How much time do you spend making a track?

First I would like to ask how much time you spend on average making a track? 45 minutes? Two weeks…. a month?

There are many ways to write and produce songs. And you might have another method that works best for you. But this is the method I use when I have deadlines and know I need to produce quality songs on time.

And for me this songwriting process definitely works!

How can we finish songs faster?

Producing songs can be really painful. With all the distractions (read: plugins, apps, DAWs, sample libraries) it’s easy to get overwhelmed, and ultimately lost in the process. It’s like art, if you begin with the details you loose track of the big picture.

That’s why painters always makes sketches and block in key components before going into the refined details. A professional painter have a very clear process to work out the final art piece.

Below is me blocking in the major parts of an elephant painting (drafting). Then to the right we have the detail painting (production).

The three step process to finishing songs faster

First I divide my songwriting process into three distinct steps:

1. Focus
2. Drafting
3. Production

Before we get going with the actual songwriting we need to find our focus to be able to channel our inspiration. This is not some “mumbojumbo” spirtual deep-dive, but I think it’s important to really think about your whole workflow & process to be able to find out what works for you.

Focus, and prepare for the songwriting process

This step is important to get our focus on the right path. To help us understand we need to set aside a specific amount of time to focus on one single part – the song idea, or motif / theme if you will. Put aside all the distractions of the DAW, computer and phone.

This whole process doesn’t work if we have our focus split. 

Writing a song is about coming up with rhythm and melody. At this stage it’s not about browsing presets, finding sounds / instruments or arranging.

If we try to do too much at the same time, one area will probably suffer. Your song will suffer.

Trust me, if you focus on one single part of the process, the rest will be so much easier. You will have a stronger foundation to work with. In the focus phase we prepare ourselves before starting to draft ideas.

To start the drafting we set our laser sight focus on the core of your song, which essentially is rhythm and melody!

Drafting, the rhythm and melody of your song.

With the focus and determination in place, we can now get started creating a rough song draft.

The reason we are doing a song draft is to get a strong foundation for our song.

If your song works and sounds good as a draft, you can be confident it will work when it’s arranged and fully produced later in the production phase.

Pick up the instrument you feel most comfortable with, maybe a guitar or a piano. To me, it’s the piano. Or load up a piano patch in the DAW if you don’t have a piano around.

In the drafting phase I work with a single instrument, a guitar, or more often the piano. Because the piano is my main instrument and also the instrument I feel most confident playing. A chord instrument will also make it easy to test out harmony (and bass) with our melody.

If we put aside all distractions we can focus on the rhythm and melody rather than the sounds that we will use later in the production.

Production, expand the song draft into a full song

We now have a solid idea from the previous drafting phase. It’s time to take the draft idea and produce it into a full song. 

The drafting process probably also gave you many ideas for how this melody can be arranged. Maybe what instruments you could try and how the rhythm section should be built.

In my demonstration project in the “How to finish songs faster” I replaced the piano melody with a guitar and since the client vision was all about sustainability I wanted to give the track a very organic feel with many real instruments and organic sounds…rather than synthetic sounds.

I made some of the percussive sounds with my mouth, like hi-hats. And also played on the body of the acoustic guitar for those woody percussive sounds. It all comes together in the production.

How to finish songs faster – process summary

In conclusion, we probably saved tons of time by excluding sound browsing in the drafting phase. We focused solely on the song idea, the melody and rhythm.

It’s much quicker to make changes on the fly when you are playing the piano than it is to make changes to a fully produced song. I know it’s possible, but it’s faster to make changes when you just have the basic outline melody to work with.

My drafting process took about 15 minutes for this track which is super quick. At the same time I also tossed up another draft for a second song. The production phase obviously took longer, about 2 days.

But it’s important to know I saved tons of time and headach by making a solid draft before going into production.

So that’s basically my workflow for making music!

You can learn more about my process in the following article & video where we create some game music cues.

When you have become an experienced songwriter

With time and more experience you can probably dive in at various stages and even do the drafting and production at the same time. But when I feel discouraged and lost with a deadline closing in, I can always rely on this three step songwriting process to finish my songs faster!

What’s your typical workflow to write songs?

Now what’s your typical workflow, how do you make your songs? Please let me know in the comments!

