How do you know when a song is finished? And how to finish it faster?

[gnoll]

I might have asked about this before, but anyway...

When writing, I have a hard time finishing songs, or rather, it takes a long time. Often I work on songs for years before they're done, changing things, moving sections around etc. Then finally one day when listening to the song I will feel that "ok, I'm happy with EVERYTHING in this song" and it's done. I'm happy with the songs I've written that way. However, I'm now in a situation where I feel that I need to write more songs, quicker. And so I now hesitate about sending a song to the rest of the band because I'm not 100% sure that everything in the song is good/right.

So 1) How can I know when to treat a song as finished without feeling that I settle in terms of quality?

and 2) How can I speed up my creative process? In the past I've felt that letting songs rest and coming back to them has really helped me think about things in new ways and see new/different ways of doing things. But I don't really have time for that now.

 

[TedEH]

I've sort of set the baseline of song completeness at the point where I feel like every part of the song is saying something. I don't personally put a huge amount of thought or effort into arrangement (I arguably should, hah) so much as just try to "say things". So I might build a tune by just jamming out some stuff for a while. Then I'll come back and listen to the whole thing and think "this part is just the same rhythm played everywhere and it's missing something". Option 1: cut that part, option 2: add something on top of it, option 3: change it to a different part. Then I just repeat until I can listen through to the end of the song without thinking "this part doesn't contribute anything". On the odd occasion, I will intentionally leave a part feeling empty because that is what that part's purpose is.

I am arguably not a good song writer though, so I dunno how good my advice is. I also don't write very often. So.............

 

[AdamMaz]

I've sort of set the baseline of song completeness at the point where I feel like every part of the song is saying something.

This is my mentality.

 

[gnoll]

Hm, I'm not sure my music says a lot hehe.

I feel like the problem is there's so many possibilities. Like, you can choose any notes and arrange them in any way. You can basically do ANYTHING, so how can I be happy with what I've come up with? There must be better things I theoretically COULD come up with.

 

[TedEH]

I think it's important to make a distinction between "saying something" and "saying something of value". It's easy to say something, it's hard to make it mean anything. I mean that in the sense that I might write a lead part that, to me, sounds really weak because I'm aware of the process that led me to it, but someone else might hear it and think it sounds amazing.

I find that I interpret "what a piece of music is saying" very differently if I go back and revisit something I wrote - after enough time has passed that I don't remember the writing process very well anymore. You stop thinking "man, I only ever do this same stupid pattern" and let yourself hear just the end result, like anyone else would.

Also, not everything has to be deep or meaningful or "good" or "technical" or any of that. If I find a piece that's missing something, maybe all it needs is some stupid noise, or a very minor change to a melody to make it unique, or the addition/removal of some layer to change the level of tension in that part, and that's it. Sometimes saying nothing is what it says.

 

[KailM]

I'd be cautious about rushing your work. What you described is kind of what I've gone through-- it takes a very long time for me to complete a song. (Probably mostly because I'm lucky to have 1/2 hour a week to work on them). But here's something that works for me:

Once I'm close enough to deem a song worthy of a final mix and master, I'll do it and put it on a CD with other songs that I've been really happy with (and those songs had been compared with reference tracks from other bands I like). Once it's on a CD, it goes in my car and I listen to it on the way to work and whatnot for weeks or even months. The important thing is, I'm not able to CHANGE anything about the song the whole time. Inevitably, I'll be listening to it and all of a sudden I'll realize that something is either annoying as hell or could be a lot better if I changed it. Then I'll finally make a list of all the changes I'd wished I could make on the spot, and I go back into the mix and re-track guitars, change the drums, bass, or make mix changes.

After that, it's pretty much ready to go. A lot of people claim to never listen to their own material after completing it. I don't understand that. I make the music that I want to hear, or that I wish other bands would make. If I like it, it's done -- and I'm usually the only one that likes it.

 

[Sumsar]

For me there is two ends of the spectrum:

1) Writing songs slowly, spending a lot of time on arrangement and rewriting parts so that it all fits together.

