How did you progress, at want speed?

Kaz1983

Member
Joined
Feb 27, 2010
The thing is it feels like I'm learning to produce for 10 months, I haven't made a 'finished' tune yet - I have two 75 percent finished tunes and I know that isnt bad ------- that said when I sit at my desk looking at my DAW I end up focusing one element of the track and not progressing as I FOCUS on 1 element at a time ---I'm not sure weather that is good or bad... First of I was using all my time trying to learn my Synth ... Then I focused on getting the right pads and FX's working together and now I'm focusing on layering and chopping up old breaks to put over my drums and EQ'ing them properly....

I can work 5 hours a day quite easily -mainly cos I have the time to- but lately I've starting to think what have I got to show for all my time spend on learning producing, not that I care or anything -it just crossed my mind of late .... anyway: I suppose it comes down to make tunes from the get go and learn at the same time OR weather focusing on different elements is better done 1 at a time... if that makes sense........... also seeing also as I mentioned cause I have alot of spend time because I don't need to work atm, I find myself wasting time fucking around -I mostly guilty of listening to what ever I making too much. next though I'm going work on high hat patterns.... I think.

I know if I keep at it, it will just all come together in the near future, this is the type of stuff I'd like to produce.. (; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JcRzpqEsMM .... basically Original Sin's 'Grow Your Wings' Album....

I have a track I'm working on atm but I feel like I want to pack it, that said there is some real potential there for it to be a nice track --I'm starting to think I might find myself coming back to this track in a couple of years and polish it off, as all the structure is there and my ideas for the way I want the track to progress etc etc...

Anyway how long did it take you guys to finish your first track from the first kick drum to completing the mixdown of it? And the result sounding the way you wanted it to _----------------?

EDIT; let me add I've been listening to dnb for 10 years now, so that isn't helping... it is in my head, I know it back to front but just can put on 'paper'
 
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alright mate! ive been a bit of a fool when it comes to this production thing walking into it thinking it would be easy and posted tracks within a couple of weeks on these forums. im finding out that its a lot effing harder than i thought im spending almost 10 hours a day as im not intrested in working for "the man" anymore and although im learning fast its becoming more dificult as im never happy with what i produce. but saying that i reckon its a good idea to ask for some feedback and help on forums regardless so post your tracks up that you think your almost complete.

i doubt id spend years polishing of a single track but that may mean ill never get really good at it and you may, i take a more experimental aproach to it i cant stand structure so right now im messing around with different drum patterns but at same time i always try to make a track weekly and sometimes they sound good most of the time not. mastering is also something im trying to figure out just now.

anyway to answer your question i started a track 3 weeks ago and ive been tweaking it here n there after some help from guys in here and im not happy with it so far to call it finished but i think mabye three months down line after ive figured some more of this out id be able to call it finished although some may disagree :/
 
a nice simple response to your wall of text from me personally would be;

dont sweat it, just make music, how ever you want, go through whatever processes you want to, just keep doing it, dont concentrate on finishing tracks, this early in the game its just not important, and you wont ever be 100% happy with your tracks, and if you are then maybe you have problems : p

sounds like you might just be over thinking everything, its really easy to do when its on your mind for hours a day, try not thinking about it so much, in the end, think why you wanted to make music in the first place, enjoy it, dont stress over it, everything will develop in its own time, it just takes practice and a long damn time!

as for what speed do others progress, its really irrelevant and wont really help your cause, imo.
 
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Easily over a hundred random unfinished project files all over the place from my first two or so years.
Sure feels nice to actually finish something, but the first years are always about actually gaining the experience to do so.

Just take it easy and keep up the good work.

~Shades out.
 
yeah man, dont pressure yourself. Ive been doing it for 5 years and havnt had a track released!!
at the end of the day u just got to enjoy what you can do whilst keeping your head down... once you put some serious time in you can just look at the progress and feel satisfied.. but it can take fucking ages to get good.. it just depends who you are!!

try not to sweat it, just do what you can do and do it for the love and youll get some love back!! dont get too far ahead of yourself :)
 
If your using Reason 4 check out www.boyinabdand.com for the absolute best tutorials, if not, random youtube stuff will have to do.

but anyways, all my stuff was complete shit (prolly still is, lol) , but once you see that you have the ideas of basic rhythm and a funky melody/baseline you see that your old stuff was really actually genius.

More important is to develop good monitoring ears, be nice to them, don't go to loud punk rock concerts, and don't blast your ear buds/iPod. Maby try going our side and picking out where a specific sound is coming from, how far away, what kind of dynamics is has, is it muffled, what note on the piano is it?
 
A tip I'd like to give you is, don't compare your development speed with others either and then feel bad about it, like Luciduk said, people are different, some people are more capable of obtaining large amounts of information more easily than others, and peoples workflow is different as well, for instance, i like to work fast, yet where a friend of mine likes to work slower. Also, some people just have a better musical ear.
Just work, and progress with your own speed, and stop worrying about anything else, just make them sweet beats, and have fun.

For instance, some people learn things quicker, i've been only producing for 8 months and i'm coming up with tracks like these...


