Why Are You Recording an Unfinished Song?

While some may say, "It's done when it's done," plenty of others never actually finish their song. We keep tweaking the smallest details or even scrap an entire day's work to go back to the previous version. Before we realize it, we're still working on the same project for weeks. Even worse, we're working on another song idea while our catalog of unfinished works keeps growing.

Part of the problem can be that we don't always properly separate the song from the recording of the song.

In this glorious age of DIY music and home recording, technology lets us move faster than ever before and by the time our new idea for a "song" starts to take shape, we might already be working on production ideas—auditioning synth patches, tweaking a guitar tone, picking samples, or even laying down scratch tracks and overdubs, simply because we can.

While seemingly productive and inspiring, this can be a huge distraction from actually finishing the song itself—the words and music. 

Your workflow might revolve around a certain sound you have in your head from the very beginning but there’s a difference between recording a rough work tape to assess your song ideas vs. recording specific parts (even scratch tracks) before you’ve actually finished writing the song.

Hearing how individual parts might come together can help propel your creativity but it can just as easily steer you away from making sure the song itself is fully baked and not half-cooked.

Before you get too far into the sound of your song, make sure you have a catchy melody with underlying chords and lyrics that tell a good story from an interesting point of view. The icing on the cake here would be to also have a solid song structure that lets you tell your story within a relatively short amount of time to keep the audience engaged and wanting to hear it again.

I would argue that moving on to anything else is entering into production, where we start to think more about how we'll best present or perform the song. At that point, we're no longer thinking about how to improve the song or even questioning if it still needs improving. 

This can be a missed opportunity to take a good song and make it a great one.

We start working to finish a recording of the song before we've truly finished writing the song.

You can always come up with a different arrangement. You can always re-record your parts or create a completely new production as you re-imagine your song. You can always come back to change how the song is performed but...

You must first and foremost finish the song itself. 

When it comes to ownership, there are separate copyrights for the song and for the sound recording made of that song. Use that as yet another reason to first focus on making the song as good as it can be, and then start thinking about all of the cover versions and future royalties a truly good song can generate.

No one wants to cover or record a bad song because they know few people will ever want to hear a bad song. Why should they?

No amount of production, mixing, or mastering wizardry will rescue a song that didn't receive the attention it deserved during its initial songwriting stage.

Focus on the words that will tell us a good story. Focus on the music that will make us feel something. Don't overly distract yourself with things that can be addressed later in the process.

If you can finish the song, you can then turn your full attention to what comes next. Sure, you can often continue to tweak the song as you move forward but be sure you have a solid foundation to build upon first.

I’d love to hear what you’ve been working on lately, even if it’s just a rough idea or a completed recording. Tell me about your music!

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