As someone who’s been around and about, doing this whole music thing for quite some time now, a handful of things are prone to getting on my nerves as a producer. While not exactly monumental issues, they are still enough to irk the most level-headed audio folks.

1. Getting 90% of the way through recording an instrument and hitting a bum note

Picture the scene: you’ve been playing around with an idea for a great piano part in your song and you’ve pretty much set your mind on what you want to play. You hit the old record button and you’re feeling like the new Robert Glasper – you’re absolutely nailing the part as your mind spills onto the keys in front of you. You can see the finish line ahead of you and suddenly…“clunk!” In your excitement, a stray finger’s hit a bum note, ruining the entire take. Part of you wants to take the easy way out and adjust that single note, but your pride won’t allow it. From the top!

2. When your newly found sample won’t cooperate

Now, I don’t know about you but I have a tendency of being somewhat of a “rag and bone man” when it comes to sourcing my samples. I have amassed a library of samples recorded from the most mundane everyday items around the house. Now imagine you’ve accidentally bumped into something and it’s made a sound that you’ve taken quite a liking to. You fire up your DAW, hit record and suddenly you’ve drawn a blank; you can’t remember whether it was a scrape or a brush, whether it was caused by contacting you directly or contacting whatever was next to it etc. You record a bunch of different samples, but none of them are quite the one you were looking for in the first place.

3. Creative block on a specific track

So you’ve started working on a song and everything’s going beautifully at first. Your drums are absolutely killer and your melody is spot on. You think to yourself “ok, what next?” and…nothing. Not a glimmer of inspiration. Every time you look at your watch an hour has passed and you’re still nowhere near figuring out where to take the track next. To add insult to injury, every song you work on alongside or after it is making amazing progress but that one track leaves you stumped. You would just call it quits and leave it on the scrapheap, but the track has so much potential!

4. Unprepared artists

To be fair, some artists are absolutely fantastic at writing during sessions, pretty much pulling magic out of thin air within an hour of getting there – we are not talking about those people. Instead, I’m referring to the ones who would’ve sworn on their life that they had some fire to put down on the track, had got a bit carried away in their estimations and ended up coming to the session completely unprepared. And we’re left with an instrumental on loop while an artist (who knows very well they typically take 12 hours to write a song) lies to me and themselves that they’ll have something ready in half an hour…and it’s already been 2.

5. The “supposedly-necessary” entourage

Ok, I get it. Nothing is more of a boost to the ego than having a following, and the icing on that cake is having a group of people physically trailing you during your comings and goings. While that’s great for marketing yourself, when it’s time to get down to work it’s all about remaining focused. If they aren’t serving some kind of creative purpose they really don’t need to be at the session at all; how many people do you really need taking photos or 15-second clips of your session to put on Instagram, and telling you every single take is “hot”?

What grinds your gears when making music? Let it off your chest in the comments below!
Until next time.