I’ve been producing for about a year and I’ve been experiencing some anxiety about the creative process. I was wondering if anyone else has been “suffering for their art” and how you deal with it.
In no particular order…
If you’ve spent many hours crafting the next megahit and you get a handful of streams, how do you stop being hopelessly despondent about making more music? Is it worth the effort for what would appear to be very little return?
How do you stop running out of enthusiasm when crafting a track? After a few hours of listening to the same thing over and over, I get ear blind. All I want to do is to move on to the next thing and make something new. I know you shouldn’t, but I start cutting corners and I know I could release something better but it’s the law of diminishing returns.
The track only needs one more plugin/effect/synth and it’ll be great! No, it won’t, and that’s another track that’ll never see the light of day and should have been canned ages ago.
I’m not about to give up production any time soon. I enjoy the process up to a point but all or some of the above takes over and I can feel my enthusiasm waning. A wise man one said that art is never finished, it’s abandoned. At what point should your latest project be abandoned? And how do you know when that time has come?
I’ve been making music for over 20 years (I started really young) and at least in my case, it never goes away. There are always pitfalls, slumps and roadblocks and depending on how deeply you invest yourself in it, you’ll often question your sanity. Or at least that’s what I do. Nothing is ever truly finished, either. And it’s almost guaranteed never “good enough” by our own standards.
One thing I’ll say for sure though is that your values and what you place importance on might shift in some really unexpected ways, depending on how far you delve into music production or things related to it. There are so many rich areas full of depth and new avenues to explore, if you’re open to them. But you might also develop even larger blindspots to others in the process. Sometimes it feels like the more you learn, the less you really know.
But I guess a lot of things are like that in life. Somehow it continues to give us meaning, through the frustration, mysterious strokes of creativity and everything in between. Whatever feeling you have right now will reverse, and then that will reverse, almost infinitely. If you’ve been feeling unenthusiastic about it for a while, I can almost guarantee the magic will return right when you decide it’s not for you anymore. Or I’m just weird.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned (on a more concrete level) is that we often only have one mix in us, which is likely a combination of factors involving our ideal sound, what we’re capable of, and how our brain perceives what we’re making. A lot of producers can deconstruct an entire track, remix the entire thing from scratch, and end up with results that are nearly indistinguishable by their peers. In fact, I see it on the internet time and time again.
It’s important to remember that a lot of the small tweaks and details just don’t matter, and in a lot of cases (I listen to a shitload of rock and metal) the mix doesn’t even matter much at all. Really, being able to effectively communicate musical ideas and make people feel something deep within them boils down to decent songwriting, whether we like to tell ourselves otherwise or not.
I suppose it’s what your main motivation is for doing it. I don’t want to be rich and/or famous, I’m too old. If you’re in it purely for the money then it’s pointless these days - nobody wants to pay for music any more, unless you can forge a career doing technical studio work, live performance, music for the gaming industry or ad-hoc composition commissions.
If you enjoy the process of creating and learning then that should be reward enough. If you CAN make some money then it’s a bonus.
I might be wrong, but I’ve always kind of believed that traditionally, art has always been somewhat undervalued (maybe for good reason?) and hasn’t really been profitable for 99.9% of artists anyway, so there might only be one reason for doing it at the end of the day: because for whatever reason, we enjoy the creative process.
I’ve learned to just enjoy the process, there will (and should be) many abandoned ideas. Most of your work shouldn’t see the light of day.
It is so worth putting things in a drawer, so to speak, and coming back to them months later. There is no way around ear blindness. As long as you have the main idea down, no need to mix the track immediately.
I think something else that may help is trying to develop a workflow in which you only write/arrange songs until you’ve nailed the arrangement. Especially in electronic music there is a common tendency to mix while still arranging/writing. This is a creativity killer imho.
I do all my writing/arranging on one sampler and I don’t bounce the audio to my DAW until the writing is 90% done. The limitations of the sampler versus the endless possibilities of the DAW help me a lot too. This is the way I’ve separated writing from mixing. But it isn’t the only way.
I also like having a sampler because like a guitar or another instrument you can get joy from just noodling. Personally, I don’t feel like I can noodle on/in a DAW. I’m always throwing together beats and mashing them up against other dance tunes, playing with loops etc on my DJ setup.
For end results, you can’t beat a DAW. For getting joy out of the process it is hard to beat a standalone physical instrument.
