As others have rightly said, mistakes or ‘failures’ if that is how we want to term our creations we don’t like ARE learning experinces.
How is this for a change of perspective:
If everything that you made effortlessly came together, it is quite likely that you are not really experimenting, or pushing yourself.
I think having some projects that don’t go anywhere in particular is often proof that you are trying new things. Especially with my Elektron units (Digitakt and Digitone), both devices can really reward pushing your sound design, trying odd modulations and strange things - but equally such sound design safaris can end up as complete and utter noise!
Have fun and consciously treat each track as ‘an experiment’. If your experiments sometimes become full tracks, then great. If not, at least you learned something new. I find that this mental framing takes a lot of pressure off.
Can’t have the ups without the downs so my advice is to go with the flow.
Maybe if your life depended on it, ie it’s how you make money it’d be different. Deadlines sometimes help.
Think whatever your hobby is it’d be the same.
Fishing or golf for example.
Plenty of off days where you wouldn’t catch/have a good round. Next time will be different
If you have a busy life and a long to-do list, sometimes using a timer can help alleviate pressure. Give yourself an hour or two with zero expectations of outcome. Then just play around and find something interesting. Don’t try and complete anything in one go. Save it. Come back to it tomorrow during another 1-2 hour chunk of time and keep going.
Even with that technique though, I still have times when I’m just not feeling it. Perfectly normal. Like you say, I mutter under my breath, turn it off, and go do something else. No big deal. I just try not to take anything too seriously.
Have spent a couple of hours this afternoon doing a bit of sound design with the Iridium, no expectations, discovered a couple of things didn’t know, so much to learn with that synth, got a couple of patches out of the session I’ll definitely be using in future.
I’m sure my mindset going in contributed to a positive outcome, had a good run early this morning, then reunited a terrified lost dog with his family this afternoon. Seeing his demeanour change when he saw them come to collect him was lovely.
But one person’s catchy hook is another’s annoying earworm.
One thing I’d suggest if you’re just getting back into music is covers. Pick a song you like that’s fairly simple or doesn’t have a lot of different parts, and make a version.
It gives you an end goal, and means fewer overall creative choices to make, which can help.
I suggest watching Captain Pikant’s channel. A lot of his videos go into the techniques artists have used to make their electronic music sound less repetitive and annoying, and more fluid and cohesive.
I recently tried this, with ASC’s Cryogenic. Getting to 80% was relatively straightforward, although it was instructive how seemingly off grid the melody that comes in around 1:50 was. Notes I can do, rhythms something I’m hopeless at accurately identifying. Captain Pikant is great in that regard, for sure.
My apparent inability to accurately play a few bars of this, resulting in lots of fine tuning the piano roll, whilst frustrating, was definitely instructive. No rage quitting, but that last 20%, adding the various bits of audio garnish, that makes a finished track finished, I suspect would take as long or longer than getting the bulk of he parts in place.
Edit. I’ve just watched the swing/shuffle video, the production values are amazing.
Not speaking about covers, but these last 20% of interesting little touches usually take about 90% of the time when I write or produce something. But it’s also the things that make a song out of a jam imo. Mind you, I still make pretty basic productions and have no intention to make perfect mixes, so I can only imagine how much time this takes for someone into that stuff.
I don’t rage quit, but one thing that comes to mind is the day I took down all my music, because I decided I hated it. Maybe that was childish or whatever, but I just couldn’t hear it again. Even when people told me it was good, my inner voice was like “they have to be lying, this is garbage”.
After reading most posts here, it sounds like we all annoy ourselves, at least from time to time.
Totally. I do this a lot. I’ve started to hit record and then revisit the thing I found to be unmusical: sometimes it can be chopped up and mined for hidden treasures — try it out, you might be surprised
I definitely do this. A lot of the time it is when I might not have had any plan in mind. At these times I am guilty of trying to put too many parts together so it ends up sounding like mush.
I will usually hit a point of fatigue, I’ll have a few minutes of something with an ok idea in there, but poor execution, poorly timed takes, weird structure etc.
I like to think if I was a better player I would have fewer issues to fix. But mostly I’m just improvising on top of improvising.
Problem is I can’t come back after taking a break and pick it back up, redo a take or whatever (because I can’t remember what I played).
Funny, listening back a year or more later to some of these things they definitely sound better than they did at the time and less easy to see where the problems are. I’m no good at turning them into something at that point though.
I make some sessions, where i just create sample fodder, which i want to use as ear candy, sweeps, etc, it stilll gives a purpose to the session, but it dosent have to be a track, a building block is just fine. I store it in the same folder where i work on the track and use the same key, thats about it. It can also be deleted. Kill your babies/blocks.
In the context of the OP, fairly regularly. I’ll be whipping up loops of things and patterns while my wife watches TV next to me. Sometimes I really like what I’m doing and turn it into a track. Sometimes as it keeps playing I get more and more annoyed and realize that it’s stupid. I tell my wife “I wrote a bad song” and shut it off. Somtimes I turn it back on that same day/night and make something different to make myself feel better. Sometimes I wait until I’m inspired for whatever reason. I think that’s normal. I wouldn’t stop doing it. Just stop when you want to stop. It still taught you something. Try altering your approach a bit on the next go-round. Maybe start with making some sounds or something and wait for somthing to start rolling on its own. That’s when I know things are going well. I start designing a sound, then something clicks, and things just take off. Even the failed endeavors are worthwhile though. I am under the impression that these things sit in the back of your brain somewhere, and help guide future fefforts once you let your brain rest for a bit.
I find that this mental framing takes a lot of pressure off.
I’ll be whipping up loops of things and patterns while my wife watches TV next to me. Sometimes I really like what I’m doing and turn it into a track. Sometimes as it keeps playing I get more and more annoyed and realize that it’s stupid. I tell my wife “I wrote a bad song” and shut it off. Somtimes I turn it back on that same day/night and make something different to make myself feel better. Sometimes I wait until I’m inspired for whatever reason. I think that’s normal. I wouldn’t stop doing it. Just stop when you want to stop. It still taught you something. Try altering your approach a bit on the next go-round. Maybe start with making some sounds or something and wait for somthing to start rolling on its own. That’s when I know things are going well. I start designing a sound, then something clicks, and things just take off. Even the failed endeavors are worthwhile though. I am under the impression that these things sit in the back of your brain somewhere, and help guide future fefforts once you let your brain rest for a bit.