5 Mistakes every one makes while making their songs

We often talk about how you can improve your business and productivity skills, but all that doesn’t matter if your songs are not the best they can be. Therefore, here are a few things to have a more streamlined process with your creation process to make better tracks and avoid wasting time with what doesn’t matter…

5 THOUGHTS FROM ME

1. Don’t forget that you’re telling a story through your song.

One of the most common mistakes when creating a track is forgetting the story that you’re trying to tell in it. As a movie or a book, your track has a part A, B, and C, and it needs to have an interesting hook for people to keep on listening, otherwise, they will just skip it. So, here are some things to keep in mind when you create your tracks:

1. Add a hook to your track. A lead that you can introduce in the break or drop 1, and then you can even add a top lead on drop 2 to complement it. Some people, though, add an arp and think it’s the lead, but it might not be, and a good way to test this is with a vocal. If you add a vocal on top of your lead, and the track doesn’t feel crowded, then your ‘lead’ might not be acting as a lead, but as a background element, and you might need to revisit it;
2. As a movie or a book, if parts A, B, and C are the same, people will skip your song. Part C, drop 2 (or the last drop), needs to be the most exciting part of your tune so, reward your listener for listening until it happens and go all in with it. Open cutoffs, add more percussions, and keep it interesting;
3. Lastly, one rule of thumb that I apply to my songs is: If the next 8-bar loop, or 16-bar depending on the genre, is the same as the current one, delete it. You need to keep your track moving and growing, and if you don’t move, people will skip it, so make it grow over time;

2. Don’t make your song too long or complicated.

Even though tracks above 7 minutes still exist, they are fading more and more and becoming more genre-specific because we simply don’t have the attention span for them anymore. And this also applies to DJs as well. Nowadays, a lot of DJs are editing long tunes to only play the best part of it and avoid losing the dancefloor in a long song.

At the same time, if you make them with the perfect length, but too complicated to listen to, it would make it too hard to follow and, again, make people skip it. Therefore, here are some things that I’d recommend you follow:

1. Avoid adding elements that take you away from the main story. Remember, you’re telling ONE story and not two or three, so adding elements that don’t collaborate with that one story or that just change the story completely might just throw people off;
2. Use two or three reference tracks to check if your sections (drops, breaks) are not too long/short compared;

3. Scrap the ideas that are not working for you early on.

Instead of pursuing ideas that are not triggering you so much just for the sake of finishing everything, work only on the ideas that you’re in love with. Basically, if you’re not “HELL YEAH” about an idea, say “NO” to it (which is something Derek Sivers says in this post).

The only exception to this rule happens if you’re still developing your skills since then the goal with this song should be to ‘develop your skills’ and not to ‘release it’ (which should be a plus, not an end goal at this stage). Doing this, you’ll get more time to work on the tracks that matter and that will open up more time to work on making new ideas rather than just one song after the other. But, how to choose the best ideas?

1. Start your ideas the same way, same elements, and if possible, the least elements possible. This way, you can judge the idea by the feeling it evokes in you, and not by any cool sound design (unless your genre is sound design driven);
2. After this, build a full 8-bar loop, and only an 8-bar loop, for the best ideas you made earlier. This will give you a sense of which ideas can best become a track without needing to fully develop it;
3. For the 8 bars you like the most, build a drop or a break, and if it’s still a ‘hell yeah’, then you finish them;
4. However, if you give that 8 bar a week or two, and when you come back to it, you’re not feeling it anymore, scrap it and move to the next one.

In essence, only invest time on what you’re “hell yeah” about it, and avoid wasting time on what’s not worth it.

4. Mix your song while you’re making your song instead of only in the end.

I receive a lot of demos for feedback that the main issues with them are related to mixing, but the demos also contain a comment that says “Mixing will still be done”. However, when you mix your track while you produce it, it will not only make the project more enjoyable to work on, which can motivate you to finish it, but also help you find gaps in your track that could leave it empty when you fully mix it.

Therefore, for every 2-3 sessions that you do, do a session where you’d be just cleaning the sound, adjusting, and organizing your project, which, by the way, is an awesome session for when you’re not feeling creative since it doesn’t require creativity.

When you do this, not only your demo will sound better while you produce it, but it will also open up space for new elements to come in and make your song fuller. Lastly, this will, in the end, make your mixing process a lot easier and faster since your song is already well-mixed from the start, which can help you finish it faster.

5. Make your songs’ mixdowns fit within each other and the tracks you love in a genre.

Whenever I’m mixing my own and my clients’ tracks, I always ask for their previous tunes or tracks they love to use as a reference to make sure that if you play this new one with your old ones, or within the label’s catalog, it doesn’t stand out in a bad way. To make sure this happens, here are a couple of things you should do:

1. Test your songs within a DJ set to make sure they don’t stand out negatively among other songs. If they, for example, lack low end compared to others, then this is a hint that you need more low end;
2. Use reference tracks that you love while mixing your songs, but also use your own tracks as reference tracks. If you’re still developing then I’d focus more on your most loved tracks than your own songs, but I’d still compare them among each other to make sure your current mixdown sounds similar to what you have as a reference.

Both these scenarios will show you things that you could fix on your tunes to make them more like what you’re trying to reach, and they will also help you understand when your song is finished, which is something you can read more about in this post.

1 QUESTION FOR YOU

What else are some really common mistakes we make when producing tracks?

1. Stop thinking about the outcome and results when making your song.
Make what you like and you can even think about the target label, but NEVER make a song only to get signed. This will often make your track generic and can end up sounding generic, which is never attractive to a label, which is something I mentioned in our last post.

2. Not evoking an emotion.
The point of music is to evoke an emotion and build a track around it. Therefore, if you have conflicting emotions in your tune or it doesn’t really evoke anything, it can end up sounding bland and skippable.

3. AVOID using elements that everyone is using.
If an element is being overused in your genre, avoid it, even if it’s the coolest thing ever. Otherwise, you’ll risk sounding generic and doing the same as what everyone is doing