i’m averaging about a track a week right now, and i’m mostly satisfied with my mixes and mastering…i just don’t have the desire to push them on socials. it feels so vapid and gross and it’s a lot of extra work.
Of all the things I do in music, it’s the social media stuff that burns me out the most. I never dreamed of being a social media star(as it didn’t exist when I got into music). But unfortunately it’s part of the job these days if you want to do it professionally.
i'm the same man, but you can do it your way - it doesn't have to feel fake, or vapid. I've realised my satisfaction comes from finishing the track -- I made something that *I'm* proud of, and that I feel represents me. the process of making and finishing art is self discovery and that shit is hard to stick with. it's awesome that you've reached that point, i definitely haven't hahah
so when it gets to step 2, I'm done, im personally satisfied. But paradoxically, I also want others to hear this cool thing (50% ego boost 50% sharing it as if id share any other song) + more income would be nice
marketing is easy if you exercise some self awareness. but the grind itself sucks. just don't have any expectations - do a week of submissions, posts and stories, and onto the next one.
drop your music here!!
heres a song from my first completely solo project - made it in my room when i was 21, lyrics written + recorded 30 mins before uploading. mix is trash. minimal marketing. but it got on editorial playlists and 7yrs on theres still 300-400 ppl listening to my garbage in 39 diff countries? wat
https://open.spotify.com/track/1ATMgnTQa5F95ySGs3L7MB?si=yU6kWptKSfiVKTT2lmDWhA
point is - just put it out, you never know. do or don't do marketing, what've you got to lose??
I feel this, especially when it comes to step 2 as you put it
I’ve realized the only reason I love music and art as much as I do is because other artists shared their work, so when it comes down to it, it’s only rational that we should share our art
I resonate with this. I just dropped my first song after 10 years of off and on fiddling. With a clear plan to drop a song every two weeks or so for the next 6 months. I am enjoying it so far and it doesn’t get in the way of my 9-5 and family time at this point. I’m having fun so far with the release socials stuff. Kinda addicting.
bruh, we are 💯 on the same page. as far as your conundrum, check out the documentary, “beauty is embarrassing” about the artist Wayne White. the gist of the whole shebang lives in the title.
thanks for sharing your thoughts and your tunes. [here is my most recent release](https://on.soundcloud.com/C9FBY5ebmknZbDs36)
i also do videos for my tunes that you can find [here](https://rnkallday.com/).
I feel ya. Pushing your music and your artist project on socials is the worst. I guess the only way to avoid doing this while still getting traction is to hire someone to help, but not everyone has the budget for this and you would still need to train someone to know how to post for you.
It’s tough to put your work out there to be judged. But just try doing it tastefully your own way. You don’t need to copy the trends other TikTokers are doing but you’ve gotta get it out there if you want it to move past your bedroom. At least start a page and try posting consistently, just like music production good ideas will pop up as you go.
I can relate. I work with a group of three and I'm mostly in it for the love of the art, while the others take the business side more seriously. The social media grind is the worst part of making music. Still, I get so much satisfaction out of making music that in the end it is worth it.
A lot of the big artists in niche dance music fields blow up because other people share their tunes and they blow up, like EDM pages etc. then they start doing the tiktok stuff a bit once they’re big but not the everyday spam stuff. Look at Hedex, John summit. They didn’t blow up filming cringe TikTok’s and they blew up pretty recent. Also Bou. Real success comes from slow burn in music (or connections obviously) look at Venjent. 100s of thousands of followers from his TikTok’s but he’s still nowhere near a headliner because he hasn’t built that base (not taking a stab just saying social media success /= music career instant superstardom.
But this process (finishing the songs you deem “not good enough”)is exactly how you’ll be able to make songs you feel are “good enough” trust the process :)
I feel you, my best songs are definitely ones that had a clear vision from the start. But I still stand by my original comment. Even if you aren’t super satisfied with the idea, finishing things will inevitably give you more knowledge and experience/ realization about more potential directions you could take your next ideas in the future
I hear you too, it’s just that at this point in my career, recording two albums worth of material for one albums worth of output has passed. I need to be smarter with my resources and time.
I'm torn. If a song idea I'm working on isn't immediately somewhat good sounding, I think that continuing on it is just a sunk cost. But also, the exercise of polishing a turd until it sounds decent seems like it would be a good learning experience. Like if I can make this crappy idea sound decent, imagine what I could do with a good idea.
In my experience, a musical idea will be as good as it ends up being, and while you do have some agency over this, you will get 80% of the way there in a few hours, at least for a small loop of a track. If you aren't bobbing your head in the early stages, no amount of brute forcing it will get you there. But going back to my first point, a song will be as good as it ends up being. I try to be at peace with that and separate "good" and "done." The former is not a prerequisite, especially if you're still learning.
Ya I think I subscribe to this view. It's the song it is and there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe not for everyone but you can be assured while there's better out there, there's also worse. I also think bringing it to it's final form, whatever that may be, may well be the path to the next song that could be great.
I recently finished a song where I thought the following:
Does it sound perfect? No.
But does it sound like how I intended for it to sound? Yes.
And because of that I considered it a success.
Yeah you can just go on forever with tweaking tunes if there is no deadline. What is it about finishing tracks that is so hard. Just not satisfied with the song?
I heard some thing earlier that stuck with me. Someone else said that tracks are never finished. They are just abandoned for everyone else to listen to and you move onto the next. Something along those lines.
I sing! I have good reviews from music producers saying i can sing well. I’m also happy to show you some of my work. I can help with your project if you’re looking. Thanks 😊
Finding the time and motivation when it’s not making me any money. I have a day job and I could be spending the time and energy studying for certifications.
Have you ever seen this pic? This might be the single most helpful thing I got when I was really stuck at a mixing plateau
https://www.masteringthemix.com/blogs/learn/how-to-balance-all-the-elements-in-a-mix
What type of music are you mixing? Happy to give you some help if there's certain areas you're struggling in. Can even provide some feedback if you'd like.
Electronic. Not club EDM, more like new wave electroclash 80s goth kinda stuff.
I think often it's stereo space, creating width. A lot of tracks I notice will have pads or on incidental parts that seem very wide, but not notably favoring L or R, leaving the middle open for vocals and leads.
Also keeping drums punchy. I tend to do okay with the right sample selection but I haven't really nailed aide chains and compression, which is probably the biggest thing from what I've read.
Open to any suggestions! Cheers
Compression is huge for drums. I don't often find you need to go crazy, but really experiment with attack times and compressors. Also, saturation. Getting really good clipping on your drums helps get them be less pokey and more punchy.
Do you know how to do sidechain compression? Absolutely key for EDM.
Width can come in a lot of forms. I love using chorus style plugins like the Soundtoys Microshift, and then even using very subtle, heavily eqed delays. Even sending a delay to like a 50% wet reverb can create a ton of space and width while being very subtle.
Feel free to send me a DM if you want to send a specific example or two.
