So these are the hurdles I’m trying to get past. I’ve been making tracks (mostly collabs) for some time and a few have been released on some pretty good labels. Most of them have been heavily sample based and I want to get away from that and focus more on my own sounds and riffs, as well as working on solo tracks.
Mostly when trying to make a track with no vocals,
1) I’m having trouble coming up with some good simple riffs that are both danceable and can hold their own throughout the length of a track without getting too boring. Maybe it’s just me being hyper critical but it just doesn’t seem have that head bopping quality to it. It’s not so much the rythms as it sounds good and grooving when I program in one note…it’s when I start to try and move notes up and down the scale it ends up sounding amateurish.
2) So looking at my hard drive I have tons of projects that I have 16 bars of good sounds (drums, bass, synths and FX) but when I go to make an arrangment I just get stuck constantly switching through all the possibilities. I tend to get stuck during the intro (which I know makes no sense since most of that is lost in the mix) or right after the intro and the main lead sound comes in. I have analysed tons of tracks I like but still I’m getting stuck or if I do finish an arrangement it sounds neandering to me…not something focused specifically when I’m trying to do a track without a vocal.
3) Mixdowns - I think part of this also has to do with me not being happy with my arrangment in the first place or the fact that I tend to like the darker more filtered sounds which too much of muddys everything up.
Just needed to vent…sorry for the long post.