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[Pete301]

Hi, I'm new to this forum and I have a question for you composers out there...

How do you remember and implement great ideas or structures for your next song?

I have a song that I'm working on currently and I know that when I made the plan for it I had great ideas for how I wanted it to sound and different things wanted to add. But now I am half way through, it sounds different to how I imagined it and I can't seem to get the sounds that I had imagined into practice.

Maybe it's a case of not having the know how to create the sounds I want to implement, or something else.

I'm specifically thinking of sounds and small additions to the song (glitches or cymbal crashes or any little embellishment), not melodies or harmonic progressions.

I like to use a whiteboard sat next to my desk to write down notes for what I need to add/improve/change for my next session. I use a notepad for any ideas I get when at my (unfortunately unrelated) job. But sometimes it's just to difficult to describe a sound or express it on paper. I have thought about using a Dictaphone to record me mimicking my imagined sounds, but not used it yet.

[rj]

i fuck around a lot and probably get drunk and fuck around a lot again until something sounds cool to me. i never really plan embellishments. only basic melodies, harmonies, etc, and sometimes even those are just built in the moment from messing around. very intuitive.

hello, i've been making music professionally for seven years

BASICALLY: DON'T OVERTHINK IT. IN FACT, STOP THINKING. when you're throwing the glitz on the gravy you can't let yourself get bogged down in ennui

[mscottweber]

After you've been working for a while and you think you have the piece in a pretty good spot, stop working and go do something else.  Go take a walk outside, listen to a podcast, do the dishes, something to clear your head and get out of music-land.

Then when you go back and listen to the track again, you will probably have an easier time picking up on what's not working right.

"What's not working right".  I think that's my biggest thing.  I try not to worry so much about remembering to throw in little sounds/techniques that I've heard before because I think they sound cool, I just try to listen to the track as an outsider would and focus on what about it works and what doesn't.

[ArnoldSavary]

This is an interesting and difficult question for several reasons : first because every composer is different, second because of the nature of inspiration. What I mean by that is that the musical idea that popped up in your head when you started writing your track was probably a combination of several sources of inspiration. Basically you probably were combining songs that you'd heard before, which was why it flowed so naturally. The advantage of the method you resorted to, and that is working on the musical basis you'd written, is that when doing so you use your own music as a starting point; instead of combining influences, the influences only come into play in your knownledge of music and musical taste, only in the direction in which the song will progress while still being anchored to your basis. Which is why I think that your result is probably more personal than the first idea you had.

However, when putting hours of work into a track, you tend to lose the sense of what works emotionally and what doesn't, with the possible consequence that you won't know what progression has the right amount of momentum. Typically, because you've heard one specific part dozens of time while tweaking it, you know it so well that it does nothing for you anymore and you might not give it enough space to develop. In this case, it's probably best to take a break and come back to your track later, so that your feelings towards the track are kind of restored.
So, this is a case where maybe having written down the progression you wanted beforehand might be useful, because your candid impression of what you want in the song might reflect the listener's expectations more than your tired composer brain.

tl;dr version : do what works best for you / what you imagined probably wasn't that good anyway

[Lauchsuppe]

I guess your problem is the ideas you write on your whiteboard are of verbal nature. The tricky part is translating a verbal idea to audio.
I've had similar problems when I was starting out but to be honest, I can't give any advice other than being proficient in composing/ being able to form ideas in your head and then contextualizing them in your music.

However, writing down these ideas still is a good thing. You'll learn a lot from trying to implement certain elements and then understanding whether (and why) they fit in or not. At least I feel that it helps me a lot. Because if I don't write stuff down and use it as a compass, my head won't stop producing dozens of dozens of cheesy ideas and earworms which are merely banal and annoying as hell.
Being fast at sketching out the basic shape of your piece is a great help, too. At least for me, if this all takes me a couple of days or even more, I would have added so many other different approaches and new ideas that came in the process, that my initial treck is nothing but a wreck.

[Pete301]

Thank you all for the suggestions. I will try taking breaks when I get stuck during my next session, and attempt to think less and creative more .

I think a lot of the time I end up trying to create a sound I have imagined, but during that process I have stumbled across something else interesting that fits in with the piece, so I keep it. However this leaves me feeling depressed that I didn't get my original sound and makes me feel like I am not so much composing as stumbling through music. The music doesn't sound crap, just not as I originally planned.

I don't know whether this is normal or whether I need to practice more to get the sounds that I want. I will be sure to post the song when I have a finished version.

p.s. The song I am creating is for a Portal 2 mod, I fuckin' love the Portal 2 soundtrack , but I'm no Mike Morasky, yet...

[rj]

this leaves me feeling depressed that I didn't get my original sound and makes me feel like I am not so much composing as stumbling through music

this is what composing honestly is imo

if you're making something that sounds good, don't be depressed if it's not exactly what you wanted; understand that the reason it came out that way is because you have your own distinct voice, and you're reaching that voice organically. it's entirely normal to end up with something different from what you initially envisioned, but it's not always bad, especially not in this case.

[Bakuda]

Most all of us have a smartphone, and that smartphone has an amazing tool for composers: an audio recorder.  Inspiration usually hits me in the strangest places (usually the shower).  Having my phone with me all the time, it's no problem for me to just pull it out (after stepping out of the shower), hit record, and hum/doo waa away.  Then when I sit down for my next writing session I can pull it out and away I go.