Are Your Standards Too High?

[Loose Cannon]

Im startin to realize the more that i work with people that i might be settin my standards too high. Cuz i can work 2 hours on a beat, then out of nowhere if i feel for a second that this beat aint dope to me, then i delete it. I listen through 10 whole records straight before i find somethin thats acceptable to my ears. And i spend hours lookin for just a 1 second sound to compliment what im workin with.

Then i go and listen to some instrumentals from some other shit and these classic tracks they got are real simnple beats. They just bang and they just get stuck in your head kinda shit.

I dont think i could stop bein hard on myself even if i tried, but i wanna know if im alone in feeling like this or everybody feels like this.

 

[J Rilla]

Yes.....I will think shyt is terrible and one of my boys will be like "thats a hit'.....most people are never satisfied with there beats anyway...My cousin say never delete beats though. Come back to it later and u could probaly make it hotter

 

[eXampuL_oNe]

I have that problem man... Except with me it's like this... I'll compose a beat (play everything on the triton) then listen to a sampled beat and be like "PFFF" and delete the beat i was workin on... But yeah, simplicity is everything... It just depends on the audience your tryin to reach... If you want to make a "hit record" most of the time there basic because it's super catchy to the listeners ears... If you want to make some deep rooted underground hip hop that just bangs out of control that's when (to me atleast) you should add more to complement the lyricist... It all depends on the type of records your tryin to make, u feel me?

 

[JPeg]

Its good that u got high standards cos then u'll push urself to make ur beats better, but as in the scratch mag madlib article "everything cant be great" so still make sure u do get things done other wise ur just using that as an excuse not to make beats.

Madlib said he dont even like half his beats, so sometimes u just gotta make stuff

 

[Ambition]

Im startin to realize the more that i work with people that i might be settin my standards too high. Cuz i can work 2 hours on a beat, then out of nowhere if i feel for a second that this beat aint dope to me, then i delete it. I listen through 10 whole records straight before i find somethin thats acceptable to my ears. And i spend hours lookin for just a 1 second sound to compliment what im workin with.

Then i go and listen to some instrumentals from some other shit and these classic tracks they got are real simnple beats. They just bang and they just get stuck in your head kinda shit.

I dont think i could stop bein hard on myself even if i tried, but i wanna know if im alone in feeling like this or everybody feels like this.

Doggy you are not alone is this battle. This book I read said that you are a true producer not a beat maker. Don't fall in the trap of the industry formula and make simple beats becasue that's what some people are getting paid for ( Ying-Yang Twins whisper song) The only thing I can tell you is not to delete anything come back to it becasue you will hear the method to you madness latter after you give your ears a rest.

 

[Carpe Diem]

yup same here...i often work on a beat for ages...sometimes a few hours, then when i listen to it back after checking other peeps beats, i think its wack and end up deleting it...not good...

 

[Loose Cannon]

cool. thanks for replyin.

im glad to see i aint the only one feelin like that.

 

[Bloodybastid]

I think all my beats are below-average or not up to par....but people from this site has given me pretty good responses in general in the Showcase section so I don't have much to complain about. If peeps think it's hot...then it's hot cuz after a while of making beats...you lose all perception of what is good and what is not.

 

[Beatz 101]

i kinda think that im not to my full potential. And sometimes i try too hard to sound hot.

just like what o'boy said, most the of the joints that i think are simple n' i kinda had a dead-end wit are the beats everybody around me loves to death. They be like, "yeah, dats the single, that should be your style". Whut the phuc?

 

[JPeg]

I think all my beats are below-average or not up to par....but people from this site has given me pretty good responses in general in the Showcase section so I don't have much to complain about. If peeps think it's hot...then it's hot cuz after a while of making beats...you lose all perception of what is good and what is not.

Dont pay too much attention to what peeps say in the showcase cos ive noticed peeps here tend to be on some good to shoes shit and they will say as much good things about ur stuff as possible.

They may be well meaning when they do this but ultimately u'll get more use out of people being over critical when trying to advance ur beat game.


