how do you cope with the meanwhile

i tend to get a lot of ideas when i'm stuck at work, because i just do one simple task (scanning documents) for hours and i must wander a bit in my mind to keep from going crazy.

the stress i'm feeling is due to musical ideas coming when i'm 4-5 hours from home and my musical devices. there's this constant fear that whatever musical idea i have brewing is going to evolve into some sort of daydream about using that elevator down the hall that only goes to one floor (2 story building) and finding out it actually plummets into an underground pressurized well where the college keeps deep sea creatures for study.

the only thing i can think to do is to try to talk about whatever idea it is with someone else via instant message or email. in that way i'll have to put it into words, which will form a clearer image, and assist my memory in storing it. also i can get feedback or imagine it while i type it.

for drawing ideas i've got this post-it pad glued near my keyboard, making it concealable (it's under my hands when i'm typing) so that's settled well enough.

maybe i need like a java tracker interface or something for musical thoughts.

do any of you guys keep some sort of emergency sketch book, or LSDJ near your desk or somewhere similar, in case of mind fire?

i just post on watmm while my ideas rot. this is why i SUCK AT LIFE.

I have a tiny, waterproof book that I always keep on hand. Also, use Google documents.

For music, my mp3 player has a mic built in. So I just hum, or whatever, into the mic.

Napkins, toilet paper, unused female pads, other peoples faces, cheese wheels, and the floor are all viable alternatives.

no they're not

"I got to write these jokes. So, I sit at the hotel at night and I think of something that's funny. Or, If the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of wasn't funny. "

-Mitch Hedberg

I'm working on some DSC shit here at work yo! - so fire my ass.

i usually dont even bother trying to save the idea, it never works

this is rock n' roll !

it's usually a contention between usefulness and enjoyment.... my best ideas are the ones that go away right after they're thought

having a laptop helps

that guy is pretty fucking good at the end of the clip

there's a renoise file wasting away on my mac's hard drive that contains what I thought was the greatest melody ever, made with a very simple sine wave just to jot it down. I made it a year ago. I haven't done anything with it other than open it and listen with total indifference.

when I was in school I'd write down ideas for songs and sometimes entire albums or series of albums. these were simple ideas that bloomed into gigantic, sprawling, three-page manifestos of scattered thoughts that were almost incoherent when taken in as a whole. when class was over I'd always fold them up and put them in my pocket. then I'd come home, take it out and toss it on my desk, and months later come back to it and throw it away.

sometimes in a strange, manic frenzy of inspiration I'll walk around and twitch uncontrollably and make clicking sounds with my mouth that correspond with the most spectacular music anyone could ever witness that's rolling in my head. most of these experiences last for a good hour, with ten minute pieces filled with driving progression, no repitition to speak of, and sound design that only a human brain could manufacture. then I'll sit down, actually physically drained, and totally forget about all of it.

the reason that none of these ideas become concrete is that I have another train of thought parallel to them, reading as "you don't have the talent nor patience to see any of this through. this is masturbation. cut it out, you're just exhausting yourself." it sticks around long after the ideas actually fade. I'm pretty much doomed to just fucking around with the tools I use to do anything creative and creating at best incredibly weak imitations of these ideas.

how are those prodikeys by the way

certainly not as ideal as a seperate midi controller, but for just note input they seem neat

my first thought is that the keys would get worn out from your hands resting on them while WATMMing

i'm sure there's a cover for them but i would definitely take it off and then step on it accidentally, immediately. is there a version where the keys slide into the keyboard like a drawer? that would be classy

I don't even know, I hate writing down ideas or leaving them in my memory for long-term, because they grow stale fast, and I lose the passion for them, if I can't develop the idea at the moment, then it goes gone.

and mushroom i relate

i didn't have access to a computer until i was like 18-19 and much of my teens up until that point i would sort of get a flash of a complete song in my head all at once, and then go back over it and flesh out details, but being musically illiterate i had no way to transcribe the thoughts and they just melted away. but one nice thing about keep one of those monsterous thoughts as long as possible is strengthening or just feeding what monstrous creative activity is rattling around in your brain, so that later on, when your abilities do develop well enough to just flow onto a page, that torrent of notes in your noodle will have already gone through years of evolution and growth.

most of my first thoughts of imaginary music focused on panning, stereo spacing, pitch / texture... i'd have sort of landscape in my head of the shapes of instruments and placement. none of this was useful for anything until many years later when i began doing 14-16 track sequences of found sound and such... then suddenly i was glad to have done all that fake mental music in my youth, i felt like i knew where everything should go

Im pretty much always at a computer with music software on it, so if something comes to mind, Ill just open up logic.

If Im not near a computer, Ill write down the idea with words.

But usually I don't get musical ideas when Im not actively thinking about music. If anything, Ill think about a concept, but not a actually musical phrase/whatever.

This was said already, but having a laptop really helps. I usually bring mine to work with me for this reason, as well as a few others. It's not my whole studio, but it's good for making sketches. If I don't have any new ideas, I can use it in between calls/work duties to tweak pre-existing tracks, too. I'm pretty lucky that my job lets me get away with it, though.

Ultimately, I think your observations about experience are dead on. As you lay down more and more tracks, the translation from mind to music becomes more fluent. I don't think it ever becomes perfect, but you can constantly refine it.

A lot of my melodic ideas come into my head when I'm outside though, and away from my computer. A lot of them are fleeting, and I can't hold onto the notes (sometimes I can, and those turn into tunes, but I forget more than I'd like)...a handheld recorder would be great.

maybe the with and without contrast is healthy for one's creative side

i just noticed that i more often wish i could put an idea down when i lack the means, but during a weekend i'll just sit there play the song i'm working on looped and not really touch it.

it's like how a hungry person might fantasize about food

say you've got the weekend off, you're at home, you can have a snack every minute if you wanted, a sandwich is fine, cause you never let yourself get that hungry. but then let's say you're stuck at the DMV for 16 hours, you're starving, man the things you could be eating! instead of a sandwich you're piling bacon upon bacon glued, with velveeta, to a newborn deer, and somehow you're going to get cilantro in there but you'll work that out when you get home. you build a fantasy equal in weight to that discomfort you're feeling.

maybe building a great hunger, although stressful, is better for the tunes in the end

i got a lot of sounds done when i got home, thank you threadternets

and all who held my hand through this ordeal

my eyes are rotting out of my face from monitor radiation

I really only get solid ideas if I physically put my hands on the keys and play around a bit. Otherwise it's all silly squiggly nonsense banging around in the old bean and I know I'll never remember it.

and I'm totally making a track out of that prodikeys guy.

"play a little fastahhh!" oh lol.

I think up a lot of basslines and melodies in the shower, so I try to relate it to something I'll remember it by [like a movie I've seen] so when I rethink of the music it will be mapped on that neural pathway in my brain. More easily attainable later on.

i draw doodles that depict the phrase, like draw a long horizontal box shape, and then use it in the style of a stave except just draw lines. i like this method for working out portemento and pitch bend aswell, drawing curved lines puts it into quite a different perspective, and often when i go back to my stuff with the doodled lines, i can get the multiple similtaneous pitch bends in melodic lines i quite like using much better than when i was trying to do it beforehand.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, it is what you do with them that counts.

the songs just grow in my head once they have grown big enough i harvest