>Make an entire demo album >Put a lot of time and effort

Trash it if its irredeemably bad
Sounds hard to do but at least you had fun making it

>>72560410
I've trashed like 10 albums worth of material my dude, it comes with the territory

Eventually you get better at recognizing what's a waste of time before you go through the trouble

>>72560410
You have to really figure out what makes you go from loving it to hating it.
What changed? Were you just enamored with the act of making something?
You need to look at making music more objectively, take yourself out of the songwriter head-space that leads people to think "i like this because I wrote it" and judge it as you would if someone else made it.
What makes you like the music you like? What makes them different to the music you're making? How can you put those things that you like into your music?
Basically what is your shit missing and how do you put it in there?

If you can, get somebody else's opinion on it who wasn't at all involved. The same thing happens to me when I'm getting something ready to release something, but usually it's just because I listen to my stuff so many times before it's done that I just get burned out on it. If having someone else check it out isn't an option, try going a week or two without listening to it at all so you can get a better idea of how good it actually is.

>>72560410
Post audio, or it doesn't exist

>>72560561
>>72560715
wow, best answers in thread. gotta post these in all future listen & rate threads.

>>72560561
>What changed?

not OP but its sometimes possible that an entire "way" going about it was wrong. imagine playing nothing but mandolin and making a full mandolin album then waking up the next day and saying "I really do hate mandolin. forever im done playing it" need new outlet, new technique, new approach, new focus etc

in other words its easy to get caught up in the micro sense, making minor tweaks and additions to try to "enchance" something, vs the macro of realizing the entire direction may be flawed, even if the details themselves arent too bad

>write great song
>realize i subconsciously stole the melody

JUST

>>72560775
man this can't happen THAT often. I feel I always am pretty sure if I've heard something "somewhere" even if I can't pin it down

>>72560763
Even those things can be adjusted for.
You wrote mandolin music and hate mandolins now? Rearrange the pieces for other instruments.
You wrote a prog album and now hate prog? Remove unessential sections and arrange the structure to be more cohesive and less meandering
You think straight beats are gay now? Add some swing to it.
You wrote a bunch of children's music but now hate kids? rearrange it for synths and add weird frantic glitch drumming and be Aphex Twin

Most musical ideas can fit in any instrument/style, it's just about how you expand it. Scale it back to the essential composition of chords/melody and start again.

>>72560775
Melodies are pretty easy to rearrange.
Just make minor adjustments to pitch or rhythm until it doesn't sound like the other song.

>>72560410
..
because you spent so much time 'inside' the music you can't hear it with fresh ears, all you see is yourself making the music or finding flaws..

>>72560410

Not really, like others are saying I've learned to stop working on shit pretty quickly if it's not interesting to me. There's just not enough time in the day so it's easy enough to realize when something is good, if I have the motivation to finish then it'll generally be worth it. And nothing is ever really interesting on accident, y'know? You might get burnt out on something but if the spark was truly there once it'll be there again.

>>72560775
>just finished one of my best songs
>realized the main melody is stolen from the Sealab theme

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>>72562724

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>tfw everything I ever make sounds cheesey as hell
At least there's an 80's synth revival I guess

>>72560410
post it man!!

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Post it somewhere and get feedback so you can at least learn what to do better next time
You're going to make a lot of garbage before you make anything worth listening to and if you're too self-conscious to even take criticism you'll never get anywhere

Most /mu/sic sharing threads are either a circlejerk of everyone complimenting each other or a circlejerk of everyone launching the nastiest insults possible at each other's music but the worst thing that'll happen is that a bunch of strangers on the internet will say something shitty about an album you already don't like
If you post a sample I'll give you honest feedback