This topic is probably brought up so many times, but i am really loosing myself. I can't finish anything and after i was on vacation, i cant get anything going. I get in my DAW and i just cant produce anything. I don't touch my guitar anymore and i dont enjoy any music, nothing.
What have you guys done to tackle this? What could be the issue?
Soo...yeah
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 157 posts since 13 Feb, 2015
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thecontrolcentre thecontrolcentre https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=76240 - KVRAF
- 35189 posts since 27 Jul, 2005 from the wilds of wanny
Find another hobby until you feel like making music again. Unless its your job, of course.
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- KVRAF
- 7540 posts since 7 Aug, 2003 from San Francisco Bay Area
If you haven't read it already, this book is full of inspiration:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00WHXYZG8
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00WHXYZG8
Incomplete list of my gear: 1/8" audio input jack.
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- KVRAF
- 1530 posts since 17 Sep, 2002
This happens to me pretty much every year. I always have to find ways to remind myself that music doesn't just come from nowhere. It's about expressing something you are feeling, that can't be expressed in other ways. It's about living life, then sharing it through sounds and rhythms.
I try to go on walks to unfamiliar places, or meet new people, or try new foods. Sitting at a DAW used to be inspiring when I was a kid and hardly knew my way around it; everything was so alien and new. Now, sitting at a DAW is, perhaps, one of the least inspiring things to me. It's like a bank account. You can make withdrawals (make songs), but if you're not putting any deposits in (accumulating interesting life experiences) then your account will run dry and you'll be out of money.
So instead of looking at my DAW as a toy or a playground, like I used to, I treat it as a set of tools. I don't just pick up a saw and start cutting wood and hoping that eventually it will turn into an amazing table or something.
The problem here is that, because my tools have gotten so much nicer over the years, and I've gotten more proficient with them, that I should be producing the best music ever, right? No. That's a trap. You can't try to outdo yourself with every single song. Sometimes you have to just sit and make a bad song. Not just playing around, but actually sit down and make it, from start to finish. Polish it. Release it. The worse it is, the better. Just because you got a $3000 guitar doesn't mean you need to only play $3000 riffs on it. Et cetera.
I suffer from depression, and when it gets bad, I can't even pick up my guitar or anything. But then I eventually get around to listening to new (to me) music and becoming inspired again at some point.
Go spelunking. Get your heart broken. Get a pet iguana. Try making curry. Learn jiu jitsu. Make a podcast.
Your DAW will not inspire you. It's a box of tools. So instead of thinking, "ah I wanna cut something with this saw, because i have a really nice saw," try to think more along the lines of "hey that's a neat table, maybe I'll try making one of my own, because we could surely use an upgrade," and then you might realize that YOU, not your tools, are the one making the music. It now has purpose, instead of just aimless sawing and hammering. And when you've identified a specific need or desire, it makes finding direction a bit more intuitive.
To further saturate the metaphorical content of this post, think if it like cooking. If you go into it thinking "i'm hungry," and then you just start heating stuff up and chopping stuff, you're letting your basic biological needs dictate your actions in a primitive way. But if you go into it thinking "I'm hungry for a loaf of rye bread," then you can actually focus and accomplish that goal. If you just start chopping and heating ingredients, you might just end up with a pile of ingredients that, while edible, in no way resembles an actual meal. (and stir-fry gets old quickly...)
If I sit down at my DAW and say "i'm gonna make a song," I don't get a single thing done. But if I sit down and think, "I'm gonna make a sugary pop song about how beautiful this girl was that I met on the train," then it's no longer 'Me vs. music-making,' it becomes 'Me needing to accomplish a specific task.'
YMMV of course, but I find that if I have a particular goal in mind, I can flip on the tunnel-vision and, before I know it, I'm 6 hours into a really fun recording session when I should have gone to bed long ago.
An old mentor of mine used to say that there's a good idea in every pen. It might be near the tip, it might be in the middle, or it might be at the very end. But you won't know it until you get there, and the only way to find it is to keep on writing until you hit it.
I try to go on walks to unfamiliar places, or meet new people, or try new foods. Sitting at a DAW used to be inspiring when I was a kid and hardly knew my way around it; everything was so alien and new. Now, sitting at a DAW is, perhaps, one of the least inspiring things to me. It's like a bank account. You can make withdrawals (make songs), but if you're not putting any deposits in (accumulating interesting life experiences) then your account will run dry and you'll be out of money.