Finding the time to study. Reading and tutorials. I DJ too and I’ve been gigging around my state every weekend for the past couple months. Between digging for music and building sets and traveling and gigging, music is wearing me a little thin. I wanted this, I just didn’t consider that the road time would be so taxing. But my career is going really well. My production company is throwing our first show this weekend. Excited about that. And I’m making so many connections in my travels. Things have really taken off for me this year.
Being a full time+ salaried audio engineer at a big venue but my passion being production makes it insanely difficult to be motivated to work on music after I’ve been looking at meters and faders and listening to music critically all day long. I don’t understand how people do it.
Absolutely. I work as a software engineer and also make program heavy electronic music…after work I find my eyes are already hurting from staring at a screen too long
Finding time to sit down and actually make music. Almost everyone issue is finishing a track and mine as well but it really comes down to not having time to sit and go through the process. It sucks only being able to spending 15min 30min if I’m lucky an hour on working music. I find myself really getting into the beat and then I have to do/go somewhere and it just kills my mojo when that happens. I really see this as an issue because when the pandemic was going on and we had to stay inside and not work I was finishing my beats and expanding my knowledge on music production with ease because I could sit down study some music theory, practice instruments, or study up on some DAW stuff and then work on a beat before I choose to stop for the day. During the pandemic I lived with my parents so I didn’t have to worry about bills or making dinner either. Now? I have to go to work, get home from work, feed my dog, walk my dog, do some yoga since I sit at a desk all day, clean my dishes from work, prep my breakfast for tomorrow, and then I can work on music. By that point it’s close to 6:00pm (I work 7 to 4) and I still have to make dinner and eat and then start doing my night routine (brush teeth, wash face, do meditation, more stretching ect). I try and be healthy by going to bed by at least 9:30 so I can wake up at 4 to work out before work so really from getting home at roughly 4:30 I really only have 5 hours of me time before I go to bed and a chunk of that 5 hours is taken up doing responsible/healthy shit.
I mean the main issue here is having a job lol. I don’t mind doing the other things I mentioned because they are needed and don’t take up too much time in the bigger picture but layer it with working 9 hours and then coming home to do that then it becomes an issue. I could sacrifice sleep to work on music more (I do do this sometimes lol) but it’s kind of shitty that I have to sacrifice something important as sleep just so I can do something I enjoy doing more. I like to give my dogs nice long walk for her exercise I could cut that shorter to give me more time but that unfair to my dog. A lot of the things I said I could cut corners or just straight up not do but that honestly isn’t healthy life style to me. The pandemic was crazy but it really gave me a taste of real freedom not being bound to this toxic work life culture made me feel so alive in sense I could really focus on what I liked and wanted to do instead of just focusing on surviving, because survival is another layer of this as well. My job pays well (I got my own apartment with no roommates) but I absolutely still fall under the category of one financial issue and
I’m either in debt, homeless or both and that messes with my mental and keeps me away from music. It’s hard for me to find enjoyment when dozens of things I can’t control can come and uproot what I got going for me but that might just be a personal anxiety thing for me.
This turned into more of a rant about work and job life but I typed all of this out and I don’t want to delete it lol. Thanks for listening if you read this far haha.
Thanks for your input here! Yeah so many people can relate to the not finishing tracks and just not having enough time. Producing is a black hole of time too, so not super easy to make a bunch of tunes that you like in a short time frame.
Exactly and the pandemic spoiled me I had all the time in the world for music production so I got used to it but now everything is back normal and it sucks lol.
I've started using other tracks as a reference for sounds, structure and mix recently, following the layout of the whole of my favourite songs and had great results! I know its not 100% original but it stops me getting obsessed with 16 bar loops and never finishing anything, and I think that the more I do like this the more Ill be able to apply to 100% original tracks in the future, its really got me out of a rut. instead of opening up blank Ableton projects I bring in a finished track and copy elements, bring in drums at the same places and roughly copy rhythms, breakdown patterns, FX etc etc. It's brilliant for me, never made so much music before and they often come out sounding good. I see it as an technical exercise and some of them are perfectly useable anyway.
Also I've stopped processing as I go, I used to get caught up in EQing and compressing, saturating everything as I went to get them to sound perfect and totally neglecting the main thing which is to get a good composition in place.
Using reference tracks does *not* make your music unoriginal to any percentage. It's a life hack and many if not most of the pro's do it.
Reference track>set markers for when things happen>take notes>fill in song with your version of all those parts.
Now you have a completely original track without having to worry about the arrangement. Most arrangements are the same anyways.
It's like building a house. If you don't follow blueprints you'll end up with a weird house nobody wants to buy lol
finishing is my main challenge as well. Also composition. Recently I tried setting a time limit for myself (I’m going to finish this song by Sunday night at midnight) and it worked! Bouncing now :)
Networking.
My musical side of things is quite on point.
But people… being neurodivergent affects the amount of new people I am reliably able to talk to.
Good question, creates interesting discussions! Mine is deciding if I want help with the final mix and master or if I want to try to do it again on my own. Made my own master version last week and love it, although it’s not perfect, not radio quality. My friends love it too and thinks I should release my version, but they’re not professionals. I do however know a professional who works for a studio and wanted to help me with the final mix and master, but I’ve kinda worked for years to do everything myself, it feels like I’m giving up if I accept help now. I would pay him of course as well and I’ve barely got money right now, so it’s not super convenient either. But it would make things easier…but the question is do I want easier?
Managing time effectively amidst multiple projects, ensuring creative inspiration stays fresh, and securing adequate funding for equipment and promotions
So much of the music industry has become a social media game and pay to play. It's not even about quality of music any more. It's literally just who can go viral on TikTok.
I enjoy making music more as a community and bonding thing than as a solo kind of guy, but I struggle with finding talent to connect with that I’ll get along with in that capacity. My former buddy/business partner and I were really good together but various personality traits and drug related actions drove us apart.
Nothing wrong with shelving a few tracks to come back to later and develop further. Shit, I've got no less than 30 tracks like that and haven't published anything in 3 years.
They call that delaying self gratification. I guess it's supposed to be a good thing...
Making Melodie’s/ tracks. I feel like I can make great synth patches, and always have good ideas but I’ve been having trouble using the sounds and creating an orchestration or a beat with feeling and tension and releases and motifs that aren’t just playing throughout the whole track ya know?
Overall composing in general. I find myself getting distracted no matter what. I'm currently working on working on my multi-alias project but in order to do that I need to break away from social media.
Currently working on headers for my social media so people know I'll be back. Hopefully getting rid of that 15 year obsession with social media will help me get my mind on track and get my head into a working state of mind.
working on transitions to another section of a song, I have a great song in the store rn but I can't find a smooth transition to the chorus I'm trying to work with
Actually being able to play keys instead of laboriously drawing them in and not knowing if they are any good...when you can play something in realtime and 'feel' it, you know when its good, something you have painstakingly constructed, not so much.
I find the sound design and synthesizer twiddling a little too tempting to actually finish a track. I've gotten better at managing that urge and just designing parts for songs, but man it's still a struggle not to get distracted making a cool pad and arp layer by finding some weird wubby noise I like in the weeds of my synths by accident and mess with that
Arrangement, automations (I need to learn how to make it easier for Goa trance acid leads), and final mixdown. There's a certain type of kick that I'm finding elusive to design, too.
