Musical Minimalism: How To Finally Finish Your Songs

Howdy! Today I want to talk about minimalism and why it might be the most effective way to finish more music.

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[VenusTheory]

- last video before I leave for Paris for a few weeks. In the meantime, do me a favor and go get some sh*t done.

[electricmeatpuppet]

This helped me a lot : "Highly focused people do not leave their options open. They select their priorities and are comfortable ignoring the rest. If you commit to nothing, you’ll be distracted by everything."

[tizoc]

"9 times out of 10 when facing writer's block, it's because you are afraid of what it won't be" this perfectly describes my anxiety around a lot of tracks I can't finish. It's helped me to just give myself a deadline on a track and release it, regardless if it sucks to me or not. At the least, it builds skills for future tracks and it forces me to keep moving forward. Thanks for the vid!

[WavePunkRL]

Common misconception about 4’33, it’s not 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence, but rather 4 minutes and 33 seconds of ambience. It’s an encouragement to listen to how musical the world around us already is, and courts the idea that the only thing that separates noise and music is perception. If you watch John cage perform the piece, he usually does it outdoors with life and nature making sounds around him, not in a sterile soundproof concert hall.

[Davotunes]

"Music is a top down thing. You can't master your way out of a bad mix, you can't mix your way out of a bad arrangement, you cant arrange your way out of a boring song and you cant sound desing out of a fundamentaly crappy idea." man that was just BRUTAL TRUTH!! ❤

[iqnill]

As an architect and (a self-proclaimed) musician I always try to remember that: The design is finished not when there's nothing else to add, but when there's nothing else to remove from it.

[SuperHonkyPodcast]

My jaw is on the floor right now. I'm almost in actual tears. Goosebumps! I've been producing for well over 20 years. I'm currently 40 years of age.
In the last few years I started to really get burned out when it came to producing new music. I just didn't feel like sitting down and spending countless
hours on making new music anymore. Especially due to the fact that I never really "made it" as a musician. I've made some awesome music over the
years, but never was able to make a career out of it. The way I'd envisioned all those years ago when I pressed my first key. Because of that, it's lead
to me getting burned out. And because of that, as well as NEVER making it within the industry, it lead to catastrophic depression! The feeling that I'd
just wasted 20+ years of my life for almost NOTHING! Especially when you factor in all the naysayers throughout the years. The people telling me to
"grow up.." or "get a real job.." or... "you better have other options than just music!" With that said.. I stumbled upon this video and it completely blew
my mind. Similarly to the way you said you felt when you were 15 regarding the white canvas. For years I would make a beautiful song.. but always
left the project in an unfinished state.. simply assuming it needed more! And not just more as far as vocals, but MORE sounds, more instruments..
MORE MORE MORE! I think we come to that point because these days instead of having a guitar, a piano, a bass, and maybe some drums.. we quite
literally have thousands.. if not hundreds of thousands of different sounds/instruments/vst's to choose from. This has always made me feel like my
instrumentals were always lacking, or that they NEEDED MORE! When in reality, some of the best songs I've ever heard in my life maybe have 3-6
different sounds in them. Including most rock bands etc. that are out there! I appreciate you for this! This may help me relight the candle that has
been fading away for the last several years.

[TheToobNube]

"Pixar films don't get finished, they just get released." Handwritten letter to fan, from director of Monsters, Inc.

[kylergunnell]

Filmmaker here, I couldn't help but feel how many parallels I could draw between music production and filmmaking. I think all of the ideas presented in your video can easily be applied not only to filmmaking, but many other art disciplines.

[MikeRenouf]

Recording everything live as one stereo track is my favourite way of really getting s**t done. 👌

[jarkokoo]

For me the thing when I started to finish my tracks was when I stopped pleasing anyone else but myself with my music. This eventually led me to really like my own music. And I'm a firm believer that you need to be your own biggest fan. If you don't like what you create, how do you expect anyone else to like it? But, if you like your own creations, there's a fairly big chance that someone else will as well. And this has nothing to do how complex music I make, I just make what I enjoy to make and make decisions just to please myself. I haven't felt a writer's block since (I've been there back in the days and that was exactly because I tried to please other people, not myself - trying to chase the trends so to speak).

[RayTheProducer]

I finish my songs. It’s the ‘final’ finish that takes forever. Ears play tricks on you after you’ve lived with a song for too long. Good stuff.

[jamespingel]

This was something I noticed years ago when I got my first mastering gig. It was for an IDM compilation, and most of the artists on that album had been producing for 20+ years compared to my 5 years at the time. So I had the opportunity to listen to these tracks from much more experienced artists and force myself to think about how they were structuring their songs so I could bring the best master to each song, and inevitably I compared what they were doing to what I was doing. Without fail, I could tell that they had less stuff going on in their songs than I did, but there was much more intention (or at least the appearance of intention) behind every thing in there. It's taken years, but I feel like I've gotten much better at that now. When I sit down with an idea, I try to put only that down in the DAW with no other embellishment. I get that base polished up and then see if I hear anything else. My average track count hovers around 10-20 tracks (with half of those just being dedicated channels for each drum hit, and another quarter being FX sends). Average number of inserts on each track is 2-3 (EQ - often just a simple 3 band bus EQ with compression and/or saturation as needed). My most recent 3 tracks were finished in 4-6 hours each, and I'm still enjoying listening to them too.

[pianoomann]

"Never fear simple ideas" - 🙏🏻

[zardon]

I’ve been doing what I consider to be a type of minimalist electronic since 2019. In the beginning it was due to the fact that Live Intro only allowed 8 tracks to be recorded easily. But even tho I graduated to Studio, I felt compelled to make music with fewer elements than most people. I have a 14 track mixer (Tascam Model 16) and, except for EDM, I never use all the tracks. And somebody must be listening, I have over 750, 000 plays.

[Conradaxx]

It’s strange when you hear exactly what you need to hear at the exact time you needed to hear it. Some form of synchronicity perhaps…

I’ve had such a creative block that I haven’t touched an instrument nor booted up a DAW in almost a year. The ideas in this video somehow changed that and I’m actually excited; something I haven’t been in relation to composition in quite some time

[SoundColliderMusic]

Talk about timing! I'm in the midst of recording an instrumental album by myself and I can't tell you how much this resonated with me.

In the past I've gotten stuck so many times due to option paralysis, over thinking things and trying to add so much to a piece in order to make it "enough" that they started falling apart and eventually gave up on them all together.

There is something to simplicity and intent. A solid melody doesn't need much to spice it up ❤

[mdmorris]

I’m 61. I’ve been recording songs for 45 years. And I’ve learned as I’ve (arguably!?) gotten better at it that the stronger the song (as in the copyrightable bits: melody and lyric), the less you need to support that melody and lyric. Great video, Cameron. Well done!

[moolakami]

Everything, from camera work, recording quality, editing, narration style and concepts delivered makes this an amazing video. This is premium quality content and it could easily be a whole paid masterclass by itself.

Well done Cameron.

[Kin_G_JLab]

Very important to remember.

Artists. Don't "follow" rules.

Might know them, might learn ourselves techniques.

But each is their own freak, let it out, let it leak.
Never fear, keep on, otherwise you will go wrong.