So instead of looking at my DAW as a toy or a playground, like I used to, I treat it as a set of tools. I don't just pick up a saw and start cutting wood and hoping that eventually it will turn into an amazing table or something.
The problem here is that, because my tools have gotten so much nicer over the years, and I've gotten more proficient with them, that I should be producing the best music ever, right? No. That's a trap. You can't try to outdo yourself with every single song. Sometimes you have to just sit and make a bad song. Not just playing around, but actually sit down and make it, from start to finish. Polish it. Release it. The worse it is, the better. Just because you got a $3000 guitar doesn't mean you need to only play $3000 riffs on it. Et cetera.
I suffer from depression, and when it gets bad, I can't even pick up my guitar or anything. But then I eventually get around to listening to new (to me) music and becoming inspired again at some point.
Go spelunking. Get your heart broken. Get a pet iguana. Try making curry. Learn jiu jitsu. Make a podcast.
Your DAW will not inspire you. It's a box of tools. So instead of thinking, "ah I wanna cut something with this saw, because i have a really nice saw," try to think more along the lines of "hey that's a neat table, maybe I'll try making one of my own, because we could surely use an upgrade," and then you might realize that YOU, not your tools, are the one making the music. It now has purpose, instead of just aimless sawing and hammering. And when you've identified a specific need or desire, it makes finding direction a bit more intuitive.
To further saturate the metaphorical content of this post, think if it like cooking. If you go into it thinking "i'm hungry," and then you just start heating stuff up and chopping stuff, you're letting your basic biological needs dictate your actions in a primitive way. But if you go into it thinking "I'm hungry for a loaf of rye bread," then you can actually focus and accomplish that goal. If you just start chopping and heating ingredients, you might just end up with a pile of ingredients that, while edible, in no way resembles an actual meal. (and stir-fry gets old quickly...)
If I sit down at my DAW and say "i'm gonna make a song," I don't get a single thing done. But if I sit down and think, "I'm gonna make a sugary pop song about how beautiful this girl was that I met on the train," then it's no longer 'Me vs. music-making,' it becomes 'Me needing to accomplish a specific task.'
YMMV of course, but I find that if I have a particular goal in mind, I can flip on the tunnel-vision and, before I know it, I'm 6 hours into a really fun recording session when I should have gone to bed long ago.
An old mentor of mine used to say that there's a good idea in every pen. It might be near the tip, it might be in the middle, or it might be at the very end. But you won't know it until you get there, and the only way to find it is to keep on writing until you hit it.
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- KVRAF
- 1586 posts since 7 Jun, 2007
^^ great post! So true.
I also suffer from clinical depression, which is often a just-below-the-surface under-par kinda feeling that you're barely aware of (but which can be compared to the 2-3 days you feel "off" just before you get flu)...but it's enough to make anything that much more difficult, from clearing your mind to focusing on the job at hand, to relating to what you did yesterday and being able to continue with that idea...you name it. It interferes and grinds you down. I recently discovered that my feelings of being depressed and subdued were also related to another medical condition, and since treating that things have improved remarkably.
Anyway, what I'm getting at here is "take stock of yourself". Look at yourself holistically and honestly and check out your physical, emotional, spiritual well-being and self-esteem. So many factors can play into the "blank stare" state that you're describing, and the ones I've mentioned can be remedied.
A creative block is scary because it's intangible and impossible to grab and wrestle into submission. There may be underlying physical or emotional contributing factors, or as funky lime said, get out and do LIFE. Creativity is a response.
I also suffer from clinical depression, which is often a just-below-the-surface under-par kinda feeling that you're barely aware of (but which can be compared to the 2-3 days you feel "off" just before you get flu)...but it's enough to make anything that much more difficult, from clearing your mind to focusing on the job at hand, to relating to what you did yesterday and being able to continue with that idea...you name it. It interferes and grinds you down. I recently discovered that my feelings of being depressed and subdued were also related to another medical condition, and since treating that things have improved remarkably.
Anyway, what I'm getting at here is "take stock of yourself". Look at yourself holistically and honestly and check out your physical, emotional, spiritual well-being and self-esteem. So many factors can play into the "blank stare" state that you're describing, and the ones I've mentioned can be remedied.
A creative block is scary because it's intangible and impossible to grab and wrestle into submission. There may be underlying physical or emotional contributing factors, or as funky lime said, get out and do LIFE. Creativity is a response.