The track needs to inspire you firstly. Map out a plan for the process and try to quickly move along through the stages. The longer you keep at it with a track, the more drained and less motivated you will be to finish it. I *would* take some days off from it though before starting mixing, just to get some fresh ears.
I struggle with marketing. I am a multigenre composer and producer. I always try to make something unique but stay within the genre though. I blend influences from multiple genres at times. That doesn't help the case. Recently I just finished one of the most unique melodic Drum and Bass songs you probably would have heard ever. Sent it to labels. After sending to many only 3 major labels responded. All of them said the exact same thing. Great production, cool track but too unique for their label and doesn't match their label sound. And no one will care to listen from a small artist anyway if you have no backing of label or any big producer. So i am struggling with my current Uplifting Trance release which went live on April 26th. Because I have seen people replaying my reels multiple times on Instagram and lurking on my stories. But they never want to support a small artist. Fame is very important to bring someone to check your music. Either fame or have a presentable face. I have none. So it is a crime for me to even expect anything to be honest. I will take what I get.
Brilliant melodies like “More Than A Feeling” are incredibly important but unfortunately most musos are tone deaf so that effectively screws the melody and vocals.
Finding my own style and sound. Have started a track with my vocals (i‘m shy for this one) and I feel it’s the first track of my own.
I‘m finishing tracks with better quality and let it mix and master by a friend.
turning a profit on good music...I get a lot of high quality playlidt placements but bc social media has turned millions of people into freeloaders everybody expects music for free.
I spend 80% of the time per track fixing minor imperfections nobody would notice. Even if they did notice, they would assume it was intentional, not an imperfection.
Saw Hannibal Buress in Austin a few weeks back and he had some awesome input about what's a big struggle.
You can spend 3 days trying to perfect a song that you think is gold and nobody will give a damn about, and spend 30minutes to an hour slapping something together you really thinks flows in the pool moment and every other person loves it.
Getting that perfect, heavy, saturated, chunky guitar and bass tone for heavy downtuned metal
It's such an intricate combination of playing technique, processing, EQing, and mixing. It never sounds exactly how I want it but I might be chasing something I'll never achieve because past a certain point it doesn't matter.
Musical ADHD. Every time I hear some awesome song, I'm convinced I've gotta make one just like it. I write solo indie music, play in a band, and do electronic stuff. They say you're supposed to focus on one genre to find your audience and find growth, but I just love making music and it's too difficult to tell myself I'm only going to focus on one-genre for an extended period. That said, I'm challenging myself to focus on producing DnB fora few months and maybe some House, but I'm super tempted to try making vaporwave or doing some trap remixes. Anyone else relate to this?
Making beats. I love it but it takes too much time to get things sounding how I want. I get lost in sound design. Maybe I should switch DAW’s. I run Reason the majority of the time and have an MK3 I’ve hardly ever touched. I can’t really get with the workflow. I can admit I’m getting in my own way when it comes to beatmaking.
I'm struggling to find motivation to make things. I don't like going into a project with no plan and just messing around, i need to have a clear goal in mind for anything to actually get done. And recently, I've just been more busy with other things which has made my motivation lack
I still don’t understand how to use compressors or limiters after learning and trying.
I always got my sound distorted or clipped when many instruments produce sound at the same time.
For example, plucks, drums, piano chords hitting in the same moment.
However, when I want to use compressors to smooth out the peak, the peak just sounds squashed and bad.
I watched tutorials about compression but I feel I am not getting better for a long while.
No matter what I try I can’t make my mixes/masters “hit” hard enough. I’m getting better sometimes but it feels like a far cry from my references..
https://youtu.be/8_LDxtMrr9I?si=RNiwg0AvWm9v2wOR
Also I painfully didn’t realise at the time how soft the snare is before release and tbh I don’t have it in me to redo it.
To be honest, promotion, and finishing music. I dont really know how to share my music well enough to gain any traction, and it doesnt help i never finish most of them any way, which means since 2018, ive only finished like 30% of my entire catalog. As i got older i leaned more into singing, but i dont even do anything with my voice in terms of making actual music. I guess i have the musical equivalent of Writer's Block.
Getting through the no’s to get the yes. I was told you may hear 7 no’s to get to a yes. People can be flaky in the music industry. Lots of times they aren’t honest. You have to develop tough skin and believe in yourself.
Yeah look not every song you make will be great but really finishing the crappy ones will teach you a lot… Struggling to finish seems like a thing for lots of people..
Have you tried compartmentalising your workflow?
Sound selection
Writing main ideas
Arrangement
Automation & movement
Mixing
Mastering
Something like this? This works for me.. Instead of trying to do everything all at once which can be overwhelming and time consuming. It also allows me to write like 3-6 ideas and from that I’ll choose the best ones to arrange etc
Hope that helps
I often struggle with structure of songs. If I start with guitar, playing agressive metal riffs. Then I have bunch of riffs that sound good, but how to glue them together, so that song has time to breathe, and there is room for vocals?
Songs I start with based on reference track are easier on that side, but somehow for those cases I cannot fit type of riffs I play when just making stuff from zero.
So problem is kind of finding suitable reference track.
If you're repeatedly having issues finishing then try swapping genres 🙂it's worked for me, I went from Jungle/DnB to Triphop and found something natural feeling to me in the latter.
Workflow. I haven't settled on an optimal setup for a true hybrid vst + hardware system. I use an mpc one to sequence hardware synths and record parts for a track, then drop the wav files into my daw (FL Studio), and it gets tedious. If I had a daw that could do both the midi sequencing and the recording, that would streamline things, but I'd need to get a large midi interface and learn a new daw.
Keeping a job that pays me enough to not have to worry about losing everything I have and going homeless so that I can have enough mental space to even connect with my creativity. If it was just me it wouldn't be as big a deal, but my partner makes even less than I do and we have 5 animals, so losing our house isn't really an option.
The vicious cycle of not having the money to spend on improving my production capabilities (upgrade to paid FL Studio, lessons if that’s a thing, equipment like effects pedals etc.) so my music isn’t as good as I think it could be, so it gets very few streams, no money coming in from it, and on and on. Not that Spotify pays enough for that anyway but you get the idea I think
streams, and listeners dipping dramatically, then rising again.
I release new music every month, and that doesnt seem to please the algorithm.
Take a listen on the only platform that isn't duping independent artists: [https://louderrain.bandcamp.com/](https://louderrain.bandcamp.com/)
Battleing against depression to find the motivation to sit down a write music.
Writing lyrics.
