How To Write More Music – In this blog I’ll discuss my top techniques and tips to write more music, and finish your songs! No matter how far along the music journey we are, we can all struggle with finishing the songs we have started. Sometimes when we first start writing/producing, it can be very easy to look at your idols and wonder how they can churn so much music out. In this blog we will discuss our top tips to get you writing music faster, and to start finishing your songs consistently.
1. Production Reports
A production report is basically a review of the music you have written, mixed, or produced. To do this, either grab a pen and paper, or even better open up a program you can type into (I highly recommend Evernote). The next thing you want to do is hit play on your recording, and simply list everything you don’t like, need to change, what sounds bad or what doesn’t work. The key here is to listen all the way through as it will give you complete context.
The reason why this is so good is because most people listen back to their work in its entirely. They notice something they don’t like and instantly go to fix it. The problem with this is, it’s like falling down a rabbit hole. You instantly forget everything else you wanted to fix. You also may not get the chance to listen to the piece in its entirety, which then doesn’t give you proper context. Instead now you are going to have a list of things you want to work on and any ideas for the track. Your not going to forget them cause they are written down.
2. Limit Your Options
This one can have a huge impact on not just on your productivity but also your creativity. With DAWs we can have so many sample packs, presets and instruments, that sometimes we spend half of our time just searching for sounds.
However, if you choose to limit your samples and instruments you’ll be forced to come up with new ideas and get even more creative. For example, I was bored with Ableton and my producing slowed down as I spent more and more time searching for instruments and samples. I ended up deciding to only create with my Elektron Digitakt + only 6 drum samples. This forced me to record my vocals and guitar lines into the Digitakt. The Digitakt also has only 2 effects (reverb + delay) so I couldn’t spend forever messing around with effects. In the end I produced 2 different songs in 1 night.
A few limiting ideas
Only use 8 samples, or 1 drum kit
Try using only 1-2 synths
Limit yourself to 8 audio/midi tracks
Only use 4 chords
Perhaps try all of these ideas at once? You’ll be amazed at how creative you become.
3. Accept Your Music Will Sound Bad
It may be hard to hear this, but no matter how good you become at music, no matter how successful you are, you are going to write bad music. The crazy thing is, you’re probably going to write more bad music than good, but you will also write amazing music. Once you accept that not every song is going to be amazing, or sound exactly how you were expecting, you will naturally stop obsessing over making it “sound right” or “work” and you will just finish it. This is something you will have to remind yourself forever, I for one, still get caught up on a song sounding bad and try to fix it. If it sounds bad, just finish it and forget about it.
4. Commit to finishing
This one everyone struggles with and is the key to actually finishing your music. It’s obvious, but we often overlook it. Simply put, you need to commit to finishing your songs. It is so easy, to fall out of love with an idea or loop and want to start fresh and make something new. Or sometimes we we don’t like the track, abandon it, and start writing a new song. The problem with constantly abandoning songs is that you don’t get to practice every step of the songwriting process.
You will become really good at generating ideas, but you will begin to lack finishing them and mixing them. Even if you don’t like the song, you may like it in a couple of months, or you may be able to show it to a singer who loves it and wants to purchase it from you. I have stacks of tracks, fully produced and finished just sitting on my hard drive. They probably will never be heard, but finishing them improved many of my skills.
So when you think of abandoning the song, commit to finishing, and you will soon get into the habit of finishing more tracks.
Conclusion
I hope this helped you, and do not be afraid to reach out if you have any questions 🙂 If you’d like One-to-One music production lessons, then check out our Ableton Live Lessons. Good luck writing and producing your music! Much Love, Zak
Ableton Live shortcuts are incredibly useful and speed up your workflow. They are definitely worth learning, but can be tricky to remember. In this blog we list our favourite Ableton Live Shortcuts, what they do, & we also provide a free 1920 x 1080 Ableton Live Shortcut poster so you don’t have to go googling when you forget the shortcuts.
Our favourite Ableton Live Shortcuts. This poster is free (see at the bottom of this page)
What does each shortcut do?
