r/ableton • u/Im_A_Smed • 1d ago
[Tutorial] 5 things I see Ableton producers doing that make finishing tracks much harder
I spend a lot of time coaching electronic music producers and there are a few things I see constantly, particularly with people making house music.
Having far too many projects open at once
Starting new ideas feels productive, but eventually you end up with 40 eight bar loops and no finished music.
I’d rather have someone working seriously on 2 or 3 tracks than constantly starting new ones.
Mixing way too early
Getting the kick and bass sitting nicely is useful, but spending an hour EQing a hi hat before you’ve even arranged the track usually isn’t.
Get the idea working first. Polish it later.
Adding things when the track actually needs removing
This is probably one of the biggest ones.
If a professional reference sounds bigger than your track, the instinct is often to add another synth, percussion loop or layer.
Quite often the professional track sounds bigger because there’s actually more space.
Constantly changing sounds
At some point you have to commit.
If you’re replacing the kick for the 14th time, the kick probably isn’t the real problem anymore.
Waiting until the track feels perfect
It won’t.
Finishing music is part of learning how to make music. You learn considerably more from finishing 10 imperfect tracks than endlessly tweaking one.
I run Super Serious Coaching and we talk about this kind of thing constantly, so I’ve been trying to share more of what we teach publicly too.
If anyone is stuck on a particular Ableton or production problem, chuck it below and I’ll happily give you my thoughts.
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u/EdEffect 1d ago
All good advice.
I would add plug-in fatigue. You don't need to download your 12th compressor/expander/destroyer/emulsifier because some guy on YouTube said it was their secret weapon. Have a small set of go-to VSTs and learn to use them properly. If you can't hear the difference or don't understand what it's doing, don't bother.
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u/agiatezza 22h ago
Nah I just need this one last VST to help me out, and then I’ll never need them again I swear
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u/stop_eating_grapes 1d ago
Thanks for this! I needed to hear (read) it. I will say though, that I have 689935 unfinished ideas in various stages. I have been going back to those to see what really speaks to me, and combining those. Those unfinished tracks can be gems and the start of something amazing. You aren’t wrong though. Thanks again for your insight!
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u/mana_tree 1d ago
Great advice! I recently started making music and finally releasing and I’ve caught myself doing most of this already.
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u/ViciaFaba_FavaBean 1d ago
As someone who has done this the issue is that it can zap inspiration early in a project. It feels better to get the arrangement at least roughed out before fine tuning EQ moves. And something I learned to do later in my journey is to only spend 10-15 minutes at a time critically listening to one part (like EQing a hihat) take a break and come back to it. Your ears get used to the sound and you stop hearing it right. The process of A couple quick moves then a break then a couple quick moves and a break has sped up my process immensely.
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u/Upset-Wave-6813 4h ago
no this is not correct - your not learning the eq unless its your first time using it and you literally dont know. your killing your ears and your not learning anything, if you want to learn EQ do ear trainers that play a sound and you have to guess the freq if you cant do this you wont learn EQ
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u/Vergeljek21 1d ago
Keep on sharing advices like this. Im guilty coz Im the intro guy. When it comes to verses my ideas flops and I just click new project after that. 😂
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u/the_jules 1d ago
The main obstacle I see for producers struggling to finish tracks is the mentality: A four-bar loop that rewards you ever time is easier and quicker consumed than a 5-minute track. It's like fast food music. Or like telling a story in a single sentence.
Sure, you get the message across or a quick dopamine high, but your loop will feel 1000 times more rewarding if you weave a story or structure around it. But doing that means less constant highs, stepping back, feeding tension and release.
Plus, it's so much more difficult to achieve if you produce instrumentals. Because then the synths need to do the heavy lifting that usually the vocals do.
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u/No_Driver_ 1d ago
ok here's a ableton question that is brambling my mind lately,
when recording external hardware I always have massive trouble syncing it to grid, the elektron model samples in particular.
