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

One of the problems with having gigabytes of cool sound libraries is that it's easy to get lost in finding the "perfect sound". Put together a Short List of preferred sounds that you can go to to get ideas out of your head and into the computer quickly. You can always tweak later when you're in producer mode. But while you're in performer mode; i've found that having some stock sounds at the ready helps me to get things like drums, bass, keys and strings done quickly.

Scott