I like to work by intuition and feeling during the creation phase. Later on, when it comes to mixing, you may need your brain as well as your ears.

In this thread:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

Loads of unfinished ideas?

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