If you enjoy what you do more, and stop worrying about stuff. It'll come naturally, atleast it does for me. Plus the time you spend on worrying, could have been used to make a sweet reese instead.
 
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I have about 500 unfinished project files right now. Most of them are Drum & Bass and Hiphop.
I started producing Drum & Bass around 2008, released an free downloadable album called Twisted Minds on my own website on January the 1th, 2009.
Got a lot of good responses on the album, the only thing was the mastering wasn't quite right at that time.
So I spend a year and a half on mastering and mixdown tutorials, articles and video's and I got much better.

Now finishing more tracks, but I spend more time on each individual track. I can spend 5 months on a track till I'm satisfied! :D
 
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I deffo prefer to work on the slow side, Im the sort who goes over what they post here and other places more than a few times for example - checking for spelling errors and sentance structure etc etc -Im being serious, sometimes I wish I could post on these forums faster but I always seem to want things to be 'perfect' and all before I hit 'SEND REPLY' ... It's the same with other things in life as well, Im a perfectionist or at least try to be and you know what, I hate it -I wish I could do something on the fly without double -then triple thinking is this 'perfect' kinda thing. .... so yeah it is me that is the problem here in some ways, who has to change ---I just need to know just because the audio samples and such aren't lined perfectly and neatly on my screen -it is OK, after all it is NOT an art competition is it.... cheers for the replies.......
 
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Yeah, I understand that last post. The clinical visual element of the D.A.W messes with me too. This whole 'making sound with my eyes' thing is taking a lot longer (year and a half...so far) than I expected to get the hang of. I find it slightly un-natural.

But yeah, lot of good responses here. As long as you can see a progression in your work over time then that's gotta be encouraging.
 
its taken me over 10 years to get to a point where my tunes sound like they do in my head. progress has been sloowwwww and soo full of pitfalls. ive been focused on things that do not matter at all 99% of the time, usually because i read it somewhere (for a long time i was like fuck the high end. who cares about the high end? which made the songs sound pretty amateur) and held that for gospel. but i see it as a life long thing, its going to be like this for pretty much ever.
 
Yeah I'm producing for almost 11 years now and since 2 years I enjoy listening to my own music.
It took me a long way until I started bobbing my head to my own tunes, but hey it was worth it.
And I'm still learning every day when working on a track, lately I've been checking out several DAW's other than FL Studio and it made me feel good. :D
I'm satisfied with what I produce in Reason now, but not with the stuff I know about Cubase. So I'm now checking out Cubase 5 since I always use Cubase for my mastering.
 
No matter how good you get, you'll still be progressing. If I was you I'd try to make full tracks instead of leaving them at 75%, then you can listen to it as a full track and think "yeah, next time I'll try and make the drums tighter" etc
 
We have been producing now for 4 years and there is still SO much that we are needing to learn
firstly imo id concentrate on actually finishing a track, that way your creative flow is still moving nicely

Worrying about mixdowns etc at too early a stage can easily disrupt your flow and stop you finishing music IMO of course

Its great that you are willing to spend time on synths and learning about processing etc you will learn a lot faster that way. but as i say imo it can stop you from finishing tunes, which is really what you were saying is happening

I think it took us at least 3 years before we became happy with our mixdowns and learned how our monitors sound and how "our sound" is percieved

On coming back to tunes later....Definately a must, our first vinyl release Confessions was a track that we had an idea for but bascially wasnt skilled enough yet to achieve what we wanted. Left it a year and it bascially wrote itself, got signed and was out on vinyl 6 months later
 
No matter how good you get, you'll still be progressing. If I was you I'd try to make full tracks instead of leaving them at 75%, then you can listen to it as a full track and think "yeah, next time I'll try and make the drums tighter" etc

Cracking advice from Roadrunner21 again... We spent ages starting new tracks rather than seeing out the current. It almost feels like ideas wasted now and because of that we have shaped our techniques to suit.

We started out dj'ing together from school, made the decision to move into production and bought an MPC2000 and a Tascam M1600 mixer... there was no ableton then... or any decent pc's either, unless you won the lottery... if they started it by then???

It schooled us unlike any software and for a while we even fought the pc saying it wasn't for us. Try saving 100mb of sample on an S5000 at 1 in the morning when you have to be up for work at 6 and tell me hitting save in pro tools isn't better! lol We have a good setup now and have the knowledge to match but still learning everyday. You'll learn your weakness' but 10 months in... I'd call you a virgin!!! 12 years and still producing... in it for life... loving every minute!

Every hour spent trying, is an hour your improving... keep at it bruv, looking forward to hearing the results!

Peace


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Lee Fury & JTB
http://soundcloud.com/biteandgouge
 
I've been playing drums for two years (almost exactly), and can now play some complicated breakbeats and jungle stuff at 160bpm and it doesn't sound too bad I guess. Good enough for jamming and having fun with.

I'll give it another year or two to get a bit tighter, and another year or two to add some groove and interesting fills. Probably will start to play for an audience somewhere in there. It's interesting to compare my progress to the guys producing using computers, as they're progressing roughly at the same speed, ie, give it a couple of years before you can play your music on front of a crowd.

I practice for an hour each day, some forum producers are at it 10 hours a day, so they'll obviously progress faster :P
 
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