Finish That Song! 9 Tips To Help You Avoid Losing Momentum The Next Time You Produce A Song By Yourself
I know many songwriters who self-produce their material. The technology we have at our disposal nowadays makes it incredibly easy as well as a fun and rewarding experience. However, it does come with several challenges compared to collaborative productions. Being the only person responsible for every creative decision in a self-production can, at times, prove to be one responsibility too many. When it does, self-confidence can take a beating, which reduces the chance of your work reaching its full potential.
Besides the isolation of self-production, it can also be easy for the well of creative ideas to run dry as you have no one around you to spark ideas off. If you hit a creative wall, unsure where to go next in your production it’s easy to lose momentum and exacerbate your creative dilemma.
The good news is that there are several simple methods you can use to protect yourself from sudden creative stalls in a self-production workflow. The tips in this article are designed to help you to recognise what needs to be achieved when producing a song by yourself and then maintain a productive workflow.
Please be aware that these first four tips are easy to rush through or avoid altogether, so take your time…
1. Don’t Just Work On Any Song - Produce The Strongest Song
If your goal is to produce excellent sounding music you should be choosing strong songs to record in the first place. There have been times when I have worked for several hours on a song to find myself going round in circles on the instrumentation. After hours of wrestling with song, I have come to the realisation that the song wasn’t developed enough and realise that there were, in fact, better songs I could have chosen to work with instead of the song I had battled with for hours.
If you are a songwriter, or you’re collaborating with one, try to pick the most complete songs available to you as they are more likely to be worthy of production time. Try to avoid wasting time on patchwork song ideas, instead go for songs that are well written and arranged. Most good songwriters worth their salt have pools of songs to choose from, whereas songs that only have catchy choruses or quirky guitar hooks are generally the songs that stall quickly in production because they aren’t complete enough yet.
There is no shame in saying to yourself, or anyone else for that matter, that “This song isn't complete enough to produce, what else do we have to work with?"
2. Don’t Rush Into Recording - Spend Plenty Of Time Arranging The Song
Arranging a song is an art in itself. Well-arranged songs, more often than not, produce themselves. Arranging a song forces you to make mission-critical musical decisions. Song key, length, structure, tempo, dynamics structure, groove, instrumentation, mood and emotional impact. These are important decisions to work out before hitting record and are often referred to as pre-production. There is nothing worse than realising after a few hours of recording that the drum & bass grooves don’t work together or the song’s key doesn't work for the vocalist.
Spending plenty of time just arranging the song on a piano or guitar can save you from these kinds of creative dilemmas later in the production process. Remember that pre-production aims to craft the written song to be the best it can, ready for recording. Use it to address any doubts you have, which may include lyrical content and structure. Spend time crafting the main hook melodies and make sure your songs have personality.
3. Test Drive Your Ideas - Record And Analyse A Demo
Recording and evaluating demo recordings is the best way to evaluate the qualities of the song you are about to produce. Some producers find it difficult to judge a freshly written song if they need to play it themselves. Playing an instrument can take attention from the song as the focus becomes playing the song, rather than listening to the song. Other producers prefer scratching up quick rough and ready demos to help them pre-produce a song. A demo, even a scratch recording on an iPhone, enables you to be able to take a step back and be objective about a song’s lyrics, structure and feel. Demos can also give an opportunity to experiment with creative ideas in a pressure-free workflow. For example, if you had a song and wanted to play around with backing vocal ideas or structural changes, then the demo is the perfect vehicle for this.
Remember, demos are disposable, making them great tools for getting your good and bad ideas out in the open. Demos can also be thought of as templates that you can use to produce a song from, painting by numbers style.
Most importantly, use demo recordings to bring the process of songwriting to a close. Demos need be able to confirm a song's concepts, arrangement ideas and pre-production decisions. The more time and effort invested into these first three processes laid out in this article the more time you save in production trying to piece together fragmented ideas.
4. Get Some Feedback - Reflect On Your Ideas
At this stage you should be sharing your demos with friends who can offer constructive feedback. Listen to their input and compare it with your creative instincts. Feedback can help you to iron out any wrinkles in your music before the committing process of production. For example, if you are unsure about a lyric or chord progression, you should be asking others to find out if your doubts are justified or not.