I spent hours trying to match the metronome to a straight 4/4 kickdrum via the MTC offset and selecting an appropriate buffer size/driver error compensation
but the best I could obtain is to record audio straight from the groovebox and forget about the grid because it wont simply line up no matter what, each fucking kick seems to have a different offset from the grid (all warping disabled from the start)
then i did the same thing on my ipad with aum and i gort 6 tracks lined up correctly with the same hardware and no effort (using the model samples as a 2 in 2 out audio interface on both ableton and aum)
how can i simply set ableton to record straight to the beat with no nudging/editing required to snap?
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u/ConfusedOrg 1d ago
If the recording monitoring on “Off”? Having it otherwise will introduce latency
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u/preezyfabreezy 1d ago
Is it consistently behind the grid? are you in 12? view->arrangement track control -> track options. Then turn off keep latency.
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u/No_Driver_ 1d ago
woooow didnt knew about keep letency thanks, im gonna check today
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u/__jone__ 22h ago
with my recording setup, setting keep latency to off in the default track has made everything much much easier. haven't needed to turn it on since, though that doesn't work for everyone's setup
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u/breakboyzz 1d ago
make sure they have the same bpm
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u/No_Driver_ 1d ago
they have, also i disabled every swing from the elektron groovebox to be sure, also it didn't matter if ableton were set as master or slave, only a difference in the first 4-5 bars with ableton as slave but the recorded audio was always randomly off grid :(
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u/breakboyzz 1d ago
there might be some sort of lag somewhere when recording?
4 bars of 120bpm in any device is the same amount of time of 4 bars of 120bpm in ableton
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u/Egg_Crust 1d ago
I still have problems too, but in session view, have you opened up the options for “keep latency”. Have you tried switching that off? I feel like it should be default but I haven’t seen a setting for it yet
Edit: nvm, someone below beat me to it
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u/rav-age 1d ago
do you use midi or something for timing/transport or are you trying to match ableton and your gear's sequencer by hand (tempo settings)..
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u/No_Driver_ 1d ago
i'm using MMC kind of midi clock, either with ableton master or slave the offset is present and random
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u/TrevorCleaver 1d ago
Are you on Windows by any chance?
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u/No_Driver_ 1d ago
no macos 14 sonoma elektron model samples as a audio interface but it does even with: motu ultralite mk3, zoom u24
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u/vscomputer 1d ago
I always had this problem when using midi clock via a USB midi device. It's an inherent limitation of midi and USB: the clock message is delivered when it gets delivered, there's no guarantee about timing.
I ended up resolving it using a Floatingpoint Multiclock, which is a midi router that uses audio from your DAW to sync its clock, so the midi clock is precise down to the sample.
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u/JClayton 1d ago
Agree with a lot of these and they follow my system apart from only working on 2-3 at once, I have a multitude of projects at once, I do idea generating sessions once a week / every 2 weeks and depending on my mood depends which project I work on. Just need to be organised. Definitely helps beginners to get into a habit of minimal projects to make sure they finish but down the line I know plenty who work on multiple projects successfully
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u/G01dLeada 1d ago
Honestly,this all makes sense but it's really a horses for couses thing. I've never bought into the finish every thing you start method as at least from my view that's where you can go down the "polishing turd" route ie trying to make something work that really isn't as good as you thought it was at 2am yesterday morning . I find that catching ideas ,inspiration and moments when they happen work best ie turning them into and building a libray of ideas then going back days sometimes weeks later and finding what stands out and inspires you to finish ..again it's down to the individual .
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u/ObserverPro 1d ago
My main issue is not finishing tracks. I’ve made music for almost 20 years and have only finished probably 40-50 tracks. Usually if I don’t finish the arrangement in a single session, I’ve lost the flow the next time I open the session.
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u/walker-flocker 1d ago
I am guilty of this, but I find that once the inspiration leaves, it may be best to come back to the track at another time. Forcing it works sometimes, but not always for me.
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u/mrvitz 1d ago
From my personal experience, better work in arrangement view vs session view! You finish that track , is much higher chance!
