Writing A Song

[ClayMask]

I've finished about 6 or 7 songs with my musical sim. It takes ages. I haven't times it exactly but I make sure she has all needs maxed out before starting. I have found that if you try to cancel writing a song, the action continues for sims hours but at the end there is no new song!

Have you tried queuing an action for your Sim after the canceled song?  The sheet music will then go in the Sim's inventory, and you won't have to do it all in one "sitting."  This works for my Sim.

[lindsaysoderberg]

My kids have missed school numerous times because they were writing a song, and it didn't cancel when they were "sent" to school, even when I manually canceled it.

I found that if I manually canceled the song and also canceled the "go to school" action in the queue, and then re-sent them to school, they would finally stop writing and go to school.

And yes, it takes a LONG time to write a song. It's a good thing you can pick them back up using the sheet music in your inventory. Maybe I'll try timing how long it actually takes from start to finish. To be continued... 

[Playalot]

Have you tried queuing an action for your Sim after the canceled song?  The sheet music will then go in the Sim's inventory, and you won't have to do it all in one "sitting."  This works for my Sim.

I don't actually mind that my sim sits there and get's it done. It's quite handy when I've got seven other sims to worry about! lol. I think that queuing another action does work in my game too, but like I said, I'm good with her nearly passing out at the piano. 

[Stormi71]

I am having the same problem and wasn't sure it was a bug from the update. In the game that I lost, I had a musical sim and she wrote the songs on guitar, and it didn't take very long at all. I would set her to write song, then she'd still be playing guitar, then I'd click on the action and it would now say "play guitar", but the song count had gone up. So it seemed to happen really fast. Maybe it was to do with the traits she had?
In my current game, I have a teen sim doing that aspiration on violin. He keeps getting stuck when I try to cancel it (but have found clicking something else stops it ie take a shower). I read a couple of days ago that an action has a circle around it, which slowly fills up to show you how far through it you are (not sure if all actions, or just ones like write song, write book etc). He was playing for ages and the circle barely filled up, so I kept cancelling it. I will have to check his inventory to see if there is sheet music in there. 10-12 hours to write a song is a bit unreasonable when their needs go down and they have to go to school or work and sleep, so you would think you'd be able to continue writing song, just like how you can continue writing books or programming etc.

[lindsaysoderberg]

It took my child, with Level 10 Piano skill, 8 hours and 45 minutes to write "A Mysterious Theme."

I'm assuming you all already know that after your children max the 4 "child" skills, they can actually learn 7 more: Charisma, Fishing, Logic, Mischief, Piano, Video Gaming, and Violin.

Now that I think about it, I haven't seen that mentioned anywhere else in this forum.

[ClayMask]

I will have to check his inventory to see if there is sheet music in there.

Yes, the sheet music goes in the inventory if you cancel it.  You don't have to do it all at once.

[Stormi71]

I checked last night and there were four lots of sheet music, because I kept canceling it and then clicking write song on violin. It also seemed to take a lot less time when my sim was inspired (because I often forget about the traits and make them do things without the ideal mood). So he's managed to write one song now.

[Figwit]

I love the song writing.  It is amazing how they put together the different strands of music into one whole polished piece at the end.  It is hard to break them out of the song writing thing.  Resetting works, getting another sim to interact with them works and also getting them to change their clothes.  I even had one once who broke out of it once I had cancelled out of the action.  First and only time though.

There is a little progress circle on the left hand side of your screen.  Until recently I didn't know it existed because the progress is quite pale and difficult to see, but it will show you how far advanced they are in any particular activity - eating, sleeping, writing songs etc.  It gives you some hope that they will eventually get the job done. 

[chicagodan]

Per the examples of Kurt Cobain, Nick Drake, Elliott Smith and others, songwriting mortality might be one of the more realistic features of Sims 4.  I don't think songwriting should be taken lightly in the game ... I suggest going on vacation to do it.  Get a nice quiet cabin with one other person and spend a week writing songs, ideally with your partner cooking meals.  If you have any potions to restore vitality, that's a good thing to have as well.

[fivine]

to cancel writing a song

1 cancel writing
2 save
3 quit the game
4 restart

that works 100% .it s not too long and your sim will never be late at work ( as long as you caught him misbehaving )
I do this anytime i get a problem, even sometimes i prefer restart my computer if i encounter more weird behaviors. some old TS3 training i guess...
Well till now it worked perfectly to solve all my problems.

I find writing a song is a little longer as a book but nothing like crazy.

I find you are going to end up with many songs not licensed, with is coming too seldom in the mailbox.

Mod: on MTS there is a tiny mod which is only making the background of circle more dark so you can much more easily see the green circle progress on any task.

[Steellace]

Fivine, I'm a little confused as to why you would quit the game and sometimes restart the computer just to get them to stop writing.  I know they don't like to end that task, but there's a much easier way to force them.  Just click on the ground somewhere and tell them "go to" (right beside where they are standing works just fine).  Once the feet icon shows up in their que, cancel the writing task, and they will stop to move to that spot.  While this is a weird behavior, it is actually a normal one.  If going to work is the issue, you can que them to "go to" any time after starting writing, then when their work icon shows up (will appear above the feet), cancel writing.

I also restart my game and sometimes computer when strange things start happening, but I also clear out the caches.  I find this much more useful to resolving weirdness in TS4 than just restarting.  Oh, and I LOVE the MTS mod for making the circles darker.  On my laptop, I can't see the circles without it.

[fivine]

i never cleaned any caches till now, maybe i am lucky.
restart is quick with TS4 (part of the fun) but i will try your way next time.
I like your idea of queuing.

thanks