2) Writing songs fast, never really rearranging anything and never rewrite parts, just leave the song as it first came about.

It sounds to me as you are very much doing point 1) of the above.

For my self as an example, with method 1) my band and I can maybe write 5-10 songs in a year, while with method 2) we can write 20 - 30 songs a year, because the songs are finished in one or two weeks max. Of cause many of the 20 - 30 songs are not gonna be the best, but since you have written so much, you can throw away half your songs and then only be left with the really good material.
My main issue with 1) is that even though you spend more time on songs, they don't tend to get better over time. Yes, you change things and you rewrite things, but does it make the song better or just different?

Another point is that song writing is a skill that you need to learn. And since you get through the most material with method 2) this is also the fastest way to learn to write songs.

It can be hard to throw away material, but once you get used to the idea, it can actually be very very liberating to just let the 'not quite there' songs go and put them in the grave.

In reality in my band we do something in between, with the current album that we are currently finishing up, we wrote 16 songs in a couple of months and threw away 5 of them, and then we spend some time polishing the fixing the things that didn't work so well with the remaining 11 songs.

 

[Dayn]

My advice for both questions is the same. I listen to the song over and over again. Does everything flow right? Are you hearing music that should be put into it? And more importantly, are you hearing parts that are out of place and need to be taken out? I do this over and over again until I can't think of anything of substance to add or remove. Then it's 'done'. It may need tidying up, but it's 'enough'.

That's the same for 'speeding up' the creative process. I just force myself to do the above. Do whatever rituals you feel you need to do that'll help your creative process, whether that's brewing some tea or going for a walk, do it then get listening and force it.

 

[gnoll]

Thanks guys, you say wise things.

Funnily enough I think I just finished the song I was working on. There was this one part in the song which I liked, and which was the right tempo and key, and which made for a good transition. But somehow when I listened to the song it just stuck out. I liked the part but it just didn't quite work in the song even though it "should". I almost said "meh, good enough I guess" and got on to the next song, but ultimately I decided to cut the part. Then I thought maybe I could add a guitar solo about there instead, and spent a day trying to write a solo. THEN I realized I suck at solos and randomly tried playing a variation of a riff from the song together with a variation of a lead from another part of the song. And BAM it was just epicness! It was like I found what I was looking for even though I wasn't looking for anything in particular. And now the whole song all of a sudden just seems to "work".

So I think for me at least that's a lesson that I shouldn't settle for things which don't feel right. I think sometimes it takes time to write good stuff, but yeah the more you do it the better you do it, and even though you don't always feel productive or creative, sometimes you stumble upon gold. I also think I need to be fine with cutting things that aren't working. It feels bad but you can always reuse things in later songs, and if you don't, maybe they weren't that great to begin with.

 

[Ancestor]

A lot of artists say they like the way they play the song, and it sounds better after they've toured it for a year.

 

[theFraz]

Me: in rehearsals, when I think the song is ok I record it and I listen to it after 4/5 days

 

[Ebony]

Speaking only for myself, a song is usually not finished until I decide to finish it.

But sometimes, the end just comes to me out of nowhere. I have a song conceived back in 2011 that is still not finished but the ending has been crystal clear since 2013 (a crushing, sudden and slightly unexpected tremolo-picked modulation over roughly 280bpm blasting).

 

[Seybsnilksz]

A song is never finished, only abandoned.

 

[KailM]

But sometimes, the end just comes to me out of nowhere. I have a song conceived back in 2011 that is still not finished but the ending has been crystal clear since 2013 (a crushing, sudden and slightly unexpected tremolo-picked modulation over roughly 280bpm blasting).

Sounds like my cup of tea.

 

[GunpointMetal]

For me, I like to think of each song like a story or a film. So the intro sets the tone, where do I want to take it from there, do I want to go back to that mood, do I want to move away from it, what is the mood going to be at the end. Sometimes I literally map out stuff like that before I start writing "Epic Joyous Intro - Disaster - Fighting to Overcome - Additional Loss - Final Fight Scene - Mysterious Is-It-Over Ending" and try to write parts that fit that scenario.

