Some 20-odd years ago, a frustrated boy named Ian sat on his bed in the evening, and wrote his first journal entry.
The relief he found from writing about his teenage difficulties motivated a lifelong habit, first onto paper, then increasingly a computer screen.
By scratching his thoughts down as they arrived, he was able to extend his train of thought far beyond what his ADD-addled brain could handle alone. It also scratched the information deeper into his brain, making it easier to recall than before.
I am very grateful to that younger version of myself, for discovering one of the most powerful coping tools I use today. So naturally, it had to find a place in my music production work.
Early(er) on in my song-making, I would sit at my laptop and immediately start to panic, because I didn’t have a plan for what to do that day. I was putting my creativity in a position to ‘hurry up and come up with something’, and often, I choked instead.
So as I started piecing tracks together and ideas started to present themselves, I wrote them down. I wrote down things that needed fixing too, and how. Actually, I often didn’t know how, but I still wrote what needed fixing.
The next day, those ideas were all set or me to act on. No more choking! And once I got started, new ideas started coming up: ‘What if I tweaked the reverb on this a bit? Let’s try modulating the cutoff filter on the pad…’
I always try to make sure I have at least one idea written down that I didn’t have time to get to that day, just to make sure my producer brain gets a running start the day after.
That said, sometimes the ideas do dry up. The hardest part is getting started with a brand new song idea, because there is the least amount of structure to help guide the process. Once I’ve started, it almost drives itself sometimes.
So I present to you, dear reader, my 14 suggestions for breaking through the creativity dam:
- Learn something new through an online tutorial, and try applying it to my mix.
- Listen to music artists I like and take notes on what makes them stand out.
- Listen to my favourite preset loops for ideas.
- Grab sounds off a previous track and use them in a different way.
- Play some chords based on classical music, then modify them, arpeggiate them, move them up or down.
- Move notes on a track up or down a few semitones or a full octave to hear how the sound changes.
- If working on a song, take a break and switch to shorter loops for a while.
- Listen to a piece of music I like and try and recreate my favourite sounds.
- Take a loop and add plugins or stomp boxes to create weird unique sounds.
- Focus on whatever part of music production I’m enjoying the most right now.
- Write in my journal about what I’m feeling.
- Burn some calories – Jog, workout, do Pilates, etc.
- Take a break and do something relaxing.
- Have a nap.
Credits:
‘Boy in Pink Crew Neck Shirt Eating Ice Cream’ by cottonbro from Pexels
‘Formulas on an Old Blackboard’ by Roman Mager on Unsplash