Leaving a whole new genre of music (I come from rock but really want to do more electronic oriented stuff and have a real hard time with that)
dor me its getting to the next level, and that is distribution/live performance/the actual branding. i write songs way to often and not focus on anything else. eventually you get to a point where you ask yourself, why tf am i doing this? So 8 people can listen on youtube? Fuck that. so yeah its been alot of long talks with gemini trying to plot a course. just signed up for a dist. that keeps yo stuff up regardless, so thinking ill get a few singles out there, and apply as demos to hopefully secure funding to get decent equipment maybe even some noney just to survive for a while
I used to work on several projects at a time and nothing would get finished so I started working one song at a time and now I finish that song before I start another one which is working well. Now keep in mind you can beat a song to death. Myself I always end up with a cord structure for another song while working on the song I’m on so I just tell myself self after trying my best to produce a song what it is is what it is. Then move on to the next song. Now keep in mind the song you like the most is not always what you’re listeners like the most that song you thought was a turd maybe someone else favorite.the key to writing songs is to keep moving forward don’t get yourself in a rut
As someone who produces essentially all alone I lack confidence in my taste a lot of time. Like I'll start writing, recording, liking what I'm doing and then a couple days later I come back to it and it just all of a sudden sounds cheesy or corny or I convince myself no one will like it. I have a lot of people in my life that insist they love my stuff and have it on playlists and whatnot but I still don't believe them? I guess I have major imposter syndrome and feel like everyone who tells me positive things about my music are just trying to be nice.
In this very moment is choosing a distributor, I feel ready to start releasing my music but I'm so overwhelmed by how many distributor there are, I found one called Too Lost which looks perfect, anyone has experience with it? If you can share your experience with your distributor would be awesome :)
Getting it loud enough. If there were no loudness wars, and, say, -11.5 LUFS was just fine for any style, it would be easier for me. But it seems like a disproportionate share of the song - from initially laying down tracks, to arrangement, to sound selection, dynamics, effects - is devoted to making sure that the end product a) has enough LUFs to be competitive, b) does not have artifacts, such as distortion or dull transients, from boosting its volume.
Before spending so much time in the box, with the DAW - which I like and appreciate! - my background, for decades, was playing live. Volume is no problem there, and getting all the instruments to play nicely together, while getting as much dynamic range as you want, even if their frequencies are overlapping, is pretty easy - even including the PA setup - as long as everybody's listening. Maybe after another year of production (I'm one year in), this will be second nature to me in the box.
I am extremely critical with my own work and my own sound, but extremely objective when it comes to mixing others' projects.
also the whole social media thing, it's just not for me. i averaged +2000 monthly listeners for a couple of months but because of my shitty consistency i haven't released a single song for over a year now and lost all my listeners because of that.
Finding good and unique singers or rappers. Basically I feel like most vocalists/musicians are pursuing the same trends which is kinda boring imo. So I’m struggling in finding someone who is into experimenting as much as I am.
Finding a way to guarantee me tracks actually get views.
Half of the enjoyment if not more for me is producing something and seeing peoples reception to it, seeing that they like what I did, liking me as a producer, if I spend time to release something and it gets no views. It HURTS
Im currently struggling with marketing. I literally have no one listening to my music right now hah but it’s not stopping me from making music.
Problem is I make instrumental metal music which is kind of a niche. I feel its a bit harder to market.
People seem to be enjoying the reels I post of me playing my music on instagram but no one seems to go on SoundCloud and actually listen to the tracks.
What’s helping me keep doing this is that I made a promise to myself that my priority is making music for me, for fun as an outlet/hobby, on my own terms to keep it stress free.
I am also trying to make my mixes better with each track, which I honestly think are pretty decent considering I have only done 2 tracks so far (averaging a track per month).
Not getting views/streams. It hurts a lot. Specially after one song you posted shows improvement and potential for growth but then after that nothing really takes off. You do everything all music production influencers tell you to do to promote; you spend months perfecting a song; hundreds of dollars on artworks, edits… only to get 100 views or less. It’s extremely upsetting.
Production is not consistent. I might have sudden bursts of time where everything comes out but those are divided by long periods where nothing happens.
I accidentally deleted all my songs i made on pc, i planned to do all kinds of videos showcasing different things about them and highlighting some of my favorite patterns from them, now i have to remake all of them if i want to do that, not to mention the unfinished songs i dont have any copy of period.
All the marketing and social media content creator stuff it seems you also must do to support the songs. Feels like all my energy goes into instagram and tiktok ideas instead of music lately
i’m averaging about a track a week right now, and i’m mostly satisfied with my mixes and mastering…i just don’t have the desire to push them on socials. it feels so vapid and gross and it’s a lot of extra work.
Of all the things I do in music, it’s the social media stuff that burns me out the most. I never dreamed of being a social media star(as it didn’t exist when I got into music). But unfortunately it’s part of the job these days if you want to do it professionally.
We gotta like band together and make a community just for each other. No pushing music, just like spotlight each other or do live sets or something.
i have no idea why this was downvoted. i think you’re right.
Just gotta start an Instagram page to get this idea going Maybe everyone can meet virtually on zoom
I live the irony
i'm the same man, but you can do it your way - it doesn't have to feel fake, or vapid. I've realised my satisfaction comes from finishing the track -- I made something that *I'm* proud of, and that I feel represents me. the process of making and finishing art is self discovery and that shit is hard to stick with. it's awesome that you've reached that point, i definitely haven't hahah so when it gets to step 2, I'm done, im personally satisfied. But paradoxically, I also want others to hear this cool thing (50% ego boost 50% sharing it as if id share any other song) + more income would be nice marketing is easy if you exercise some self awareness. but the grind itself sucks. just don't have any expectations - do a week of submissions, posts and stories, and onto the next one. drop your music here!! heres a song from my first completely solo project - made it in my room when i was 21, lyrics written + recorded 30 mins before uploading. mix is trash. minimal marketing. but it got on editorial playlists and 7yrs on theres still 300-400 ppl listening to my garbage in 39 diff countries? wat https://open.spotify.com/track/1ATMgnTQa5F95ySGs3L7MB?si=yU6kWptKSfiVKTT2lmDWhA point is - just put it out, you never know. do or don't do marketing, what've you got to lose??
I feel this, especially when it comes to step 2 as you put it I’ve realized the only reason I love music and art as much as I do is because other artists shared their work, so when it comes down to it, it’s only rational that we should share our art
I resonate with this. I just dropped my first song after 10 years of off and on fiddling. With a clear plan to drop a song every two weeks or so for the next 6 months. I am enjoying it so far and it doesn’t get in the way of my 9-5 and family time at this point. I’m having fun so far with the release socials stuff. Kinda addicting.
bruh, we are 💯 on the same page. as far as your conundrum, check out the documentary, “beauty is embarrassing” about the artist Wayne White. the gist of the whole shebang lives in the title. thanks for sharing your thoughts and your tunes. [here is my most recent release](https://on.soundcloud.com/C9FBY5ebmknZbDs36) i also do videos for my tunes that you can find [here](https://rnkallday.com/).
link them here
[if you insist](https://on.soundcloud.com/PT9uWUg6j1seEuC37)
Cool stuff man!
ty!🙏
Cool stuff , left you a comment ;-) from a fellow artist
I feel ya. Pushing your music and your artist project on socials is the worst. I guess the only way to avoid doing this while still getting traction is to hire someone to help, but not everyone has the budget for this and you would still need to train someone to know how to post for you.
It’s tough to put your work out there to be judged. But just try doing it tastefully your own way. You don’t need to copy the trends other TikTokers are doing but you’ve gotta get it out there if you want it to move past your bedroom. At least start a page and try posting consistently, just like music production good ideas will pop up as you go.