 

[JohnIce]

Deciding to finish it, is good advice. I try to work the way a sculptor would, i.e. start with a rough block and work towards finer and finer details. I find that working this way it's much easier to see when you're done, and you run less risk of making parts that don't quite fit together or getting problems like your pre-chorus sounding fatter than the chorus. So if you divide that into three steps:

1: Minimal, boring chords, generic bassline, stale drum loop, just throw together enough to get a shape of the song that I can start singing and writing lyrics over. In my opinion the lyrics and vocal melody rule the song, and should dictate whatever the instruments should do, that's why it's good to get them done early. In this step, you will find out if the idea is strong enough to even warrant working on this song more or if you should just start over. It's also worth spending an extra few minutes making sure the key is the right one for you/your vocalist. Becaus f**k your open strings and natural harmonic tricks, the singer decides what key the song should be in Anything else is unprofessional and will only hurt you later.
2: When the vocal is on point, I start carving away at the boring instrumental. Guitars, bass and drums (and any other main instrument). Work out some more interesting guitar parts, a proper bass line, change up the drums, experiment with finding the right tones. Make sure every instrument is playing in the right octave and not taking more space than it should. This could be done in the rehearsal space in full band, that's certainly a fun way to do it.
3: I dig into the details, like fills, solos, percussion, little extra guitar lines or synth parts to add extra weight and contrast to different parts of the song. Backing vocals, special FX etc. After steps 1 and 2 chances are you'll have plenty of cemented ideas for what these add-ons should be already.

Then, if it still doesn't "feel" finished, I have a mental checklist that I try to go through, just to be sure.
- Is the first verse, especially the first line, interesting enough to make people want to stick around until the chorus?
- Is there contrast from section to section?
- Is there a distinct melody in every section (i.e. vocal melody, riff, solo, synth hook)? I like there to always be something in the foreground.
- Is there something new happening in every chorus? Does anything sound copy/pasted?
- Are there ever too many new instruments or melodies added at the same time? I prefer not overloading any new section of the song with too many new things, just makes for bad storytelling.
- Are any sections longer than they should? Would the song benefit from cutting the pre-chorus in half, for example?
- Is there anything "signature" about your style or your band that you want to implement, but forgot to?

I find that if the song isn't finished after all that, well... come to think of it, I've never gone through all that and NOT felt finished

Good thread! Too little songwriting discussion on this forum, too much talk about signature gear

 

[Sollipsist]

A song is finished when you're sick of it. Then you give it to the band and play the crap out it until you're so sick of it that you don't want to ever hear it again.

Then the audience starts to like it.

And then you get famous for that song, it's the only thing anybody wants to hear, and you end up talking about it for the next 20-40 years. And you make an ass of yourself dissing the song in interviews, pissed off because nobody cares about all the other music that you've spent so much more time and effort on.

And just when you think you're done being sick of it, some director puts it in a movie or tv show and you can get sick of it all over again. Remastered and remixed.

But by then you're dead inside, a soulless victim of success whose only joy comes from counting the money that still dribbles in from time to time.

And then you die from some horrible wasting disease, and your obituary reads "best known for the song..."

That's when you're finished.

 

[MFB]

A song is finished when you're sick of it. Then you give it to the band and play the crap out it until you're so sick of it that you don't want to ever hear it again.

Then the audience starts to like it.

And then you get famous for that song, it's the only thing anybody wants to hear, and you end up talking about it for the next 20-40 years. And you make an ass of yourself dissing the song in interviews, pissed off because nobody cares about all the other music that you've spent so much more time and effort on.

And just when you think you're done being sick of it, some director puts it in a movie or tv show and you can get sick of it all over again. Remastered and remixed.

But by then you're dead inside, a soulless victim of success whose only joy comes from counting the money that still dribbles in from time to time.

And then you die from some horrible wasting disease, and your obituary reads "best known for the song..."

That's when you're finished.

I didn't realize Jani Lane was posting on SSO from his grave.

Neat!