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- KVRAF
- 7363 posts since 9 Jan, 2003 from Saint Louis MO
Argh, typed something up and lost it.
My problem wasn't so much a creative block, as a lack of actually sitting down and starting on things. Usually once I start exploring I can find something I like -- though there were times when I used to think "this is crap, I suck and I'm going to stop now."
For years I was making music in intense bursts, one album at a time, between periods of several months where I did nothing creative. For 2016 I decided I'd start, finish, and post one track per week for the whole year.
I began it sort of reluctantly and resentfully. I'd go 6 days, realize I hadn't done anything, make something and then go back to playing video games. What I made wasn't bad, but my heart wasn't entirely in it.
After a few weeks that started getting easier. I also started adding hardware to my previously all-software setup. Relatively cheap stuff: Microbrute, desktop synths, toys etc. Exploring new gear often got me excited about working on a track and made the whole process easier and more fun. I was consistently finishing 2 or 3 tracks per week, and really enjoying it. Some of that gear was only fun for the first few weeks and then I found myself not using it, so I'd trade it for something else and have a new thing to explore.
In October I started getting into Eurorack; it's more expensive but so much more flexible and open-ended, with all sorts of techniques and styles I had never encountered before. The new musical territory had me pouring out 5-10 tracks per week for a bit, no exaggeration, and a lot of it was really cool stuff I enjoy listening to afterwards. My "one track per week" turned into "let's see if I can finish 100 tracks in 2016" which I did on December 4. Then I did 20 more just because.
I haven't been quite as intense with it in 2017 as I was at the end of 2016, but today is day 78 and I have 54 tracks done.
The factors that I think made this work for me:
-- lots of prior experience. I'd self-released something like 16 albums from 2005-2016 and done quite a bit of musical experimentation, and some formal violin and piano, some music theory, and jazz and taiko performance, since childhood.
-- I like improvisation and I'm decent at it. Always have been. My "composing" process is very closely tied with that, and it moves quickly and fights against writer's block.
-- once I got going and made more than just a few bars of a loop, I rarely found myself stuck. The issue was getting started. Though sometimes I did wind up creating something I hated.
-- putting GAS to work as a positive force. I started cheap and I went through a lot of cycles of selling stuff to fund other stuff, but even short-to-medium term fascination with "new" pieces of gear helped keep the momentum up. This has limits of course -- I have set myself a hard maximum rack size for Eurorack gear as well as maximum I/O (MIDI/CV and audio) and studio space. Once that's reached there might be some slow turnover. But mostly, gear was the lighter fluid and the bonfire is already well underway.
-- being able to research this stuff at work. I'm a software developer on a big engineering-related project that takes quite a while to compile and often a long while to compute results. This gives me time to check out gear videos and reviews on the web and make better and more fun choices. (It also feeds the GAS, admittedly.)
-- exposure to and appreciation of weird musical styles, and no particular genre or target audience in mind for my own creations. Ambient, drone, noise, sort of jazz-like stuff, chiptunes, Middle Eastern or Nordic folk-inspired stuff, West Coast synthesis, simple melodies, whatever. I don't spend my time trying to make a killer hook or just the right kick drum or imitating Kanye or whatever. I play/experiment until I hit something neat and then go from there.
-- a sort of (informally) Taoist approach. Once the process has started, I let it go where it leads me. I'm making aesthetic decisions myself of course, but I feel like I'm guided by the logic and feeling of that particular song, not by the rules of a genre or trying to anticipate what someone else will like. Flowing like a river in a valley.
-- modular synths lend themselves particularly well to my approach. I can start with "how many audio rate squarewaves can I simultaneously generate from my hardware?" or "what if I recreate a VOSIM patch using these three modules?" or "I wonder what feeding this back into here will do..." and that's so much easier than starting from "I need a great bassline and a perfect groove and an engaging melody..."
My problem wasn't so much a creative block, as a lack of actually sitting down and starting on things. Usually once I start exploring I can find something I like -- though there were times when I used to think "this is crap, I suck and I'm going to stop now."
For years I was making music in intense bursts, one album at a time, between periods of several months where I did nothing creative. For 2016 I decided I'd start, finish, and post one track per week for the whole year.
