Ableton Forum

Posted: **Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:11 am**

Ok I'm trying to figure out why i have this crazy passion for making music but can't finish a track if my life my depended on it ...its driving me crazy...im thinking if its my sounds someone told me sound selection is very important but when i sat down with a musician/songwriter he said it doesn't matter the sound selection because i will be able to tweak it later...i have a bunch of sounds so the lack of sound is not the problem but ill start making a track with piano first mainly because thats the instrument i play...then drums and some type of soft moogy triangle/sine wave sound...as for baselines i struggle a lot with that..so then i put strings and pads in it and then BAM! I'm lost...stuck on stupid don't know what to put in next and it gets very frustrating because when i come back to the track I'm not in the same vibe or emotion i was in...

I guess what I'm trying to ask is do you guys have any suggestions or tips on how you pick your sounds...because going through a bunch of sounds takes the focus of the track away its very time consuming for my workflow...I'm into R&B but i want to be versatile

Posted: **Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:51 am**

I feel you fella. Finding and tweaking sounds for each and every element of a track can be trublesome work, especially when it comes to the less prominent sounds.

What I guess you could do, in case you haven't tried it out yet, is to listen through a bunch of tracks from the genre you focus on for you're current song. Then pick out some of the sounds that you find cool or interesting and try to either recreate them on you're own or with help from tutorials or similar.

Obviously, the reasson for doing this is not to rip of sounds completely but rather geting to know the proccess behind
creating them. By doing so you'll often run into moments where you can add tweaking and adjustments in accordance to you're personal preferences and thereby you get a personal version of a common sound.

Other than that, throwing on some interesting instrumentrack presets of instruments that you'd normally not use and tweak around with them can often yeild good results.

Guess that's the best I can come up with at the top of my head, good luck finding you're sounds fella.

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Sound selection tips

Sound selection tips

Re: Sound selection tips