Let’s face it, we all start way more tracks than we finish. A lot of times we just play around with ideas, find sounds, get in the mood, get lost. Granted, the loop can actually be a very nice place to be, and is definitely a large part of becoming a better at creating, defining your sound and imagining directions to take it all further.
But more often than not, choices are never made to get past the looping bars. And then the inevitable happens: You grow tired of listening to the same 4, 8 or 16 bar loop over and over again, and eventually abandon the track for a fresh new one. That’s what computers give us: Many ways in, but too many easy escapes as well.
It may seem trivial and boring to even bring it up, since starting something is almost always easier than committing and actually finishing it. But it can be a vicious circle, disheartening even, with all those unfinished tracks just lurking around on your hard drive.
But don’t look at your loopy DAW sessions as wasted time, if you end up playing on repeat. It’s all building blocks, practice is necessary to stay sharp creatively, training your ears and to generate ideas. Even Mozart was, and modern day geniuses like Aphex Twin undoubtedly is, no stranger to unfinished material. So let’s take a look at a range of different ways to be creative with whichever tracks that has you stuck in time. The examples below are with Ableton in mind, but should be possible with most other DAWs.
Resample yourself
So what can you do with your one million 8-bar loops? Well, one approach could be resampling all the tracks you feel are doomed, or ones where you like the vibe, but just don’t make any progress in terms of arrangement. Then chop them into smaller bits, either on a master channel export level, or per channel. Don’t be too proud or embarrassed to think of your tracks and parts of them as clean source material, like something out of a sound pack or off a record, at this point.
The great thing about it is, that the exported sounds more often than not come with flavor added by you already, since you really did tweak the hell out of that loop, didn’t you. Maybe even mixing it for maximum listening pleasure. I know I’ve done that plenty.
Make drum kits or synths
In Ableton, fun things can come from dragging whole or half finished song exports into a Simpler and making a synth of it, or chopping it into a drum kit in Slice Mode, either by transients or zones, as suggested above. Once the drum kit is down, you can tweak each pad on the kit and adjust sample starting point, set filter and individual effects per pad, even. And you can of course daisy chain effects on top to create something totally different.
The great bonus you get from doing rehashes of your tracks like this is the understanding and connection you gain from handling “your sound”, you are working with your own source material, and this can be very rewarding in itself, a sense of having something that’s yours to send out into the airwaves.
Convert audio to MIDI
There’s also the idea of creating MIDI files from your unused material, or any material for that matter. Ableton has an OK function for this, and even though it’s still not always super precise with complex material, the end results are always there to use in any way it makes sense. It’s such an easy way to have the system create notes, rhythms and chords, and fun results too.
So, to get an infinite amount of MIDI for use elsewhere, simply right click on a sample and convert to MIDI, choosing between drums, melody and harmony for different extraction algorithms to generate the resulting MIDI. Some of it will of course be unprecise, if recognizable 1:1 conversion is your thing, but sometimes sticking the resulting MIDI from a chunk of audio into the track of a freshly made drum kit can become the basis of a whole new beat. After the initial kit is down, you can replace the drum kit patch for wild variations in sound.
Recycle the band
Another way to make some use of the many hours spent tweaking that evil loop is to keep the channel setups, but delete all midi notes and audio. Start writing a new track using the channel and instrument setup and build from there. You will instantly have a certain feel and tone to it. Maybe even change the tempo – drastic changes like half our double tempo can sometimes work wonders, especially if you have any delay units or LFOs based around the tempo.
Or you can drag in whole track channels from other projects and instantly gain the vibe they bring. Remember to drag it up next to the channel name before you release it. It’s quite easy to browse through other projects like this, if you add a shortcut to your songs folder in the places column of the browser.
Wash Out!
Add a huge reverb or echo to your whole track and export it as a new sample. Use it elsewhere or wash it into the background of the original track, giving a layer true to the original “color” and tune of the track. Try using an EQ Eight with a rather steep (12+ db) low cut and high cut filter and find a sweet spot, only to let some of the frequencies through. Render and cut away. Create nicely fitting sounds, from big and airy to confined and metallic, for further use either in the track or elsewhere. The resulting audio can be further converted to MIDI, to create anything from basslines to percussive tops and anything in between.
Arpeggio accepted
Instead of slicing any sample you put into Simpler to a drum rack, consider placing an arpeggiator in front of the Simpler and play around with the quantization, range and method of slice detection. An arp can really elevate the rhythm as well as move through sounds way faster than you would likely think of finger drumming or manually playing on a keyboard. Great melodies and hard drums can come from using an arp, especially once you start automating parameters. Try sneaking a Pitch MIDI effect in front of it all, and automate the starting pad of the rhythm as well.
Chop yourself up
Using an exported audio file of your whole track, find a great melodic or drum part of an easily dividable length and convert it to a drum rack. Even parts of a melodic track can become a nice drum kit, if you play around with the slices in a Simpler before slicing to a drum rack. Maybe you’ll enjoy a new drum kit that is “magically” in tune, now transposable per slice, which can give surprising results.
So there it is, don’t ever look at old tracks from the perspective of necessarily finishing them. Use them to start something new – with a head start.