I began it sort of reluctantly and resentfully. I'd go 6 days, realize I hadn't done anything, make something and then go back to playing video games. What I made wasn't bad, but my heart wasn't entirely in it.
After a few weeks that started getting easier. I also started adding hardware to my previously all-software setup. Relatively cheap stuff: Microbrute, desktop synths, toys etc. Exploring new gear often got me excited about working on a track and made the whole process easier and more fun. I was consistently finishing 2 or 3 tracks per week, and really enjoying it. Some of that gear was only fun for the first few weeks and then I found myself not using it, so I'd trade it for something else and have a new thing to explore.
In October I started getting into Eurorack; it's more expensive but so much more flexible and open-ended, with all sorts of techniques and styles I had never encountered before. The new musical territory had me pouring out 5-10 tracks per week for a bit, no exaggeration, and a lot of it was really cool stuff I enjoy listening to afterwards. My "one track per week" turned into "let's see if I can finish 100 tracks in 2016" which I did on December 4. Then I did 20 more just because.
I haven't been quite as intense with it in 2017 as I was at the end of 2016, but today is day 78 and I have 54 tracks done.
The factors that I think made this work for me:
-- lots of prior experience. I'd self-released something like 16 albums from 2005-2016 and done quite a bit of musical experimentation, and some formal violin and piano, some music theory, and jazz and taiko performance, since childhood.
-- I like improvisation and I'm decent at it. Always have been. My "composing" process is very closely tied with that, and it moves quickly and fights against writer's block.
-- once I got going and made more than just a few bars of a loop, I rarely found myself stuck. The issue was getting started. Though sometimes I did wind up creating something I hated.
-- putting GAS to work as a positive force. I started cheap and I went through a lot of cycles of selling stuff to fund other stuff, but even short-to-medium term fascination with "new" pieces of gear helped keep the momentum up. This has limits of course -- I have set myself a hard maximum rack size for Eurorack gear as well as maximum I/O (MIDI/CV and audio) and studio space. Once that's reached there might be some slow turnover. But mostly, gear was the lighter fluid and the bonfire is already well underway.
-- being able to research this stuff at work. I'm a software developer on a big engineering-related project that takes quite a while to compile and often a long while to compute results. This gives me time to check out gear videos and reviews on the web and make better and more fun choices. (It also feeds the GAS, admittedly.)
-- exposure to and appreciation of weird musical styles, and no particular genre or target audience in mind for my own creations. Ambient, drone, noise, sort of jazz-like stuff, chiptunes, Middle Eastern or Nordic folk-inspired stuff, West Coast synthesis, simple melodies, whatever. I don't spend my time trying to make a killer hook or just the right kick drum or imitating Kanye or whatever. I play/experiment until I hit something neat and then go from there.
-- a sort of (informally) Taoist approach. Once the process has started, I let it go where it leads me. I'm making aesthetic decisions myself of course, but I feel like I'm guided by the logic and feeling of that particular song, not by the rules of a genre or trying to anticipate what someone else will like. Flowing like a river in a valley.
-- modular synths lend themselves particularly well to my approach. I can start with "how many audio rate squarewaves can I simultaneously generate from my hardware?" or "what if I recreate a VOSIM patch using these three modules?" or "I wonder what feeding this back into here will do..." and that's so much easier than starting from "I need a great bassline and a perfect groove and an engaging melody..."
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- KVRist
- 100 posts since 8 Mar, 2017 from Kathmandu
Thank you for this post - exactly what I needed to hear right now. Inspirational. Bravo!funky lime wrote:This happens to me pretty much every year. I always have to find ways to remind myself that music doesn't just come from nowhere. It's about expressing something you are feeling, that can't be expressed in other ways. It's about living life, then sharing it through sounds and rhythms.
I try to go on walks to unfamiliar places, or meet new people, or try new foods. Sitting at a DAW used to be inspiring when I was a kid and hardly knew my way around it; everything was so alien and new. Now, sitting at a DAW is, perhaps, one of the least inspiring things to me. It's like a bank account. You can make withdrawals (make songs), but if you're not putting any deposits in (accumulating interesting life experiences) then your account will run dry and you'll be out of money.
So instead of looking at my DAW as a toy or a playground, like I used to, I treat it as a set of tools. I don't just pick up a saw and start cutting wood and hoping that eventually it will turn into an amazing table or something.