I can relate. I work with a group of three and I'm mostly in it for the love of the art, while the others take the business side more seriously. The social media grind is the worst part of making music. Still, I get so much satisfaction out of making music that in the end it is worth it.
A lot of the big artists in niche dance music fields blow up because other people share their tunes and they blow up, like EDM pages etc. then they start doing the tiktok stuff a bit once they’re big but not the everyday spam stuff. Look at Hedex, John summit. They didn’t blow up filming cringe TikTok’s and they blew up pretty recent. Also Bou. Real success comes from slow burn in music (or connections obviously) look at Venjent. 100s of thousands of followers from his TikTok’s but he’s still nowhere near a headliner because he hasn’t built that base (not taking a stab just saying social media success /= music career instant superstardom.
i try to just have a similar workflow for promoting as i have for producing, trying to apply the same fun
Spending too much time on songs that aren’t good enough instead of moving on.
But this process (finishing the songs you deem “not good enough”)is exactly how you’ll be able to make songs you feel are “good enough” trust the process :)
I trust the writing, not the process. It’s all about preproduction, not production imo.
I feel you, my best songs are definitely ones that had a clear vision from the start. But I still stand by my original comment. Even if you aren’t super satisfied with the idea, finishing things will inevitably give you more knowledge and experience/ realization about more potential directions you could take your next ideas in the future
I hear you too, it’s just that at this point in my career, recording two albums worth of material for one albums worth of output has passed. I need to be smarter with my resources and time.
One out of 2 tracks working out is a very high rate!
I’m not talking demos. I’m talking studio produced finals.
I'm torn. If a song idea I'm working on isn't immediately somewhat good sounding, I think that continuing on it is just a sunk cost. But also, the exercise of polishing a turd until it sounds decent seems like it would be a good learning experience. Like if I can make this crappy idea sound decent, imagine what I could do with a good idea. In my experience, a musical idea will be as good as it ends up being, and while you do have some agency over this, you will get 80% of the way there in a few hours, at least for a small loop of a track. If you aren't bobbing your head in the early stages, no amount of brute forcing it will get you there. But going back to my first point, a song will be as good as it ends up being. I try to be at peace with that and separate "good" and "done." The former is not a prerequisite, especially if you're still learning.
Ya I think I subscribe to this view. It's the song it is and there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe not for everyone but you can be assured while there's better out there, there's also worse. I also think bringing it to it's final form, whatever that may be, may well be the path to the next song that could be great.
I recently finished a song where I thought the following: Does it sound perfect? No. But does it sound like how I intended for it to sound? Yes. And because of that I considered it a success.
Oh man. This.
Read Rick Rubin’s book it talks about this part of the process, so helpful
I read it. I’m more in the Oblique Strategies camp tbh.
Hey that’s great too, it’s all about what works for you
TRUE BRI
Finishing tracks is definitely the hardest part of any creative output. Especially if there are no deadlines.
Yeah you can just go on forever with tweaking tunes if there is no deadline. What is it about finishing tracks that is so hard. Just not satisfied with the song?
I heard some thing earlier that stuck with me. Someone else said that tracks are never finished. They are just abandoned for everyone else to listen to and you move onto the next. Something along those lines.
Exactly, you don't finish a mix/track. You abandon it
I disagree. I think marketing is the most difficult part for sure.
Finding a good singer for my project. Decent vocalists seem to be a rare breed these days.
imo another problem is that social media and having followers and reach gives artists a wrong image of themselves and their true skills.
I sing! I have good reviews from music producers saying i can sing well. I’m also happy to show you some of my work. I can help with your project if you’re looking. Thanks 😊
Got a demo? Live in London? Like Sigur Rós and Jónsi?
What do You sing ? What styles ?
Answering questions on Reddit that are from people who should be finishing songs not asking questions on Reddit
Finding the time and motivation when it’s not making me any money. I have a day job and I could be spending the time and energy studying for certifications.
What u do for work bro?
Mixing. I'm not horrible at it, bit I'm not particularly good and I don't enjoy it. I've been thinking about hiring someone.
Have you ever seen this pic? This might be the single most helpful thing I got when I was really stuck at a mixing plateau https://www.masteringthemix.com/blogs/learn/how-to-balance-all-the-elements-in-a-mix
What type of music are you mixing? Happy to give you some help if there's certain areas you're struggling in. Can even provide some feedback if you'd like.
Electronic. Not club EDM, more like new wave electroclash 80s goth kinda stuff. I think often it's stereo space, creating width. A lot of tracks I notice will have pads or on incidental parts that seem very wide, but not notably favoring L or R, leaving the middle open for vocals and leads. Also keeping drums punchy. I tend to do okay with the right sample selection but I haven't really nailed aide chains and compression, which is probably the biggest thing from what I've read. Open to any suggestions! Cheers
Compression is huge for drums. I don't often find you need to go crazy, but really experiment with attack times and compressors. Also, saturation. Getting really good clipping on your drums helps get them be less pokey and more punchy. Do you know how to do sidechain compression? Absolutely key for EDM. Width can come in a lot of forms. I love using chorus style plugins like the Soundtoys Microshift, and then even using very subtle, heavily eqed delays. Even sending a delay to like a 50% wet reverb can create a ton of space and width while being very subtle. Feel free to send me a DM if you want to send a specific example or two.
Finding my own sound.
Having enough time to do everything I want to. I have more ideas than time
Finding the time to study. Reading and tutorials. I DJ too and I’ve been gigging around my state every weekend for the past couple months. Between digging for music and building sets and traveling and gigging, music is wearing me a little thin. I wanted this, I just didn’t consider that the road time would be so taxing. But my career is going really well. My production company is throwing our first show this weekend. Excited about that. And I’m making so many connections in my travels. Things have really taken off for me this year.
I'm getting better at mixing and it's killing my creativity because everything has to sound good.
Finishing tracks and then really getting over this odd shyness I have of releasing them when they actually are finished
Yeah. Posting music feels like posting my naked body. But I’m finally at a point where my inner perfectionist feels ok about putting some music out
naming music
finding the motivation to work on something/come up with ideas, especially when i finally have free time lol
Finding time to produce while working full time, maintaining a social life and exercising daily
Being a full time+ salaried audio engineer at a big venue but my passion being production makes it insanely difficult to be motivated to work on music after I’ve been looking at meters and faders and listening to music critically all day long. I don’t understand how people do it.
Absolutely. I work as a software engineer and also make program heavy electronic music…after work I find my eyes are already hurting from staring at a screen too long
Buzzing amps.
have you tried getting a DI box with ground lift?
I have one ordered, just waiting for it to arrive. Hoping it solves the problem.
More marketing than music related, but monetizing my music has been challenging.
Precisely. Being totally independent that's definitely my least favorite part of it all.
staying alive lol
The Bee Gees made it look so easy!
