Im totally locked in my music making process help me

[Tricky-Loops]

He seems so happy to be alive, shame he's basically been farmed to be eaten alive

That's not much crueler than most nature documentaries where animals are eaten alive from other animals...

[Sendy]

He seems so happy to be alive, shame he's basically been farmed to be eaten alive

That's not much crueler than most nature documentaries where animals are eaten alive from other animals...

True, it's a bear eat bear world out there.

[spacecult]

You're right for seeking knowledge but dumb luck is just as important. Most 'genius' moments in music, and anything else, were as much accident as it was intent. Of course, it takes skill and knowledge to do much with those accidents, so that's important, but don't discount or ever disown your own naivety. It is just as important. Operating too much on theory, technical skills and knowing the correct way to do everything will just put you back behind the curve again and make you great at making only a different kind of garbage.

[DSmolken]

Simple suggestion: find a female singer who writes songs, maybe can play a bit of piano but doesn't know much about production. Record a couple of her songs, then try to turn them into electro house. It's a totally different kind of challenge, and a totally different process, especially when she does something that won't work well with standard structures, like write a verse that has three lines of lyrics.

[xalama qo]

I haven't read this whole thread, but I'm the king of creative blocks, y'all are just amateurs at creative blocks yo!

I recently took my default project template tempo down from 130bpm to 85bpm, and that just felt so much more me. It may be a passing phase, I dunno, but I was genuinely astonished at the difference it made in my approach and comfort zone. I'm probably gonna just go slow and sparse for a while, give myself time to feel, zone in or out, and see how I do.

But I'm a notorious non-finisher, yup, I have that throne too, taken. Sorry boys.

[SayersWeb]

Stop and listen to what the music wants. YOUR music.

Absolutely! Make music for yourself... If it is good others will surely enjoy it.

[elxsound]

I haven't read this whole thread, but I'm the king of creative blocks, y'all are just amateurs at creative blocks yo!

I recently took my default project template tempo down from 130bpm to 85bpm, and that just felt so much more me. It may be a passing phase, I dunno, but I was genuinely astonished at the difference it made in my approach and comfort zone. I'm probably gonna just go slow and sparse for a while, give myself time to feel, zone in or out, and see how I do.

But I'm a notorious non-finisher, yup, I have that throne too, taken. Sorry boys.

This is a great creative block reducer... It's so easy to get locked in at specific tempos when you work from within the box. If I start with clean slate and no ideas before sitting, changing the tempo to something slow works great for me.

Otherwise, I also have not read the rest of this thread

[ccDuckett]

Also, mouth-breathers like me often do benefit from spending some time
with less common time signatures, in terms of creative block.

Sometimes, all it takes to feel trapped and frustrated is hearing

TIC toc toc toc TIC toc toc toc

[ghettosynth]

I haven't read this whole thread, but I'm the king of creative blocks, y'all are just amateurs at creative blocks yo!

I recently took my default project template tempo down from 130bpm to 85bpm, and that just felt so much more me. It may be a passing phase, I dunno, but I was genuinely astonished at the difference it made in my approach and comfort zone. I'm probably gonna just go slow and sparse for a while, give myself time to feel, zone in or out, and see how I do.

But I'm a notorious non-finisher, yup, I have that throne too, taken. Sorry boys.

This is a great creative block reducer... It's so easy to get locked in at specific tempos when you work from within the box. If I start with clean slate and no ideas before sitting, changing the tempo to something slow works great for me.

Otherwise, I also have not read the rest of this thread

Yep, and then I like to loop sections of the slow track, rendered, and bring the tempo back up for the house mix, heh! Cubase's arranger track and Reason's block are great for doing this quickly.

[xalama qo]

Another thing I've started to do to get a new track going, usually just something of a sketch (i'm a non-finisher as previously stated), is to take elements of a previously "completed" track, either midi clips or audio stems, whatever, and process them through some extreme time-stretchers (like paulstretch), or speed them up, pitch them up or down, or for midi I use eXT's randomiser process, which takes what's there and mixes it up, but intelligently, maintaining the key and rhythmic cues... of course you could set it to go nuts too if you want.

All this deconstruction of your previous track often leads to new melody lines, new rhythmic ideas, etc.

So if the blank page/clean slate is daunting and you have no ideas in your head to start from, take bits of previously completed songs, mess them up with FX/time/pitch processors, and little inspiring nuggets are bound to pop out...usually just a few seconds of something interesting...but it's a start.

The key to this though is to be extreme...forget about trying to achieve something musical. Totally destroy the original input. Also don't feel obliged to use the mangled output in your new tune...it just might be a head-jolt for something new which can then be realized with your usual set of tools.

And always allow yourself to be playful. Some of my favourite mini-tracks are of when I was just having some silly fun, panning the entire drum kit to the right speaker, placing guitar riffs and solos alternately from left to right to middle, break all the 'rules', use all old uncool 'inferior' synths to build a tune.

Dunno about you, but when I load up Diva I get performance anxiety...like, "crap, this is the best sounding softsynth ever and I have to do it justice". Then I reach for Pro-53 or Adventus, and it's like, whew!... now I can make crappy music and not feel bad about it!