Finishing Music

This is an area that is without doubt the biggest problem most of us face in our journeys as music producers. As I write this, I can 100% guarantee that each and everyone one of you (me included) has a folder of 100s of unfinished ideas and tracks that will probably never see the light of day. Some of these tunes also have great potential, like beautiful sculptures that are left unfinished.

What is it that makes finishing music is so hard? What tools and strategies can I use to overcome this hurdle?

Your Mind vs Your Skill Level

I believe that there are two main problems that impede our ability to produce & finished tracks. Firstly, we have to battle against ourselves and overcome the phycological hurdles that stand in our way.

Music production at it’s heart should be fun. I think we can all agree that the first couple of hours producing a tune and coming up with the vision and creative ideas is an absolute blast. From that point onwards, pushing the track for 30% to 100% can feel like much more of a grind or chore.

Here, our perfectionism, OCDs, creativity & inspiration can start to waver and throw us off course. The more times we get to this point, feel stuck and give up, the harder it gets to ever push past it. 

The only way to ever overcome this hurdle is to practise doing just that. Practise the art of finishing tracks. Sometimes it will absolutely feel like a grind but you have to push through that mental barrier & force yourself to commit to developing this skill. 🥋

The other pole is somewhat easier to address. I think that actually, especially as beginners, we just lack the skill or knowledge to know how to develop tracks & finish tracks. Whether this is in arrangement, mixing & mastering, developing our ideas beyond the 16 bar loop. There’s actually a whole bunch of technical knowledge & a million and one rabbit holes to get lost down trying to figure the damn thing out. 🕳️🐇

What you need to do and hopefully this blog post will help, is to develop a toolset that will help you whenever we reach one of these road blocks.

Custom Playlists & Presets

One of the biggest problems I’ve faced in the past is the question of ‘what do I add next?’ 

At this point, I would scroll endlessly through my sample library or through synth presets, throwing things out at random in the hope that something sticks. Whilst this method can give you results, it’s very hit or miss and can lead to a lot of frustration. 🤯

A much better question to ask is ‘what does this track need?’

Here, having a custom playlist of samples relevant to the style of tune you’re making or some goto synth presets can make a massive difference. This is really the whole purpose of the Professional Dj & Record Label Owner tier of Patreon, to provide people with a custom pack each month that’s perfect to dip into for inspiration. 💎

I also think the Oblivion Timeshift Serum presets I did a video on a while back are of the highest quality for leads/keys/pads/fx & bass if people are looking for really solid 90s jungle synth patches. 🌌

Elements

What you really need to do, is identify what elements are already in your track and where is there space for you to add more?

If you’ve already used a sample that’s very full and has chords & melody in it. There’s often not much space to add more of those elements. Instead you need to think about bass, fx, transitional elements, drums, texture & ear candy. 

List of Common Elements in a 90’s Jungle Track:

• Drums (Breakbeats)

• Percs (Bongos, Shakes, Rides, Hi-Hats)

• Bass (808)

• Leads & Melody

• Chords

• Ear Candy

• Pads

• Vocals (Ragga, Diva Vocal) 

• Arps

• Speech (Movie, VHS, Radio)

• Samples & Record Chops

• Texture (Noise, Grain, Field Recordings, Vinyl Hiss, Jungle Sounds)

• FX - Filter Sweeps, Dub Delays (1/8D), AKAI Time-Stretching, Distortion, Bit-Crushing & Downsampling, Large Reverbs, Phasing & Flanging FX, Reverse FX, Dub Sirens, Pitch Drops

Where Is The Space?

Whilst it’s great to think about what a track needs in terms of it’s elements, there are also a number of other ways to figure out what to add next:

• High vs Low Frequency Spectrum Balance

• Foreground vs Background (using reverb, filters and gain to push things forwards or backwards in the mix)

• Tempo-Synced Rhythms vs Arrhythmic, Off-Tempo

• Sustained Notes vs Short Staccato Notes

• Harmony vs Melody (thick chords vs single notes)

• Call and Response (how space maps out over an 16-bar loop)

• Emotional Arc of a Track (the rise and fall of energy from one passage to the next across the whole piece)

All of these are excellent ways to identify what a track is missing and direct you into what type of ingredients you need to progress the track. 

Arrangement 

Progressive Arrangement - Arrangement in dance music also often falls into two categories. The first is a more progressive style where elements are added bit by bit on top of an existing loop or foundational idea. This is common in 90’s jungle & trance or progressive house where the music seems to take you on a journey, constantly building throughout the course of the track.

You start with a break or percussion loop, build the tension up to a crescendo over several minutes and then the energy drops back down towards the end. Sometimes tracks will build and drop multiple times in this way, subtly evolving as they progress. 

Pop Arrangement - The other style we see a lot in commecial DnB is much closer to pop music, where there is more of an intro/verse/bridge/chorus arrangement. Of course certain elements will carry through but you can feel this distinct jumping from one part to the next.

My Style Of Arranging - I think it can actually be really helpful to try and establish a few different sections in the early stages of producing a track. Like having 3 similar but contrasting 16/32 bar loop sections. I tried to demonstrate this in the recent Patreon video series https://www.patreon.com/posts/making-dnb-track-127730597 

Once you have a couple of different passages which are built out and have some depth to them, it then becomes so much easier to flesh these out into a full arrangement. All you do is move things around, mute certain sections, add transitional elements and suddenly you have a full track.  

Common 90’s Jungle Sections 

• Intro

• A Section (Main Idea)

• B Section (Contrasting Idea)

• Bridge Idea (Connecting The Different Sections)

• Breakdown

• Stripped Back Section (Drums, Bass, FX)

• Outro

Transitional Elements

• White Noise Risers

• Pitch Risers & Fallers

• Reverse Reverbs Snares

• Delay and Reverb Sends

• Filter Sweeps

• Crashes

• Dub Sirens

• Gating FX

Finishing Music

I made a video series a while back trying to tackle this exact issue I think has some really valuable points to bring back up here:

• Creating Custom Playlists of Samples

• Referencing Tunes in the Same Style

• List of Inspirational Techniques

• Advancing Existing Elements vs Bringing In New Ones

• Making Notes At The Start Of A Session About What The Track Needs

• Projects - Deadlines - Time Allocation & Accountability

As you can probably tell, I could talk about this topic for days but I think I will leave this one here as to hopefully not overload you with too much information!

I’m really loving the Digitakt mk2 at the moment so working on another jam style video on that. Should be out next week sometime. 

Hope everyone is well & looking forwards to the weekend! 😊

Cheers,
George✌️