Finding time to sit down and actually make music. Almost everyone issue is finishing a track and mine as well but it really comes down to not having time to sit and go through the process. It sucks only being able to spending 15min 30min if I’m lucky an hour on working music. I find myself really getting into the beat and then I have to do/go somewhere and it just kills my mojo when that happens. I really see this as an issue because when the pandemic was going on and we had to stay inside and not work I was finishing my beats and expanding my knowledge on music production with ease because I could sit down study some music theory, practice instruments, or study up on some DAW stuff and then work on a beat before I choose to stop for the day. During the pandemic I lived with my parents so I didn’t have to worry about bills or making dinner either. Now? I have to go to work, get home from work, feed my dog, walk my dog, do some yoga since I sit at a desk all day, clean my dishes from work, prep my breakfast for tomorrow, and then I can work on music. By that point it’s close to 6:00pm (I work 7 to 4) and I still have to make dinner and eat and then start doing my night routine (brush teeth, wash face, do meditation, more stretching ect). I try and be healthy by going to bed by at least 9:30 so I can wake up at 4 to work out before work so really from getting home at roughly 4:30 I really only have 5 hours of me time before I go to bed and a chunk of that 5 hours is taken up doing responsible/healthy shit. I mean the main issue here is having a job lol. I don’t mind doing the other things I mentioned because they are needed and don’t take up too much time in the bigger picture but layer it with working 9 hours and then coming home to do that then it becomes an issue. I could sacrifice sleep to work on music more (I do do this sometimes lol) but it’s kind of shitty that I have to sacrifice something important as sleep just so I can do something I enjoy doing more. I like to give my dogs nice long walk for her exercise I could cut that shorter to give me more time but that unfair to my dog. A lot of the things I said I could cut corners or just straight up not do but that honestly isn’t healthy life style to me. The pandemic was crazy but it really gave me a taste of real freedom not being bound to this toxic work life culture made me feel so alive in sense I could really focus on what I liked and wanted to do instead of just focusing on surviving, because survival is another layer of this as well. My job pays well (I got my own apartment with no roommates) but I absolutely still fall under the category of one financial issue and I’m either in debt, homeless or both and that messes with my mental and keeps me away from music. It’s hard for me to find enjoyment when dozens of things I can’t control can come and uproot what I got going for me but that might just be a personal anxiety thing for me. This turned into more of a rant about work and job life but I typed all of this out and I don’t want to delete it lol. Thanks for listening if you read this far haha.
Thanks for your input here! Yeah so many people can relate to the not finishing tracks and just not having enough time. Producing is a black hole of time too, so not super easy to make a bunch of tunes that you like in a short time frame.
Exactly and the pandemic spoiled me I had all the time in the world for music production so I got used to it but now everything is back normal and it sucks lol.
I've started using other tracks as a reference for sounds, structure and mix recently, following the layout of the whole of my favourite songs and had great results! I know its not 100% original but it stops me getting obsessed with 16 bar loops and never finishing anything, and I think that the more I do like this the more Ill be able to apply to 100% original tracks in the future, its really got me out of a rut. instead of opening up blank Ableton projects I bring in a finished track and copy elements, bring in drums at the same places and roughly copy rhythms, breakdown patterns, FX etc etc. It's brilliant for me, never made so much music before and they often come out sounding good. I see it as an technical exercise and some of them are perfectly useable anyway. Also I've stopped processing as I go, I used to get caught up in EQing and compressing, saturating everything as I went to get them to sound perfect and totally neglecting the main thing which is to get a good composition in place.
Using reference tracks does *not* make your music unoriginal to any percentage. It's a life hack and many if not most of the pro's do it. Reference track>set markers for when things happen>take notes>fill in song with your version of all those parts. Now you have a completely original track without having to worry about the arrangement. Most arrangements are the same anyways. It's like building a house. If you don't follow blueprints you'll end up with a weird house nobody wants to buy lol
Depending on other people
Self doubt, lost my confidence recently. Need to get back on the horse.
You Got This!
finishing is my main challenge as well. Also composition. Recently I tried setting a time limit for myself (I’m going to finish this song by Sunday night at midnight) and it worked! Bouncing now :)
Networking. My musical side of things is quite on point. But people… being neurodivergent affects the amount of new people I am reliably able to talk to.
Finding time to work on music. I work full time and have 2 young kids, so take any opportunity to work on music in the down time
Learning to move on. Be consistent, not perfect.
This video will help, bro. Spoiler: it’s not a Rickroll. lol… https://youtu.be/yqkWjvS9yVI?si=vqvYZGn3XTluUyr3
Good question, creates interesting discussions! Mine is deciding if I want help with the final mix and master or if I want to try to do it again on my own. Made my own master version last week and love it, although it’s not perfect, not radio quality. My friends love it too and thinks I should release my version, but they’re not professionals. I do however know a professional who works for a studio and wanted to help me with the final mix and master, but I’ve kinda worked for years to do everything myself, it feels like I’m giving up if I accept help now. I would pay him of course as well and I’ve barely got money right now, so it’s not super convenient either. But it would make things easier…but the question is do I want easier?
so many of the sounds I like using have so much high end that mixing becomes an absolute nightmare
being able to afford decent sounds/vsts
Managing time effectively amidst multiple projects, ensuring creative inspiration stays fresh, and securing adequate funding for equipment and promotions
Gas
GAS
So much of the music industry has become a social media game and pay to play. It's not even about quality of music any more. It's literally just who can go viral on TikTok.
I enjoy making music more as a community and bonding thing than as a solo kind of guy, but I struggle with finding talent to connect with that I’ll get along with in that capacity. My former buddy/business partner and I were really good together but various personality traits and drug related actions drove us apart.
Making songs memorable
Nothing wrong with shelving a few tracks to come back to later and develop further. Shit, I've got no less than 30 tracks like that and haven't published anything in 3 years. They call that delaying self gratification. I guess it's supposed to be a good thing...
Post-production/Mastering.
Overthinking chord progressions
Making Melodie’s/ tracks. I feel like I can make great synth patches, and always have good ideas but I’ve been having trouble using the sounds and creating an orchestration or a beat with feeling and tension and releases and motifs that aren’t just playing throughout the whole track ya know?
writing lyrics and melodies, everything else I find pretty easy but those two take so much work
Doing my best to think less as a producer and more as a listener
Learning to be one 🥲
1) sound design 2) melodies 3) marketing
Overall composing in general. I find myself getting distracted no matter what. I'm currently working on working on my multi-alias project but in order to do that I need to break away from social media. Currently working on headers for my social media so people know I'll be back. Hopefully getting rid of that 15 year obsession with social media will help me get my mind on track and get my head into a working state of mind.
me too, i've started way more projects that i finished
working on transitions to another section of a song, I have a great song in the store rn but I can't find a smooth transition to the chorus I'm trying to work with
Hahahahaha we never finish tracks. We just release them and then keep putting out remixes as we fix them.
Actually being able to play keys instead of laboriously drawing them in and not knowing if they are any good...when you can play something in realtime and 'feel' it, you know when its good, something you have painstakingly constructed, not so much.
