The creative process / constistency - tips?

Sammelkorn · 2015-12-22T08:52:23.000Z

Hey guys,

I haven’t finished a song in my life. Last time I nearly did (before the accidentally wiped the hard drive) was like 7 years ago.

In the last year I’ve been getting into music again: I bought an A4 in February and am about to buy a second hand MD mkII (no UW).

I tthought he the A4 was piece of equipment which would offer me everything I need for being able to spend considerable amounts of time with it without getting bored. But often the patterns and sounds I come up with just bore me. Which I think is one of the reasons why I don’t spend so much time with it. (Sometimes only once a week for 15 minutes.)

I am aware of a trait of my personality that makes me think that more gear is gonna help me be creative. But that’s mostly not true I think. However, I still intend to get the MD, just because it’s a good deal I am getting and because it will do beats differently from the A4.

So my question:
What do you guys do to motivate yourself to stay committed to making music?
How not to get frustrated / how to keep it playful

I think my goal is mainly to learn my gear; have some nice jams, both alone and with friends; learn to perform with a few bars of loop, just to keep it interesting and to train that for making songs; eventually recording small jams and some day recording songs (more like performances than programming songs I think).

(I don’t know what kind of music I wanna do.)

Thanks for listening, al ideas highly appreciated

David

SoundRider · 2015-12-22T09:08:28.000Z

Welcome to the club. I think many of us have been there and do from time to time

IMO the only source of frustration you can kill is the frustration about not beeing familiar with your gear and to fall from trap to trap - technically speaking. If you know your gear well, you might avoid to try things that would fail anyway.

Try to stay curious like a child and experiment with the Elektron boxes.

About finishing a track … you might want to pay a visit to the following thread:

http://www.elektronauts.com/t/finishing-a-track/15514/127374

De_wouzer · 2015-12-22T10:21:03.000Z

UDI dont make tracks, i make live sets
Just a couple of loops with morphing possibilities i can play with

I like to make loops
I like to make morphings

If i make a song, it is just an improvisation of loops
If i make a live sets, it is an improvisation of many loops, mixt with each other (i mix them by looping inside octatrack or kaoss pad 3

There is one rule i work with:
DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU

If it doesnt work for you to make a song, dont make a song
I found out i can make songs by just jamming and recordings with a stereo recorder

TrabanT · 2015-12-22T10:53:23.000Z

put a bump on the off beat
start jammin at 133 bpm
use the arpeggiator
if u cant come up with your own synthesis use the elektron patches…plenty good stuff there
limit yourself to messing around with only 1 track and focus for 30 min each on the effects section, chorus, delay and reverb…see how much you can change the sound.
lfo1 random to modulate lfo2 parameters. you wont get bored there easily.

20 min a week is not even enough to keep you from unlearning new skills.
I do at least 1 hour a day on couch with headphones…that changed me a lot!

seeing other people on your toys helps tremendously… I would love to watch all of you folks on this forum over your sholder and copy your workflow etc

yoof · 2015-12-22T11:27:10.000Z

I find my creativity goes in peaks and troughs and I regularly find myself struggling with how to proceed with ideas. One thing I have noticed though is that when I approach my machines with no set idea in mind and just experiment, then good musical ideas seem to spring forth.

My machine of choice is the Op-1, which I find lends itself to completing projects very well given its destructive nature that forces you to commit to ideas and its tape mode which is a way of linearly laying out your track. When I use my Elektron machines though, what seems to help me is to string a few patterns together (chain mode for example) to get past that loop feel of things and then to make things as organic as possible with parameter locks and lfo’s.

Also, don’t forget that when you feel creativity is lacking, you can always do more mundane things that will help you when you suddenly feel creative. Eg, work on some cool sounds and save them for quick recall later. Actually, I can get lost in sound design for hours and while it sometimes doesn’t feel productive, I’m pretty sure it’s teaching me something.

andreasroman · 2015-12-22T12:20:58.000Z

If you’re not finishing stuff, but feel you want to, you’ve probably made it too hard for yourself. Your definition for something being finished is likely at a level where it’s just too taxing for you to get to.

If I want to become a writer, and begin with writing a novel, I will give up. But I can write a short story, or an article, or perhaps just a page with something that contains a beginning and an end.

So what if it’s okay that you just make one pattern, and that’s cool. That’s finished.

Then start over, make another one, but say it’s thematically similar to what you did. Not part of the song, but something that could go before or after. But still just a pattern.

And then again.

And so you got three patterns, which are just three short songs, but that belong to a greater whole. But each one of them is finished on their own right.

Your end goal can be the sky and beyond, to the point where beyond the sky feels like it was yesterday.

But your next step to that place, should probably be to just open the door to the rocket that gets you there. And that’s not a bad next step.

4.33 · 2015-12-22T13:29:06.000Z

Do you have any picture of what you want your finished sound to sound like? If not, a good starting point is to cover your favorite songs. As a side bonus not only it will help you build your sound design skills, but also will give you a feel for song arcs. Songwriting is a whole different skill and should be practiced separately. MD won’t help you with that. A4 is perfectly capable of doing full pieces, especially with the performance macros. Stick with that and buy new gear once you get a picture of what you want your music to sound like.

