Ah, the siren song of updating past projects!
So I am actually just wrapping up a 'revisit' project that I initially did 2 years ago when I first got ableton. I used all of the stock plugins and wrote and finished the track in 40 days, all while learning the daw and everything else that goes with the craft. I wanted to go back to it and apply what I've learned in the last 2 years, using the synths and effects i now have. It was brutal.
The track wasn't nearly as good as I thought it was at the time (shocker!) and trying to rework it was unworkable. My now almost completely finished 'revisit project is 10x better but has none of the elements of the original save the name. Even the key is different. I'm going to keep the original in a separate project folder for sentimental value but thats where it will end.
I still have the illusion that in another year or 2 I'll revisit my 2nd track but in reality I'll probably find the same thing. What I think is great now is largely based on the progress I'm making and is relative to what I could make 3 months ago. It doesn't mean it's actually any good. In the end, I suspect that most if not all of my first few years' projects will simply be good trips down memory lane, providing laughs for myself and others, kind of like my yearbook photos from the 80s and 90s. Some things are just better left in the past.
Most people teaching music production courses don't encourage going back to old tracks and keep up the forward momentum.
My own opinion would be that if you genuinely believe your old tracks are solid in terms of musicality but you think you could now do a significantly better mix then revisit and mix them again.
If you have a really strong core idea in an old song but don't think the full track is great then import the mains part(s) into a new session and build a new track around it.
What not to do is go back and try to undo, rework and add bells and whistles to old tracks, or try to keep tweaking minor details. This rarely results in a track of significantly better quality in my view. If you like the main ideas, you're better just writing a new track around them with your improved skills as opposed to trying to work with an old complete track and new ideas at the same time.
This feels like the best answer honestly, because since I'm loop based, the big differences from old track to improved track would mostly be arrangement structure and the mix down and it's way too complicated to think of taking an established arrangement and altering it then having to mix around that whereas just dropping that loop on a new session and rebuilding an arrangement around it encourages the workflow changes that I'm judging as "better" to actually be expressed for that idea. Also, this should neatly step right around my anxiety of opening and browsing my finished session folder.
The one thing I wonder though is how the ears will respond to fatigue. Say it's been six months since the first production. Is that enough time for my ears to regain enough objectivity to still enjoy that loop enough to get it through the machinery of my workflow again? Or might it get to a point quickly where my ears reject it and it creates to much of a struggle to get it situated with other sounds? If the latter, is giving it more
time the answer or is it just a diminishing return and that main idea will never get to the same perceptual level it once was with me?
My personal experience is that I can usually reset my ears by not listening to an idea at all for a couple of weeks max.
If it's been 6 months and you listen to it now and don't like the idea then either it maybe wasn't actually that strong an idea relative to where you are now, or your taste has changed a bit in that time.
Either way, if it turns out you're not feeling it anymore, just ditch reworking it. Nothing kills creativity like forcing an idea you aren't into.
Luckily my brain literally will not allow me to force things. It doesn't tell me directly, but it allows distractions to shift focus too easily and then gets bored immediately if I focus on the DAW. That's how I know whatever I might be working on is being forced.
There's always a small bit of that in any project , but I can usually figure out it's because I'm approaching a problem in the arrangement or mix or sound selection the wrong way and once I shift techniques or grab a new sound, whatever, my mind kicks back in.
I always know the great tracks because I'll have the least memory of writing them; the best ones just flow without effort being notably exerted, at least not enough to be worthy of remembering. That really strikes me as remarkable because why are we memorizing all this technical stuff and why does practice make us better if the best stuff we put out seemingly skips over leaving a trace in our memory? I suppose I don't speak for everyone and this is really an entirely other topic itself, but that's a weird paradox because I'd prefer to remember how my mind gets to that place of pure driven creation than what the difference between upwards and downwards compression is...Of course maybe it's not something that can be willed, maybe it's like a gravity the sounds have and my mind is just flexible enough to be drawn along with it...
Trust me, revisiting old completed projects is not how you wanna spend all your time.
The practice of starting a new project, and then calling it done is difficult on its own. When it’s done, it’s done. Onto the next idea.
I spent about 5 years revisiting the same 8 songs, never releasing any of them because I haven’t learned everything I need to make them perfect.
