The music in my head turned off

[MackTuesday]

Okay, want serious answer, give us more info than, what made you even start the journey, what kind of music you do?

Smoking weed isn't best advice, but what else you got, we are artists, musicians and engineers, not psychologists.

What made me start the journey was listening to Yaz back in the day, then Depeche Mode and Erasure. Vincent Clarke's pop sensibility really inspired me. And when I was a kid little bits of music would come into my head. Nothing really interesting. But I had a synthesizer and became interested in music theory (so it's always been electronic -- synth pop). I cared enough that I developed a moderately good ear for identifying which chords were which when I listened to songs. Eventually music became an avenue for expressing emotion.

Does that help?

[MackTuesday]

listen to music all the time

I think you might have hit the nail on the head. I did cancel my Napster account to save money and I haven't been listening to music much. Spotify is free but I didn't want to use it because it pays artists dick. But maybe I can tolerate it for the time being. Thanks for the input.

[vurt]

if music is an avenue for expressing emotion, maybe if things have been that bad in your personal life then your emotions need some time to reset.


the best advice i ever got was "don't force it, it will find you when its ready"

[V0RT3X]

I think the only time the music was absent in my head was when I was very seriously depressed. Once I got over that mostly, i started getting inspired to get back into it.

If that's not the issue, maybe you just need a break?

[Zexila]

Okay, want serious answer, give us more info than, what made you even start the journey, what kind of music you do?

Smoking weed isn't best advice, but what else you got, we are artists, musicians and engineers, not psychologists.

What made me start the journey was listening to Yaz back in the day, then Depeche Mode and Erasure. Vincent Clarke's pop sensibility really inspired me. And when I was a kid little bits of music would come into my head. Nothing really interesting. But I had a synthesizer and became interested in music theory (so it's always been electronic -- synth pop). I cared enough that I developed a moderately good ear for identifying which chords were which when I listened to songs. Eventually music became an avenue for expressing emotion.

Does that help?

Yeah, I think you need new inspiration, like trip to some forest, mountain, listen to all that beautiful birds and everything, watch sunsets and sunrises, man, I got so inspired just watching the sunsets in the autumn, that beautiful colors, I even got back to making music because of it, I heard tones in all those colors

This track in conjunction with autumn sunsets got me back to music making.



and this one just made me find that missing link

[Hink]

just have fun

[chk071]

Music in your head can be quite annoying. Every now and then, my mind seems to have a fun time torturing me, with some German Schlager, or similar crap.

[imrae]

Find music that is new to you - I suggest looking for well-regarded records in genres you wouldn't normally go for. Then steal the aspects you enjoy.

[foosnark]

I find I don't often hear music in my head before I hear it in my ears. When I do, it's not usually very good.

I have to do it the other way. It's all about improvisation and experimentation for me. I... just sort of open a door and let music through. My first experience of it is hearing it physically. When I hear something I like, I start developing it.

It comes easily to me now, but that's because of many years of improvising and experimenting -- just messing around, not really in a way that felt like "practice" at the time -- and less many (but still more than a few) years of developing it.

Time spent sitting at a keyboard working out how to play the Tetris theme music or playing a half-hour-long blues solo with a painfully 80s synth lead sound wasn't wasted IMHO

[mgw38]

The creative process is a highly iterative one. You start with something, refine it, test it, refine it, test it, and so on, until - after hundreds of iterations - you arrive at a result that you feel happy with. It is something people often refer to as "design thinking" and which is now taught across pretty much all disciplines as a critical skill to navigate highly complex systems. Theoretically speaking, it is a heuristic optimization process and such such the point where you start has a big influence on the nature of the result. But it does not have much influence on the quality of the result.

So, long story short. It does not matter how you start as long as you start somewhere. Whether the starting point is in your head or you arrive at it by just fiddling around experimentally (the way I usually do it) does not make much, if any, difference. Stop worrying and simply start making some noise.

[waiting man]

Tinfoil hat doesn’t help.

[annode]

I don't have advice but I do have a similar story.
It was a long time ago, when I was about 13-14. I used to have this music rolling around in my head all the time. It wasn't a song that got stuck, it was just like musical resonance with no real structure.I remember in 7th grade asking a teacher I respected if he could tell me what was happening with me. I couldn't actually concentrate in class with that music always in my head. He didn't actually take me seriously.

In 8th grade I made a new friend. He lived close by and he invited me to his home to smoke some weed. This was my first time. It took a week of smoking a lot then it finally hit me. Music sounded amazing, and that's all I wanted to do, is get high and listen to music. Can you blame me, it was 1969-70 and the music was pretty good back then.
Well, at some point that year the head-music went away and never came back. I wish it had never gone away.

Your the first person Mack I have ever heard speak of 'the music in my head' besides songwriters.
If you smoke weed, stop. Other then that I don't have a clue...good luck.

[fese]

the best advice i ever got was "don't force it, it will find you when its ready"

Or maybe just the other way around: force it. Make music everyday. Write a song or compose a piece as often as possible.
Sure the best things happen when inspiration hits you, but e.g. songwriting and composing is a skill that can be learned and practiced, like musical instruments. You often hear professional successful songwriters say that they more or less write one song a day. A lot of it never sees the daylight, but once in a while you hit a gem.
The problem I personally have with the „don’t force it“ approach is that it can take a long time and that waiting can be frustrating in itself.
But that’s what everyone has to find out for himself..

[deastman]

Practice.

Try this: the next time you’re driving somewhere or perhaps standing in the shower, start humming a melody in your head. Pick a note and hum it silently. Move to another note. Start to work out a melody. Keep repeating a phrase to yourself all the way home. Keep repeating that exercise, and I’m sure the music will start to come back to you.

[Jace-BeOS]

[...](actually, not strictly true. I have a lot of rage about the state of the world that I want to scream about, but when I try to put down on paper it looks like REALLY bad teenage poetry)

I have exactly this same problem. I wish I knew how to direct my rage into music. I feel like the Nine Inch Nails "Broken" EP half the time, but I cannot create that kind of output.

Even "lesser artful" lyrics sound better with appropriate music, but even just putting rage into a poetic structure to attempt to put it to music is out of my immediate grasp. I think it's just that rage is in no way conducive to actually doing the work. Like, I need to get the rage out after I've written and started composition, not before.

But even putting it to words... I mean, I could just make a song where I'm screaming "f**k" over and over with ever increasing intensity (probably ending up with blood on the pop filter), since that's pretty much the level of disgust with things that I feel ... but that's not something anyone wants to listen to. I'm not into the death metal vocal sound either; my goal is "singing rage".

Blah blah blah...

If you ever figure it out, please share