Do you find it impossible to finish off a track, and spend ages tweaking all the little details? Or perhaps zap through a beat in an afternoon, only to wonder later on if it couldn't use a little more interest? Then join us as we look at two different approaches to writing tracks, which may just help you find a different style...
There's always an ongoing discussion in music about how long it takes to write a track; put a group of producers in a room and you can be sure that they'll eventually come round to this. Four hours? Four days? Four weeks? Answers will span the whole spectrum, and while there's not really a right or wrong, it is worth considering if you sometimes feel you haven't found your rhythm.
Artists such as Skream and Zed Bias are famous for writing their tracks very quickly - both are quite capable of writing four or five tracks in a single day. While this level of productivity can make other producers envious, it's worth remembering how many they release - an awful lot less than 25 tracks a week! It's clear, therefore, that the vast majority of their tracks do not see the light of day.
Conversely, other artists take much longer; Peverelist for instance has spoken in interviews of how he can spend anything up to a month working on a single track.
What's happening here are basically two different means to the same end. Those who turn out tracks by the dozen are essentially coming up with an idea, finding a way to run it over the course of 6 minutes, making sure it sounds roughly right and then moving on to the next one. The ideas are not overly developed - there isn't time for that - but just presented in a raw form. Some of them might not be amazing, but that's ok, because one of the next few might be the hit - an idea so good that it just works on its own, looped up.The opposite end of the scale involves starting with an idea, which may or may not be amazing, but then working on it and shaping it until it finally becomes a good track. This can require plenty of changes and a willingness to recognise when something isn't working - if you need to scrap a bassline for instance, even though it's been in there since the start.
The upshot of both of these methods, of course, is broadly the same; you spend a long time writing music in order to come up with a good track. But if you sometimes find yourself stuck in a rut with your tune writing, it's often worth trying a different tack to see if it doesn't give you a fresh way of looking at things.
So if you normally spend forever tweaking and changing your tracks, then set yourself a challenge - try and write a tune in, say, 5 hours or so. To do this, you need to forget about messing around with the details and concentrate on the big stuff; the drums, the bass, and the main hook, be it a sample or a melody. There's no point in spending 20 minutes EQ'ing a reverb tail if your drums don't cut it. Do that at the end, if at all! With any luck, once you've got a strong basis for a track down, you might realise that the reverb tail isn't as important as you once thought.
If on the other hand you start a new track every evening, then it's maybe time to slow it down a bit, and work on something until it's fully ready. When working like this, there will be plenty of ideas and sketches that don't make it into the final arrangement, and sometimes dead ends where you scrap a whole big chunk of the tune and start over. To do this, you need to use one of the hardest skills to acquire in music - that of listening to your work critically and objectively. You need to be able to step outside the 'creating' bubble for a moment, and instead of thinking 'do I like this lead/breakdown/bass?' consider 'does it do what it needs to do?'.
One good way of getting into this mindset is to get a friend round and play them the beat - if you find yourself apologising for the track, or saying things like 'wait for the next part, it's great', then you know you need to go back in. And before you try to argue that you'd get bored working on a track for so long, remember that if you can't listen to your eight-bar loop for three days solid, then it probably isn't good enough! So at this point you need to be ruthless; cut out the bits that don't quite work and try again. It will be possible to create a good finished article, so long as you have the discipline to make it work.So, there are two basic ideas for writing - keep to the bare bones of an idea, finish it quickly and let it be seen in a basic form, or spend time working and developing it until it's as good as it can be. Both sides have their disciples, and both can be equally rewarding - so maybe it's time to switch up your workflow, and try a new angle on production!
