I see a lot of people having trouble with this so I want to give some tips about things that I've learned.
1. Don't mix your song during the creative process.
This is a really common tip but some people don't understand what it means. When you are laying out an idea, try to arrange as much of the song as possible before you mess with synths or anything. Don't be afraid to have your "lead" be a simple piano and your "drums" the first sample in a sample pack. What you are probably struggling with when finishing songs is coming up with a structure such as your intro, outro, verse, chorus, etc. If you write down your "idea" which consists of an 8 bar loop, then do all the sound design and sample selection, it will be very difficult to go back into "creative mode" and write the rest of the song. As you gain more experience you will be able to mix your song fast enough to not interrupt your creativity, but when starting out you can get lost trying to tweak everything
2. Don't be afraid to scrap ideas.
Don't feel like you need to finish every song to make it not a waste of time. If you have a song you really like, then get stuck halfway through and have no idea where to go, don't waste time trying to complete it. There is no magic idea that will make you world famous. If you are capable of writing something great, you can do it again, so don't get hung up on one project for too long.
3. Get a notepad open to stay focused.
When your song is in that "almost done" stage, needing only a few additions, open up notepad. Listen to your song all the way through, and instead of stopping to fix anything, just write down what needs to be fixed. When the song is finished playing, you then have an easy list to follow. If you don't do this and stop every time you hear something that needs fixing, you can easily forget what you were doing and get lost in an endless chain of tweaking random things instead of finishing your song.
4. Learn how to work even when not inspired.
This one sounds counter-intuitive because it's the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish, but it will help you in the long run. Let's say you have 3 hours to write music, but have no ideas for a song. Write down something like hot cross buns, or just copy the melody of a song you like, and make a song out of it. Practice your sound design, adding effects to your instruments, writing a drum pattern, and anything else you might do for an actual track. After you've made some progress, delete the project and start over. Doing this will help you be more efficient with your DAW, so when you have an actual idea you can do everything much faster than if you never practiced with this method. You don't have to delete the project, but it will help you from getting bogged down in hundreds of useless project files.
The main purpose of this tip is to gain speed, if you are writing a melody and it takes you 5 minutes to apply some EQ that you need, you're going to lose any inspiration you had. But, once you've added EQ 100 times in your throwaway practice projects, you'll be able to do it in 10 seconds so when you have an actual idea you won't get lost in tweaking knobs instead of writing your song out.
Submitted July 28, 2017 at 12:03PM by DubWubbington https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/6q4cuj/some_tips_to_stop_writing_8bar_loops_and_finish/?utm_source=ifttt