How to Finish More Song Ideas: Tips for Producers

Modern production tools offer a multitude of creative options, powerful features, and the ability to craft high-quality audio, all—in the box. But it can still be hard to finish songs…

With almost endless options, the ability to quickly reverse decisions, and access to ready-made, high-quality samples, across EVERY genre, coupled with the pressure to produce great mixdowns. It can leave producers feeling overwhelmed with options, and unable to complete tracks and get them out there in the world.

Finishing tracks is a skill, like creativity, that needs to be practiced, and developed.

In this article we give you some tips for getting through the barrier, and getting things finished when producing music.

Copy, Paste and Refine

When you have a loop that is working, don’t be afraid to duplicate it out so you have a rough arrangement which you can then start to mould into a full track.

This can help you to:

Avoid getting stuck in a loop

Visualise the whole song

Move the track forward

Leave it Overnight

Whether it’s a creative idea that you can’t get to work, or a mixdown that just won’t sit right.

Sometimes you can spend hours on a track, tweaking EQ’s and volumes, cycling through bass sounds, and presets, trying to get it to click. But you can’t get there. And sometimes it ends up being further away from finished than it was at the start of the session. It’s important to take regular breaks throughout a session anyway, but taking a break, especially overnight, can help to give you a fresh perspective that can help you to finish more song ideas.

Separate Composing and Mixing

It’s important to find what works for you, and play around with different approaches. But some people prefer to separate their song writing and mixing sessions. This can allow you to focus on each skillset separately, and not get caught up with refining sounds when you are writing the song, and finishing your arrangement in the mixing phase.

Get a Mentor and Upskill

Music production can be complicated, it can take a long time to get good at it, and to be able to finish songs regularly. Getting a mentor who has been there and finished tracks can help you to take your skills to the next level, get better at completing songs, and increase the quality of those that you do finish. Many top producers offer mentorship, 1-to-1 lessons, and more.

Create a Template

A template is a customized file that you can use as a starting point in your DAW that you can load every time you start a new track. As you get more proficient at producing there will be certain actions that you nearly always take when you make a track. You will probably have favourite instruments, plugins, FX, certain buses, and more.

Templates can help you to finish song ideas by:

Streamlining your workflow to optimize creativity when it comes. Saving you time, and brain power, so you can get that idea down. For example - you don’t have to add a synth to a MIDI channel because you have one already set-up, so you can start jamming straight away.

Making it easy to get a vibe going to get inspired from, and build on.

Making it easier to arrange a track as you can set labels, or colour coding for different sections as a guide.

When creating your template you could mark out certain sections of the arrangement, ready to start creating in, such as the intro, chorus, and verses. Add MIDI channels with your favourite synths on or FX that you often use into audio channels. Setup Buses, and more.

Of course you can detour from your template, and adjust it to mix it up, but having a lot of these things set-up already can help to get a vibe going, and keep your creating fast when it comes.

Work with a Vocalist

It can be easy to think you have to do everything yourself when you are a producer, with an orchestra of instruments at your fingertips, and millions of samples. Working with a vocalist, or another musician with a skillset you don’t have, can help to make songs that you were stuck on come alive. It gives you someone to bounce ideas off of, make creative decisions with, and magic can happen when you are working together in a live setting.

If you are looking for a place to find musicians to collaborate with, Verse-Chorus is a collaboration platform brimming with musical talent. With songwriters, lyricists, singers, producers, and more. Connect and create with thousands of musicians in one place.

Decide on the Centrepiece

Sometimes when you are making a track, all the pieces are there, you can hear it, but there’s something not quite right, and it doesn’t sound how you pictured it. Maybe there is too much going on at once, certain elements are fighting for space, or clashing. Deciding what the most important part of your song is can help with this, sometimes unlocking a mixdown or getting a song finished. Once you’ve decided, you can base your composition, arrangement and mixing decisions around this, so that it’s prominent. If the vocal is the centrepiece then you could make it louder, reduce clashes, reduce the volume of other elements, use sidechaining, and more. It can be useful to keep the genre in mind.

Written by Nick Stephens, a music production tutor, music marketing writer, and down to his DNA—music obsessive. When he isn’t making music you can find him at live music events, DJing up and down the UK, including Glastonbury, and the gym—sometimes.