# How do you speed up working on your mock-ups?



## gohrev (Feb 7, 2021)

I spend an entire day on crafting just 4 bars for woodwinds + strings: Endlessly toying with CC1 and dragging notes in the key editor well after I played them in. How do you all get your mock-ups in shape, in time?


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## angeruroth (Feb 7, 2021)

It may be a good idea to forget about CCs at first (unless you can play the notes and the CCs at the same time, of course).
IMHO it's better to work the whole piece in more that one take than trying to get the perfect sound for a too small chunk of the whole.


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## kilgurt (Feb 7, 2021)

Structure first? Instruments second, expression last...?


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## Rick McGuire (Feb 7, 2021)

Work in concentric circles. First broad details like the overall structure of the piece working down to the smaller details like the CCs for an individual line or voice-leading


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## MartinH. (Feb 7, 2021)

berlin87 said:


> I spend an entire day on crafting just 4 bars for woodwinds + strings: Endlessly toying with CC1 and dragging notes in the key editor well after I played them in. How do you all get your mock-ups in shape, in time?



Doesn't sound like you were working on a tight deadline. Those can do wonders for improving your speed.


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## Rctec (Feb 7, 2021)

Funny That...
I spend all day yesterday not even getting 4 bars done. Left late, very unhappy. Then I realized it was all just preparing. I know today I got some new synth sounds I made, the structure seems unquestionably solid in my head, I got the piece under my fingers.... sometimes you just have to go into ‘Etudes’ mode until You’re ready to commit to a piece...


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## AlexRuger (Feb 7, 2021)

Definitely been there. Sometimes massaging those tiny, subtle details can just suck up hours and hours. I try to write and then go back and do more detailed mockup/production work, but often times it's less a "concentric circles" thing and more of a push and pull -- I might write out a sketch with a piano track, get a few bits of the cue half-written and/or orchestrated, and then suddenly feel like I can't move on until a certain section feels totally right. Reason being, these _aren't _just separate processes that can be totally cordoned off from one another -- _how _something is played might inform _what _I write in a later section. It's all about creating a vibe, whether it be note choice or note expression or sound design or mix or whatever.

And then, sometimes I play something in and it's pretty much perfect. Sigh.

I think all you can do is do what we all do in terms of speeding up common functions -- key commands, touch screens, macros, that sort of thing -- but at a certain point the actual work itself can only ever get so fast, especially when that thing isn't rote by nature. Your technique and tools might rock, but at the end of the day, chiseling a rock to reveal a sculpture is time-consuming work.

Edit: thought of a great example of this. The first couple seconds of the first track on this page took me a solid 8 hours to mockup. Getting that sort of lumbering, swinging motion out of the double basses was _so _much harder than it should have been. Gah.


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## lux (Feb 7, 2021)

I would add also that there's a good dose of masking and illusionism in creating a mockup, it takes time but once you get familiar with that it helps a lot speeding up things.


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## Dave Connor (Feb 7, 2021)

For me, mock-ups are a type of sculpting. You hack away first in getting the idea down and then return to it repeatedly to perhaps hack some more or begin to polish it. Most my time is spent in numerous polishing phases (rather obsessively.)

As with anything, you get better at the various stages. If you are able to identify what may be slowing you down than you can address that. You may be spending too much or too little time at a given phase. If you spend too much time polishing an idea when you put it in, you can lose your forward momentum (if you’re still in the writing phase.) If you spend too little time on a new idea it won’t sound good enough to make sense of or know if it’s any good.

Everyone needs to find their own best procedure. Chances are, you may be doing everything just right. Creating nuance and fine expression or even just making a loud chord sound natural and balanced: all of it is difficult with computer control of what are mostly static samples.

A day on four bars is nearly what golfers call, _par for the course. _And I don’t golf.


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## angeruroth (Feb 7, 2021)

Rctec said:


> sometimes you just have to go into ‘Etudes’ mode


I like that. Lately I feel like I'm living that way, just experimenting, looking for the muses to appear among the rubble, but that only happens when my mind can grasp the whole; the opposite almost always leads to the realm of the never used ideas.


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## antames (Feb 7, 2021)

Complete the song first even if it's a rough draft. Just have it all pieced and arranged together. That's the hardest part to do. After that it's just giving it life with dynamics, expression and volume, and mixing with EQ, compression, reverb, and whatever other plugins you want. Don't get too caught up too early on on trying to make it sound professional otherwise you will get stuck in the 4/8/16 bar loop trap.


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## Leandro Gardini (Feb 7, 2021)

It seems counterproductive but writing the full score first helps a lot to speed up the entire composing process.


