Ableton Forum

Do you find that sometimes the more time you spend fiddling on a track trying to get stuff right, the worse it gets and you just wish you'd left it how it was a month ago??...
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
*vents frustration*

GUILTY !!!

I do it all the time. I can't remember how many tracks I've ruined by constantly
twiddling my knob(s).

I tend to save loads of variations on the same theme only to come back to the 1st or 2nd
version and nail that one.

In fact I've just been doing it again.

I blame it on all those pretty toys that we have at our disposal, like "ooh, what if and
what does this thing do and maybe............."

Here is number 2 of 9 versions I've done with this track in 48 hours........

http://soundcloud.com/mr-zed/starlight-motel
Cheers.
Z.

Absolutely! I have a good rule for that it goes like this: When you work on a track, every time you have an idea and you really feel that you're improving the track, do it, then you go on to the next thing. If you make a change and it's a change but you're not sure if it's better or not, you're fiddling so don't do it. End of the day is when you don't have ideas where you really feel you making it better, then you go to sleep.

Second thing I do is whenever you've done abit of work save as name.01 name.02 and so on, then if you listen back to an older version and it sounds fresher you can import the tracks so you have the old settings again.

kinda like when your taking a test and afterwards.. you go through and double check your answers before you turn it in and end up second guessing yourself and changing a bunch of shit that was right the first time...

i've been guilty of that also, which leads to my procrastination because I don't know where to start to make it better, which leads to inaction due to being overwhelmed and getting stuck on a song and forget about other projects.. it's never going to be perfect in our eyes.. i think we just gotta let it go at some point and go to other projects instead of just being stuck at one song and you don't learn anything..

Do it all the time...

it's even worse if I don't have any sort of deadline to stop me from tinkering.

thats why i avoid spending too much time in session view.

i get out of there as quick as possible

Yup, it's much better to vom ideas, sift and then move on. The idea should drop into the session fast and obvious without much fiddling. It should mix like butter too. Of course it's easier said, but it's how i try and work.

A new idea is way better than the tweez-it thing. I think you end up ahead in the long-run no matter what. imho

that's why i save in revisions after making major changes, or change in direction. then you always have something to fall back on

I normally save multiple versions. Sometimes I get to a dead end and I quit working on a track. A few months I come back to it, cut out all the garbage and go a different direction. It usually turns out well.

The thing I hate most are experiments. I get ideas from a technique or something I heard and try it out. I waste time making a track that sounds like something that I wouldn't write. I'm happy because I can do that technique but it's all for nothing.

I find If I have a great track and I constantly work on it with the track's focus in mind, then it goes well.
But if I have no direction and I'm just trying to find parts that fit, then I waste my time and the track sounds like shit and I give up working on it.

hurlingdervish wrote:thats why i avoid spending too much time in session view.

i get out of there as quick as possible

+1, I am learning this lately...shit starts happening when you turn away from the clips.

But then of course you start ladling automation and various crap all over everything, and get married to that.

happens every time.

two words

"incremental backups"

everytime i fire live up or make a big change do a "save as" with todays date. that way you can always go back.

yeaa gonna have to start making indivudla track folders and learn the 'save a copy' shortcut rather that just one folder of projects and cmd+s. Just endlessly messing with reverb times and delay feedbacks etc, and compression thresholds. gahhhh. awesome song turned to excessive mess in a matter of hours and theres no going back. poooooooooooo.

Don't give up on the overtweaked versions too soon.... I thought I was doing the same thing a lot of the time until my bro was pissing around with Live on my laptop and said he really liked something I thought I had vastly overworked, I guess sometimes you just get sick of listening to it the same you would any tune on repeat for more than 3 hours... I tend to leave a track when I start to feel evil thoughts towards it and not go back until I've almost forgotten what it sounded like. I'm in no rush to make my music so this works really well for me and also gives me a massive ammount of material to work with should I decide to do so.

Man I could sort 10 tracks out of one sometimes when I block on the session view
[Ex lite user spotted>>frustrated for months, now abusing of this new power<unlimited number of scenes and tracks>]


It's the way of all arts... Stopping at the right moment. Don't make up too much

Sometimes just saying fuck it and ditching ALL effects, leaving nothing but the clean original tracks, and then bringing more delicate tweaks back in, you end up with a lot more focused remix. I've done this many times since I started recording with cubase a decade ago. Sometimes you just know there's a good song in there somewhere, and you have to get all the crap off it to find the goodness. A lot of the time it's just a matter of heavyhanded shitty EQing or overcompression, at least that's historically my personal experience.