What's the hardest thing in music production for you?

One of my main gripes with my setup (or maybe music production in 2012), is the inability to quickly manipulate and improvise with a bunch of tracks and sounds. I'm talking 30+ tracks where there's hundreds of possible variations.

It's a time killer sifting through everything to find the best combinations at times.

@Coz
I think the problem is that the industry works like hollywood, creative solutions to problems like you've described will not come from corporations... Or at best, when they have caught up with what we wanted 10 years ago... it won't be relevant.
If only more people would cooperate on open source music gear projects... An open source MPC would kill anything a bunch of suits can throw out the window...

Materialising ideas. That is getting all the gear to work with one another flawlessly. It limits my creative process a lot.

Finding time/quiet at home to make beats! That's the hardest shit in the world when you have kids and a wife, a full time job that requires you to be in call and not having a proper room/studio to work in.


The only time I KNOW I can work on shit uninterrupted is after 9 or 10 pm (everyone else is in bed, hahaha).


Also maintaining a train of thought. Starting a beat and not getting close enough to completion will kill it for me, ill typically erase/not save those beats.

szr wrote:@Coz
I think the problem is that the industry works like hollywood, creative solutions to problems like you've described will not come from corporations... Or at best, when they have caught up with what we wanted 10 years ago... it won't be relevant.
If only more people would cooperate on open source music gear projects... An open source MPC would kill anything a bunch of suits can throw out the window...

What you're saying rings true. The suits assume that because there's a lot of simplistic music about they can justifiably strip features away in their products to fill that niche, but it's a chicken and egg situation. When products are repackaged in a shiny new box with less features than 10 year old gear, you can't help being slightly sceptical.

10 years ago, all I wanted was more sample time.

hardest thing for me is finding the keys of my beats, and finding other samples in the same key to mix with it.

the hardest part for me (currently, cuase it always changes) is getting bored of the beat after 30 mins or so, or my lack of keyboard/true music theory knowledge - i wanna really learn how to play piano. that would take my beats to the next level. i grew up playing bass and other instruments, and can read both clefs, so it should be TOO bad - i just been lazy i guess, when it comes down to it

Coz wrote:What you're saying rings true. The suits assume that because there's a lot of simplistic music about they can justifiably strip features away in their products to fill that niche, but it's a chicken and egg situation. When products are repackaged in a shiny new box with less features than 10 year old gear, you can't help being slightly sceptical.

Makes me think of Apple's latest products.

It's the dumbing down of technology because the majority of the people that now buy these things need to be hand-held apparently(!), so we have less features and worse usability

When people complain they get the obligatory "you're the exception. 95% of people don't need that". Major gripe of mine. I h8 the dumbing down of tech, sacrificing features for "dumb" masses.

shyftexhales wrote:...And I also find it hard to make some real variations cuz the loops things keeping me in the zone like meditation or someting.. so I dont see whats wrong with that.. but it obviously is :p

I know exactley what you mean bro!

Hardest thing for me is choosing the right sequence or pattern when I flip a sample. I tend to get lost and stuck on this part when making a beat. I'll be happy with the way i flip this sample but 5 minutes later I'll be unhappy and flip it some other way. I can do this for hours until I'm satisfied. Wish I had friends over all the time when I make a beat cause they can give me feedback on the fly.

Sometimes I would have friends over while I make a beat and when I see them nodding their heads or saying 'oooooooh' or start rhyming, thats when I know I'm doing something right.

jimmie wrote:Makes me think of Apple's latest products.

It's the dumbing down of technology because the majority of the people that now buy these things need to be hand-held apparently(!), so we have less features and worse usability

When people complain they get the obligatory "you're the exception. 95% of people don't need that". Major gripe of mine. I h8 the dumbing down of tech, sacrificing features for "dumb" masses.

I think Apple and Android stuff offers a nice complimentary interface to more powerful gear, but I know what you're saying.

What's annoying is coming back to hardware after 10 years of working almost exclusively in software, and the most powerful hardware is 10 years old!

damien907 wrote:hardest thing for me is finding the keys of my beats, and finding other samples in the same key to mix with it.

I try to focus on finding the tonic note first and then figure out the rest of the key on a guitar or piano.

es-k wrote:i wanna really learn how to play piano. that would take my beats to the next level.

Your beats are already level 20 grandmaster vorpal sword wielding ninja assassin multiclass. I'd pay good money to see you do some beatmaking videos and cough up some of that secret mpc kung-fu you're hoarding.

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The hardest thing for me (cept finding time) is going tone deaf over the same 2/4/8 bar pattern. Sometimes I'll go down the wrong road and won't realize that it is better to just throw everything out and start again. It's hard to tell yourself that you just spent 2-3 hours baking a cake made of poop.

i def feel you on working on wacccccccck ass shit for wayyy too long, its so repetative and you think its the dope shit, but the next time you turn the mpc on your like wtf was i thinking?

Word, the last 4 posts said it the best.
I'm always having problems with going 'deaf' over time when you're working on the same instrumental for 4 hours or something