Bogged down

[Insahn]

Hey all,

I have a question about workflow. I'm really new to making dubstep, but not really that new to making music or recording. I've recently (past 6 months) dedicated a lot of time to learning all I can about synthesis/mixing. Now that I'm armed with this new knowledge I can't seem to get anything finished. My question is how much time do you spend on sound design vs. actual song writing? Do you ever get bogged down mixing as you go because you want to have an accurate picture of what something is going to sound like?

Thanks

[oprs]

this is pretty normal, its better to get ALL your ideas down, mix it down later. why ruin your creative flow tweaking nobs for 30 minutes then continuing?

[blinx]

My workflow generally has the two combined, my songwriting starts building a beat/synth/loop/bass and then everything else comes from that starting point (sound design) but i will design other sounds while im still composing the tune building its structure.

With enough gain structuring practice under your belt it begins to get alot easier to mix the elments all most subconciously while composing your track. If you get the source sounds right from the get go, and it becomes your standard workflow, you can save time and headaches later on.

As mentioned above, I also try to write all the "creative" parts of a song in one setting, almost building the "skeleton" as we call it in my studio. Then a few days later ill take the skeleton and fine tune things and begin the proper mixdown/master phases with my engineer hat.

[Insahn]

Thanks, I think my problem might be that I just don't have enough of a sound library to work with. I need to spend more time designing sounds so that I can quickly pull sounds from it when doing the song writing part.

[blinx]

yeah 60gb+ of sample and sound material helps when your feeling bogged down for sure.

[Dreadfunk]

You'll build up a library of patches and samples as times goes on, but for me I like to write tunes before I design them. I find it makes for a better song, but it takes a little more creativity.

I like to get all the notes down using basic synths, so if I want a crunchy saw sound I'll just plop a really basic patch down and start writing the tune before I try to make it sound good / interesting.

If you think about it, there are a lot of good tunes out there that are really simple sound design wise, and it's because they are well written and well conceived tracks that were made with a vision in mind. Get an idea in your head of what you want it to sound like, and then rough it in with basic sounds. Then refine, refine, refine until it actually sounds like you want it to.

Kinda like drawing. You start with the basic shapes and add the details as you go.

I find sitting there and trying to make cool bass sounds is really counter-productive to actually making music.

[jrisreal]

Yeah man I hear you OP. Before I learned synthesis and sound design and mixing, I could make a tune in 15 minutes and it be a good tune and be done with it. Didnt give a crap where it was peaking or if the kick didnt have the clarity it needed or whatnot. Now I can make things sound clear and make cool synths but I spend too much time on that rather than just having fun and getting the song done.

[FuzionDubstep]

this is pretty normal, its better to get ALL your ideas down, mix it down later. why ruin your creative flow tweaking nobs for 30 minutes then continuing?

this is the best advice but I think its just human nature to end up trying to perfect everything.. I always think right lets get some ideas down and make a rough structure of a track and go back but I always end up spending hours on one section perfecting the sound when I could do this later. I don't know why but I can't avoid it ha ha