The problem here is that, because my tools have gotten so much nicer over the years, and I've gotten more proficient with them, that I should be producing the best music ever, right? No. That's a trap. You can't try to outdo yourself with every single song. Sometimes you have to just sit and make a bad song. Not just playing around, but actually sit down and make it, from start to finish. Polish it. Release it. The worse it is, the better. Just because you got a $3000 guitar doesn't mean you need to only play $3000 riffs on it. Et cetera.
I suffer from depression, and when it gets bad, I can't even pick up my guitar or anything. But then I eventually get around to listening to new (to me) music and becoming inspired again at some point.
Go spelunking. Get your heart broken. Get a pet iguana. Try making curry. Learn jiu jitsu. Make a podcast.
Your DAW will not inspire you. It's a box of tools. So instead of thinking, "ah I wanna cut something with this saw, because i have a really nice saw," try to think more along the lines of "hey that's a neat table, maybe I'll try making one of my own, because we could surely use an upgrade," and then you might realize that YOU, not your tools, are the one making the music. It now has purpose, instead of just aimless sawing and hammering. And when you've identified a specific need or desire, it makes finding direction a bit more intuitive.
To further saturate the metaphorical content of this post, think if it like cooking. If you go into it thinking "i'm hungry," and then you just start heating stuff up and chopping stuff, you're letting your basic biological needs dictate your actions in a primitive way. But if you go into it thinking "I'm hungry for a loaf of rye bread," then you can actually focus and accomplish that goal. If you just start chopping and heating ingredients, you might just end up with a pile of ingredients that, while edible, in no way resembles an actual meal. (and stir-fry gets old quickly...)
If I sit down at my DAW and say "i'm gonna make a song," I don't get a single thing done. But if I sit down and think, "I'm gonna make a sugary pop song about how beautiful this girl was that I met on the train," then it's no longer 'Me vs. music-making,' it becomes 'Me needing to accomplish a specific task.'
YMMV of course, but I find that if I have a particular goal in mind, I can flip on the tunnel-vision and, before I know it, I'm 6 hours into a really fun recording session when I should have gone to bed long ago.
An old mentor of mine used to say that there's a good idea in every pen. It might be near the tip, it might be in the middle, or it might be at the very end. But you won't know it until you get there, and the only way to find it is to keep on writing until you hit it.
Feed The Paw
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- KVRer
- 4 posts since 28 Aug, 2016
Found that the book "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield was really insightful on how to deal with and respond to the exact feelings you describe.
Pressfield calls this feeling "The Resistance", which he describes as "the universal force that acts against human creativity". Sounds a little woo-woo, but highly recommend The War of Art for the OP and anyone who feels the same, it helped me a lot.
Pressfield calls this feeling "The Resistance", which he describes as "the universal force that acts against human creativity". Sounds a little woo-woo, but highly recommend The War of Art for the OP and anyone who feels the same, it helped me a lot.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 157 posts since 13 Feb, 2015
Thank you guys for posting your stories, i enjoyed reading them! Such inspiring and great stories you have written!
I found out what my problem was on my own, but i came back respectfully to read your posts!
My problem was just laziness and pre-depression sate i guess, i just didn't feel anything while listening to music and I've read somewhere on the internet that, that might be a pre-depression state, which i came out of luckily. I also forced myself to just go on the DAW and create music. I forced myself to ask someone to make a collab with me which forces me to do something in my DAW. I also get rid of distractions because before i used to go on Facebook and YouTube every 5 minutes.
I think i had/have the same issue as foosnark and tackled it almost the same way, discipline, setting goals.
Thanks to funky lime, xalama qo, foosnark - and others for responding on this topic! This just makes me happy that producers help each other As mentioned I've read them all and found some new ways to tackle writers block.
I found out what my problem was on my own, but i came back respectfully to read your posts!
My problem was just laziness and pre-depression sate i guess, i just didn't feel anything while listening to music and I've read somewhere on the internet that, that might be a pre-depression state, which i came out of luckily. I also forced myself to just go on the DAW and create music. I forced myself to ask someone to make a collab with me which forces me to do something in my DAW. I also get rid of distractions because before i used to go on Facebook and YouTube every 5 minutes.
I think i had/have the same issue as foosnark and tackled it almost the same way, discipline, setting goals.
Thanks to funky lime, xalama qo, foosnark - and others for responding on this topic! This just makes me happy that producers help each other
As mentioned I've read them all and found some new ways to tackle writers block.
