2 things:

1. i'm curious to hear people's strategies for staying active. it seems like everyone on here has pretty incredible output, and i have a problem finding enough time to invest into making music...i'm assuming most people on these forums have jobs, friends, relationships etc...how do you find time? i'm really interested to hear your time-management techniques...

2. i think one of my main problems is a kind of beat a.d.d...
meaning i'll "start" 20 beats and never follow any through...any suggestions how to work with this issue? i'm sick of not having anything completed, just a bunch of loops, riffs, ideas...sketches and rough drafts but no final product...

i think these problems are related...maybe avoidance and perfectionism?

anyhow, i'd appreciate everybodys input.

ONE.

I find that I make more beats when I have other stuff going on in my life. It gives me the ability to force out some beats instead of wasting time pushing pads mindlessly and being too lazy to put something together.

sounds like sketching out a beat, like a rough draft. thats super good though. most times ill just spend a whole night droppin samples into the mp through the 303 just so next time i could a nice selection to choose from. ive been slackin lately but i usually try and start in the early evening then work on and off of somethin til like 2am with a movie on. sometimes ill just go all day and lose track of time. interesting. smoking def does not help. i come up with rediculous shit like looping the sound of a door shutting

Exactly, since Im always pressed for time this is the only way for me.
I work 2pm-11pm 5 days a week. Im an online student so after work I do school from midnight til about 1:30-2:00. Then I do beats from 2-4:30 or 5:00. on the weekends I kick it with my girl all saturdat and sunday morning. I record vocals and beats on sunday nights.
I smoke in moderation. I can't be high everyday allday like when in my teens. Too much weed puts a damper on motivation and inspiration plus, if your always doin it, when can you really appreciate it?

i got way too much time on my hands lately, and nothing's coming out of it, and also i'm way too perfectionistic

so i'd say go the other way

personally, i don't have time.
i'm working and i got 2 kids
when i'm makin music is late night (sometimes until 2 oclock!) but the "main problem" is that the next day i'm goin to work...
i don't know for how much longer i will arrive to do this, it's very tiring
now i half solved this: i'm makin music also at lunch time beteween the work time

^ YES

me and my mate are always thinking when we're on acidventures out n about.. "man we have to take acid and produce music! all the crazy ideas we have!"

But we've tried it a few times and we just ended up watching nickelodeon junior all night... SOOO FUNNY

sketchy sam the salt shaker...
a rastafarian flamingo and a guinea pig that hides his celery inside a pineapple..

I realise now we should probably try to make childrens shows not music

same really, work and a misses. i mostly make beats between 10pm-2am, ofcourse kills me when i have to get up for work the next day, and don't forget the hazey head from the greens. i tried making beats in my lunch, but kill my motivation for the rest of my working day. only thing on my side is the fact im far from a perfectionist and make a ish load of freestlye beats.

one thing i love about the 404 is the fact you can turn it on and get going in seconds.

that is joke

Nice thread.

I find that I am one of those who has 20 beats going on at once...move onto new samples and let the old ones sit in pieces on my hard drive. I finish maybe 10% of what I save.

When I smoke I might play around more and discover cool things...but when I'm sober I end up actually getting something done; no time for staring off as a loop is played for 25 minutes straight.

Also, it helps to get things done when someone you know gives you a beat in exchange for one of yours to see what new beats you've got--I usually feel more urgency to put something out that way.

now i'm at work with a pc+ a nanokey (since 1 month) to make music/beats at lunch
but yesterday i was bored by this and i came with an sp606 at work and when my collegue told me what it was i said that it was a machine for measuring surfaces very hard to design (im an architect)

haha, well i work in finance so i guess i could try and blag my sp as a hardcore calculator.

i always wanted to be an architect.

At my job, I work all sorts of shifts, the morning, the afternoon and the night. But its cool though because when I do the morning one day, the next day I don't have to punch in until the afternoon so I got time to chill and make beats not to mention time to recover from buddah sessions. But now since I got this new girl, she sucks my time and I haven't been in the studio in a couple of weeks. I tried to get her to spend time with me in there so I can actually get some stuff done but it ends up like a porn scene and I find myself in bed with her getting talked to sleep. Last Sunday I told her I was sick just so I can have the day to myself, BUT she got so disappointed that she came to my house with chicken soup. I wanted to jump in a cab and take off with my MPC500 to a motel or something that day.

ahaha
that's why i plugged my sp303 or my st224 with batteries pack. sometimes it's useful to go out with...