Larry Jones
This is a great thread. I hope it helps the original poster. I know it has helped me to hear how many of you go through the same difficulties as I do. My songwriting has diminished almost to nothing in recent years, and this leads directly to self doubt: Maybe I'm not as talented as I thought I was. It's good to know others have found various paths out of the darkness.

Don't be too hard on yourself, Larry. Lots of things to consider if you really think about it.
 
Sometimes we go through phases where we live this stuff and we're inspired, other times job, family and life just makes it a little less important.
 
Another thing too...we get older. As we get older, sometimes the challenge of music can get a bit much for us. I notice I'm writing more intricate stuff now than I did when I was a into the progressive phase. Some of my new material is a bear to play. But you know how it goes...if you can hear it in your head, you can play it! :)
 
Heck sometimes I'd rather just do something else. I've not played my guitar in about 15 days due to a new control room I'm building. That's something I don't think I have ever done in my life since I started playing 38 years ago. Though it would bother me if all of a sudden I couldn't play anymore, I didn't miss playing. I enjoyed playing tonight for the two hours I played, but it didn't have the same effect it once had. Sometimes like our tastes in food change, our tastes in other things change.
 
You're probably just as talented as you thought...just not as motivated or maybe music just isn't as important to create as it is to listen to for you at this particular time? If that is the case, it doesn't mean it will always be that way. :) Between messing with sounds in the studio and trying so hard to make things sound good to performing good, sometimes this field can take a toll on a person. :)
 
-Danny 

I've come back around to hearing the 'voices in my head'. I'm curious... do you guys have a process you use to keep your songwriting/production process simple and straightforward?
Do you write out your arrangements? Have a particular style with a fixed instrumentation and style that you know well enough that you don't work outside of it? Simply keep your FX or track counts as low as possible?
 
I have a track I was working on and what has thrown me off is that I have NO idea what arrangement ideas I have in mind. I sort of threw a ton of instruments and FX into the project long hoping to get something good long before the project was even done. I'm not sure it ever will be.

davdud101
I sort of threw a ton of instruments and FX into the project long hoping to get something good long before the project was even done. I'm not sure it ever will be.

What exactly are you trying to achieve davdud101 ?
 

That's the problem, Paul! I had some vision... a strange mixture of an 8-bit/chiptune EDM style mixed with a kind of punk rock feel. What I've ended up with is a really badly arranged piece where NOTHING sounds just at ALL like what I really want. I have something of the basic idea, but it's not truly what I have in mind.
On top of that, whatever I've done with t helix just causes everything to sound bad. The vocals are poorly performed, to make it worse.
It's not too important of a project, so I'm setting it aside to work on things that interest me more.

I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who start out with some grand arrangement vision in mind and can sketch it out from the get go. Personally I can't work like that at all and I don't think I'm alone. I work very haphazardly, organically, whimsically, scatterbrainedly, call it what you will.

I usually start with some riff, beat or other simple musical idea that I've come up with while messing around. And then I build around it slowly, adding bits here and there and experimenting with different directions. Very often during the course of a project I will do a complete about turn and revamp the whole thing into something completely different from my original idea. Sometimes this will result from a particular sound not working out in the mix - I'll change it to something else and realize that this new sound suggests a completely different style, so I'll change the beats as well. And sometimes new sounds suggest different arrangement directions.

Sometimes a musical idea you originally thought would be the "centerpiece" of your song gets relegated to a less dominant role in the course of the organic development of the project. For instance I'm currently working on a remix of a song by a female vocalist. All I have was the bare vocal part. I originally came up with a guitar riff that I thought was awesome (still do). So I set about trying to arrange the tune around this riff. A couple of months later and the guitar riff has found itself in a back seat position, near the end of the song in the final verse. I had come up with better sounding synth parts in the meantime which I realized should define the song more than the guitar riff. So now the riff is just adding a bit of variety toward the end.

If you work like this, you have to be proficient in a few things. The first involves being intimately familiar with the arrangement editing tools of your DAW. How to move chunks around, how to delete time, how to make sure automation moves with clips etc. The second involves learning to let go of musical ideas which aren't working in the track. I know I find that part hard. But set them aside and know they're always there as raw material to take advantage of in future projects.

As for FX, I don't think there's any harm in working on a rough mix at the same time as your arrangement. I sure do. I know there are people who get the whole tracking thing done before they insert a single plug, but I can't work like that. My musical/arrangement decisions are very much influenced by the sounds I'm working with, and I need to use a rough mix to get an idea of whether or not sounds will work together. If you can't get them to sound good in a rough mix, time to choose other sounds. I'm sure most EDM producers are playing with FX as they write. How on earth can you figure out the arrangement of an EDM track without FX and automation, when things like delay and filter sweeps are an integral part of that arrangement?

Most of all, just accept the fact that there's no hurry. Sometimes you need to perform multiple "passes" of a project, whittling down and editing and rearranging parts, before a good arrangement emerges. Depending on how you work (and how many hours you have), this can take months. But even if you choose to set it aside to work on other projects, make sure you come back to it regularly so you don't lose sight of it. I've come back to projects after a year and have no freaking clue at all what I was doing with the arrangement and routing etc. Very easy to abandon projects when you just don't recognize them anymore!