Duplicate Pretty simple this one, anything selected will be duplicated. This works on audio tracks, midi tracks, midi clips, and audio clips. Really handy when you have a 4 bar loop of audio samples and you want to create a 16 bar loop. Simply select all of the audio clips and hit CMD +D (for Mac) or CNTRL + D (for windows). Its important to remember it will duplicate EVERYTHING SELECTED, that means if you have empty space selected it will also duplicate the empty space. Therefore make sure your clips are consolidated, from the beginning of the bar (or bars) to the end of it, perfectly. This is the same with midi notes.
Slice/Split This cuts a midi clip or audio track from wherever you have selected. For example, lets say you have a 1 bar hi-hat progression, with each hi-hat hitting on every 16th note, but you don’t like one of the notes, rather then starting again, you can easily remove one by slicing the clip and removing it. Simply click the mouse where ever you want to split the clip and hit CMD + E (for Mac) and CNTRL + E (for Windows).
Toggle Session/Arrangement View This will let you move between the two different windows of Ableton. Really handy when you are doing a mix down and don’t have two screens.
Show/Hide Automation This feature was added with Ableton Live 10 and was a much welcome upgrade. To see all of the automation across all instruments, simply hit A. You have to make sure the computer midi keyboard mode is turned off. You can do that by hitting M, when computer midi keyboard mode is on, a little keyboard in the top right hand side of the screen will be yellow, when it is off, it won’t be lit up at all.
Toggle Pencil Simply hit B and you will be able to use the pencil. The pencil is really useful when you quickly want to draw in midi data, or draw in automation.
Group After duplicate this is probably our most used shortcut. This shortcut works on audio tracks, midi tracks and audio effects. If you have multiple audio effects on an instrument, being able to quickly hear how much those effects are changing the sound is crucial in any stages of the music making process. Simply select all of the audio effects by holding SHIFT and clicking the effects. Then hit CMD + G (Mac) or CNTRL + G (Windows). This will put all the effects into an audio effect rack. Now if you turn off the audio effect rack, it will turn off all the effects at once. Super handy! You can also use the shortcut to group instruments. This is the same as creating a submix or buss in Pro Tools. This is very handy when mixing, simply because if you like how all of your percussive instruments sound together (volume wise), but your percussion is a little too loud compared too the rest of the instruments in the track, you can group your percussion instruments together and pull down the volume of the group, which will ultimately reduce the overall volume of ALL the percussion instruments.
New Audio Track Pretty simply this one, simply hit CMD + T (for Mac) or CNTRL + T (for Windows) in order to create a new audio track.
New Midi Track Basically the same as above, but instead creates a new midi track. For this one, hold SHIFT then press CMD + T (Mac) or CNTRL + T (Windows).
New Midi Clip This one is for the Midi lovers. To create a midi clip in the arrangement view. Simply select the area of where you want the new midi clip to go. Then hit Shift + CMD + M (for Mac) or Shift + CNTRL + M (for windows).
Consolidate Probably our 3rd most used shortcut. Consolidating basically turns multiple individual midi or audio clips into 1 single clip. Really handy and saves CPU power. Simply hit CMD + J (for Mac) or CNTRL + J (for Windows)
Rename A good producer is an organised producer. Naming your audio tracks and midi instruments correctly is vital for efficiency and especially important when collaborating. Don’t be afraid to give an instrument a long name, and try be descriptive. This is so if you need to export the stems out and send them to another producer, they will know exactly what the instruments are. For example Open_Hi-Hat_LongTail_Left. Or the abbreviated version O_HH_LT_L
You can also rename midi clips, which is awesome for when you want to quickly remember a chord progression. I’ll usually do this if I have a complicated chord progression, and I don’t want to double click the midi clip to see what notes I was using, OR when I have converted it to an audio track and wont be able to see the notes anymore. Simply select the audio/midi clip hit CMD + R (Mac) or CNTRL + R (Windows) then type in your chord progression. I’ll usually write the chord name, plus its roman numeral. For example. Gmaj7 (I) – Dmaj7 (V) – Bmin7 (iii) – Amin7 (ii)
Stack New Clips In New Audio Tracks This one is really handy when needing to import a heap of stems. When you are importing a bunch of stems, you want them to simply stack on top of each other so they are all lined up at the same spot. However without using this shortcut, they will all display one after another, on the same track. To utilise this shortcut select all your tracks, hold down CMD (Mac) or CNTRL (Windows) and drag your clips into the bottom of your session (while in arrangement view). Then release CMD or CNTRL before you release the mouse. Ableton will then add each clip to its own track.
