Impossible for me to commit to ideas

[dewgong]

Drives me utterly insane. I just.cannot. stick with my musical ideas. I'll make it to about 3min and then just need to move on. Its as if I onl have an alloted time with each track. Once that's over I never look back. I've learnt a hell of a lot from the constant redrafting and self analysis but it means that my output is essentially nil. I have never gotten to the mixdown stage with any of my tracks before.... thats how bad it is.


Anyone encountered anything similar?

[Apostate]

Having to force yourself to complete something is almost always disastrous, and not something I'd recommend. I've found that most of the time it's just a phase. You might need to take a day off the computer, or spend a good portion of time simply listening to music (not neccesarily in the vein you're aiming for). Maybe take a drive, hang out with someone you care about...anything but getting on the computer and doing, well, anything.

The really crazy side is when I end up with eight zillion 4 to 8 bar ideas, all saved as projects, all needing to be picked through...the wheat from the chaff so to speak. And then I put even that off for weeks, months.

My girl has this problem of clutter, she even read parts of a self-help book out loud to me concerning it. That's what I think happens to us producers of music, perhaps most especially when we're ITB composers. There has to be an everything goes sale. It just takes impetus I think.

[b4serenity]

Hey, I can relate to that....a million song ideas to track! I've gone back through them and have separated good from bad etc. I even have classified some like ballad, good acoustic idea etc. I think I'll listen to them here and there and maybe find an idea worth pursuing but that's about it. Most of my songs come to me nearly complete BUT, I'm afraid of criticism so I keep them to myself!! ???

I know it doesn't make sense but that's my life. Any advice for not being so afraid of judgement? I mean, I know it shouldn't matter and criticism can even be helpful but it never FEELS like something I want to face and I KNOW that has to change.

[Apostate]

The main thing that helped me was to conscientiously not fear. Whenever I found myself worried about what someone was saying I would ask myself things like "is this person contributing financially to what I'm doing?", "exactly what has this person ever done (besides be a whine ass on a public forum, for example)" and, perhaps even more effectively "geez, it's not like this fool is going to beat me up or something".

The old Deep Purple guy David Coverdale said it well: "don't ever let anyone make you afraid". Considering he was under the domineering influence of dickhead guitar genius Ritchie Blackmore for a couple of years, his might be the sagest advice I could quote.

[Aiynzahev]

Drives me utterly insane. I just.cannot. stick with my musical ideas. I'll make it to about 3min and then just need to move on. Its as if I onl have an alloted time with each track. Once that's over I never look back. I've learnt a hell of a lot from the constant redrafting and self analysis but it means that my output is essentially nil. I have never gotten to the mixdown stage with any of my tracks before.... thats how bad it is.


Anyone encountered anything similar?

Yep, same boat here. No idea what the solution might be. Maybe just make a crazy mash-up genre of your own that changes every few minutes in a track, why not? Better than nothing and there are bound to be fans for that.

[Apostate]

Drives me utterly insane. I just.cannot. stick with my musical ideas. I'll make it to about 3min and then just need to move on. Its as if I onl have an alloted time with each track. Once that's over I never look back. I've learnt a hell of a lot from the constant redrafting and self analysis but it means that my output is essentially nil. I have never gotten to the mixdown stage with any of my tracks before.... thats how bad it is.


Anyone encountered anything similar?

Yep, same boat here. No idea what the solution might be. Maybe just make a crazy mash-up genre of your own that changes every few minutes in a track, why not? Better than nothing and there are bound to be fans for that.

That's what composer John Zorn went for with Mr. Bungle. They put out a couple of seriously cool mashed up albums: heavy metal, acid jazz, film music, disco. The band was most brilliant on their first album, where Zorn's compositional skills were most obvious, but they never released an uninteresting album imo.

[lotus2035]

Try entering some remix contests, throw something together and upload it before the contest deadline even if your not really into the genre, it doesn't have to be perfect but do a few of those and it will develop your ability to work towards a specific goal and finalise projects.

http://www.remixcomps.com/

[Winstontaneous]

For me, working with other people helps, because I have to commit to providing tangible results (that must stand on their own) at a certain point in time. Otherwise the experimentation can go on forever!

[JoeCat]

I've got Live projects on my Mac, Renoise on an old laptop PC, and now thanks to my iPad, three piles of unfinished projects.

For me (at least, everyone's different), it's no so much fear (I have no real audience ), but two competing factors. First, I'm so anal about the process that I overwork my initial good (and I'm decently self-critical, so I know they're probably at least decent) ideas/seeds. Then, as I get sick of them, I think "Hey, I should do it this way instead".

Which wouldn't be so bad if "this way" were "use the Fender bass instead of the Moog" of days past. Now, "this way" is a million other possibilities, such that I'm not even sure where to start. So I start over...

Anyway, it's different for everyone, but many of us are there. I do try to force myself to finish just to be able to step back from the process critically after the entirety, maybe to see if I went wrong in the beginning, middle, or end. But there's no incentive to finish; I just remain optimistic that I'll get through it next time. Been going on for years. I have finished projects, but only when they had a concrete purpose and deadline (a friend's video soundtrack, etc.). Trying to "fake" that hasn't helped.

Good luck to us!

[Passing Bye]

Treat that ideas as demo's, so few bars, little preview, basically just glimpse of it for pitching them further and actually probably there is market for it, I feel less "serious" like that, don't bother trying to be special or me, feeling no shame in sounding whatever, using samples, loops, even recycling ideas, because, that was the goal, no pressure, just fun, few bars, few hours, next idea/demo.

Or doing that idiotic ideas for laughs, there's some treasure in that stuff, I did one that was begging to leave my weird side and actually singed&all, my test subject went nuts, like crazy funny brainwashed, thing stuck there and it was most idiotic thing that includes repeating three words in different order in some hooky way with hooky cheesy melody and you just need to make idiotic funny faces and dance, it's bizarrely retarded, I mean I went nuts too, so I killed it, saved the world from another drop of IQ, man, sometimes when I remember it, I got nuts again, seriously idiotic stuff, but it's fun doing it and probably there's some stuff for commercials in there worth dumping and scoring some buck.

[xoxos]

good! goodgoodgood!

the commercial paradigm has failed for you!

you just can't get with dumb shit, even if you try. that's just excellent!

ey -bro - sometimes, as a response to this shit, i want to make some thing. usually i don't because artifice and commoditisation.. the medium is the message.. and i'm trying to talk on a higher level than shitty shit.. but occasionally i still do. outcome depends on my intent, not expectations.

great! wee on it and move on.