Q: I DONT want to be fat and keep eating chips all day but i got more motivation to walk down to 7/11 and get some than to record the synth guitar solo for my song. Heres a secret tho, Im terrified of actually finishing the song in case it doesnt come out as the masterpiece i imagine with this work in progress. Do i really want anything if i dont do anything?
A: yes. the trick is, there is a tangle in the logistics of the exact steps and methods of HOW, on a very simplistic level. there are some very important unknowns here that you are unable to find the answers for, because you have not clearly located the questions. but they are there. untangling these small issues will cause magnificent surges of fresh unique inspiration that are so distinctively you that you will not be able to resist the seemingly automatic forward motion that will occur as a result. it will be as easy and addictive as chips, but lightyears more powerful. i am narrowing it down to 2 issues here: 1 is the tangled confusion of issues you know somewhere deep within your mind need to be answered, but are buried too deep to remember the details, and the other issue is simply the fear that this song will be your only song. which, to be fair, it may seem that way based on your observation of the current pace. the important rule here is that every song gets better, but i realize this doesn't help if the pace does not seem commensurate with any realistic progress timeframe. So, you need to approach this tangle. It's important to recognize that recording and arranging your own songs is by nature a very tangly and complicated mess. for this reason, it is vitally important that you practice simplicity at all costs, in every aspect of the arrangement. always remember, there was once a time when people had to record on 4 track tape machines and the only way to get more tracks was to burn 3 tracks down to 1, never being able to change them again. in some ways i'm sure your computer software is crippling because it affords you too many options. so simplicity is necessary at all costs, and i think you can expect to have to remind yourself that again and again. But as far as untangling the confusion points, i will tell you one thing that is vitally important to me which i cannot live without, and i've done it for years and continue to do it to this day, in fact it saved my day today and rescued me from the sour depths similar to what you described, and continues to save my ass again and again for at least 10 years or more now, and it's this: keeping a very open freeflowing documentation/discussion of your entire thought process and everything relating to the project, and stay especially in touch with the origins of the project and continue to backtrack and re-explain to yourself how and why you started doing this project and everything that led to it and everything that has gone into it. keep a constant open dialogue with yourself, whether in writing, text, audio, video, or all of those at the same time. drench yourself in discussion of the issues. get it all out in the open. it's like a tangled rope. what you have been doing, it seems, as you described it in your question, is trying to pull on the ends of the rope. what i am describing is when you go into a large room, and lay the rope out on the floor and get a better look at how this thing got this way. and the crazy thing is, every time, when you start to solve it and those tangles come out, not only is it wildly refreshing to have a freely untangled rope, what's crazy is all these memories start flooding back to you about every little tangle as it comes out, and suddenly start to remember exactly how all of them got there in the first place. it's like the big bang all over again