Four minutes: a practical order of operations

Four minutes sounds short and plays shorter. The players who do well are not faster at placing notes — they are the ones who never spend time deciding what to do next.

A running order that works

• 0:00–0:30 — drums, one bar only. Kick and snare first, hats last.
• 0:30–1:30 — bass. This is what decides whether the loop has a key, so give it the most time.
• 1:30–2:30 — the one melodic idea. One. A second one under a clock usually means two half-finished ones.
• 2:30–3:30 — repeat the bar across the loop, then break bars five to eight.
• 3:30–4:00 — levels. Turn things down rather than up.

The three time sinks

Auditioning instruments before writing anything. Every voice in the kit works; the one you pick matters far less than what you play on it. Pick the obvious one and move.

Fixing the drums after the bass is in. Once there is a bassline you will hear things to correct in the kick pattern, and you can lose ninety seconds there. Get drums to good-enough in the first thirty seconds and do not go back.

Starting over. There is no time for a second attempt, and the entry you would have abandoned almost always scores better than the empty one you replaced it with.