When do you decide when your track is done?

[Woah]

This is a major thing for me as it seems like it's a black hole i fall into every single time.
Usually I can't even decide on the intro.

I keep making beats and they sound awesome but then another sound comes into my head and I try that out, which also sounds good and then I try other combinations.. well you get the idea This leads to a workspace jammed with sounds...

Bits and pieces which I created, 30 percussion loops, 10 different hi-hat combinations, you name it. And when I finally got it right there's always that extra spark which could be added and I do it all over again... Some of my tracks got at least 7 different versions.

How do you guys deal with this? When is the point where you say "kay sounds cool, let's export!"

[BiggChev]

This is a dilemma many songwriters struggle with...

I never KNOW when my tracks are done. Honestly. I work at tracks, get fed up, get re-inspired, then change gears completely. Ultimately the best way I found to finish a track is to layout an arrangement, with the parts I've got so far. Listen to the whole 3-5 mins of it repeatedly. ASIDE from mix & master, if I can jam to it that's how it stays.

Again, the act of finalizing a song differs from writer to writer. But here are some tips I've picked up along the way to help push me towards completion.

1. Oblique Cards: great set of cards with abstract ideas, thoughts, quotes that are designed to keep juices flowing and to avoid stagnation.

2. BOUNCE TO AUDIO: this has been brought up a few times recently, but bouncing to audio, is probably one of the best ways to keep yourself from going back and changing shit. Got a bass line that sounds good? Bounce it and throw it into the arrangement. Move on.

3. Competition: I found I was the MOST productive when I was writing with my hip-hop group. Between the 3 of us, it became very competitive to have a disk ready for Friday with a stack of hot new beats to show each other. Also, it's a great way of having a secure feeling sounding board of trusted people.

4. Workflow: Improving your workflow, and compartmentalizing different parts of the process help to keep you from multi--tasking in vain, and tweaking knobs endlessly without really accomplishing anything. Sound Design, Write, Arrange, Automate, Mix. BOUNCE!

Hopefully this helps!

[alchemy]

try to finish your song as quickly as posible.
if spend more than 20hs writing and re writing your arregementar your are doing something wrong.

try to have at leas the arrangement of the song in your first 20 hs of work. Limit yourself to finishing this in no more than 20 hours.
It doesn't matter if your song is not awesome after this part of the work.
only after this, start adding details. glitchs, small variations, complicated automations etc.

[Woah]

Yeah it does, I guess the main issue is also getting bored with it because you're listening to it so much, while it actually sounded fine :S. It's hard to tell if it's just ear fatigue or if it actually needs adjusting :O

[LoopCat]

Yeah it does, I guess the main issue is also getting bored with it because you're listening to it so much, while it actually sounded fine :S. It's hard to tell if it's just ear fatigue or if it actually needs adjusting :O

I do this all the time!

[Woah]

In what order do you guys create the sections? Main part first? Or just start with intro and go from there

[the_bastet]

Honestly meng, a track is never finished. The beauty of music as an artform is that it is everchanging. I have tunes that are 8 years old I go back, hunt down the multitrack or project file, tear apart and remix it as a vip to both modernize and re express the same emotion. When you can play the track over and over again without finding anything you want to ad or take away, then it is ready for the masses. Thats not so say you wont hear it again next year and think... "I could have done that differently"

[Tarekith]

I know instantly when a track is done, and it's always way before I expected it to be. I often have these grand dreams that every track will have hundreds of edits and fills, really complex layers and what not. Then suddenly while listening to it I think "wait, sounds great like it is, don't fuck it up by opver-doing it", and that's when I stop.

And yes, very rarely sometimes you just sick of listening to something. You like it, you're proud of it, but you know it's not your greatest work and you're so obsessed with it you just need to release it so you can move on.

[grazz16]

Oooooh man, i hear you my producer brothers! This too is the bane of my producer existence. Especially since i just finished a track that i must have listed to 100's of times, and for the life of me, i just could not get it sounding the way i wanted to in the mixdown. I sounded "good" but not the "amazing" picture i thought it could be in my head. I added things, i took them away, i changed the sounds, i changed the levels, i would leave it for a couple days and come back and thing the whole thing was off, i listened to it so many times i lost perspective on if i even liked it or not, i swear to god i almost sent it to Terekith to mix for me lol...this song drove me nuts for weeks. Ultimately, i think you just need to get to a point where you have to stop being a perfectionist and be happy with your work...now for the perfectionist this is way easier said than done.

Usually it comes down to, as some said, listening to it a through and thinking "i have nothing i want to change". At that point for me the song is done, usually this is fairly definitive, but as OP said there is the ever temping desire to go back and keep adding parts. I think this is especially easy to do with percussions, synths usually tell you when things are cluttered.

I wish i had some easy quick fix for this issue, but i really dont. I like to think it'll just come easier with experience. The more tracks you write the better you'll become at seeing the proverbial "forrest through the trees". I think i disagree with the 20 hour rule however. I know thats illGates thing where if his songs are not done in 20 hours he just "scraps them for parts" as he says. I see the merit in that, but i also think theres probably nothing worse than finishing a track under the gun, thinking its good, and then listening to it down the line and thinking "damn i wish i had put some more time into this, cuz i need to change x, y, z". I wouldnt give up on an idea i thought could be great just because i was at my self-imposed time limit. Thats just me tho.

Although i think what Terekith said is actually fairly profound: sometimes you just need to realize this one got away from you, finish it, know that it may not be the best song you've ever written, and move on. I think we'd all like every new song we write to be our best ever, but i just dont think it works that way. Thats a very hard thing to come to grips with sometimes.

[Woah]

I need some objective ears on this...
Beat 1: https://soundcloud.com/bartpoort93/1...ound-1/s-bF82k - little bit more techy, just a snippet without the vox
Beat 2: https://soundcloud.com/bartpoort93/1...around/s-Jj9fd - more funky feel to it

which one do you like the most..