Theory: About unfinished tracks

After a little reflection on some recent events in my life, I came to this conclusion. There occurs times where I am not inclined to choose either option A or option B unless some other external pressure forces me to make the decision. Example: I could be undecided as to whether or not I want to go out Friday night, and remain undecided until Friday night when a friend calls and asks, "hey, you going out?" at which point I have to decide. So, whats the point? Well, I was thinking about the number of times that I have begun to create some new techno track, only to eventually archive it unfinished, or simply trash it in favour of another, newer track. And, after reflecting upon this process, I considered that the reason I have left so many tracks unfinished might be connected to this bigger picture regarding decision making. That is, I'm thinking that a finished track has encountered a number of decisions along the way, such as "break-here"," change-here", "that's going to be the bassline," and, of course, that final decision, "track-done," and, maybe, an endless archive of unfinshed tracks is a consequence of an unwillingness to make any final decisions in regards to the production of a track. However, add a deadline, and I'm sure, in one form or another, like it or not, the track will done.

What do you think? Food for thought or a load of wank? <- decision ;)

i finish track if it sounds good to me. if it doesnt then i do not finish it.

if you dont like it it will show thru

I think you've hit the nail on the haed there mate for me! Im so bad for finishing trax nowerdays! But when someone said their gonna relase this track i was working on i got it finished. So a deadline definately helps for me mate.

my brain hurts

deadlines work really good sometimes, but then again you get in such a hurry you don't get to finish it good enough.

thats a good theory, but ive never really been given a deadline to finish a track so i couldnt really agree with it.

i force myself to fnish songs
I find completeing songs comes quicker and quicker the more you fisnish songs!

rushing also shows thru

somethings like mixing down gets easier and better erverytime you do it.

If you never ever finish songs and mix them down , you will not develop crucial skills.

I force myself to fnishe the songs i don't really like and use it as practice , the ones where everything comes together , well , those ones are my best songs.

yes exactly. i guess in beginnings when u just learn your lesson (thats first few years), its better to finish goddamn trax just for the sake of picking up those crucial skills.
i have a friend who has ridicolous talent for music, but he just never finishes his tracks and that minimezes his talent.

my theory about unfinished tracks

1) you get bored of listening to them and the initial buzz off what u first started hearing dies and it starts to sound like your fave track from 5 years ago that got played to death when it got in the charts

2) you run out of ideas, u cant just do a really creative spell and finish a track in one go all the time , as you do more tracks your ideas get used and you have to have a break to think things over

3) your mates nock and drag you away from your gear kicking and screaming to the pub and at 1am when you stagger in you dont always feel like hammering shit out of keyboards and designing sounds on a nord modular :)

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Originally Posted by miromiric

yes exactly. i guess in beginnings when u just learn your lesson (thats first few years), its better to finish goddamn trax just for the sake of picking up those crucial skills.
i have a friend who has ridicolous talent for music, but he just never finishes his tracks and that minimezes his talent.

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i think your friend is just a mentaly unbalanced lazy bitch....kick his ass n make him finish those trax!

yes, well thats true, he is a bit unbalanced - he lives with 2 dogs and 3 cats, one of them is dieing.

Most tracks that i finished, where always astablished with a certain pattern.
Day 1: Arrangement. Mostly finished in 1 day.
Day 2: Motivated and left with a good feeling from day 1. Mixing it off... Ready!!

think of it another way, if you start on maybe a new tune every day when you arent really that experienced yet,you are playing around,and might wanna leave it alone after some time,till you got the skillss of making it sound like you want it to,or even just that you get bored of it or dont know what to do with it at the moment. months( maybe years) after you go through your unfinished things,and you can maybe see a much better potential for some of the stuff + youve gotten better technically, so something new comes out of it. after a while you got so much better that you are able to take all those tracks and one by one complete them.
i saved almost all i made except when i thought it really reeked, and dug a lot of it out a while after and made a great thing outta it,fitting to what your into at the moment,etc.
ive been doing music for a few years now,and the whole first year i wasnt able to finish a track,but the last ½ year ive been able to finish a lot of thngs,gradually, because of this
i can see that if you have a release deadline or so its really necessary to be able to finish off,but if you dont: just play around. cause one day it will be there,in one way or another

all unfinished tracks should be used as pallets of ideas. play through them all every 6 months you might just hear one and be inspired to go elswhere within the track, than you had origionally intended. :?:

Work on a couple at a time so that you don't get so used to the sound of the one track. That's what I do. Just add to them and work on them until one sounds like it is done. You always know when it is done.

Finishing of the trakcs seems to be the problem sometimes, because after spending some hours on one project, ears are tired and you are into track-sound. So it's hard to tell if the track became better or worse.
The deadline helps sometimes, when I did the track for EP, I had a finished track, but I listen to it again and again, and found one sound doesn't sound well to me, I trie to improve it, and I 've found something better fit into structure, I was really on hurry, but I hope it enhanced it at all..
I just wanted to tell that finishing tracks is an adventure sometimes, but I like it a lot :cool: