Out of inspiration

I still don't understand why is so big problem not having inspiration? It's not like lack of libido...tho i can see connection.

Music production is not that important and if/when it really is important (not music per se but what stands behind it) to someone than inspiration is there.

Making music or anything else out of habit or cause ''my other friends are doing it too'' is just wrong approach.

when I lack inspiration it means I need more sleep. When I get sleep, I get inspiration!

  On 5/25/2013 at 1:32 PM, xox said:

I still don't understand why is so big problem not having inspiration? It's not like lack of libido...tho i can see connection.

Music production is not that important and if/when it really is important (not music per se but what stands behind it) to someone than inspiration is there.

Making music or anything else out of habit or cause ''my other friends are doing it too'' is just wrong approach.

Making music is able to have a therapeutic effect in my opinion, so I understand when people feel bad when they run out of inspiration.

You have to dare to suck. Quantity creates quality.

  On 5/29/2013 at 3:19 PM, paranerd said:

You have to dare to suck. Quantity creates quality.

This. 95% of creating anything is definitely getting over the stage where you look at your own work and want to incinerate it or die of embarassment, or at least learn to tolerate your own shitness until you start getting good.

Gotta work through that lack of inspiration sadly, I think there's this odd saggy middle period in the journey from "starting making music" to "confident at making music" where you start to lose that early naivety and get a bit down about the stuff you're making coz it's not as good as you want it to be. Just got to push through that by making more tracks sadly! Even if they suck and you hate them, it's all practice and that's what counts!

Maybe try making something in a genre you wouldn't normally work in? Might help get out of a rut if you're in one.

There is that joke about the brick-layer who comes home depressed one day and his wife asks him what's wrong and he says he has brick-layers' block.

While it's not a very funny joke I do find it very useful to view music-making as a non-creative thing, especially when I'm lacking inspiration. It's a very Eno perspective I think.

So what I'll do when I'm not feeling creative is do things like use dynamics and tension-and-release in a very practical way as if I'm building a shoe or something where there's a sort-of pre-existing template or blueprint to follow. I'll decide a song length maybe and then I'll structure the parts so that the tune has movement in a very basic sense.

What ends up happening is that I make alot of tunes that are essentially just two parts back and forth, but while the harmony and bassline might remain constant I will give each section of the song different melodies (sometimes such that the melody never repeats), variations in the drums (e.g. dropping parts out or twisting the rhythm), dynamic variation, timbre variation, variation in the density of notes, etc.

And then when it comes time to make creative choices (e.g. harmony and melody) you can once again use non-creatives ways of choosing. A guitar teacher I had when I was 16 used to have me pull chords out of a hat and then I had to compose a tune out of the sequence. And maybe beforehand it would be decided that the melody would ascend for two bars and then descend for two bars. And so maybe the chords would be Fmaj Dmaj Abmin Cmin (whereupon I would think 'oh shit that's not gonna sound good'). So we'd pick a note to start on and go from there:

(chords last two beats each)

chord melody

FAC B

DF#A C#

AbCbEb Eb

CEbG F

FAC G

DF#A F

AbCbEb Fb(E)

CEbG D

FAC B

Or maybe you play all the chords over an F pedal. Or maybe you use the 9th of every chord as the melody. Whatever.

Anyway, the idea is that none of this stuff is really 'creative' per se. It's 'creative' in the way that choosing a shirt to wear in the morning is creative, but not in the sense of pulling magic out of thin air. Which cuts to the very heart of the problem IMO.

i don't make music, just draw, but i always think the biggest barrier to getting stuff done is your own apathy for what you're doing, and it always helps me to never start from scratch -obviously i have to at some point- I look through old stuff, old unfinished work, anything with a modicum of quality to it that it exists but which was never pushed further...i sometimes look at it and think it's not so bad, so i use that as a starting point, it's the kind of stuff that immediately is appealing but has little longevity, and once you start messing around with it you realise why it's in the scraps section.

