Been tracking for over 7 years but still not a pro :(

I'm having mostly blockage and also having idea problems or even enough interest to keep on tracking on one song. It just seems to me like my songs don't get anywhere close to other trackers on the web. So probably is my technics.

I usualy just load up the program, and just choose some samples I think would be good in a song. And then just mix them up one by one and just building and searching and applying new samples and paterns and ideas as I go along. Of course most songs sounds like crap and only some sounds not too bad. And even good enough to be listened to by others. So maybe I'm losing my edge or interest in my songs.

There was some tips like the one about writing the ideas on paper and also song structure but I really wonder what he meant by ideas and song structure. Can anyone assist me or even help somebody that's been in the tracking biz almost since it's started and can't still do hit record. I've started near 1995 with fast tracker and then Mad Tracker and then Psycle which is the thing I am curently using. Of course now I am thinking of maybe going for fruity loops. But I doubt that will make any difference with my technics. Like one said huh, What's it work spending money on tools if you don't even know how to use them

Anyways need some help from Pro's mostly since I consider myself as a intermediat. But not Pro yet I hope some day though HELP ME (

Thanks a bunch
Steph

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Dark Funk on Tube

Dark Funk on Myspace.com

Hey funkman_166!

Try to read these articles:

music inspiration


how to make drumtracks


how to write a song

These are general music guidelines not related particularly to any softrware.
It helped me a bit.

Regards
Alcyon

I think some tutorials always help (i'm going to read them too) but the sad thing about this is that some ppl don't have what is needed to reach to a PRO level (included me).

What is the important thing imo is that you enjoy making music, lettin your ideas come true

I'll always make music. I think i'll enjoy all life making music though it doesn't be nothing serious.

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

Last edited by sampler on 11.08.2004, 12:43 o'clock.

sometimes the actual sounds you use can make a song...even if the riffs arent that great, if you have a sound which makes people think "woah...what the hell was that?!?" then even with a simple melody the track can start to sound amazing.

sometimes i work on a really complex fucked up sound for a while until it sounds pretty nice, then i deconstruct it back to as basic as it can go while still sounding good.

then introduce a simple melody with the simple sound, and gradually make both the melody and the sound become more complex. i think that helps a lot with making the track feel like its kinda organic, and evolving all the time. do this with a few different sounds/riffs at the same time, and by the end it sounds just plain nuts!

then again....not everyone likes my music, but hey, i do.

have fun

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If you win the rat race, you're still a rat.

bend your thoughts...unveil your soul

If it makes you fell better, I also have a sortof writers-block.

Remember you PLAY music !!!!!

if you still think you need to be a pro, just throw those self doubts overboard and start behaving like one, the rest will just follow by itself

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someone else loves you ...:rolleyes:

Last edited by someone else on 07.09.2004, 02:54 o'clock.

I'm interested on tracking since early 1996 when I first met with FT2. Okay, It's not 8 years because I have no finished songs since early 2000 and I am very inactive in the XXI. century but I think it's not a problem. I have my own profession and making music is ONLY a hobby. It's easy then: just for fun!
And I love it!

Bye, krokpitr

Pro is a very hard term to define in the tracking world. By Pro, do you mean expert? Do you mean that you are making money off your music? Or do you mean that you are well known and respected for your tracking abilities by most people?

Technique is probably one of the harder things to track down with music creation on a computer. I'd start looking at your melody, harmony and rhythm theory.

I, like you, have been involved in tracking for a long time, and have very little out there to show. Most of my problem is inspiration. I make a good riff, or melody, or bass line, etc... and I abuse it, because I don't know where to bring it. then when I feel the need for a change, I just cant find it because I've been forcing everything "into the box" so to speak, instead of looking outside of it early on... I have about 30 unfinished songs that go nowhere. It's common.

Do I consider myself a pro? Well, if it comes to how to write music in Psycle (ie: using the interface), I'd say yes. I can lay down tracks with the best of them. I can technically make Psycle do almost anything I want, barring things which aren't possible, such as multi-pattern sequencing.

