5 Reasons You Can't Finish Music

There are many reasons why you might struggle to finish music. So here are 5 of the most common reasons with solutions that you can take away.

Our Courses & Programs 🎛️

Connect with EDMProd 👇

0:00 Intro
0:32 Song Finishing Accelerator
1:14 Reason 1 - The Loop Trap
3:28 Reason 2 - Perfectionism
5:17 Reason 3 - Overcomplicating Things
8:14 Reason 4 - The Taste Gap
10:32 Reason 5 - You Haven't Been Shown

[samueltattum]

First of all, thank you EDMProd. This video was super helpful for me. I've been in an awful bout of writer's block recently and felt like I was just starting at 30+ projects with no sense of completion. This vid has given me a few ideas for how to conquer this. :)

And, if I may offer my own tip for any other beginners out there, or people who feel stuck. For finishing songs or at least getting an idea of HOW artists finish theirs, try this: open your DAW and throw in a track in the same genre as the track you're making. Get the bpm of this reference track and line it up in your DAW.

First, listen through the reference track. As you are listening, create a track for each new element you hear in the song (kick, snare, hi hat, shakers, synth pads, synth stabs, bass, synth leads, fx, EVERYTHING unique) and name each track created. After that, arrange the tracks in whatever makes logical sense to you (drum elements together, synths together, etc.). Now, you could stop here and try to make your own song just out of the tracks listed.

OR you can try this next step, and this bit may take you longer - listen through the track again, but this time make midi regions that line up with the instruments in the song. Whenever you hear the bass playing, for example, make a MIDI region that lines up with it. Make sure to cut the midi region whenever the element isn't in. I would also make a note somewhere for any sections in the song that appear to have a change in the chord progression (likely the bridge of the song will have this).

Now with a complete arrangement and song structure, you can do one of three things: try to recreate the reference track to the best of your ability, write your own new song with the structure, or insert one of your existing loops/ideas into the structure. If you do one of the latter two, you'll already have visible markers for the dynamic, gradual changes over time, etc. that Aden is talking about in this video.

As they say, good artists borrow, great artists steal. Now, you don't have to keep doing this 100 times to get good at finishing songs. Just do it enough that you start to understand how to implement structure to your own loops so that you can get your own songs out faster. Strongly recommend following the advice in this video as well - but this tip has helped me a lot in my own music production.

[Teddy-ezqq]

I have 500 half finished songs. All I do is load the song, play a section of it, dance round my room as if I’m playing out to a crowd of thousands and then close the song, open the next one and repeat.

[frankwalders]

My best remedy for this problem is: limit yourself to two instrument and set out a structure first (verse, chorus etc...) do not do anything else before you have finished that. You can bring detail to structure, but it's much harder to bring structure to detail, that's the problem in a nutshell. When you start doodling around in these immense libraries we have today, you are leaking decision energy and end up with nothing. It's a bit like opening a dictionary hoping it will inspire you to write a book. I try to focus on the idea first and later fill it in.

[Maxc_]

Bonus Tip: Use a reference track during your arrangement session and literally just try to match all sections with it (intro, hook, break etc.). In that way you'll get a sense of what your track should look and sound like as a finished product.

Thank me later.

[hariharanvenkatesan]

I had been struggling with making music. The Loop gap and the perfectionist gap was my drawback, even though I have been producing for 4 years. I always had a habit of opening an empty FL project, make a loop, and straight up get depressed for not making it in the way how my favorite producers make.

Thanks a lot for your solution, this is really helpful.

[briancase]

This is good, thanks. As for changing your view of your music, just export it to a high-quality MP3 format, put it somewhere on your phone (I post it to "note to self" on signal), and then I listen to it outside of my studio. Ear buds at the gym; car speakers in the car; send it (or the important loop) to a friend. But, there's no excuse for listening only in your studio on your monitors or your headphones there. You will get ideas from external listening that you wouldn't get otherwise. And you'll start to calibrate your ears so that you know how to make up for the deficiencies in your studio monitoring setup. All this said, don't listen *too* much without making changes and repeating the process. There's a danger that you'll start to convince yourself that it's fine. :) Always, if possible, listen to your music sandwiched between two professional tracks. :)

[timtrzepacz]

I find that the best way to finish songs is to get all of the chords and vocals worked out on the guitar before I ever touch a sequencer or do any recording. The act of having to play it and sing it at the same time enforces some song structure and flow that doesn't always come naturally when starting arrangements on the computer.
After I have a complete song that I can play, then I record it in the sequencer, and start adding synths and moving stuff around as necessary. But because the core is a complete song, I don't get lost in the loop.