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## germancomponist (Feb 7, 2021)

berlin87 said:


> I spend an entire day on crafting just 4 bars for woodwinds + strings: Endlessly toying with CC1 and dragging notes in the key editor well after I played them in. How do you all get your mock-ups in shape, in time?


I know your scenario all too well. 

I almost only compose with a piano or with string / brass section-presets. So I know from the start that I will take care of "everything else" later and now concentrate only on the grades. (Yeah, the x and y is in my head always ....) Of course I also make notes on a small piece of paper. This is old fashioned for sure, but I work best this way!


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## germancomponist (Feb 7, 2021)

One more note: There are special moments when something very special is needed. For example, the transition from one emotion to another in a few seconds. I often do this with synthesizers that I program for it. My advantage is that I learned that very well when producing advertising. The production of commercial music is totally underestimated by many people! ...


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## visiblenoise (Feb 7, 2021)

I'm both an amateur and also really awful at getting things done, but on occasion I've found it helpful to try remembering not to have too much fun if you're still in the writing phase. Personally, messing with synths, sound design, getting the CC right for the orchestral stuff, anything that comes _after_ you've settled on the core ideas of a piece, that is more approachable and fun. But composing from zero is like eating your vegetables.

Depends on the type of music, though.


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## CT (Feb 7, 2021)

leogardini said:


> It seems counterproductive but writing the full score first helps a lot to speed up the entire composing process.


Yeah exactly, or if you can't write, at least be able to imagine the piece to some degree of completion before sitting down and doing a mock-up of it. Or settle on a piano version first. But if you pile the actual creation of the music simultaneously on top of the mock-up process, you're going to probably regret it.


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## Rasoul Morteza (Feb 7, 2021)

Let me know once you've figured it out... often I start writing for "strings" just to end up in a sound design competition, going back and forth on those 0,5dB adjustments between a few hundred layers. All of that to reach a sound in my head that's nothing but a Mirage. Deadlines slap me back to reality however!


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## BenG (Feb 7, 2021)

1. Play it in (close enough) 
2. Clean it up
3. Expression/Mod with line tool
4. Copy/paste when possible 

Good orchestration will cover a lot of 'rough edges' at the end of the day.


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## Will Wilson (Feb 8, 2021)

1. Dots
2. Articulations
3. Modulation and Expression
4. Forget about it and never finish it


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## gohrev (Feb 8, 2021)

I absolutely love all of your suggestions!!
Personally, I seem to mix writing with editing a lot. I will basically "write ahead" for a couple of bars (4, 8, 16… always stuck in that pattern) – then go back to the previous part, finetune all —> start working on the part I just played in.

Rinse and repeat.
I think I will try what @leogardini suggested, something I rarely do. When you say score, I assume you are "only" referring to the melody and basic harmonies?


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## Vik (Feb 8, 2021)

berlin87 said:


> I spend an entire day on crafting just 4 bars for woodwinds + strings


Are these edits compositional, or are they about wanting them to make things sound better? I'm asking because unless you're actually going to publish what you create (as a mockup), I wouldn't spend that much time on fine tuning a mockup from an 'it must sound good' point of view. If some of these edits are compositional, maybe it's worth waiting with creating mockups until the composition is closer to a final stage. Many prefer to compose on piano before we start making a mockup, at least for some pieces. 

I'd also actually (sorry!) consider using a different library for composing if you often find that a lot of tweaking is needed.

On the other hand: if you create, say, 15 seconds of music which sound presentable pr. day, that could end up as more than a symphony pr. year.


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## Leandro Gardini (Feb 8, 2021)

berlin87 said:


> Rinse and repeat.
> I think I will try what @leogardini suggested, something I rarely do. When you say score, I assume you are "only" referring to the melody and basic harmonies?


Not at all. When I say full score, I mean the entire music completely ready on paper. When you have such a thing, you eliminate the many trials and errors with your samples because you have everything concisely organized in front of you. If you know your libraries well, you go straight to the one that will best work for each phrase. What seemed slow at first became very fast a last. 
One caveat. If you've never done it before there's a high chance that you will be disappointed at the beginning.
You may heap a lot more than just a faster speed if you write the score first, but it's an incremental process. 
My advice is to start writing 2 bars and later transferring them to samples. After some time, augment it to 4 bars, and then 8. When you are able to write 16 bars without checking them in your samples you are able to write an entire piece away from your daw.


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## Arbee (Feb 8, 2021)

If I find myself obsessing over just a few bars, then either a) my brain hasn't processed the idea enough to materialise it appropriately or b) there is something fundamentally wrong with what I'm trying to do (composition or arrangement) and it will probably come to me in the middle of the night. 

In either case, deadlines excepted, I'll try to find the discipline to put it down and come back later. I've rarely ever been happy with the outcome when I stubbornly persist, I just get far too close to it.


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