If it comes to my production abilities, and my ears, I'd say I'm an amateur. I can write music, sure... but do I know how to make it sound good? Not that well. Sure, I know how to add compression to a song, but do I know WHEN to add it? Or how much? Nope...

Do I make money off my music? Nope. I'm amateur at best, in that department.

And am I well known and respected for my music? Nope... I have released 4 songs since 1996. One was a cover of a video game tune, so only 3 were original compositions... Taika-Kim might like what I can do with a single guitar sample and a few VST's., but on the whole, I'm not well known outside of this site, and the United Trackers website. And only here has anyone really listened to my music that I know of...

Don't be stuck on the "Pro" of things... Most trackers never make it to that stage on all accounts. just try an make something that you like. Start with a single instrument, and go with it... Write a Bassline. Write a melody, and then figure out what to put behind it. Write a simple, but catchy riff, like in the song "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones, then work around it...

Or if you want to learn, grab someone else's song and remix it... add countermelodies and harmonies, and all that jazz. Take a classic NES video game theme that you can find sheet music for, and update it for the 21st century. Turn a Punk song into a dance song, or vice versa. Learn what sounds good, and feels good in music. Even better, figure out what sounds good and feels bad in music - The blues and Rock music have survived off this principle for close to 100 years. And that's where most modern music comes from these days... Just follow the progression from The blues and gospel, through soul and Motown, into Funk, right through the dreaded Disco years and into Dance, Drum and Bass, and electronica... Listen to all of these if you want to write electronic music, whether you like it or not.

Learn from your predecessors, what you like and don't like. Sometimes regressing to an earlier form of music, to bring something back is a good thing... Look at people like Puff Daddy (Or P Diddy or whatever the hell you want to call him) who take old songs, and steal the melody and add a modern beat... I hate the guy's music because it's stolen note-for-note, but he's smart, because he's willing to look back at what people liked, and bring it back in a (somewhat) new form. If he took the sound, but not the actual notes, and wrote new music, I might have more respect for him... Likewise, I'd love to hear a modern day Beatles... (No Oasis doesn't count, but Sloan [a fairly famous Canadian Band] almost makes it there).

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

Being a pro doesn't necessarily mean you're good...just means you make money off it. Thats' technically speaking...look at Korn. Sure, they've got rhythm and hooks, but there's tons of people that are better drummers, guitarists, and vocalists than those in that band and they just hang out at the local music instrument store. Try walking through one some time and you'll see what I mean...people with amazing skill that put 'pros' to shame.

My favorite artists don't make a damn dime off their music (Paniq, Pinku VTY, SER, etc.) so you'd hardly consider them a pro in the sense I'm talking about, but boy, they can rock out with their cock out!

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Copy and paste this link to hear random audio by me, mostly unfinished:

members.lycos.co.uk/hseiken/a/

I totally agree with Hakyoku. The perfect example is my guitar teacher, he's really an artist, really good at music and with guitar. He compose and has recorded some discs (i think two) but he's never going to be famous or get MUCH money for his music. He has his own style composing and i'm sure he like it (and others like me...) but it's a music that never will be even a bit famous. It's not music for the masses.

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

I just want to add: bingo!

Thanks alot for you support in my work and all that I appreciate it. I think that psycle is one of the best programs of all time and I've been using two programs mostly befor that, Fast Tracker 2 and Mad Tracker 2 lol! So go figure. I'm used to using Fast Tracker 2 interface that's why I favor psycle and I needed a alternative to the silly but power Buzz Machine. Which is a incredible but too complex engine.

I've made a many songs by far with psycle and here is a link so you can download them all if you want and tell me what you think

http://newgrounds.com/audio/view.php?id=607490

My latest song is Bastard and I am curently working on another song. Of course that song I mentioned is of a mature nature So keep the kids ears away from it lol

Anyways, I basicly bought a piano of like about 300 bucks or something although honestly I feel like I blown all that though for nothing since first of all I need to be pretty much familliar with the piano and also psycle still doesn't have the things for piano that you'd need. Honestly I think I should of gone with the mini Oxygen 8 Piano if I knew you could control effects and set preset knobs on your keyboard which this piano don't have.

