r/WeAreTheMusicMakers • u/PSACreates • 6d ago

Do you develop a middling idea?

Do you all finish ideas for pieces that seem to have only middling potential?

I go through these stages of development:

  1. I love the originating idea - the first loop.
  2. Next few days, meh.
  3. Next week: It’s truly awful and should be buried. Plus I don’t know where to go next.

Many pieces get abandoned here - my hard drive is littered with them. Occasionally I do push on, and I go through the next few stages:

  1. It’s not as bad as I thought.
  2. It’s finished, I don’t know if it’s good or not, but it’s going on the album.

Do you push on and finish those pieces that seem to have only limited potential? Is it a valuable creative exercise to finish the piece, or do you move on to something else?

Thanks in advance for sharing this aspect of your process.

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u/SportsMaGorts 3d ago

For the unfinished songs I like to remove the drums or dominant beats, add an excess of effects ( echo, granulators, and reverse the track) until it sounds like an interesting texture or non musical element. Then I add it as a background to another song that is going better. Key doesn't really matter because you can always pitch it up or down.

Most music has this kind of ear candy, before I got in the habit of re using these scraps my songs never founded full or interesting. It works really well with eclectic music, but if you listen to Rumours or Revolver those albums are littered with little non sensical background bits.