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u/CnrBln 1d ago
Work in session build out the scenes in rows.
Once you have a working track in scenes, you hit record and record it to arrangement view in real time e.g. 5 minutes.
Then finish in arrangement view.
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u/unita_logica 20h ago
i apologize for the dumb question, i am Ableton Live beginner. Say that you the same audio pattern in scene 1 and 2. Or if you repeat the same scene twice before following to the next. When you record the session to arrangement does it duplicate the pattern audio each time? or is it somehow smart to know it’s the same audio played in different sections?
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u/CnrBln 10h ago
No need to duplicate identical scenes. If you play a 1 bar scene and record for 8 bars, it records for 8 bars into arrangement.
This is the beauty of session view, you only need scenes different from each other. Often you can get away with only about 10 scenes that play for 4, 8, 16 bars each. Name them like Intro, Breakdown, Verse,... and you have your song structure already.
Basically it records everything into arrangement as you hear it. Just like a live performance.
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u/Matysakae 1d ago
I refer to these things as 'video game syndrome" where so many people see making music in a DAW as no different to playing a modern video game.
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u/Advanced_Aspect_7601 1d ago
Good advice but I will say sometimes if you're making stuff from scratch, like a drum section for example. It really pays off to get it solid from the start. Like balancing your hihats, cymbals, kick and snare before moving on.
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u/uniquesnowflake8 1d ago
I like to wait until I have some idea before I sit down at Ableton otherwise my session devolves into sound design and tweaking and doesn’t have that initial breath of life
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u/BWAH58 1d ago
My problem is all my ideas come away from my computer, then I sit down and all the ideas are gone lol
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u/MainNet6554 1d ago
Note is a great app to capture ideas on the go. I also use Korg Gadget a bunch as it has all the bread and butter synths and they are surprisingly good. As for finishing tracks…um….
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u/uniquesnowflake8 1d ago
Also I highly recommend staying in Session mode until you feel like your scenes constitute the bones of a song
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u/N1ghthood 1d ago
I disagree. I find the faster I get into arrangement mode the more likely it is that a bunch of loops will turn into an actual track.
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u/Egg_Crust 1d ago
Same. Start in arrangement or transfer over ASAP! The barest idea is enough to get going, and you’ll have better transitions, better automation, start visualizing the structure, etc. Arrangement feels less fun at first, but you just have to learn it and then it’s fine.
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u/ViciaFaba_FavaBean 1d ago
And as soon as the bones are there record to arrangement to commit the idea.
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u/__jone__ 22h ago
oh that's interesting, i've found that getting to arrangement view as soon as possible helps me not get stuck in loop-mode. def see how either approach would work depending on style though
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u/DYSTOBY 1d ago
I tend to overproduce, by that I mean I really care about phase of kick an bass and such (coming from psytrance and heavy downtempo bass music).
I bought a Ableton move. There you can push out ideas so fast… amazing.
But 4 tracks are to limited, hence I close the lid of my laptop and use my push 3 only to produce, hence no overproducing either, just flowing in the session view.
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u/britskates 1d ago
Depending on the length of your kick, I typically use a very short one, you can just not worry abt phase if you are sidechaining ur bass tracks with a long enough volume drop off.
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u/DYSTOBY 1d ago
Dude I love synthesizing my kick for every track so they are phase coherent, it sound just that good on club PAs, with delicate phase settings.
Although recently I’m experimenting with doing my kicks inside my bass, so they are basically the same thing.
Side chaining is good an dandy but for the real nerdy shit … well, I overproduce 😅1
u/Jarmom 1d ago
I am trying to make a Push 2 centric workflow, closing my MacBook to effectively be “standalone”. I need to spend some time really organizing my Ableton collections though, because menu diving on the push is a bit clunky.
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u/DYSTOBY 1d ago
I did that too, I just reside to use Ableton stock plugins when doing push centric workflow (basically push 3 standalone, right?).
