Finishing Songs

I sometimes hear other people talk about the difficulties they're having in finishing songs. They create many small musical fragments, ideas which don't progress to full-blown songs. Sooner or later, someone will usually offer advice along the lines of "just finish it. Finishing songs is a skill like any other and it gets easier with experience". To a degree, this is good advice.

Something to keep in mind is the difference between completing a song and completing our progress as artists. Our current song can only be completed to our current level of ability. It's very likely that six months from now, we could come back to it and make significant improvements to it. Hopefully, we will continue to evolve and improve throughout our lives, which means there will always be a point in the future where we could improve the song we're currently working on. Our progress as artists will never be complete.

In order to finish songs, we have to be comfortable in letting go. We have to let go of the expectation that our work will be perfect. It will only be as good as our current level of ability. We have to let go of the thought that soon we will have a better approach to using reverb in our mixes. Our reverb will sound the way we presently know how to use it. We have to let go of our thoughts about our limitations and simply do the best we can do.

In order to finish songs, we need to clearly delineate our "finishing songs" sessions from our "learning how to improve our bass sound" sessions and our "experimenting with compression" sessions. Can songs be finished while doing these things? Sure, but it's less likely than when we make song completion our primary goal. Sessions where we are learning and experimenting are more likely to result in the many small musical fragments many of us end up with. This is totally fine - these fragments are incredibly valuable steps in our learning. There's no need to turn each one into a full-blown song. Only when we have a sufficiently strong idea, or composition, is it likely that we'll be motivated to carry it through to completion. If our focus is on finishing the song rather than on learning or experimenting, we'll be fine.

Finishing songs is a valuable skill to learn and it does improve each time we do it. Our first few songs may progress from beginning to end in a very rudimentary way - instruments drop in and out, instrument levels are fairly static throughout, transitions from one section to another are functional at best. In time, all these aspects and others are refined and our songs become much more nuanced, much richer experiences for our listeners. If we wait until we have "the perfect sixteen bar loop" before finishing a song, we will still have a lot of learning ahead of us in order to create something worth listening to for longer than sixteen bars.

Finish songs, then let them go. There are plenty of great songs ahead of us.

Keep making great music!

Fabian

Headaches of Hardware

These days, a lot of us start out using only software for music production. This makes sense – it's a very cheap way to get into music production, since there are a lot of good affordable (or even freeware) tools around. It means that if we find that music production isn't our thing, we haven't lost too much money.

At some point in our journey, a lot of us start wondering about hardware devices (synthesizers, samplers, effects units) and what they can offer us. Are they capable of things our software can't do? Are they the missing link between us and the coveted “pro sound” (whatever that is)? Well, maybe they can do particular things which aren't available to us in software currently (these “particular things” aren't better or worse, just things not currently available as a plugin). Maybe they will bring our productions forward, once we get to know the piece of equipment and how to work it into our production process.

There are a few things to keep in mind, for those of us who have an itch to add hardware to our setup – if we've been entirely software based until now, we need to realize it's not like adding another plugin to our setup. The following points are in no particular order of importance.

Hardware takes up space. This is pretty obvious, but it needs to be taken into consideration. How much room will the unit take up? Will it sit on the desk, or will it require a rack to mount it into? Will the unit be easily accessible from your production vantage point?

Hardware uses cables. Which take up more space. They also need to be the right cables, plugged into the right inputs and outputs. A lot of units will require both audio and MIDI connections.

Hardware requires an audio interface to plug into. If we're using only software, potentially we could get by using only our computer's onboard sound (though the quality may leave a bit to be desired). With hardware, and it's aforementioned cables, we'll very likely need an interface which can send audio out to the unit and bring audio in from the unit. We could very well require MIDI connections to get signals into and out of the unit. The interfaces we get may require a firewire connection, which could be an additional expense.

The more hardware we get, the more issues we create. It's only feasible to daisy chain a few MIDI devices together (the MIDI signal gets passed through the chain until it finds the device with the MIDI channel it is referring to). If we want to use a device at the end of the chain, we need to power up every other device. So we may require a MIDI interface with multiple inputs and outputs, or a device which splits a MIDI signal into multiple signals. On the audio side, we may need an audio interface with multiple inputs and outputs – maybe eight or even sixteen. Cables can get messy, it may be much easier to get an audio patch bay which sits near our audio interface, with all the audio cables running into the back of it. This way we can quickly patch in the units we require from the patch bay. At some point it may even be appealing to look at custom built furniture to accommodate the equipment in such a way that it's all easily accessible and the cables are hidden away.

Hardware is a little more difficult to interface with from our sequencer, though not too much. We need to set the incoming and outgoing audio and MIDI channels so that everything comes through properly. MIDI automation is slightly more unwieldy than plugin automation – it's much easier when we see “filter cutoff” rather than “MIDI CC40” (which the manual has told us controls the filter cutoff for this particular synthesizer).

Hardware settings generally don't get saved with our project files. Which means we load up the project, turn on the hardware, then find the preset or manually input the settings we used (which we've written down in the relevant track's notes). It is possible to automate program change information (but I must admit, I haven't worked this out myself, it seems fiddly and doesn't seem to work properly with every device).

Particularly frightening is when our hardware starts dying, or stops working completely. A lot of times, it turns out to be a faulty cable, or a cable plugged into the wrong connection. Sometimes it's more critical, meaning a potentially lengthy stay with the repair person (if we can find someone who knows how to fix it). If software exhibits problems, a restart usually helps, or a software update. When hardware exhibits problems, it could soon be lost forever!

For those of us who are prepared to deal with all these issues, hardware can be a wonderful addition to our studio setup. There are high quality units around, built by companies with decades of experience in creating products for musicians. Each unit has it's own sonic character, and certain characters aren't currently available as plugins. We all choose our tools and our preferred way of working, whether it's entirely software based, a mix of software and hardware, or an entirely hardware based setup running into an analog mixing desk. All of these have been used countless times to create fantastic sounding music.

I hope this post has been handy for some of you. Keep making great music!

Fabian