3 reasons beginner musicians fail to finish tracks

I’m going to share with you some of the reasons why finishing tracks is so difficult for electronic musicians when they first start out.

Producing a powerful piece of techno or a dreamy ambient track is a great way to express yourself and performing or DJ’ing the finished tunes live is a real buzz. However, making those first few solid tracks can feel extremely difficult and until you’ve worked through that early phase, finding your rhythm and building confidence in yourself, it may seem like an impossible hill to climb. Once you do manage to complete a few pieces though, the black art that is music production becomes less intimidating, less overwhelming and more familiar.

Unfortunately…

Beginners don’t set constraints.

Here’s how to do these things step by step. This is just one way I have developed, and I don’t always need to follow it rigidly, but it has really helped me to remain focused when I feel like writing music is a battle rather than the joy it should be. Hopefully it will help you too:

Step 1: Choose at least one artistic reference to inform your track.

It’s really important to nail this first because any time you feel like you are lost, your reference can guide the way. No piece of art exists in isolation – everything is inspired or informed by something that came before it.

If I am unsure of whether to create a syncopated rhythm, how many bars the bass riff should be, or whether to include a breakdown, I go back to the reference and ask myself how that informs the musical ideas at play in the track. I don’t copy the reference, but it is there to give me ideas. Movies, paintings, books – these are all potential reference material which can set a mood and tone in my mind that I want to carry over into the music. Dark and gloomy, hypnotic and trippy, or calming and euphoric – take the feeling that your piece of reference art gives you and try to infuse the music with those elements.

Step 2: Make something random at the start of the process to ignite your ideas.

Starting with a blank slate can be intimidating and it often makes us feel lost or intimidated. Making a short random loop helps me to begin writing (techno in particular) and really lessens the possible sense of overwhelm. Sometimes I use my favourite synthesizer (at the moment that’s the Novation Circuit), and make a bar of random 16th notes for a bassline. Ambient music can start out with a random chord and a generic strings pad, and I’ll then modulate the sound of the synthesizer patch to create rhythmic or tonal shifts which suggests the next direction to follow. Trying to envisage a whole tune in my mind with no stimulus just doesn’t work for me, so putting some intial sounds into play from the outset helps to provide options to select from. I simply look at what is working and what is not working, and make alterations from there.

Step 3: Tell a story with the arrangement and make sure it has a beginning a middle and an ending.

You already know and love a thousand stories, and any one of those can make writing music easier for you, so think in terms of telling a gripping tale. This is especially true when it comes to the process of arranging your music, because the arrangement is a linear structure of pacing and dynamics that carries the listener on an emotional journey – just like a story. Do you build the whole piece, slowly adding elements to create a final crescendo, or

By combining each of these steps you should feel more confidence in your own artistic vision for the piece you are writing and throughout the process you’ll have helpful constraints to guide your decision making and inform the direction, but ultimately you will still be in control of what you are producing.

If you have a DAW folder of unfinished tracks, or your music hardware is sitting gathering dust because of ‘writers block’, give these methods a try and let me know how they work for you – I’d love to know the results!