When to abandon something is a skill and an instinct that comes with time. I would say these days I trash a lot of ideas in less than 3 hours put into it. Also, storage is cheap. Save
everything. Sometimes I go back to old projects and pull out a few cool elements and bring them into a new project and do something completely different with them.
As Manton said, all great questions. I’ll do my best to give my perspective on each. Hopefully some of it is helpful, I’m just sorta winging it here.
This all depends on what you are expecting the returns to be honestly. I’m very modest as far as expectations go, usually a few positive comments is sufficient for me honestly. I’ve never done this for anything other than my own enjoyment and to push myself to grow. That’s pretty much it. I just do this because I enjoy it. Anything that comes after is just a bonus. So that’s how it’s worth it to me.
That being said. Some times feel more hopeless than other times. I’ll see accounts and artists with more plays, more interaction, more publicity and think “man, my stuff is at least as good as this if not better, and my sound design and songwriting is more interesting. what the fuck do they have that I don’t?” Or i’ll have crazy writers block, or i feel like each idea is just garbage from the start, etc etc.
I don’t have a good answer here, but i know that for me, even if i feel like that sometimes, at some point I always want to get back at it, and then i end up doing something i like and having a lot of fun. So i guess just hang in there as best you can during those times and it will come back.
It’s kind of up to us individually to check in with ourselves and ask why we’re doing what we do. If you want more plays and more engagement, in this day and age you kinda start needing to know how to leverage the systems we have, like social media, or by doing networking. I think it’s ok to want that, it’s just a lot of work, as there is so much noise now from other creators that it’s hard to stand out.
I don’t. Running out of enthusiasm happens all the time. Sometimes i’m just tired of hearing my track, or sometimes I don’t know where to take something. This seems like a curse, but I think it’s a good thing. It either means that the track isn’t worth pursuing, or its not the right time for that track yet. It’s a balance though, you dont want to give up too quickly. My sort of mental guideline is that if i’ve spent more time listening to a WIP than i have actively working to expand on it, it’s time to move on, if only for now, to something else in the meantime.
That abandonment of an idea, wether temporary or permanent, keeps me from trying to force something that doesn’t belong in that track. Normally, I find that if you’re in sync with the track, the track itself tells you what it needs, not the other way around. I like to try and find that zone and stay there. At least, thats how i feel about it.
It’s ok to abandon ideas. It’s not like it’s totally off the table, it’s just pushed to the side, ready to be explored at a later time.
An example that comes to mind: I think my most surprise track on Nulla Anima was a track i had started and “abandoned” like a year ago called Xylk. It was essentially nothing, and I didn’t know what to do with it. But with new context that idea turned into one of the most interesting tracks on the EP.
Yeah, that’s a tempting idea. More is better right? Over the years, i’ve found that my most simple ideas always turn out the best. It’s when i try to do too much or force things that tracks start to loose their soul. I think it’s better to start small and simple, and keep the density low. I want stuff that makes sense, not just sound for the sake of sound. I feel like this is part experience and hearing it in your head first, but i think it’s mostly intuition.
Really listen to your work, and ask yourself, “Do I really like this? Would I be proud to put this out? is this interesting and engaging?”. If you have any doubts, that’s a sign that something is wrong. Trust your gut and be honest. Again, let the track tell you what it needs.
I think i already talked about abandonment enough above, so hopefully some of that is helpful. Again, it’s ok to abandon things. There is no right or wrong time either. Just trust your instincts. Be honest. Good tracks and good progress will come, but only if the creative outlet is not being blocked by remnants of ideas and the need to force things.
For what it’s worth, I always enjoy your music, and think you’ve got a knack for it. Just hang in there, even if nothing is flowing right now. At some point it will, and by then you’ll just be better for any efforts you made prior, whether successful or not.
My boy is crying in his crib now, so thats all i got. No more edits before i post. Hopefully it all makes sense.
I think this is very true. If you stop enjoying the process then move on.
Maybe art is undervalued because it’s not perceived as being a “proper” job by the majority. Art developed as people had more down time when their technology developed; they spent less time trying to survive because their hunter/gathering/agricultural methods became more efficient. If you spend all day pursuing a creative career and don’t come home with dirty hands, looking and feeling exhausted and needing a hot bath then you’re not viewed as doing anything useful or productive.
