"It’s amazing how your brain reacts when you’re listening to 50 seconds of music, rather than just a two-bar loop": 8 pro producers show how to break out of the loop and turn basic ideas into finished tracks

We’ve all been there. Staring at the same two bars going round and round lacking inspiration and pondering just where to go next. It’s easy to start a track, but finishing one is a whole different matter…

Don’t worry. We’re here to help and in our latest producer video we pick the brains of eight experts who each have their own tips for breaking out of the loop.

Break out of the loop: 8 pro producers explain how to turn basic ideas into finished tracks - YouTube

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Danny Byrd shows how he turns “a few seconds into a four minute, finished piece of music”. Beginning with a chunky horn sample – lifted from a Future Music magazine CD from 1994 – Byrd quickly teams the riff with some drums. “I like to get the drums in quickly,” he explains. “You’re working the drums in around the sample, rather than starting the drums from scratch,” and the track is taking shape already.

Next he takes the tonic note of the same – “the main key of it” – and uses that to kickstart inspiration for his bassline. “If you’re stuck on a track, copy and paste what you’ve got and then do an edit on the next bit,” he suggests. “It’s amazing how your brain reacts when you’re listening to 50 seconds of music, rather than just a two-bar loop. Suddenly it starts to feel better. Music’s not all about something coming in, or the drop, it’s how it progresses.”

And it’s a style that’s also found favour with Eats Everything who breaks out of the ‘endless loop’ as quickly as possible, preferring to work on a larger arrangement as soon as he has something that’s working.

“I try to mix as I go,” he explains. “I get everything into a solid loop then I copy and paste it so it’s one massive block with everything in. And then, piece by piece, I’ll solo, bring stuff in, bring stuff out.”

“Get into a track form as soon as you can,” advises Lawrence Hart. “If you create a three or four minute track, you’ll start thinking ‘maybe I should pull the kick out there’ but you need to create that block of information first.”

“With one sample you can get a lot of material out of it if you modulate it correctly,” suggests Ploy, reworking a horn sample in three different ways against a building beat.

“I’ve got hundreds – if not thousands – of tracks"

Meanwhile, Mr Mitch reckons absence can make the heart grow fonder and the secret to finishing a track is to walk away from it first… “I’ve got hundreds – if not thousands – of tracks that I’ve started over the years and I’ll get back into them, and give new ideas to them over time,” he explains. “It’s a nice way to work, because you’re always bringing a new part of yourself to it.

“When you’re creating art, you need to bring life experience into it. That track is as far as it can go, based upon where you are in your life, but come to it at a different time with a different perspective and you can bring it something new.”

Need more inspiration? “I really like to focus a whole track on one rhythm,” suggests Breaka. “Everything in that track is using that same rhythm. If you focus in really specifically on one rhythm it’s a way of making a consolidated track.”

It all adds up to a whole heap of essential advice that’s sure to get your track moving in the right direction.

Be sure to check out more tips, tricks, reviews and advice via MusicRadar Tech on YouTube.