[teensharkieharmony]

I really want to thank you, you don't even know I much it hurts me to feel stuck in the process, this is so comforting, I needed to hear that.
I almost felt like I should gave up on producing.. so I took a loooong break to avoid it for a while and get rid of all that frustration.
Now that I feel like I want to go back to my projects, this video is giving me the strength I needed 💪🏽

Thank you for this video, I'm sure it'll help many other people <3

[SinfulSoulBand]

0:41 "that's me, i struggle with finishing"

...the enthusiasm is remarkable

[tredfxman]

If you wanna finish your tracks: Force yourself to write a track in 1-2 hours. Try this for a week. Youll be surprised! It works better ithink because your brain gets trained to hear more possibilities. And you wont loose the creative flow momentum in that timespan! 👍

[midighostbeatz]

Dont evn make edm, but stumbled on ur page accidentally.... Had to sub!!!

[jepp.]

the exporting trick is huge. gives you a lot of clarity on elements that maybe didn't need to be there, or even things you hear can be added in; definitely helps to see it from a different perspective.

[Bittamin]

I good reason is you will end up starting a track at 8 or 9 pm, be working on it for 4 hours, maybe even 6 and really love what you have going on, but you’re tired now and it’s already the next day. You wake up the next morning and you’re not on the same wavelength you were when you were 6 hours deep into the night anymore, sometimes the song doesn’t even sound good to you anymore, other times there’s just a disconnect. Best solution is to just pin that project in your mind to come back to at night again, rather than being so excited you have to start working on it the minute you wake up the next day

[Human]

1) It's hard to create the music that you like so much it inspires you, there's a gap between what your current WIP sounds like and what you hoped it sounded like. I always have to remember "it doesn't sound that good because it's a WIP and missing a lot of elements to make it sound more full and complete". it's like you need a confidence that it will sound good when you have added all the elements it needs. 2) its hard to change the initial loop (like a barrier to change). i think there's a fear if you put in work to change it and progress the track that you will mess up the original idea or put work in that doesn't yield any better result. if you work on something and then it still sucks, its quite demotivating, lol. 3) loops happen organically most of the time, you just add sounds into a flow eventually the idea "appears" once you have added enough of the typical elements you know need to be there. after you have the loop now you have to actually think about the purpose of the loop and track, and its hard to come up with the idea of what the whole track will be (it doesn't happen as spontaneously as a loop). even if you have the idea you have to be good enough to execute it.

[jt-jsyi]

don't skimp out sound design session - the practice of synthesizing from initial patch, find the sound, then save/

[darkskinwhite]

at this point in my production "career" or "journey" or whatever you wanna call it, the arrangement often starts right away. it's been a long time since I found myself with just a good loop that idk what to do with. you have reminded me how far I have come, thankyou lol

[static-san]

A point on the "Perfectionism" trap... I did an online music production course a year or two ago and one of the things that chap showed was spending so much time tweaking the tracks. And yet, I've made and recorded music with a hardware groovebox and I've done none of that per-track tweaking. I never even put it through a mastering bus. And people still like it!

[Just-Michael]

I'm the perfectionist type. I've been working on an album since June 2018. I've recorded the guitars 3 times, I've remixed it dozens of times, endlessly tweaking, changing the virtual instruments I'm using, getting new plugins, etc. However, it's paid off. It sounds better than ever. I used to release an album or EP, and then a year or two later, hate the mix and want to redo it, which I did for a bunch of my music. I'm not touching them again though. But this album is the first album under a new name and I want to make a good first impression and I don't want to look back on it and think of how much better I could have done. Usually if I leave a song unfinished, it's because I don't like it, or it's so good that I just can't figure out what could follow it up. I sat on a section of a song for like a year before I finished it and it's one of my best songs.
That last point is so strange to me though. Being taught how to finish a song. I don't think it's something you can teach, it's something you feel. Maybe like in a paint by numbers sense you can teach how to write and finish a song, but I just go wherever my songs take me. If there's no bridge, if there's no second verse, it doesn't matter because it feels right. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[davidcooke]

“Art is never finished, it’s abandoned”

[PianoDentist]

We have a saying in software architecture. "Perfection is the enemy of progress", which applies to many things including music production.