What do you do when you don't know what to do?

Sometimes i Just Hook Up one Synth and start a Sound Exploration. Sometimes this leads musically to nothing but than i have at least a nice Preset. Then next time Just this newly created Preset together with something Else, fire Starts a nice composition. Its never a waste of time to sit with Music, with your Tools and Tinker around, sculpting sounds or shaping little compositional miniatures. Its always an Investment into the next time, when you sit down, which gives you also for the next time, and the next time after that and so on.

Its a Mystery.

I love threads like this … makes it clear to me (yet again) how many different processes we have.

One thing that helps me is to keep a notebook. When I’m digging into a group of instruments, my head is usually thinking about it subconsciously, whether it’s in front of me or not. So at random times I have ideas pop into my head for sounds/features to explore, ways to configure it, etc. I scrawl them down for the future, and when I’m short on inspiration I’ll open to a page that gives me a starting point.

During/after a jam session I’ll also write down a few notes including details of my setup and anything interesting/unexpected I learned. This also gives me fodder for the future.

I find the mere act of writing things down helps reinforce my memory, so the added advantage is I end up learning my tools better.

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I just listen to music until I find something to try to replicate. Usually in the process I end up making something new.

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I sleep. Seriously that’s what I do.

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Take up guitar or violin, and care about achieving skill on either instrument.

I was dumb enough to do all the above.