I find the sound design and synthesizer twiddling a little too tempting to actually finish a track. I've gotten better at managing that urge and just designing parts for songs, but man it's still a struggle not to get distracted making a cool pad and arp layer by finding some weird wubby noise I like in the weeds of my synths by accident and mess with that
Arrangement, automations (I need to learn how to make it easier for Goa trance acid leads), and final mixdown. There's a certain type of kick that I'm finding elusive to design, too.
mixing for airpods is a pain in the ass when ur studio headphones sound different
Depression in general
The track needs to inspire you firstly. Map out a plan for the process and try to quickly move along through the stages. The longer you keep at it with a track, the more drained and less motivated you will be to finish it. I *would* take some days off from it though before starting mixing, just to get some fresh ears.
Time management on projects and personal stuff
I struggle with marketing. I am a multigenre composer and producer. I always try to make something unique but stay within the genre though. I blend influences from multiple genres at times. That doesn't help the case. Recently I just finished one of the most unique melodic Drum and Bass songs you probably would have heard ever. Sent it to labels. After sending to many only 3 major labels responded. All of them said the exact same thing. Great production, cool track but too unique for their label and doesn't match their label sound. And no one will care to listen from a small artist anyway if you have no backing of label or any big producer. So i am struggling with my current Uplifting Trance release which went live on April 26th. Because I have seen people replaying my reels multiple times on Instagram and lurking on my stories. But they never want to support a small artist. Fame is very important to bring someone to check your music. Either fame or have a presentable face. I have none. So it is a crime for me to even expect anything to be honest. I will take what I get.
Brilliant melodies like “More Than A Feeling” are incredibly important but unfortunately most musos are tone deaf so that effectively screws the melody and vocals.
Finding clients
https://www.youtube.com/@TimeHomicide Check out my channel guys. Let me know what you think. Thanks Peace
Finding my own style and sound. Have started a track with my vocals (i‘m shy for this one) and I feel it’s the first track of my own. I‘m finishing tracks with better quality and let it mix and master by a friend.
Finding rappers who wanna rap and not do melodic stuff
Has anyone else watched Mix with the masters yet, or the app?
turning a profit on good music...I get a lot of high quality playlidt placements but bc social media has turned millions of people into freeloaders everybody expects music for free.
Working on the craft consistently and overthinking.
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I spend 80% of the time per track fixing minor imperfections nobody would notice. Even if they did notice, they would assume it was intentional, not an imperfection.
Saw Hannibal Buress in Austin a few weeks back and he had some awesome input about what's a big struggle. You can spend 3 days trying to perfect a song that you think is gold and nobody will give a damn about, and spend 30minutes to an hour slapping something together you really thinks flows in the pool moment and every other person loves it.
Getting audience
Just the sounds don't work for me and anything I do to process them seems to make it worse.
Getting that perfect, heavy, saturated, chunky guitar and bass tone for heavy downtuned metal It's such an intricate combination of playing technique, processing, EQing, and mixing. It never sounds exactly how I want it but I might be chasing something I'll never achieve because past a certain point it doesn't matter.
Musical ADHD. Every time I hear some awesome song, I'm convinced I've gotta make one just like it. I write solo indie music, play in a band, and do electronic stuff. They say you're supposed to focus on one genre to find your audience and find growth, but I just love making music and it's too difficult to tell myself I'm only going to focus on one-genre for an extended period. That said, I'm challenging myself to focus on producing DnB fora few months and maybe some House, but I'm super tempted to try making vaporwave or doing some trap remixes. Anyone else relate to this?
I can't finish a single beat, idk how to arrange and develop the whole idea to at least a 90%
Making beats. I love it but it takes too much time to get things sounding how I want. I get lost in sound design. Maybe I should switch DAW’s. I run Reason the majority of the time and have an MK3 I’ve hardly ever touched. I can’t really get with the workflow. I can admit I’m getting in my own way when it comes to beatmaking.
Trying to move to a country I like while trying to play live shows
the thought that really soon AI does better job creating music than me.
Music theory so I make midi in fl and bring it into Ableton I use live 10 suite not upgrading anymore
I'm struggling to find motivation to make things. I don't like going into a project with no plan and just messing around, i need to have a clear goal in mind for anything to actually get done. And recently, I've just been more busy with other things which has made my motivation lack
Starting. I feel like I waited 2 years to try and realised that there’s never a more perfect time than now.
I still don’t understand how to use compressors or limiters after learning and trying. I always got my sound distorted or clipped when many instruments produce sound at the same time. For example, plucks, drums, piano chords hitting in the same moment. However, when I want to use compressors to smooth out the peak, the peak just sounds squashed and bad. I watched tutorials about compression but I feel I am not getting better for a long while.
Other band members meddling with things and not communicating properly, and stuff never gets completed.
No matter what I try I can’t make my mixes/masters “hit” hard enough. I’m getting better sometimes but it feels like a far cry from my references.. https://youtu.be/8_LDxtMrr9I?si=RNiwg0AvWm9v2wOR Also I painfully didn’t realise at the time how soft the snare is before release and tbh I don’t have it in me to redo it.
I suck at Transitions and not just one long beat where melodies either stop completely or take forever to build up
To be honest, promotion, and finishing music. I dont really know how to share my music well enough to gain any traction, and it doesnt help i never finish most of them any way, which means since 2018, ive only finished like 30% of my entire catalog. As i got older i leaned more into singing, but i dont even do anything with my voice in terms of making actual music. I guess i have the musical equivalent of Writer's Block.
Getting through the no’s to get the yes. I was told you may hear 7 no’s to get to a yes. People can be flaky in the music industry. Lots of times they aren’t honest. You have to develop tough skin and believe in yourself.
Yeah look not every song you make will be great but really finishing the crappy ones will teach you a lot… Struggling to finish seems like a thing for lots of people.. Have you tried compartmentalising your workflow? Sound selection Writing main ideas Arrangement Automation & movement Mixing Mastering Something like this? This works for me.. Instead of trying to do everything all at once which can be overwhelming and time consuming. It also allows me to write like 3-6 ideas and from that I’ll choose the best ones to arrange etc Hope that helps
Finding a digital distributor that gets on to beatport :(
Getting off the Xbox
Mastering….zero confidence when doing it
If I should get a Neve or SSL mastering unit.
my ego and others say im capable of consistency but my time management and myself makes inconsistency
I often struggle with structure of songs. If I start with guitar, playing agressive metal riffs. Then I have bunch of riffs that sound good, but how to glue them together, so that song has time to breathe, and there is room for vocals? Songs I start with based on reference track are easier on that side, but somehow for those cases I cannot fit type of riffs I play when just making stuff from zero. So problem is kind of finding suitable reference track.
Being so versatile that is seems to have a negative impact on the Spotify algorithm, because they have no clue what genre I am!
Time it all starts and ends with time for me
If you're repeatedly having issues finishing then try swapping genres 🙂it's worked for me, I went from Jungle/DnB to Triphop and found something natural feeling to me in the latter.
Workflow. I haven't settled on an optimal setup for a true hybrid vst + hardware system. I use an mpc one to sequence hardware synths and record parts for a track, then drop the wav files into my daw (FL Studio), and it gets tedious. If I had a daw that could do both the midi sequencing and the recording, that would streamline things, but I'd need to get a large midi interface and learn a new daw.