You do WHAT for a living? Not a proper job, is it?.. [sound like my dad.]
I spend a lot of time in Photoshop and I see parallels with photography here.
I always think that a lousy photograph can be made into an average image with Photoshop’s filters and plugins. It’ll never be great if the original is blurred, badly exposed or has little artistic merit. On the other hand, an image that tells a story or elicits an emotion can be turned into something great. A poor song or concept is like the former, a good one, as you say, is down to decent song writing.
Great response with lots of interesting and important points to think about.
If you look at really successful people they never give up or constantly reinvent themselves and try over and over (or get lucky, have rich parents or are well connected.)
It seems to me that the universe conspires to shoot us down about 5 minutes before the big break comes knocking. Only another 5 minutes to go… Rinse, repeat.
Not true actually, we keep finding earlier and earlier cave paintings, some of them are like 50,000 years old. And it’s not just one or two caves either, these things are dotted all over the world and pop up within this 20,000 year timespan well before humans started doing agriculture and staying in settlements.
There are arguments to be made that these might have functioned as a sort of rudimentary map, but then you see handprints imprinted all over the walls that would have no place on a map, and it seems like this was not just some attempt at a practical cave decoration. I’m not an anthropologist, so I’m not the one to dive deep into this topic, but art as a human concept seems to predate civilization as we know it, so I’m pretty confident in saying it’s not just something we started because we had spare time from advancements in society.
I’ll throw my answers on the pile; they’re passingly similar to everyone else’s.
What do you want in return? Satisfaction of a job well done? Work at it until you’re satisfied. Praise and adoration? Has less to do with artistry that we’d like to admit, it’s about exposure and marketing to the people that like what you’re making. Money? That’s exposure and marketing plus tapping the zeitgeist and a ton of luck. I personally feel like there’s a pretty distinct line between something you do as a hobby and something you do as a job. The expected return on a hobby is a sense of accomplishment and possibly community, on a job, it’s about paying for things. Paying for things is great, but for me personally tying up a thing that’s done for fun with money is a weird mental space that doesn’t lead to good outcomes, so I keep them separate.
This answer and mindset is really key to everything downstream of it. Get your head around why you’re making music, remember it, and everything else falls into place.
Like everyone else says, you don’t. I don’t think, as humans, we can control being excited about anything, it’s a low-level and visceral reaction. If you’re jazzed about a track, that’s an intimate emotional response. If you’re cold on making a track, you can’t really control that - you can force yourself to hammer away and maybe you come full circle and start to love it again, but in that moment you’re not enjoying it and it’s okay to put it down for awhile (or forever) or just keep going and hope things turn around. I think that’s really down to the individual and having the experience to know where your head’s at with an idea. Try it both ways, but don’t discount the benefit of taking a little time off of an idea to gain perspective. Assuming you’re not doing this to keep the lights on, you have a lifetime to come back and revisit it.
Way too broad a brush. There are too many different styles and workflows and concepts to say that with any degree of accuracy. Some music has literally hundreds of tracks with incredible complexity and it’s magical and amazing. Some only have a few and they work just as well. It really depends on what you’re going for. The real key here is to develop an intuition about your personal workflow and ideas and know when you’re going overboard. It mostly just takes time to figure out when you’re going off the rails.
For me, it’s when the project is 1) not doing what I envision and I don’t see a path of how to get it there and 2) if I’m not enjoying myself and I know from experience if I keep hammering on that idea I’m just wasting my time.
Out of all the responses in this thread, this resonates with me the most:
We live in this magical time of creation where a $200 drive can save everything you’ll ever create musically. That’s amazing and helpful and shouldn’t be overlooked. Most everything you’ll ever create started with an idea, and the seed of that idea is somewhere in there. Just because it didn’t work the first (or second or third) time, doesn’t mean it’s not valid. Being able to go back to unfinished projects or ideas is an absolute gold mine with the bright light of experience and time in between.
To speak a little more to “what do you want to get out of it” – I just speak from my own experience – making dance music, if I can make a track and have it fit well in a DJ mix of my own with songs by other artists whose work I like, that does a lot for me.
Fascinating reply; I stand corrected! Maybe I’m biased because I’ve retired and have access to Tesco.
Seriously though, I wonder if we are driven create because we’re the only organism that’s aware of its own mortality? After procreation, we can make an impact on the future beyond death by making things that outlive us. Probably.