It's just one of those pianos you know. I mostly bought it cause it had a touch sensitive feature which sounds more like a real piano although I think it could use reverb.

I think that Psycle misses more midi input features. Such as making a entire patern on a piano with a seperate pop up window possibly in the style of piano role and then convert it into Digital Mod notes.

Does anyone think it's a grand Idea and should be a feature in the next psycle version?

I kind of hate the fact that you can only do one track at a time so you can't do complex piano playing like say 3 or 4 keys played at the same kind of 4 different tracks. I think you should at least assign the number of tracks you need to print so then You can input 4 notes at the same time and then psycle will just print them. Doesn't matter the order just as long as they sound right

Hope people will comment on my work! If you need to e-mail me then e-mail me at funkman_166@gmx.net

Thanks,
Steph

PS: Sorry for the wait and also just want to tell you guys that I have almost a 100 000 sample library I bought from ebay Maybe even more then 100 000 I don't know I lost count ^_^

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Dark Funk on Tube

Dark Funk on Myspace.com

I'd say I can relate to this first post better than I could to any other post I've seen here so far. Psycle is the first tracker I've ever touched, and I think I first used it about four or five months ago, so I'm working on like nothing here. It is rather frustrating at times, isn't it? It sounds like I'm having some of the same problems you described. I'll start a bunch of different songs, and I'll love what I have, but after the first minute and a half it suddenly becomes absolutely impossible for me to add anything to it. I end up with the best 90 seconds I've written yet, but that's about where it stays. So I guess I just try to force out what I can, and if I like it, then I'll possibly submit it. I guess that's it, you just have to do something that you personally like, and try that. Hell, I don't know if it's working for me or if any of my stuff is really any good, but occasionally I work up something I like. I guess that's what you have to do, maybe?

I guess when you get down to it, my basic problems are being able to keep working with something, and being able to put together a song as a whole. I've come up with tons of new synth sounds that I like, and I've put together a bunch of half-songs, beats, and lines that I like, but I can't seem to make things come together in the end. It always seems like there's something missing, but I don't know what.

Heck, I've even thought about asking somebody else if they'd be interested in seeing what they could make out of one or two of these half-finished songs, and try to carve something out of it and have it be a dual-composer song, because I really hate to just let them sit there and die. It's really frustrating. I don't know, I guess it's just something that comes with experience, which is something that I really have none of. Ah well. Wish me luck, I'll need it, and may the tracker gods have mercy on this poor little boy.

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LX Industries - The innnocent shall suffer.
http://www.lxindustries.tk

Wow...I must say, the Tweakheadz articles from the links above seem really good, for lack of a better description. Very cool. I know what I'll be doing tonight. I'll finally have a productive reason for staying up until four o'clock in the morning. If Alcyon is still active here its a somewhat old post, after all), thanks a lot!

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LX Industries - The innnocent shall suffer.
http://www.lxindustries.tk

In positions where I get stuck, I usually but a breakdown and remove elements... Then just play around with the basic percussion & bass and usually I come up with something new... It's hard to keep those "hit" parts going through all the way.

Here's a link to some software versions of Brian Eno's "Oblique Strategies" cards:

http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/Acquire.html#download

I've found this really useful when I've got stuck!


Something I'd suggest which almost always works for me for getting out of a creative rut is to just simplify everything.

Switch off the computer and sit down in front of a tape recorder and strum a guitar / sing / hum ideas onto tape;
tap out rhythm ideas on your lap etc.

Stripping away everything except your actual brain can really push your imagination into areas it wouldn't normally go.


best wishes

d
x

Last edited by moth on 22.02.2005, 03:19 o'clock.

quote:

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Original by moth
[...]Something I'd suggest which almost always works for me for getting out of a creative rut is to just simplify everything.

Switch off the computer and sit down in front of a tape recorder and strum a guitar / sing / hum ideas onto tape;
tap out rhythm ideas on your lap etc.

Stripping away everything except your actual brain can really push your imagination into areas it wouldn't normally go.[...]

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Yes, that's a good idea! I like it !

EDIT: Actually, my best ideas come when I'm NOT in front of the computer.

Last edited by DMNXS on 26.02.2005, 20:33 o'clock.