Not feeling inspired. my ideas are all trash. Nothing sounds good.... Its a perfect day to cook up (produce music)

take a break, try new gear lots of options

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Try the 5-minute rule. Just sit down and do whatever for at least 5 minutes, if it feels bad - stop it. You might find an interesting sound/pattern that keeps you going and inspires you

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Chuck a fuzz pedal on and call it Industrial (just kidding) :slight_smile:

Must admit I have some lengthy periods where I am just not in the mood to jam and sometimes its nice to do that and then get back into it refreshed.

Exploring new music always good for a refresh also

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Itā€™s gonna take some time to see what works but Iā€™m going to keep up meditation, making a point to savor good times and other techniques to keep me grounded. The root cause is still unknown for newly developed panic disorder but starting to get acquainted with a long lost version of me. No panic attacks since March.

Life is a weird one.

My favorite quote from the psychiatrist was that ā€œlife respects no one.ā€

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if anyone is reading thisā€¦ I BELIEVE IN YOU

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Samplecrastination is a real thing.

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that is what I am doing and really helping me to learn how to program drums, bass and beats.

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I love Samplecrastinating! (great term!). It feels like going to the library and already having too many books at home to read. Sometimes its fun just to look through books.

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Do you really need help? Youā€™ve been doing it a while, and have been making some great music! You definitely know how to make beats and program drums.

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well I am always humbled when I listen to new Darkwave, Techno and Synthwave artists who create awesome music and look to develop my craft and programming skills. I really just need a week to lock myself in the studio and do nothing but record, produce and remix songs.

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Is it me or do some people like to work out of one sample pack? I have tons of packs going back a long time. I do Splice and Loopmasters too. But for whatever reason I like to just stay in one pack.

Iā€™m not trying to work out of Raw Loops, Toolroom, and Waveformā€¦just one pack. Maybe Iā€™m getting old :man_shrugging:

I make house and techno and the Raw Loops stuff is just amazing imo.

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We all need that!

Iā€™ve been tracing songs and making ā€œghostā€ tracks. Its been mentioned on here by a bunch of Elektronautsā€¦

Just drag a song you want to emulate, and drag into your daw, then set up the same tempo. Then make markers where you break down the song parts, and recreate the same parts but with your own music.

Keep the original track to make the same parts as close as you want, or erase the track, and just go off the info in the markers. Erasing the track and making music with the same arragement is the ā€œghostā€ part of it.

Here is one I did for an Alison Wonderland trackā€¦

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I like to keep things as simple and easy to manage as possible. Fortunately the kinds of music that I want to make have a simple formula or drum loop, bass line and lead pad.

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This! :v:

I do. I like to take them out of context and crash them into a totally different genre.

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great idea! I need to do that with my favorite darkwave and synthwave songs. So far I get very close on my own and really just tweaking stuff like how much reverb to use and filter cutoff. After working on hardware and learning Ableton, creating tracks in DAW only is way faster process for me but hardware more fun and creative. I like to think of the Virus TI2 synth as modular and semi DAW in a box that needs internal patching.

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I go back and forth. Im starting to not constrain myself to one method.

Sometimes I work off of one pack, but sometimes those sounds have too similar coloration from how they were mastered. They sound to same-y.

Other times, I purposefully pull from a bunch of different packs to try to mash up a genreā€¦ and Iā€™ll get good results, but also risk decision fatiigue.

I just serve the track to which method I go with.

I try to be like Bruce Leeā€¦ and be like watah.

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Maybe the OP is acknowledging the ā€œSuccess is 10% inspiration and 90% perspirationā€ idea.

On the other hand, weā€™ve all heard the quote: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, over and over, and expecting different results.

I am guessing that the process of music-making leads the OP to the conclusion that all their ideas are ā€œtrashā€. They can keep working, but without a change to the process, the outcome is almost certainly going to be the same.

Instead of worrying about whether our muse is going to come, maybe we should instead question our own free-will, question our ability to break free of the habits that lead us to the same musical conclusions.

This is going to sound harsh, but I really question the notion that the ā€œsum of the partsā€ of a bunch of very cool samples necessarily equals something cool. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me many Elektronauts are ā€œbetting the bankā€, artistically speaking on this notion.

that happened to me when I began reading the Wheel of Time novels. I finished the first six books before getting too busy to finish the last eight books. Definitely better than the Amazon tv series version.

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I have a technique when Im working that i pulled from when I paint or do art in generalā€¦ Iā€™ll work on it, until I feel that if I done anything else to it, it will do nothing, or ruin it. Sometimes, I keep tweaking, and I am doing nothing, so I catch myself, and just walk away.

It may feel like more needs to be done, but maybe i am the only one who noticesā€¦ and if other people still think its unfinished, I know there is always the next track.

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