Now I'm trying to add new instruments and sections to my song. I pick an instrument and write a harmony for it, record it, listen to it, and it sounds bad. I do this like 5-20 times before getting something that works with what I already have, and all this trying things and not having them work out makes me sad. Ergo, working on music tends to leave me sad instead of satisfied. What should I do?
without hearing what you're doing, i can make some guesses. make sure something is doing the 'bass' -- that means, make sure there is something playing single notes in a low range (between 1 and 3 octaves below middle C). just try some things, you will soon learn what you want to do. but you need to be using that range, at least for some of the song (hopefully for like the 'main' parts of the song. or perhaps the whole time). also another thing i can suggest, don't be goal oriented in piling on instruments. and the main thing i would suggest is, make sure you know what the song is about before adding any instruments, or at the very latest you need to know what the song is about by the time you have added the second instrument. also there is a 90% chance your song should either have words associated with it in some prominent way, or if not it needs to be strongly associated with a video or story line. instruments are just nebulous sounds -- very powerful, but nebulous -- if you want to really get things done here, you will need something that makes sense to the front part of your brain. (words, concepts, characters, things you can identify like a cat or a dog, etc. that sort of thing) ... if you have that, then the instruments and sounds can work to their full effect, seemingly enhancing the power of those items in front. just some general hints from the way i usually look at things, although there are surely other ways to do it