my lack of muse and lack of talent
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…gas…gear addiction, is one of the biggest enemies of creativity…
…and so is ur inner, lazy asshole, we all know and have to fight down daily, more or less…
…always work with what u got…
…that’s first artist rule, no matter if ur writing, painting, sounding…around the globe…
…it’s good to look what else is out there, to have personal heros and idols…
…BUT NO ONE NEEDS A COPY OF A COPY OF A COPY…
…everybody is cooking with water…end of the day…
…while everybody has to find their own personal tricks and ways to get it boiling…
…therefor u better know ur gear inside out…and take always care to make it run solid…
…trust ur trust and feel free to be unique…
…fuk competition…and fuk comparison…it’s UR sound…
…any second of effort u put into a project will be heard by someone, if u really finish it…
…muse can’t always strike u, but there’s also always other stuff that’s left to do…
…no matter how long and beautiful u noodle around…if u don’t record at some point…
…u’r always left with nothing…
…dare to kill ur darlings…
…don’t be in the game to gain attention, be in the game for ur passion in first place…
…if ur truu…attention will find u…
…time is a bitch…so never start counting…
…chin up, pants down…
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Fear of letting go.
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With our band we always came up with new songs, ideas and riffs. At every band rehearsal there was a couple of new things to try and to come up with my own parts. The three of us worked together great.
Now that I try to do it alone I never accomplish anything except an hour or two of noodling around with my gear, perhaps sampling some idiotic but lovable tv-theme like the Golden Girls and chopping it into a hiphop-beat. I go to sleep with a smile on my face, but I wake up in existential terror at 4AM.
It really helps to have people around to bounce ideas with. I often blame my non-accomplishments to not having the right gear or not having enough time for my hobby, but every so often when I have the time, I find myself watching Netflix or playing something on the Nintendo. I’m just not dedicated enough, too many hobbies, too many things that I love to do.
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Myself.
I know what I’m good at and what process leads to the best results for me – and that involves sitting down with a pen and paper and nothing else for a few hours as a first step. But that’s hard and boring. It’s more fun to lay down a one-note bassline and modulate some parameters.
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Probably the amount of time I end up spending on making various trimmings around a release, a little advert, a little animation, video editing, a cassette release, printing jcards, picking out various materials for physical release… and so on. In the time I spend making the whole package I could have moved on and released a few more albums and gotten better as a musician. I do enjoy the whole process though, even though it grinds my music making cycle to a stop. I would maybe be better off spending some extra cash to hand some of these tasks off to others to be able to make more sounds. I will say though I wonder if you should ever be totally happy with a release, more so just comfortable with letting it into the world. I suppose the trick is to be happy with and highly critical of your own work.
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I’ve arrived at a place where the process exceeds the outcome. I not concerned as much about the outcome as I am the journey of the actual music making process. This has given me the best results because it allows me to be fully creative without worrying about judging my creations. The caveat being that I always multitrack everything. This allows me to fine tune the work after the fact when I can properly listen to it. At this point in the process I’m much more detached emotionally and attack it from an analytical mindset.
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In the past my biggest obstacle was trying to do everything at once. Working ITB, trying to write, mix, produce etc all at once.
These days I work with hardware. I seperate the processes. I write until the track is finished. Only then will I set up recording. Once recorded, only then will I worry about production stuff.
So my biggest obstacle now, is not having enough time to make all the projects I want to make. I have so many ideas, I need a few clones if myself so I can work on them all, only being able to work on one project at a time is a bummer.
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Overbridge is a glorious thing!!!
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Exactly!!! We only have a finite time to do this. Start with an intention then get out of your own way and chronicle what you are doing.
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Same-ish, although the down side (or up depending on how you see it) is that I enjoy taking new paths nearly every time. Because of that it often takes me some time to explore the new paths and to finally hear what will be the end result. I try to have a release once a year since taking on this moniker, and it takes me the full year just to find what the next release will sound like. In that time I have written a half dozen albums that were the path to the end result didn’t challenge me and will not see the light of day. I will say, that at least at this stage of my creative development that for better or worse, each release even the ones I throw out all sound like me. Long story short I guess is that while the outcome still matters, im far more interested in the paths to get there and hopefully learning something new along the way.
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I have recently watched a tutorial/masterclass from Dominik Eulberg.
He was saying: “If you want to become good you have to choose for a specific genre and only do that. Just like if you wanted to chop a tree you have to cut always the same line” (and not try one day D’N’B next day ambient and then techno followed by some Psytrance).
Sadly I went exactly that way.
Here is a quote I found yesterday which empowers this (from Hegel):
“Whoever wants something great must, as Goethe says, know how to limit himself. On the other hand, he who wants everything wants nothing, and brings it to nothing. There are a lot of interesting things in the world; Spanish poetry, chemistry, politics, music, i.e., everything is very interesting, and one cannot blame anyone who is interested in it; but in order to achieve something as an individual in a certain situation, one must hold on to something specific and not split his strength into many sides.”
This is my obstacle. Too many genres. Too many other hobbys (visuals, dioramas / DIY, lighting). Not enough discipline.
I can also identify with almost everything being written here.
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Just needs balance. I had a mate that was severely into DnB. He only listened to DnB, he only DJ’d DnB, he only made DnB.
As a result his tracks were dull, lacked life. If you focus too hard on something, you loose the bigger picture.
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Finishing tracks.
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At some point in time i decided to change the goal…from “Finished tracks” to “Full time NODDELING” now i hit the target every time…and im happy…
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That’s a fine argument, I love just chilling and learning these tools. Make a few patterns, get bored and move on. Maybe I’m missing the point, maybe that’s all I need right now. Not finishing track just enjoy jamming.
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Some really awesome wisdom in here. Relate to pretty much everything everyone is saying.
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Reading threads on here instead of making music 
But more realistically,
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constantly comparing to others instead of just having fun making music for yourself.
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The quality of the sound isn’t as important as the creative ideas IMO. Focusing on the nitty gritty always takes me out of creative head into a more science feeling head.
I’m trying to distance myself from any of the “production” stuff and just work on the music itself.
If I played guitar I could just go to a studio and pay a producer with formal training to properly mix my track etc.
So just because I make electronic music, doesn’t mean I HAVE to do the whole thing myself. Even though the producer and the ideas/creator is the same person in my case (me), splitting the “production” from the ideas/creative has helped me get tracks out.
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…don’t mock a genre…be the genre…
and no one can always just do four to the floor…or always dnb…or whatsoever monocultural style…
u’ll need at least two sides of a coin…
always pumpin’ energy will leave u only dried out at some point…
so, at least some ambient stuff of any kind is always fitting ur other side of any moodset…
and finishing stuff is essential…otherwise that’s the other way of left dried out for sure at some point…
no one can finish stuff for real, all on it’s own…
give ur final stems to a second pair of fresh ears…or at least the mastering mission…
too many lonesome fighters out there these days…start bonding in bands of any kind again…
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