Throw away a poor track….?

[Kenny]

Ok, this does not happen very often. But sometimes I just have to admit that what I`m making sounds pretty bad in my ears. The composition doesn`t work, I can`t get the mix right, and my coffee gets cold way to fast 🙁

I`ve spent hours on the track when I realize that there is actually no way to save this piece. So I just finish it off pretty fast so that it`s kind of”production ready”, and get ready to make some more music, which will probably be the best track I`ve ever made 😉

I`m sure I`m not the only one who has felt like this from time to time. You`re not exactly proud of the result, but anyway you know that there is a good chance that it will at least make you some money. What do you do with these tracks? Do you throw them away because you don`t want anybody to know that you have made this, or do you upload them anyway to maybe get some cash back for the hours that you spent making it?

[Art Munson]

I never throw anything out, I just work on it until it feels right. It just so happens that I’m working on one right now. It took a bit longer for everything to fall in place (about a week) but I’ve learned not to freak out and just put the time in. At least that’s what works for me.

[soundslikejoe]

I’ve made a few dogs…. usually the idea is interesting at first and I’ll just finish it out. Maybe upload it for a period of time in a library.   Some months or years later, I’ll go back and listen again. If I don’t like it then, it gets trashed.

Face it… some ideas are OK and might be worth finishing…. and some ideas are just bad ones.  To the dumpster I say.

… or at least to the generic discount bin with an alias name. 🙂

 

 

[GaryW]

One thing I’ve learned in my short time doing this is you never know what is going to sell. Some of the tracks I did early on, I thought the production quality was terrible, but they sold. So I don’t really ever throw anything away. You never know who might want it…

 

[Michael Nickolas]

I have a folder on my drive named “Archive Not Very Good”.  🙂 Every once in a while I’ll visit it to see if any can be rescued.

[Jay]

You are SO right Gary…i’ve been doing some ghost writing for a guy recently and just had this conversation with him as he’s looking to get into licensing….I had a track recorded in 1992 on an 8 track reel to reel in a friends basement and I ALMOST didn’t even bother submitting it – it got 3 placements recently and one of them was a weird situation where the whole song was purged from a library after a year or so without any activity (but a stinger from it remained with that company) – apparently a music supervisor liked the song and had it off to the side and when they went to use it my PRO ended up paying me both sides of the backend (have a pub co setup) because it was no longer repped by the original company…you just NEVER know and it was one of the first songs I had ever written….

 

[MichaelL]

I agree with Art. NEVER throw anything away. I’ve got all of my midi files going back to 1985 (easily 2,500).  I’ve got cues that were written on paper going back to the 70’s. I even saved cassettes of cues that I’m transcribing with Melodyne.

@Jay…way to go!!!  You never know!

I have a few cues that are on pristine vinyl, recorded with all live players, going back to about 1983. I plan to clean them up with Izotope’s RX2, then remaster them with the Oxford Inflator, Ozone 5 and a yet to be determined compressor (probably the Glue). No problem sounding dated. The cues would be considered “period ” pieces. If not, then they are retro.

 

 

[Art Munson]

Same here Michael. I transferred all of my multitracks through the years. From 8 track, 16 and 24 to ADATs and finally to wav files.

You also just reminded me that I have some great live tracks that I need to go back and turn into cues.

[Kenny]

Thanks for sharing folks. I just wanted to hear what other people do in these situations. In general I very much agree with Art and work on things till it feels right. This usually takes 10-30 hours of work and I`m most often pretty satisfied with the result.

But every now and then I just have to admit that something was just a bad idea, and I just can`t find any good reason to spend any more time working on it. Maybe it could have sounded ok with a lot of rewriting and arranging, but that would certainly take just as long as writing a new piece from scratch. Probably longer.

In this case I ended up doing a pretty quick mix, and a couple of edits. Not at all proud of the result, but it has this funny “Casio” kind of vibe. I know there`s worse things out there making money so I will probably upload it a couple of places anyway.

[Jay]

“But every now and then I just have to admit that something was just a bad idea, and I just can`t find any good reason to spend any more time working on it”

 

absolutely Kenny but all those “bad” tracks are an exercise in creativity and EXTREMELY important in your evolution as a writer and an artist (I hate that word) but you get my jest..it’s a gut thing whether or not you submit them or not..I wrote something a couple summers ago after I rode my motorcycle across the country and thought it was fabulous and important…but it actually sucked  🙂 – i’m hitting 50 next summer and as much as I think my instincts are good they’re often off..don’t trash anything…just set it off to the side and revisit it @ a later date..strangely I’m having stuff pop right now from a record I recorded in 92 (my first) I always felt there was some real honest stuff there that someone would get….pretty cool “someone” was a music supervisor  🙂  —- don’t give up…just don’t..

[Kenny]

Don`t worry Jay, I won`t give up 🙂

Not unless this track actually becomes a bestseller for me. In that case I will probably admit that I don`t know anything about this business and give up…;)

Upload under an alias is off course a way to go, so if you ever see an artist out there with only one, really bad Casio sounding track, then you know who`s the guilty one 😉

[Author]

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