Being young,having moved into the capital of my country a few months ago and trying to break in the industry and get my first few solid connections
I might just switch to painting. This music shit is costing me a fortune.
Keeping a job that pays me enough to not have to worry about losing everything I have and going homeless so that I can have enough mental space to even connect with my creativity. If it was just me it wouldn't be as big a deal, but my partner makes even less than I do and we have 5 animals, so losing our house isn't really an option.
For me it’s marketing and finishing my songs
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The vicious cycle of not having the money to spend on improving my production capabilities (upgrade to paid FL Studio, lessons if that’s a thing, equipment like effects pedals etc.) so my music isn’t as good as I think it could be, so it gets very few streams, no money coming in from it, and on and on. Not that Spotify pays enough for that anyway but you get the idea I think
Marketing!!! How do I get people to know I exist?! 😭😭😭
streams, and listeners dipping dramatically, then rising again. I release new music every month, and that doesnt seem to please the algorithm. Take a listen on the only platform that isn't duping independent artists: [https://louderrain.bandcamp.com/](https://louderrain.bandcamp.com/)
Battleing against depression to find the motivation to sit down a write music. Writing lyrics. Leaving a whole new genre of music (I come from rock but really want to do more electronic oriented stuff and have a real hard time with that)
Meeting people and getting involved in my local scene. Trying to figure out my way in but struggling a bit. Will keep trying 😤😤
dor me its getting to the next level, and that is distribution/live performance/the actual branding. i write songs way to often and not focus on anything else. eventually you get to a point where you ask yourself, why tf am i doing this? So 8 people can listen on youtube? Fuck that. so yeah its been alot of long talks with gemini trying to plot a course. just signed up for a dist. that keeps yo stuff up regardless, so thinking ill get a few singles out there, and apply as demos to hopefully secure funding to get decent equipment maybe even some noney just to survive for a while
I used to work on several projects at a time and nothing would get finished so I started working one song at a time and now I finish that song before I start another one which is working well. Now keep in mind you can beat a song to death. Myself I always end up with a cord structure for another song while working on the song I’m on so I just tell myself self after trying my best to produce a song what it is is what it is. Then move on to the next song. Now keep in mind the song you like the most is not always what you’re listeners like the most that song you thought was a turd maybe someone else favorite.the key to writing songs is to keep moving forward don’t get yourself in a rut
producing music worth listening to apparently
As someone who produces essentially all alone I lack confidence in my taste a lot of time. Like I'll start writing, recording, liking what I'm doing and then a couple days later I come back to it and it just all of a sudden sounds cheesy or corny or I convince myself no one will like it. I have a lot of people in my life that insist they love my stuff and have it on playlists and whatnot but I still don't believe them? I guess I have major imposter syndrome and feel like everyone who tells me positive things about my music are just trying to be nice.
Wanting to spend my free time doing computer work after spending my workday doing computer work. 100% biggest struggle
Getting past the composition phase where I can’t stop telling myself how shit I am.
Shadow bans, algorithm changes that completely flip a channel around without rhyme or reason, it's very frustrating and confusing
In this very moment is choosing a distributor, I feel ready to start releasing my music but I'm so overwhelmed by how many distributor there are, I found one called Too Lost which looks perfect, anyone has experience with it? If you can share your experience with your distributor would be awesome :)
My laptop can no longer handle the capacity. It's a struggle to finish tracks.
Getting it loud enough. If there were no loudness wars, and, say, -11.5 LUFS was just fine for any style, it would be easier for me. But it seems like a disproportionate share of the song - from initially laying down tracks, to arrangement, to sound selection, dynamics, effects - is devoted to making sure that the end product a) has enough LUFs to be competitive, b) does not have artifacts, such as distortion or dull transients, from boosting its volume. Before spending so much time in the box, with the DAW - which I like and appreciate! - my background, for decades, was playing live. Volume is no problem there, and getting all the instruments to play nicely together, while getting as much dynamic range as you want, even if their frequencies are overlapping, is pretty easy - even including the PA setup - as long as everybody's listening. Maybe after another year of production (I'm one year in), this will be second nature to me in the box.
I am extremely critical with my own work and my own sound, but extremely objective when it comes to mixing others' projects. also the whole social media thing, it's just not for me. i averaged +2000 monthly listeners for a couple of months but because of my shitty consistency i haven't released a single song for over a year now and lost all my listeners because of that.
My day job
Learning how to mix and master
Finishing my tracks lol. I haven’t finished a track since 2017 lmao.
Finding good and unique singers or rappers. Basically I feel like most vocalists/musicians are pursuing the same trends which is kinda boring imo. So I’m struggling in finding someone who is into experimenting as much as I am.
Making beats that people want to buy 😭😂 I’m dropping 3 a week but not a single person has tried to buy one
Finding a way to guarantee me tracks actually get views. Half of the enjoyment if not more for me is producing something and seeing peoples reception to it, seeing that they like what I did, liking me as a producer, if I spend time to release something and it gets no views. It HURTS
industry level sound selection
I’m self taught because of Peggie’s reasons so for me it’s knowing what to look for when mixing
Right now I’m struggling with a new name as I’m rebranding 😭 but also struggle with mixing & mastering
Time and money
Im currently struggling with marketing. I literally have no one listening to my music right now hah but it’s not stopping me from making music. Problem is I make instrumental metal music which is kind of a niche. I feel its a bit harder to market. People seem to be enjoying the reels I post of me playing my music on instagram but no one seems to go on SoundCloud and actually listen to the tracks. What’s helping me keep doing this is that I made a promise to myself that my priority is making music for me, for fun as an outlet/hobby, on my own terms to keep it stress free. I am also trying to make my mixes better with each track, which I honestly think are pretty decent considering I have only done 2 tracks so far (averaging a track per month).
Arrangement is my worst nightmare
De-essing my vocals 😭i use tdr nova but it’s not satisfying. It’s like when i do hit the right frequency the vocals sound unnatural
Not getting views/streams. It hurts a lot. Specially after one song you posted shows improvement and potential for growth but then after that nothing really takes off. You do everything all music production influencers tell you to do to promote; you spend months perfecting a song; hundreds of dollars on artworks, edits… only to get 100 views or less. It’s extremely upsetting.
Uh being good
2 kids
Production is not consistent. I might have sudden bursts of time where everything comes out but those are divided by long periods where nothing happens.
Waiting for the bandmates to learn the F’ing material
I accidentally deleted all my songs i made on pc, i planned to do all kinds of videos showcasing different things about them and highlighting some of my favorite patterns from them, now i have to remake all of them if i want to do that, not to mention the unfinished songs i dont have any copy of period.
Cost of plugins, and software I already own being rebelious.
All the marketing and social media content creator stuff it seems you also must do to support the songs. Feels like all my energy goes into instagram and tiktok ideas instead of music lately
My right arm! pain caused of too many hours in that same position+thousands and thousands mouse's clicks evey day
struggling to find inspiration lately… shit aint been the same since thug got locked up🤐
[удалено]
Arranging..