hello,

again and again I start psycle with the aim, to create a song.
I have a melody in my mind and start to connect some machines, build up some patterns, tweaking a little bit...
But after 2 hours my track is not longer than 1 minute, and I'm still working at drums, synth patches, etc...
Somehow I give up then, frustrated and with the feeling, that I can not create a tune. Swearing not to try composing again.
But I think, I can. The next time I hear a tune, several variations on the melodies flood my brain and I start psycle and...

How do you create your interesting songs, guys? Do you build them from the beginning until the end in a straight line. Or do you have a melody and build something around it?

I remember, taika-kim said something about discipline at "psycling" and not to begin a new song keeping the old unfinished.
It's so scaring:I have tons of scraps now, all shorter than a minute, and I don't know, how to make a song with them...

thanks a lot for your experiences

i get a melody from somewhere (maybe by fooling around on a piano/keyboard, whatever) and then build around it....i have never finished a track either, more from lack of time than anything else...the breaks in concentration can really screw me around...also, i think a lack of experience is a problem as well....i don't know how to make the sounds i want to make....although i'm getting there....

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www.quantinuitymusic.com

My personal experience is that the only thing required to make an 'interesting' song is a bit of inspiration.... of course, a good song has its well defined structure but sometimes imo it is not necessary to compose an interesting song...

One of the things i love of (my way of) composing electronic music is that sometimes i start with the bassline, other times with the melody and even with the drums....... as i've said any way is good if u have inspiration.

....anyways, i'm not a good tracker.... maybe due to lack of discipline.....

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Am i going to be the same next year???? Will i use Psycle next years?? :rolleyes:

Beer!!!
It keeps me planted in the seat for ages.
Then one morning for something different...try coffee...several in fact.
Time flies by really quickly.

12ATU I have exactly the same problem. Tons of onfinished junk. I usually start with choosing the scale and key, then I try to figure out some interesting harmonic progression. Then the melody comes itself then. Instruments are secondary for me. I usually use some presets, or SF2 banks.

heh, i've never tried to compose drinking beer.... and i love beer.


Well, there are lot of ppl with lot of unfinished tunes.... i encourage u to spread that unfinished .psys to other ppl. Maybe other ppl finish them by u or give u ideas... and it's funny.

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Am i going to be the same next year???? Will i use Psycle next years?? :rolleyes:

And sometimes an unfinished song needs to stay unfinished... I've got a few of those sitting on my hard drive right now. Sometimes I go back to them, and WISH that beer was involved, as that could be an explanation as to why the song was so bad in the first place...

But we all have our song stubs, full of misplaced, or lost inspiration. some have more than others (I have about 25 at the moment) and it's nothing to worry about too much... revisit them every so-often and tweak them to fit your mood, then maybe something will pop into your head.

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I thought you beat the inevitability of death to death, just a little bit...

I've got a similar problem, with about a dozen tracks sitting there unfinished. This has been only since the last few months or so, and I always check back to them every once in a while, and change a tiny thing or two, but that's it. Let's hope it's not some new mental desease ...

I think most producers have a few tunes idling around unfinished on their hard drives.

Here's a quick pointer which might help: don't get too lost in details.

I mean there's no point in spending 2-3 hours trying to get the sound of the lead right. You'll probably lose a bit of inspiration in the process. Instead try to lay out your tune without minding the exact sound/volume/etc. Just focus on the composition.

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United Trackers

Sorry if it sound like a recipe, a very long one some may say, but this is how I describe my composing process.

As any developement activities, composing it's an iterative process, at least for people that are not a genius, which I'm not.

So the best thing is to start from an initial idea, to a sketch and into the details.

Intial tough are made to identify the general feeling we want to express in the song. Something slow and atmospheric or something fast and epic? Anyway the important is to take an initial direction in order to start sketching the song.

Following initials feelings, the best thing his trying to make a rough sketch of the song. At least define the basic rythm section, the baseline and melodies. It gives us the abilities to align our initial work with our first feelings. It give us feedback as whatever or not we are going in the right direction or it can give us new roads to explore.

Once we have a very rough idea of the song, it's time to add some magic and ideas. It could be by changing melodies or rythm. Also some nice ideas could have emerge from the rough sketching and could be reuse. The important at this point is to create different section that will create the base structure of the song. It will give you the idea how the song will start, transform and end. It's a place where a lot of people hit a wall, and have difficulty to go on, having an unfinish business.

At this point we will be able to see where we need to create a break in the song or if we need to had others section to attach the song skeleton, not to say 'filling' section. It a challenge to see if the song can hold together. It's the step to see if we need to add other stuff or maybe if it's should not be better to remove others.

Once this is completed the major focus will be put on detail, and it's crazy how much there is tiny corner to smooth and parts to tweak. At this time you should love your song, because you'll need to listen to it a lot of time to be sure everything fit perfectly together,

And finally, mixing, were we ensured sound and instrument don't overwhelm each other. Also it the time we find that our sounding need dynamics or filtering.

Completing a song is a very rewarding activities. As you pass from sketch to detail, there is a lot to learn and with time it will help you to compose more rapidly, be able to jump step, like mixing while composin, and give you ability to express more easily your ideas. It's more rewarding to complete a 2 minutes song than creating 10 unfinished one.

But the most important is as long you have fun your on the right track.

/me claps very nice!

p.s. I've been working on the psycle source and my build is nearly ready for release

n.b. I never coded c++ before so I'm only tackling small things

I couldn't have the process better myself, Vardoger!

Of course starting things is slow... I started a new song recently, and spent something like 5 hours making maybe 8 patterns.