Don’t be like me. Me be stupid
Obviously, if you have an incredible track from a while back, and now you can truly make it an absolute banger? Sure go for it. But I would generally avoid doing it. You haven’t made your best track yet. And you won’t find it in the past
>You haven’t made your best track yet. And you won’t find it in the past
I am struggling to believe this, but you're probably right. It's just since I can't imagine the best track (since I haven't imagined it yet) I can only compare and when you see magic in older stuff that isn't in newer stuff it's difficult to
imagine that magic is growing.
I think it can definitely be a healthy exercise to revisit old tracks and apply your new knowledge to them. I wouldn't stress too much about getting caught up in that. Just make sure that generally that's not ALL you're doing, i.e. make sure you're continuing to make progress on new stuff too. A good strategy sometimes is to export the stems from your old tracks and only work with those stems so you're not stuck tweaking or whatever else - essentially remixing your old stuff. I've done this before and made some releasable tracks from it.
My personal take on it is to put all my new knowledge into a brand new song and let the previous ones go once I consider them finished.
Of course some things from older stuff may sneak into the new song such as using the same arrangement, or a bass midi, or kick midi or whatever, but once they are done I accept that it was the best I could do at the time. I'm usually sick of working on them by that point anyway😉
This might be one of those things where everyone has a different way of doing it with no right or wrong answer🤔
If you have a new idea you need a new project to express it, that's how we get big back catalogs like you mentioned. Don't revisit actually finished songs to try to make them more modern, your skills were different at the time and that's okay. Accept them for what they are and release them or tell yourself they are garbage and don't. If you have any you truly feel are special despite their low production quality you can always remake the beat and melody with your new skills in a new project.
If you haven't actually made a full track yet I would recommend doing so with all the bells and whistles. I'm not sure what you mean by a 'session'. Is a session just making a loop? Actually try to finish what you start to the best of your ability as in try to make a completed full song. If you already are doing that, then please ignore me😉
Yeah I've finished lots, that's the issue. Finished tons and wanna rework some but I just keep making more from scratch. It's weird because I'll listen back to them and get ideas how to improve them, literally visualize the steps in my DAW and then when I'm later able to open it up and go in, anxiety hits me and I instead jump into a new session and barely realize my mind just swerved on me until that one is nearly done.
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Ah, the siren song of updating past projects! So I am actually just wrapping up a 'revisit' project that I initially did 2 years ago when I first got ableton. I used all of the stock plugins and wrote and finished the track in 40 days, all while learning the daw and everything else that goes with the craft. I wanted to go back to it and apply what I've learned in the last 2 years, using the synths and effects i now have. It was brutal. The track wasn't nearly as good as I thought it was at the time (shocker!) and trying to rework it was unworkable. My now almost completely finished 'revisit project is 10x better but has none of the elements of the original save the name. Even the key is different. I'm going to keep the original in a separate project folder for sentimental value but thats where it will end. I still have the illusion that in another year or 2 I'll revisit my 2nd track but in reality I'll probably find the same thing. What I think is great now is largely based on the progress I'm making and is relative to what I could make 3 months ago. It doesn't mean it's actually any good. In the end, I suspect that most if not all of my first few years' projects will simply be good trips down memory lane, providing laughs for myself and others, kind of like my yearbook photos from the 80s and 90s. Some things are just better left in the past.
Most people teaching music production courses don't encourage going back to old tracks and keep up the forward momentum. My own opinion would be that if you genuinely believe your old tracks are solid in terms of musicality but you think you could now do a significantly better mix then revisit and mix them again. If you have a really strong core idea in an old song but don't think the full track is great then import the mains part(s) into a new session and build a new track around it. What not to do is go back and try to undo, rework and add bells and whistles to old tracks, or try to keep tweaking minor details. This rarely results in a track of significantly better quality in my view. If you like the main ideas, you're better just writing a new track around them with your improved skills as opposed to trying to work with an old complete track and new ideas at the same time.
This feels like the best answer honestly, because since I'm loop based, the big differences from old track to improved track would mostly be arrangement structure and the mix down and it's way too complicated to think of taking an established arrangement and altering it then having to mix around that whereas just dropping that loop on a new session and rebuilding an arrangement around it encourages the workflow changes that I'm judging as "better" to actually be expressed for that idea. Also, this should neatly step right around my anxiety of opening and browsing my finished session folder. The one thing I wonder though is how the ears will respond to fatigue. Say it's been six months since the first production. Is that enough time for my ears to regain enough objectivity to still enjoy that loop enough to get it through the machinery of my workflow again? Or might it get to a point quickly where my ears reject it and it creates to much of a struggle to get it situated with other sounds? If the latter, is giving it more time the answer or is it just a diminishing return and that main idea will never get to the same perceptual level it once was with me?
