So glad I’m not alone. I finished my last solo record in 2013. I have piles of stuff recorded from 2014-today and haven’t bothered to finish anything. I went through some things maybe a year ago and was surprised at how many tracks were basically finished.
(I have put out stuff with bands and art projects, so it’s not total musical hermitude, but still).
many of the old “monome community remix projects” i participated in have tracks i don’t remember making, here’s one that i also forget someone else made an amazing video for:
i also have music i’ve been attempting to forget i made, but a certain someone named, “Peter Blasser”(who was my housemate back at Oberlin, where the Dean of the Conservatory at the time had a big brass tuba that always sat in the corner of his office taking up soooo much space… but i digress…), uploaded it all to this account to shame me forever:
This is actually the origin of my workflow for finishing music. I’m a photographer by profession and shoot pretty much everything on film these days. The delay between shooting and seeing the work provides necessary distance. I decided to use the same kind of strategy for my music. After writing an album I usually finish an entirely different project before I sit down to mix and master. This is how I can mercilessly cut stuff that doesn’t work or make other drastic changes.
I have a lot of tapes and reel to reel full of music, and of course a lot of my tapes are from the same brand with no label, for the reel to reel as well.
The same with a lot of Ableton sessions, I have an idea, record it, save with a name like “fm synth 2” and never going back to it.
So an aweful lot of snippets without a name.
I found this track and it got played on BBC Introducing but i honestly have no recollection of making it, and then there’s the tunes that pop into my head that i made years ago before i had a computer, can i find them on old TDK SA 90’s ? sometimes.