If u think ur beats r below average then they probably are ur aim needs to be at a level where ur feeling ur beats and other peeps is feeling it too.

Thats where im tryna get to so i know that struggle

 

[Bloodybastid]

^^^That's kinda hard to do because it's your own stuff, you know what I mean. It's just different when I listen to my own. You know where it has faults and leaks and where it needs tweaking. Other people doesn't really know.

I just have this mentality when I start out a beat I love it but I get tired of it after I finish it. I can't explain it.

 

[Maknbeats]

Shit i am allways doing that, I will almost get tiered of the beat and the right idea just isn't in my head at the time. I swear some of the shit that i don't like as much is more apealing to some of my friends, it's shit that i made in like 10 minutes, and since i made it in 10 minutes i don't think it's good or something. And whenever i'm running out of ideas i allways listen to instrumentals and just listen to what they did sample, or keyboard or whatever and if you listen to them alot of them are so simple, and i sit there and wonder why i'm not making shit like that when it's that simple!!

 

[PhleX]

same here im onli new to producing but i listen to hot shit and its all simple, then i try to mak esumming and it ont come out liek dat....

 

[Retro]

To be honest, nearly all the tracks ive ever bumped out im not completely 100% satisfied with. the worst thing is the more tracks i make the higher my standards get. its like im always only 99% satisfied. altho others may like my tracks and stuff ill always be thinking 'there is a tiny sumthing missing' or 'maybe i should/shouldnt have done this/that'. but what really pisses me off is the tracks that ive made that i would rate quite highly arent always well with others, but usually they are the tracks that are personal to me for sum reason. sorry if this sounds like nonsense lol.

 

[mr mello]

Every time I feel like my beats are the shi, I just listnen to fantastic vol 1 and Jay Dillas " welcome to detroit" then, I get back to work again.

I have to be able to jam to my beats man. feeling what you do is so important, i think. I wouldn't carry on doing this if I felt like all my beats were mediocre, I have this Al Green record and the way he performs on it , its like he is having the best time ever. Thats how I want my beats to sound , like I had fun doing it , not like I was in this "I have to make this dope , I have to make this a banger" type mode.

 

[JPeg]

^^^ yup feeling what dude above just said ^^^^

 

[bassic]

I love my beats and bassically there isn't many ppl who tell u the truth wot they think...Alot of ppl say thats WACK...then alot of ppl say TITE
then some ppl say its OK
the thing is no1 really ever tells u wot they think

 

[hobgoblin]

^^^That's kinda hard to do because it's your own stuff, you know what I mean. It's just different when I listen to my own. You know where it has faults and leaks and where it needs tweaking. Other people doesn't really know.

I just have this mentality when I start out a beat I love it but I get tired of it after I finish it. I can't explain it.

I'm not just saying this but i think your ish is fire - the samples you use and the general composition of you beats make me wanna go back to the drawing board on a regular basis. But I always like every one elses ish more than my own.

Quite often i get a sample which sounds tight, like so tight I'm thinking ive got an absolute banger on my hands. I then layer it with some drums and spend about 3 hours tweaking/adding/subtracting from it.

I do this generaly until i hate the beat and think its totally wack.

Its so fucking annoying.

Also recently i was asked by a mate to produce a beat for his mini LP - he already had a beat CD i did about 5 months ago and wrote a song to one of those beats and just asked me to tweak it and master it etc. Me being me though, I got carried away and produced a whole new beat completly writing over the old one. I played him the new beat and he was like ''Wheres the old beat, i liked it better'' so i had to remake the old beat all over again...

Also very fucking annoying.

 

[Haze47]

@ hobgoblin

if some fucker tells you to tweak your beat for him, tell him to fuck off!

i cant stand that, if they are so good at producing as to tell you to tweak your shit...pfff

but noone likes their beats surely, that would just be wierd

 

[aklaim]

This is my main problem. I think I've had some pretty hot shit in the past , but after a zillion listens it's like umm, -DELETE-. IMO, it only makes you better to keep it movin, so it could be a blessing not to hold on to old shit.