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1. Set the whole arrangement before adding the details

Flesh out the arrangement early. Add clips for intro, verse, chorus, bridges and outro. This means you will have setup the basic song structure before you start diving into picking the right instruments, sounds etc. This is like giving you mini-rewards on the way as you will have a better picture of how the song will end up. How long will the song be? When will the drop probably hit? Where should the breakdown section come in?

2. Keep it simple and limit yourself

Remove instruments and sounds rather than add. We often tend to add too much to the mix anyway. If the mix is too busy it will be hard for the listener to focus on the key element of your track. Think about what’s important to the song and work on that. It’s probably the main melody and bass.

3. Emphasize your main melody

If you need to add something. Maybe just emphasize your main melody with a second layer to fill out the frequency space, rather than adding more melodies which draws attention from your main voice (melody).

4. Listen to the top hits list on Spotify

It’s probably a good reason why the top hit tracks often have sparse arrangements. They don’t have that many tracks going. The tracks they do have use pristine quality samples (yes, and instruments). A winning concept is probably a good starting point if you want to learn how to produce songs properly.

5. Use a reference mix

If you are working in a DAW it’s easy to get a reference track going with your favourite song. Or just look up your favourite artist on YouTube. But don’t compare the actual song to yours. Just listen if your mix lack bass / clarity… Or again, is the music too crowded with melodies or sounds.

6. Grab the best sounding samples

Grab the best sounding samples you can afford. Samples suitable for the genre you are producing. There are plenty of great sample packs for every genre out there. Not everybody need to make their own kicks and snares and synth sounds. You can check out our sound packs here.

7. It’s fine to use presets

Use quality presets for the genre your are producing. It’s totally fine to use vst-instrument presets, mix channel settings and plugin presets. They are often a very good starting point and will let you focus on the important songwriting.

8. Write music with different tools

Working in the same way can keep you locked from exploring new areas of melodies and harmony. We are wired to take the shortest path solving a problem.

Flip to a hardware unit. Maybe boot up that MPC, Elektron Digitakt, Maschine+, Maschine mk3, Hardware Synths. Twist some real knobs and get fresh ideas.

Or add notes with the pen tool in the piano roll… rather than playing and performing on a keyboard / piano / guitar.

It’s important to understand that muscle memory will effect the way you write, if you are writing with an instrument.

Muscle memory forces you to play the same licks, accents, phrases etc. Just give it a try to get some fresh ideas you didn’t think of. I did an article on muscle memory here.

9. Sound design should be a separate session

One thing at a time. Many producers start with a dedicated sound design session where they just create 100 different sounds. Then they come back another day and make music with this custom sample pack. Importantly, you will have your own unique sounds to work with.

I did plenty of sound design videos which you can watch here.

Try to keep the composition on a separate day apart from sound design. When you write the actual melodies, bass and chord progressions. Keeping focus on one thing at a time makes it easier to approach the finish line. Ultimately, finishing the song!

10. Celebrate and reward your progress

It’s important to acknowledge and reward your work. If you are going to stay motivated to finish your track, you’ve got to reward yourself. Plan an event when you hit certain milestones. Maybe share a songwriting session with your subscribers on YouTube.

Showcase a small portion of your song on social media. Sharing on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook etc. during the process of making your song can be good to build your fanbase as you go. Importantly, also to gather inspiration and ideas from your friends.

11. Re-create a popular track (bonus tip)

If you want to learn how the top producers make their tracks it can be really insightful to re-create a popular track from scratch. The process helps you understand how a melody can be harmonized and arranged. You will learn beat programming, type (and amount) of effects used. Vocal arranging and processing… and so much more.

It’s really a gem. Personally, I’ve been re-creating parts of tracks in all kinds of genres through the years to get insight into the track creation process.

Importantly, this is useful in any type of craft: design, art, construction, needle felting, sound design, music production etc.

Re-creating tracks can sometimes feel discouraging, your end product might not sound as polished as the original. That’s totally fine! The purpose is not to make an exact copy anyway, but to learn the craft of music producing.

In the long run re-creating tracks will help you grow in so many areas of music production. I can’t stress this enough!

Rounding up the best tips to finish your songs

That’s just a few tips to get you going and finish your song. Hope it can be helpful to someone. We have many more tips on music production and songwriting in other articles on this website. I hope to see you around!

Cheers!

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The post 10 Best Tips To Help You Finish Your Songs appeared first on Morningdew Media.