Happily it got rolling rather nicely, and now I can continue anytime I want, knowing that the basics are laid out already...

I spend a lot of time making the initial setup usually. Often this doesn't pay though, since I change things anyway on the way. So I think there is space for improvement in my skills in this regard.
I often plan to do a coarse outlay of the track from beginning to end first and then start to tune the sounds more carefully, but it's very hard for me to get in the mood of the track if the things don't sound "right".

And if I start some song and see it's going nowhere, I just delete the thing. If I have a bad feeling about a song, I know it wouldn't be sensible to force myself into finishing them if I don't like them in the first place.

I haven't finished very many tracks in the past 6 months or so Lot of things going on...

Hi people!
My best songs usually begin by chance playing with the synths ,making a melody or a bassline and then doing the outline and the drum loop!!!
However in my opinion the best way to create music is the following:

-obviously the first thing is the inspiration !! (certainly), having that one everything is possible.

-the first step is to create a good drum loop,since doing so we already have a rhythmic to be followed with a pre-arranged time.

-following the time we can create now a bassline with the rhythmic of the LOOP.

-done this one can choose to insert a melody with a synth or a pad/strings (I advise to put these last first of all,so we can have a good starting atmosphere)( obviously everything depends from the musical kind which we wants to create)!

-and now we've a pattern with a certain musicality (I always begin creating the main pattern with all the instruments, in that way i must only listening to the song and insert everything that my inspiration suggests me at that moment!) that is for the first pattern I copy from the main pattern only any tracks and remove the others (for example I keep only the bassline)and I insert the other tracks progressively in the sequence following the song until arrive to the main pattern(arrangement!!)

-and at last we go to relisten everything and we add the other background instruments what are necessary to complete the song!!

I think that these are the most important points in the creation of a song,certainly the greater problem of everybody (what I had also ) is the arrangement!!!
That is The evolution of the song!!
---Mmmm.......ok!!… I created a beautiful rhythm with a beautiful melody…and now…..?!?!???!?
It’s this what I want to say:listening very much is necessary e throw everything down in the pattern without thinking,otherwise one risks to lose the inspiration.
Later ,everything will be arranged but not thinking much to the equalization and to the volumes ( they're the last things to be done in a song!!)
Said this it’s all,i hope that can be useful for those which move now the first step with the music and I hope also to have been quite clear!

EXCUSE ME FOR MY ENGLISH……!!!!


Bye!bye!
#MfM#

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www.track3z.net

I find the rhythmic composition of the song often a problem.

There have been many times when I've had a great melodic idea, but it has been just impossible to fit it into the current structure of the drums & bass... And it's usually not a good idea to change those parts too much too abruptly.

And another problem: how to make a musical notepad?

I get great ideas all the time, but usually I forget them very fast.. Listening to different kinds of music usually triggers all kind of funky patterns in my brain, and many times I can almost "hear" extra melodies & thingabobs on top of some music that I'm listening... Also it's great to start to improvise in your head on basis of some song you have just listened.

The problem is: I can't write note scores, AND I can nowhere near tell, what the notes playing in my head are, even though they are very clear and precisely tuned per se...

Just today I was napping in bus & barely hearing some song playing from the radio. Then, on the threshold of sleep, I caught a few notes from the radio and instantly imagined a few beats worth of a great woodwind melody. I pondered upon it for a while, but now, many hours later, it's forever lost

So this is something I've been thinking of investing some time into lately...

recording device: there are now 256mb usb stick mp3 players with a recording option.

I'm waiting a bit for a larger size one, but that'll replace my mp3-cd player for sure for bus rides etc. etc.

And indeed: try to write down any idea you get. I have a database with ideas about songs and what not. And I can globally write the melody (position of the notes relative to eachother and the length) which usually helps a bit to remember stuff.

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United Trackers

lucky for me i know how to write down music....my problem is being in the write place at the right time to actually write it down....more often than not i find that i don't have time or am not in the position to do it i.e. being at work.....sometimes i think of stuff at school and can write it down in my books....my problem is remembering the great melody i've just thought of in my head....a few seconds later, it's gone!!

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www.quantinuitymusic.com

quote:

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Original by TranceMyriad
lucky for me i know how to write down music....my problem is being in the write place at the right time to actually write it down....more often than not i find that i don't have time or am not in the position to do it i.e. being at work.....sometimes i think of stuff at school and can write it down in my books....my problem is remembering the great melody i've just thought of in my head....a few seconds later, it's gone !!

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Amen! That's it! I hate that, having a seemingly brilliant melody or groove in your head, and wihthin the next hour or so it's vaporized out of memory!!!
And then when I'm sitting in front of psycle and I can't think of anything good ... All a question of spontanity...

spontaniety.....that, and being the right place at the right time!!

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www.quantinuitymusic.com

@taika-kim:
that's exactly one of my problems: having lovely tunes and patterns in my brain, but beeing not able to save them. a friend, who composed impressive songs for the band, in which i play said, that there was a time, when he never went out without a sheet of paper and a pencil and when he had an idea at work, he took the time and composed. luckily he is able to write notes.

i often dream of a synth, which i can control with my voice, because this is the instrument, i have the best command of. you can do so much effects with your voice, even simulate a filter or such things. wow, if someone would develope this machine, i would kiss his feet

but well, thank you for your tips. i'm sitting at a song, which is much more improved now, than my others ever where.

quote:

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Original by 12AtÜ

i often dream of a synth, which i can control with my voice

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yess!!please let me know....it would be fantastic!!!!
maybe...in the next future...i hope!!!!

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www.track3z.net