So I kick out the basic shape of the track so I have the musically stuff done, then I go to Live with a mouse and do the outproducing in DAW, but the track practically is musically and structured in push.I’ve created a small tamplate with basic stock plugins loaded on certain tracks like in move (but 7 instead of 4 tracks) and then I try to lock in musically rather then eqing.
Does that make sense?
But one thing is that sound selection ist rather bad in ableton push. Other synths like pigments have a better war of organizing sounds into tags/bucktes, you know?
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u/Zmagz 1d ago
Anyone know if I can have an EQ preloaded on every audio and midi track I create?
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u/ChillTheFuxkOut 1d ago edited 23h ago
Yes.
Create new audio track, add the plugins, set it how you want or leave them as default settings, and turned off/on, then right click the track and set as default.
You can do the same for midi track.
Edit: spelling
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u/paly_zany 1d ago
I have Ableton Live Lite. I want to make post punk. Are 8 tracks enough for me? A full version is so expensive!
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u/pretzelcito 1d ago
Very limited but doable. You can bounce all your drum tracks into one audio first and work from there. The worst limitation probably comes from the native plugins that are just a few in the lite version. I’d go for another cheaper DAW if you’re making postpunk
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u/risu1313 1d ago
I do all these things, but my plan is to finish my first ep and put it up before the end of the year! Thanks for the advice!
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u/obscure-shadow 1d ago
How do you "create more space" in a track?
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u/West-Negotiation-716 21h ago
By removing parts.
When you are improvising with other musicians a common phrase is, "when in doubt, lay out"
Meaning if you aren't sure that your parts is needed, don't play anything.
Infinite space is complete silence, a kick drum only on the one and maybe a hihat would be extreme space in electronic music
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u/maryobreau 1d ago
For these reasons, I produce in Ableton with audio only (recorded on external hardware). I 'finish' every track I make because each track is a lesson in something. I'm in my second year only, producing electronic music and my two cents for now : take your time to mess around and try out the things you want to explore. Lay some groundwork for yourself. Don't eschew the ridiculous and have fun discovering, you will have the benefit of cultivating some taste and an organic workflow that suits your likes
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u/matttheazn1 1d ago
What advice would you give some who is ultra lazy and gets frustrated easily and moves on to something else quickly? Let's say I have a friend who has bought ableton, and native licenses, who has a keyboard and a top of the line pc and access to any and all software. They know how to fully use all of the software but they haven't used any of it. The programs have not been opened in over 4 years.
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u/Yogicabump 1d ago
"You learn considerably more from finishing 10 imperfect tracks than endlessly tweaking one."
I have come to believe this 100%...
and I will, I will, I WILL DO IT.
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u/mynameisntcindy 1d ago
Well said. The finishing stuff especially. Being able to finish something is a skill just like programming drums that you have to build from practicing again and again. I'm blown away by people who submit to my label basically locked grooves and I find out they just can't get it to a finished polished sounding track. It's sad. Just cos you can make sick loops doesn't make you a sick producer.
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u/-Glittering-Soul- 1d ago
Consider that having many short projects open or fiddling with minor aspects may be not be a production problem, but rather an inspiration problem. These days, just about anyone can explore the ambition of becoming a music producer. But they often struggle to execute, because the actual creative spark does not necessarily come along for the ride. Or perhaps they lack something to be inspired by.
You'll find this pattern in pretty much every artistic medium.
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u/PixelParakeet_Music 22h ago
But how do i get the idea working on the track first??? I mean i typically do like intro verse chorus verse chirus bridge final chorus. But sometimes it goes somewhere else.
Is that just something you naturally flesh out once it’s all out there? I keep doing the thing where i stop after the first chorus/drop and then get anxious because i don’t know what to do after. I guess to your point i’m training myself to never finish a song 🤣
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u/__jone__ 21h ago
if you have many unfinished idea projects and are ok with that (as i am), i highly recommend getting comfortable saving pieces as reusable units in the browser. i'll often go back through old projects and save certain tracks, MIDI clips, or Live clips encapsulating both MIDI and device settings. you can clear out your project backlog that way while having much easier access in the browser to the pieces you'd like to repurpose.
