Musicians of Melonland, how do you do it?

[BlazingCobaltX]

Here's my deal: Music writing is not all that hard, but what really gets me is producing it. Here I have all this expensive equipment accumulated over time to record and mix my own music... Only to realise I completely loathe the process. Something about twisting knobs in Ableton just doesn't feel like making music to me. Analog mixing for a live performance is much more satisfying, but rarely yields a decent recording (at least in my limited experience).

I just spent 12 hours recording and mixing a one-minute jingle, which took all my energy and brought me no transferable skills. And so I turn to my senior musicians on Melonland to ask: Is (amateur) music production always this long and tedious, or is there something I'm completely missing? Whether you've done music production as an amateur or professional, I am curious to hear about your workflow and experiences.

And honestly... If anyone is confident in their production skills, I would love to collab. I have a lot of materials and it would be a waste to do nothing with it.

[angelhanachi]

For me, I'm not really sure. I just happen to listen to a VIOLENTLY DRASTIC variety of music and my autism just goes wheeeeee and starts imagining shit. And with that shit I imagine, I hop into FL Studio and start going dumb.

Is (amateur) music production always this long and tedious

Oh yeah, and to reply to this, very much yes. It takes a lot of time and precise focus at least for me but it's always worth it if you know what you're trying to do, whether or not you have a full vision in mind at the time you're working on it. You just have to make sure everything falls into place, one by one. I used to spend hours on a short melody too, eventually I became able to complete 8min+ songs within a day or two. It's all about finding yourself and where you stand musically.

[Audball]

I'm by no means a "professional" at this stuff (nor do I even really see myself as that GOOD, but I get by), but for me the hardest part about the production side of things is I always find myself becoming quite the perfectionist with it.

I'll be sitting there tweaking compressors and EQs for hours and hours just because one tiny little frequency is there when I don't want it to be, or maybe one isn't there Enough, or both! Same with anything ranging from panning, reverb, overall volume, etc.

It gets far less tedious and boring when I force myself to let go of more of that and just try to get my things more to a "passable" place than outright perfect. (Not to say that you are a perfectionist! This is just speaking from my own experiences. ) Sometimes I go as far as to limit the "quality" of the things I am using. i.e. Instead of using one of those equalizers that shows a live feed of the sound and those funky graph lines you can play with, I'll use one that just has the three "Bass, Mid, Treble" knobs and see if I can get it to a kinda-okay place.

Having someone to pass it back and forth with can also help but I know for many that's not a possibility.

Something about twisting knobs in Ableton just doesn't feel like making music to me. Analog mixing for a live performance is much more satisfying, but rarely yields a decent recording (at least in my limited experience).

Very real. You can feel quite disconnected when it's all on computers.

Take all I have said with big grain of salt tho, because as I said earlier I'm by no means professional at all at this, I am a goober who piddles around in Ableton Live a lot.

[BlazingCobaltX]

I'm somewhat glad to hear the experiences are similar. It makes the 12-hour production marathon sound less like a complete outlier.

You make a good point Audball. Another example of making things complicated for myself is using a program like Izotope Neutron. It listens to the song and gives you the best possible setting. I use that function, and then still tweak around trying to make things better (I am indeed also a perfectionist). Admittedly, I don't even know what I should be listening for sometimes.

Using just the three-knob equalizer is a good solution. It's closer to analog mixing like that, too. I do get overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of options in a DAW, so much that I can't even begin to build a simple workflow. It makes the work of ARIatHOME look like magic to me.