Juggling Studio Roles, How to stay focused when doing it all? Options

[Bonzo3]

I've been wondering why it takes me so long to get from start to finish when making music – and in many ways the answer is obvious: when you're acting as writer, musician, producer and sound technician for the same song, of course it takes time.

However, I feel that one problem with performing all these roles is the difficulty in staying focused. I'm sure I can't be the only one who writes a song with a certain production or instrumentation in mind, and then gets bogged down mid-song by worrying about how I'm going to achieve that sound, rather than leaving this problem to someone else. I think this is particularly a problem when you use programming software as your composition tool, rather than just a production tool.

I'm sure that all of these roles get a little easier through pracitice and experience, but I'd love to hear from anyone how has tips on how to juggle these roles and take things a step at a time, rather than chasing your tail.

All the best,

Bonzo

[brendan]

Can you be more specific? What do you mean by using "programming software as a composition tool"? I try to stay away from programming when I'm doing music--but some people really dig it.

Certainly, it's tough to stay focused when you have to wear all of those hats...

I don't know if this'll help you but here's how I stay focused--

As much as possible, I divide writing from producing. If I'm writing with a band, I'll set up audiorecorder with my powerbook's crappy lil' microphone and record some ideas as we hash them out. Then we listen back to them, decide what's best, and refine them further. When we think we've arrived at a form for the piece of music (be it verse-chorus pop song, 32-bar standard, atonal jazz, or what have you) then, and only then, do we switch over to the process of getting it into a multitrack computer environment.

As recently as five years ago I did most of my writing walking around town singing into a dictaphone. Because studio time was so expensive, it made it easy (and cost-effective) to get ideas worked out before spending money on getting them fleshed out in a studio.

I know people who buy Logic and spend all their time just farting around with Scuplture and Ultrabeat and downloaded plugins. I suspect that if I allowed myself time to do so, I could just play with Reaktor for days and days and never come up with anything besides a lot of fun farting around...but I guess what I'm trying to say is:

• get your structural writing done first, either away from the computer or as simply as possible
• then, piece by piece, add the sweetening. Record a better vocal--tweak your drum loops--whatever

I hope this helps.