I enjoy photography and I NEVER bin anything. You can find worth in old, out-of-focus or badly composed “junk” images even if it’s only as a texture or a colour palette inspiration.
1 year is not a serious. I make music for 15 years or something and it take me 13 to make decent track. So 1 year you are in not position to ask these type of questions. But of course you can ask whatever
Going to start out saying I’ve been making some kind of music since 1994/95 with a roland s-50, a mac, and either opcode or cubase.
I’ve always approached music as something that I had to do, regardless of how good or bad the end result was. I will say that at times it saddens me that some of the stuff i’ve done hasn’t really been streamed as much as i would hope (i’m my own biggest fan apparently), but when i start with wanting to make myself happy with my musical expression, it’s a little easier to swallow. If i was doing it for the number of streams, likes, follows, etc then i’d feel really discouraged (but it’s not like i put any effort into promotion). My best advice is start by doing it for you so that you are happy with it.
I’ll pause with it honestly. I typically work on a track and get all the ideas i can think of at the time into it. then i’ll lay down what i see for the track with a rough sketch. sometimes it’s just the intro, sometimes it just the main track and i have to find an intro and outro, etc etc. so when i run out of ideas i stop. I’ll come back and listen to them on other days to see if it sparks creativity/joy/whatever. over focus on it can limit creativity instead of expanding it. I’ve had plenty of times where i open a track i’d worked on and delete aspects from it because it just isn’t working. I also find coming back in with a fresh set of ears allows me to hear things that might not be working as well as I thought.
kinda a long way of saying, it happens, and the best thing to do is pause on a track when you hit that point when creating it. But I can totally relate. happens to me a lot. for instance right now i’m sitting on 6 tracks i’ve put ideas down in the last week instead of picking something that needs refinement. but these new tracks have educated me on something that i can use on those other tracks. which can help with getting tracks that fit together for an ep, etc.
most of us want to say this because those plugins, effects, synths can offer the creative explorations that finish a track, but most of the time you already have everything you already need, you just need to know how to use it. For instance I have very few plugins and use them rarely because I’ve found Ableton Live offers me everything I really need. Spent the last few days really playing around with the Chance % feature of midi notes and feel like i’ve unlocked some great things. Used it before but not to this level.
I don’t think of them as abandoned; i think of them as little explorations that didn’t result in a full idea. however they serve as a bit of my own personal library. so when i’m working on something else, sometimes i’ll go mine for a bit that i really liked in something else. I don’t have a hard and fast rule on when something is considered an archive for use instead of an idea to pursue, but using something “as is” from something that hasn’t developed into a full idea is a good indication.