5 - By Failing To Prepare, You Are Preparing To Fail
Before producing a song, it is smart to try and preempt any possible technical challenges that could crop up and hinder your progress. The goal here is to minimize the chances of you having to switch from the creative side of your brain to your problem-solving techie side as this can stop your creativity dead in the water and break the natural flow of production. For example, make sure your computer or DAW has no regular nagging warning messages popping up. Check your hard drive has plenty of storage and that all the tools and instruments you intend to use are close at hand and in full working order.
Another thing that can help the creative process are session templates. If you put a lot of work into pre-production, you should have a good idea of what the instrumentation will be. You may also have a good idea of what those instruments will sound like and how they will interact together in the mix. If you do, by building a template session in your DAW with tracks named, organised and ready to go along with virtual instruments and plug-ins in place, you will be much more prepared and ready for when you need them. Having a DAW session organised ready for production gives you a framework to follow, further minimising the chances of disruption to the creative process. If you only take away one of these tips from this article we suggest that it is this one as templates can help get songs off the production starting block.
6 - Work To Deadlines
Deadlines can sound scary, but they are not. Deadlines are, in fact, a vital part of any creative process. Let’s say you’ve broken the back on a production, you’ve got a handful of tracks down and your song feels like it is moving in the right direction. At this point, try to work out how much more time you need to invest in completing the production. Deadlines don’t need to be pressured, but they do need to be realistic. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard someone say they have been working on a song for over six months. Try not to be one of those people. Use a deadline to help you get work done and to focus your creative energies, to get the job done in a reasonable timeframe. if it taking too long, then there it is probably not good enough.
Read: Studio Deadlines And Staying Healthy Is It Possible To Do Both? We Run The Numbers
7. Only Produce When You Feel In The Zone
Music production can be quite an emotional rollercoaster. One minute you love your creative ideas, the next you hate them. That’s OK, those ups and downs are absolutely normal for self-deprecating creatives. Producing great-sounding music you can be proud of, often takes an enormous amount of self-confidence and drive. That's why it is important to make sure you are in the right mood with ample headspace every time you approach a project.
Being in the zone doesn’t just apply to being in the right frame of mind. Being in the zone also means you are not feeling under the weather, that you are rested enough to be able to push yourself physically and emotionally. Always be fully aware of your wellbeing during a production session. Take plenty of breaks, don’t forget to feed yourself and be strong enough to step away from a project if you feel you are overdoing it. No production is worth making yourself ill over.
Read: Are You Dealing With Stress In The Studio? Don't Struggle In Silence
8. Mix With Your Ears Not Your Eyes
Be careful not to fall into the trap of making important mix decisions based on what you see. DAWs visualise so much in music production, so avoid getting lured into the graphics. It can be easy to decide on the level of a track by looking at the waveform or an automation track. It can also be easy to set a plug-in by looking at its meters or dials. Never forget that it should be your ears that inform every decision you make in the studio, not just your eyes.
A term that should never be spoken in a studio, or thought of for that matter, is “That looks about right”. Who cares what a plug-in or DAW edit window looks like, no one else is going to see it. The people that will listen to your music, won’t be looking at that plugin they will only care whether the end results connect with them on an emotional level.
Try not to “lose sight” (pun intended) when working at your DAW for hours on end. Focus on what you hear in the music and how your creative decisions make you feel.
Read: Listen - Don't Mix With Your Eyes
9. Reflect On Your Efforts - What Have You Learned About Yourself?
Towards the end of production, you should be asking yourself if you have actually achieved what you initially set out to do. Is the production better or worse off for the decisions you have made and most importantly of all, are you proud of your work? If you are pleased with your efforts, then consider which of the choices you made along the way, makes you feel proud of your work? What elements don’t you like about your production? Critical analysis helps us all to learn about ourselves, our creativity, our current skill set and our project management abilities. If we don't reflect on our projects, we deny ourselves the opportunity to learn something new about ourselves and our craft. By avoiding critical self-analysis, we will stunt our development in music production.
In Summary
There’s one more tip that I'm going to leave you with... It should be pretty self-explanatory…
Track like there’s no mix, mix like there’s no master.
If you find that there are times when you feel frustrated with your self-producing studio workflow or creative mojos then we hope that the tips this article will help. Finally, to do justice to our creativity we should always bring our A-game to whatever song we choose to produce.