Bwax · 2015-12-22T15:23:46.000Z

A few things I would advise my younger self to do…

Learn and read about songwriting. Either traditional verse/chorus methods or something more focused on Electronic Music, such as the Ableton book:

https://makingmusic.ableton.com/

Don’t worry about acquiring gear, gear, and more gear. If I were to do it all over again, I would not load up my room with expensive hardware. Try writing that decent EP or album with only the A4, supplemented with free/cheap vst instruments and fx. Focus on the songs first. Get them 80-90% of the way finished. If you still feel you need more hardware to achieve a particular sound, then buy it. But changing out a Diva sound for a Juno 106 sound is certainly not going to make or break a song.
Don’t wait for inspiration or a muse to show up. Set a timer for 1 hour each day and just dig in. Writing and finishing songs takes lots of practice and work, just like anything else really. For every 20 crap songs, you might have 1 good song. Eventually you’ll accumulate enough of those good songs to have a nice EP or album.
Learn proper gain staging and mixing and mastering basics. Make templates so you won’t have to fight volume and gain staging so much later during a mixdown. This will help get your songs out faster and you wont procrastinate because you know it won’t be such a royal pain to mix the song you’ve started. When you begin writing a song you’ll be confident your DAW and environment will be set up properly to record any audio.

I suggest Tarekith’s guides for cutting through the BS. It’s all most will ever need to release decent tracks on SoundCloud or Bandcamp.

Inner Portal Studio

Free Stuff - Inner Portal Studio

From 2010 to 2016 I hosted a blog about audio production and creativity on this site. You can find all the best blog posts from that time here in one document: BEST BITS OF THE BLOG (Zip File) This is a collection of articles I’ve written over the...

Keep things as simple as possible. Always ask yourself - do I really need this? - before adding new gear. Do I want to be a synth museum or a songwriter? Etc. Align your actions with your stated goals.

notarobot · 2015-12-22T16:52:39.000Z

Keep moving forward set a limit to how long your recording is of your song. So if you can work with 20minutes of recording time as a limit that’s a great start less time may even be better it depends on what it is.

Patterns: make one, save it and then copy and paste it. Then strip each pattern down so it builds i.e. pattern 1 has drums, pattern 2 has drums and bass line, pattern 3 has drums bass line and lead. Then do the same with a chorus if your song has one.

That can work if you put all your parts on one pattern (copy and paste and strip down after), it depends how many instruments you are working with.

Forget the DAW just use the instrument itself and arrange the patterns into a song. I don’t know the Analog Four yet. It may sound as you like without the computer. Remember to save what you work on externally so there is a back up.

Then use the DAW to remix.

Sammelkorn · 2015-12-22T19:48:20.000Z

Thanks guys! Taking it all in, making notes about what approaches wanna adopt… (I can telll you already it’s most of them)

Sammelkorn · 2015-12-26T18:07:48.000Z

Yeah so thanks everyone for taking the time to reply to my post!

Soundrider:

Totally… I am sure knowing your machines is really important. which I guess is also an argument for keeping the equipment small.

De wouzer:

Thanks for the reminder, I’ll try and figure out what format works for me. I have a feeling that a jammy approach with a simple stereo recording is something that could work for me as well. That would also help me keep my shitty computer out of it, which sounds good.

TrabanT:

Daily “work” sounds like a good idea. So does setting a similar tempo every time and working the effects. Reading your post reminded me how little time I dedicate to setting those nicely!

I googled “making music every day” and found this interesting summary of what that did for a person when they did it for 3 months (I think): 9 Things I’ve learned from 3 Months of Daily Music Making | Music Software Training & Ableton Live Tutorials

That pretty much sold me on doing it.

yoof:
Good idea, gonna try and find things I can work on when I am not in the mood for acutal musical material.

andreasroman:

Good idea man! Gotta set my goals realistically. I’ve kinda been limiting myself to loops anyway, but this puts it nicely into a bigger scheme. Cheers!

4.33:

Been playing with the idea of “convering” favourite songs already for a long time, but I am gonna make it happen now. Been looking at minimal stuff cus it has few elements and I can probably manage that kinda music with the A4’s four tracks. Dusty Kid is a favourite so far.

And yeah, macros… I haven’t even touched those so far cus it seems so daunting… Bit of a waste eh

""Bwax"":

Learn proper gain staging and mixing and mastering basics. Make templates so you won’t have to fight volume and gain staging so much later during a mixdown.

You mean like template DAW projects with plugins for mixing, like EQ, COMP, etc?

I suggest Tarekith’s guides for cutting through the BS. It’s all most will ever need to release decent tracks on SoundCloud or Bandcamp.

http://innerportalstudio.com/guides/

Thanks a lot for that idea! Will try to work those tips in when I am not working on music then

[quote"notarobot"]
Then use the DAW to remix.
[/quote]

First of thanks for the tip. That sounds like a good way of doing it. Perhaps I am even gonna try combining that with the performance macros!
The bit about the remix though: You really mean for creating a new song derived from the old one? Or more like trying a different mix, just different EQ, etc.?

Thanks again everyone for chipping in so far. Hope you’re all having some nice off time around chrismas!