When I hear artists do this with their own music i think it's the same approach; i just see music as a continual process of experimenting, you have to go through all the crap to get to the good stuff, you can't force it, there is no 'inspired moment', more just lots of little accidents found within your own experiments, you latch onto anything good in something and pursue it, just buzzing off all its good qualities. The process of continually editing previous music into something new is how autechre and venetian snares are able to produce so much high quality music, each time it's like you're building from a better base of quality.

Also I find it helps to find stuff that you detest that you can react to. I don't understand why someone would necessarily be inspired by something created by someone else that they like, because to me that provides them their craving. I think the motivation to create is lessened if what you desire most is already out there, it's easier and gives you more clarity of thought if you can react to something that bugs you. I've never understand people's mentality of seeing something and liking it so much they want to imitate it, it's like seeing someone wearing clothes you like and then buying those clothes to wear them yourself, the end result is looking good without having to have gone through the process, it defeats the point of being an artist, it's more consumerist. Photographers do it so much. Taking photographs for them isn't another way to express themselves, but about learning techniques, spending loads of money, and treating the whole thing like some professional exercise.

'I want something, it doesn't exist, i have to make it' is enough motivation if what you're seeing out there doesn't satisfy you.

I think it's better to find inspiration from within, it's more gratifying, and a self esteem boost. Save every stage of the creation of a track, and one day just go through lots of it, opening up random saves, finding anything that appeals now that didn't then. Or record a load of field recordings and sample a load of sounds and mess with those on top of what you've already got. Musicians are pretty lucky in that respect, i don't know how anyone making music could get bored really given the diversity of approach on offer that you can always use..you're not limited in audio like you are visually.

  On 5/29/2013 at 9:24 PM, Leon Sumbitches said:

 

  On 5/29/2013 at 3:19 PM, paranerd said:

You have to dare to suck. Quantity creates quality.

 

This. 95% of creating anything is definitely getting over the stage where you look at your own work and want to incinerate it or die of embarassment, or at least learn to tolerate your own shitness until you start getting good.

 

Or, instead of leaving as it is you fix them. Making shitty tracks good is a much harder and bigger practice than just baking shitty trax for ages because you actually learn how to make music instead of creating loads of it and hoping that if you're lucky some of it won't suck. Quantity does in no way create quality. That's just a stupid aproach based on luck.

  On 6/7/2013 at 3:30 PM, osobjornmedved said:

I really wanna get into high quality field recordings someday.

 

dude, wat you mean with high quality? You don't need expensive recording gear to get creative, relatively cheap ass zoom recorders can get you good results. Investigate in something like this:

Once you're in the flow, you can work on your passion without trouble. The difficult part is getting into the flow to begin with. If you find it too daunting to try to write a new album or even a new track, don't think about the bigger picture. Set yourself a much smaller first step as your only task for the day. Decide to come up with just a bunch of nice chord progressions, or one or two melodies. Basically:

Any big task can be broken down into lots of small tasks.

So any daunting task can be analysed and broken down into lots of very small tasks, none of which are themselves daunting. And once you do the first task, you may find that you've accidentally slipped into the flow without realising, and you've already come up with three chord progressions for, say, one track's verse and chorus and a second track's verse, and already you're adding a rhythm section.

It can also be daunting to try to write something really good. So just try to write anything, with an eye towards incrementally removing the worst bits and adding better bits with each incremental revision.

It can also be daunting to try to write something original. So listen to your favourite tracks by other artists for inspiration. Try to make something a bit like one or more of them, ideally a combination of disparate tracks. Then again, incrementally push it further and further away from emulation and towards your own unique sound.

It's OK if the first draft is bad.

No one else needs to see the first draft. They just see the final one, as if you magically created it out of thin air.

Don't worry about making something great, original, and complete. Just start to make anything. Once you're in the zone, it'll be relatively easy -- and fun -- to improve what you're making until it's all of those things. Remember:

Making music is more fun than procrastinating!

Now get to work.

*checking the stated gender*

>>> If you're any closer I'd prove you're wrong.

  On 6/21/2013 at 11:25 AM, ZoeB said:

 

 

Making music is more fun than procrastinating!

 

 

The French have that thing where they believe inspiration is derived from working on something.