Get your tunes done: song writing workflow
Posted: Sat May 24, 2008 10:38 pm
Finishing up my recent tune has been an eye opening experience.. I've been doing this for quite a while, but I've been finding it quite difficult to finish complete tunes after getting married, starting a fulltime job, etc.. I learned a couple of things and wanted to share this with everyone.
First thing is about small increments or changes. I'm a full time flash programmer these days, and this habbit comes from this job. At work, it's a constant cycle of bug checking, optimizing, and re-implementing. I never really related this to music, which for me at time, was a cycle of do an finish. But it turns out that this small bits and pieces process from work works very well if the only time you have to write your tunes is during the weekends, or pretty much whenever your song writing time is limited.
For me, I set up a to-do list ala GTD method, just like I do with my coding projects. You can research GTD, but the bottom line is, you just jot down things to do, or things you need to change. For me it was things like "last measure leading from second B to second Chorus needs more buildup", or simply "finish ending". I write that stuff down during the week, and not think about it 'till the weekend. Come weekend, and and I try to implement everythign possible, and do another round of.... uh... debugging, and list up everythign that has to be changed.
I think the importance is to take a freeflow tap type inspiration into something more managable, or controllable. This allows for scheduled small increments that lead to a finished product. There's no faking or kidding yourself. If the list doesn't get finished, the product isn't finished.
Next is to realize that the time frame won't adjust to your inspiration. This relates back to the "making inspiration controllable" issue, but the fact is, you can't sit around and wait for the next big bang. Considering that the next big bang will be caused by you, using your knowledge and abilities anyway, then there's no reason you can't cause the big bang on command. It sure takes practice, but once you have the list of stuff to do, and you've got your track in front of you, and you've got several horurs set aside for the task, I'm sure you can come up with some sort of solution. If you can't, you just have to stop thinking, and let your musical self do it. Let him out of the cage, feed him some good spirit, feed him the current state of the song, and he will surely wake up for the task.
The last point is, for us weekend writers, the process is never going to be fast. Actually, I don't think any song writing process should be fast. All the stuff about "I was was so taken over by inspiration I finished it in 1 hour" stuff is all just legends I think.. Imagine the work the assistants had to do after that to make the song an actual products. The days of a song writer just humming tunes is over I think. The requirements for a composer is much higher than that now I think. But anyway, song writing and arranging is not a quick process like it's portrayed to be. Take your time, give your song some time. If one song takes a month (4 weekeds), then it takes a month. It's no problem, given that you have a way to schedule your tasks. It's better to spend a month on a song than to rush a 2 chord progression song that just loops forever with parts just being muted or unmuted.
It's not that I measure things by numbers of chords in a loop, but there are definitely too many songs out there where it is obvious that the writer just had 1 master loop, and just spent 2 minutes building up to the master loop by unmuting tracks, and then just does it all over again second time around. (like I do lots of times for quick jobs) Music is a craft, and everyone related to music should work to keep it that way.
So anyway, these may have been obvious points.. but it's really hard to do this in practice. But if anyone is having trouble scheduling for song writing time, or just cannot figure out how to finish a tune, I hope this can serve as a starting point. In the end it's about punching yourself to get out of bed early in the weekends to finish up your work.. that is, finishing your tune.
First thing is about small increments or changes. I'm a full time flash programmer these days, and this habbit comes from this job. At work, it's a constant cycle of bug checking, optimizing, and re-implementing. I never really related this to music, which for me at time, was a cycle of do an finish. But it turns out that this small bits and pieces process from work works very well if the only time you have to write your tunes is during the weekends, or pretty much whenever your song writing time is limited.
For me, I set up a to-do list ala GTD method, just like I do with my coding projects. You can research GTD, but the bottom line is, you just jot down things to do, or things you need to change. For me it was things like "last measure leading from second B to second Chorus needs more buildup", or simply "finish ending". I write that stuff down during the week, and not think about it 'till the weekend. Come weekend, and and I try to implement everythign possible, and do another round of.... uh... debugging, and list up everythign that has to be changed.
I think the importance is to take a freeflow tap type inspiration into something more managable, or controllable. This allows for scheduled small increments that lead to a finished product. There's no faking or kidding yourself. If the list doesn't get finished, the product isn't finished.
Next is to realize that the time frame won't adjust to your inspiration. This relates back to the "making inspiration controllable" issue, but the fact is, you can't sit around and wait for the next big bang. Considering that the next big bang will be caused by you, using your knowledge and abilities anyway, then there's no reason you can't cause the big bang on command. It sure takes practice, but once you have the list of stuff to do, and you've got your track in front of you, and you've got several horurs set aside for the task, I'm sure you can come up with some sort of solution. If you can't, you just have to stop thinking, and let your musical self do it. Let him out of the cage, feed him some good spirit, feed him the current state of the song, and he will surely wake up for the task.
The last point is, for us weekend writers, the process is never going to be fast. Actually, I don't think any song writing process should be fast. All the stuff about "I was was so taken over by inspiration I finished it in 1 hour" stuff is all just legends I think.. Imagine the work the assistants had to do after that to make the song an actual products. The days of a song writer just humming tunes is over I think. The requirements for a composer is much higher than that now I think. But anyway, song writing and arranging is not a quick process like it's portrayed to be. Take your time, give your song some time. If one song takes a month (4 weekeds), then it takes a month. It's no problem, given that you have a way to schedule your tasks. It's better to spend a month on a song than to rush a 2 chord progression song that just loops forever with parts just being muted or unmuted.
It's not that I measure things by numbers of chords in a loop, but there are definitely too many songs out there where it is obvious that the writer just had 1 master loop, and just spent 2 minutes building up to the master loop by unmuting tracks, and then just does it all over again second time around. (like I do lots of times for quick jobs) Music is a craft, and everyone related to music should work to keep it that way.
So anyway, these may have been obvious points.. but it's really hard to do this in practice. But if anyone is having trouble scheduling for song writing time, or just cannot figure out how to finish a tune, I hope this can serve as a starting point. In the end it's about punching yourself to get out of bed early in the weekends to finish up your work.. that is, finishing your tune.