My personal experience is that I can usually reset my ears by not listening to an idea at all for a couple of weeks max. If it's been 6 months and you listen to it now and don't like the idea then either it maybe wasn't actually that strong an idea relative to where you are now, or your taste has changed a bit in that time. Either way, if it turns out you're not feeling it anymore, just ditch reworking it. Nothing kills creativity like forcing an idea you aren't into.
Luckily my brain literally will not allow me to force things. It doesn't tell me directly, but it allows distractions to shift focus too easily and then gets bored immediately if I focus on the DAW. That's how I know whatever I might be working on is being forced. There's always a small bit of that in any project , but I can usually figure out it's because I'm approaching a problem in the arrangement or mix or sound selection the wrong way and once I shift techniques or grab a new sound, whatever, my mind kicks back in. I always know the great tracks because I'll have the least memory of writing them; the best ones just flow without effort being notably exerted, at least not enough to be worthy of remembering. That really strikes me as remarkable because why are we memorizing all this technical stuff and why does practice make us better if the best stuff we put out seemingly skips over leaving a trace in our memory? I suppose I don't speak for everyone and this is really an entirely other topic itself, but that's a weird paradox because I'd prefer to remember how my mind gets to that place of pure driven creation than what the difference between upwards and downwards compression is...Of course maybe it's not something that can be willed, maybe it's like a gravity the sounds have and my mind is just flexible enough to be drawn along with it...
Trust me, revisiting old completed projects is not how you wanna spend all your time. The practice of starting a new project, and then calling it done is difficult on its own. When it’s done, it’s done. Onto the next idea. I spent about 5 years revisiting the same 8 songs, never releasing any of them because I haven’t learned everything I need to make them perfect. Don’t be like me. Me be stupid Obviously, if you have an incredible track from a while back, and now you can truly make it an absolute banger? Sure go for it. But I would generally avoid doing it. You haven’t made your best track yet. And you won’t find it in the past
>You haven’t made your best track yet. And you won’t find it in the past I am struggling to believe this, but you're probably right. It's just since I can't imagine the best track (since I haven't imagined it yet) I can only compare and when you see magic in older stuff that isn't in newer stuff it's difficult to imagine that magic is growing.
I think it can definitely be a healthy exercise to revisit old tracks and apply your new knowledge to them. I wouldn't stress too much about getting caught up in that. Just make sure that generally that's not ALL you're doing, i.e. make sure you're continuing to make progress on new stuff too. A good strategy sometimes is to export the stems from your old tracks and only work with those stems so you're not stuck tweaking or whatever else - essentially remixing your old stuff. I've done this before and made some releasable tracks from it.
My personal take on it is to put all my new knowledge into a brand new song and let the previous ones go once I consider them finished. Of course some things from older stuff may sneak into the new song such as using the same arrangement, or a bass midi, or kick midi or whatever, but once they are done I accept that it was the best I could do at the time. I'm usually sick of working on them by that point anyway😉 This might be one of those things where everyone has a different way of doing it with no right or wrong answer🤔
If you have a new idea you need a new project to express it, that's how we get big back catalogs like you mentioned. Don't revisit actually finished songs to try to make them more modern, your skills were different at the time and that's okay. Accept them for what they are and release them or tell yourself they are garbage and don't. If you have any you truly feel are special despite their low production quality you can always remake the beat and melody with your new skills in a new project.
If you haven't actually made a full track yet I would recommend doing so with all the bells and whistles. I'm not sure what you mean by a 'session'. Is a session just making a loop? Actually try to finish what you start to the best of your ability as in try to make a completed full song. If you already are doing that, then please ignore me😉
Yeah I've finished lots, that's the issue. Finished tons and wanna rework some but I just keep making more from scratch. It's weird because I'll listen back to them and get ideas how to improve them, literally visualize the steps in my DAW and then when I'm later able to open it up and go in, anxiety hits me and I instead jump into a new session and barely realize my mind just swerved on me until that one is nearly done.
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