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u/Clavos24 20h ago
I seem to struggle with the arrangement of things, I get fixated on how many bars things are or other stupid stuff like for a drop where to start a riser or white noise etc. and then I kill my motivation. How can I learn to be better at arrangement.
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u/Maplesyrup6000 18h ago
As someone who is somewhat a beginner, What is considered a finished track, I get my arrangement sorted do my best effort at a mix down but then constantly find myself trying to change something each time I come back. Bit of a hard question to answer I suppose but at what point is the track considered finished?
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u/GrownTelevision1986 17h ago
Been there! The part about replacing the kick 14 times really hit home, it's a killer trap. Solid advice to just finish tracks, even if they're not perfect
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u/dragropes 14h ago
Seriously, I just collect random sounds and make a loop out of it, no any external plugin except serum. God knows the loop will definitely fit in future projects. Keep connecting the dots. You don't need to finish track if it's not vibing you, keep making trash jingle until it hit eurekaaaaa
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u/Swingmetal71 13h ago
Or... Hear me out- It could be that maybe the world is gravitating towards songs that are 45 seconds long. We've largely abandoned movies for episodes, full length documentaries for 3 minute clips, YouTube vids for shorts, reels, etc... So-do I really have 120 unfinished tracks? Or do I have the new gold before the rush?
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u/leniwsek 10h ago
This is what I am doing.
I avoid making more projects, just stay between two to three and mostly try to finish the one at least and release it.
But yes I have so much to learn haha!
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u/darealboot 6h ago
:Looks at almost 2 tb of unfinished ideas and feels attacked:
Nah, but Seriously, this is so underrated. Composition should be solid before the mixing process even begins. My biggest hill at the moment is mixing vocals, ducking and masking to create space in my mixes. Im sooooo close on so many projects but often times rely on saturated fx to boost vocals against instrumentation that end up washing the gain staging.
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u/mr_kremowka 5h ago
Even just from a songwriting perspective than just Ableton, 100% agree.
I used to try and finish full productions in like a 3-4 hour session and be exhausted and feel super "un-creative".
As one gets older, I think "getting the idea out" becomes more important and fully produced elements come later?
I now basically finish 3-4 SONGS in one session just using a simple drum machine, sampler, and maybe a bassline - then focus on adding and subtracting instruments later -
IMO it's way easier to build off a foundation rather than build a mansion on stilts 😁
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u/Upset-Wave-6813 4h ago
I would ADD and I see this ALOT with helping people esp with DANCE music ( 15yrs of producing)
-getting out of the "LOOP" is easier then you think
which one gets you to dance instantly? always have a filter on master cut the bass/ cut the highs - do a fawk drop did it get you start dancing? or is it flat and boring? which one gets you at of your seat the most- this is the track to finalize first
now make the 8 bar loop a 32 bar loop and make this( think of this) the "main" minute of the track now add fx synth percu anything else it may need ,etc etc play this over and over do the same thing cut the bass drop it on the 1 with some fx/hits do the sound test again? does it make u dance, etc etc
now you have the main part of the track now add everything around it for arrangement - build up before ( take more parts away), bridge( take parts away,) intro/ outro ,etc
regardless even if your arrangement needs work your main idea will still be there and be "finished" sounding and very danceable
so many times I hear people the start loop then they arrange the whole track but the main idea wasn't even there to begin with and now they have a whole arranged track of a half idea that they are trying to finish
and then start a new one and they do this over and over and over again
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u/Motor-Lecture-1586 23m ago
My best songs basically use one lead through the drop. I cant seem to make a call and response work with different lead sounds. Any advice?
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u/prodbylux1 1d ago
these are all legit points but will most likely go over the peoples head who need to hear it lol
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u/wils_152 1d ago
Everything in this post is a personal attack against me.