"I'm finding it really really hard to finish a tune... I've hardly finished anything lately, but I was a bit stoned the other night and thought I'd have a look at all the loops I've started in the last 6 months or something. There were bloody hundreds, all of which must have sounded good caned at 2 in the morning for one evening but none of which I'll ever go back and do anything with. Basically inspiration lasts for a couple of hours per tune. Does anyone else find this? It's really irritating me never finishing anything"

Yep I totally know where you're coming from on that. It's hard, and I wish I knew the answer. Recently, I've kept the computer switched off and just play around on the bits of gear I've got. I find it much easier as you don't have millions of options to play with (endless plug-ins that don't seem to do much to the sound etc), but I find you can more easily cycle the sounds through millions of options (especially on the analogue stuff) which for me is more important. Does that make sense? Probably not much, but hey…

I've hit on an analogy and for me it really works. Basically starting out a tune is like being in a sea of chaos…lots of froth everywhere with all the random elements ie basslines you've previously written (or for me, patterns on the tb303), drum sounds, whatever. Then a couple of things will match up, and sound good together - that's the start of an expanding bubble. I basically go with the bubble and see where it takes me. After a while, you might mess it up and the feeling is gone - the bubble has burst. When that happens, you can either take it back down to what works, or what I prefer to do is keep one thing that you made whilst in the bubble and just spin all the other dials and knobs back to chaos and see if you can get into a new bubble.

Then when it sounds good enough, nail it and just start to sequence out a whole track…work on it until you've finished. The problem I find with just making loops all the time (and I've been there enough times) is that when you start working on a track across a proper timeline, you can do stuff which gives further inspiration for your track that you couldn't do if you simply have loop mode switched on all the time.

Anyway, hope that's of some help…no more random gibberish from me for a little while at least…

Peace