How do you start a song?
Many of my songs have come about through sudden flashes of inspiration that leave me glued to the computer until sunrise. Sometimes you are going for a specific idea and that’s always harder and sometimes you get lucky with a combination of the two.
For me a lot of the inspiration actually comes when I’m at work or somewhere where I can’t test it out. That’s because I’ll be listening to other people’s music it can be a song I love or maybe just an effect in the song I’d never thought about before and this will catalyze a whole series of ideas.
Sometimes a track or remix will start off really nicely and you just get stuck and it goes nowhere, I’ve got plenty of those, sometimes the best thing you can do is just save it and hope you can use it in the future.
I work pretty linearly so a song will never get going, even if I have the whole melody down unless I’m happy with how it starts. Then I export mp3s of the song as I’m building it even if it’s just a minute long and listen to it over and over again, parts of it sound like they should be erased or changed, and you start to hear additions and the song starts to write itself.
I’ve only done a few remixes but generally I don’t attempt one unless I have some idea of a way to improve the original or do something interesting with it.
If so you’ve really got only a couple of options to do an effective remix:
1. You’ve gotten permission from the artist and get the source samples/tracks for the song.
2. You’ve got an acapella and make a new/different instrumental
3. You’ve got an instrumental you can chop up or combine with new vocals.
Happy producing.
PS. Here the forum thread where I first wrote this, you might get some ideas from other producers.
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