That’s true and i actually have a band. Definitely something that keeps me sane sometimes.
Do this. Keep one of them on your desk and stow the others away. Set a timer for each session so you don’t overdo it. Soon the ideas will start flowing.
Waiting for the sample pack…
This actually has been one of my main things to work on recently.
This could have been one of my sketches! I do so many things like this too. One stupid trick that’s worked for me is just making the events more sparse. Like even slowing down the BPM, just give it a little more space to breathe and ornament stuff.
Side note, speaking of Autechre: I saw them live in Portland in 2015 and there was some bug in their rig (or they just pressed the wrong button, etc. - it was the first show in the tour ), and at the end of the set it sounded a lot like pretty straight-ahead synth pop. I realized at that moment that so much of what they do is just taking simple, stripped down ideas and kind of mutating them and combining them with other stuff. Since then, I try to gravitate more toward that kind of thing. There’s so many things to make a simple thing weirder and more interesting.
Sent it all to the doctor mate.
Thanks! Recently I rediscovered FieldScaper I installed months ago, recorded some sounds around the house and experimented with different presets and it sounds amazing for some ambient background shit in my tracks
Sounds pretty cool to me
Great beat and drums sounds. Maybe just change the chords/tonality to something less Autechre?
At times like you described I find it beneficial to return to a track and keep working on it and refining it. Maybe see if you can find the elements that don’t work and replace them. Several times I’ve made a better track that way.
You people are wonderful!
I wish there was a groovebox like Elektronauts. You put in your disordered ideas and you get a multifaceted ass kicking song out of it.
I felt that you would come up with good stuff to think about but i didn’t thought it would go so deep. This is almost like therapy. But with multiple therapists. And for free!
Thank you all very much.
It’s not like i’m deep into a depression or something but it definitely feels good to have a few things to try to be more happy with my music.
Remove the burden of creative novelty from your music. In my case, that is easy. All I ever do (on my Digitone) is make arrangements of music that already exists, simple melodies, folk songs. If the kids enjoy playing along with it, then it’s good enough.
Instead of expecting to find inspiration, look at music making as a set of problems to solve. Try recreating someone else’s piece…or someone else’s “sound”.
I would like to propose a moratorium on the addition and removal of successive musical layers (muting and unmuting) during intros and outros. Maybe you think it doesn’t sound like shit, but it certainly looks like shit (tapered at either end).
Q: Why is shit tapered?
A: So your asshole doesn’t slam shut!
Look to the classical music tradition for guidance. Music educators sometimes refer to the “elements” of music (in the Western, classical music tradition): melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, form. Just my (snooty, conservatory-educated) opinion, but most electronic music is sorely lacking in most of these elements.
+1 on what others said about taking a walk, doing something else. I am currently in a rut, in large part due to a lack of physical exercise.
this is good advice!
I learnt about this neurological condition today, which seems relevant to the thread title. Just the idea of it makes me sad!
This is something that happens to me often, and when it does, I try to do a couple of things: 1) take a short and substantial from making music to clear my head; 2) find inspiration from other places other than music.
Number 2 is important to me because I believe strongly that my mind, my heart, my experiences, and my world view is leagues and leagues more important than gear - and it’s free! I think of what I felt when something awesome or sad happened, and let that guide the music I make, or I’ll remember some observation I made while driving through a tunnel, idk, like, “when I went in the tunnel there were 5 lanes and now they are converging into 3 lanes” and then think how could I make a track that sounds like that, that “starts big and ends small”? Or I may remember a conversation with someone that was really funny because it was all over the place and yet everything made sense, and try to make a piece of music with those qualities.
A new gear purchase is absolutely not going to give me any of these things, and these things way more valuable in my opinion. So I invite you to instead of starting a music thing with “I place kick drum here, bass line here, and mindlessly turn all the knobs and faders all the time,” to try to come from a more abstract place, and to maybe practice building musical ideas in your head, hum melodies to yourself, do some quasi beatboxing just to get the idea out of your head in that moment, write ideas down on paper or on your phone, etc.
If you can get comfortable making music in your head, you will find out that the brain is the best studio ever.
Good advice! And i sometimes start like that. The problem is that the music in my brain sounds way better than the stuff i make out of it. And i find it hard to stay with the idea from my head. Most of the time i drift away into different sonic territories, which is fine, but the initial idea gets lost. But this can be trained i guess.
A new piece of gear is going to give an initial creative high, but if the creative mind is not solid and strong, that high will dissipate and it’s back to square one. Buying new gear is like a fad diet, you get on it, lose a few pounds, drop it, gain those pounds plus a few extras. Relearning how to eat and rethinking our relationship with food is the best diet because it is mindful, honest, and long lasting, and that starts with the mind, while the fad diet is brute force starting at the body level.
So it is more important to grow the creative mind than the studio.
Your gear works for you, you don’t work for your gear.
In those moments I usually try to orient myself differently, meaning trying out things I wouldn’t normally do, just to escape from the routine.
Likely we all have lots of default choices we go for when making music, thus ending up with predictable results and if it’s not good enough it feels hellish.
I would assume we all have a kind of inherent mood/mindset/character/whatever, that fluctuates as a result of circumstances, daily events, meetings with ppl etc, but I’m not convinced that our habits with the used gear always reflects it as much as we think.
I mean quite often I have a certain mood I’d like to capture musically but when I sit down and power up a synth it kinda puts me into some kind of auto-pilot mode if I’m not careful.
In short, when I’m sick of my approach I try to avoid what I’d usually do and make irrational and seemingly dumb but conscious decisions to alter the course of events and outcome.
Those are usually the times I end up with something that reflect my emotional state and mood more precisely.
Tried to keep it short, couldn’t.
Jerry Seinfeld spoke about how he’d sit down and write with no ideas in mind, just write down whatever came to mind and (if memory serves) he said he’d have to write for several hours just to get maybe one small nugget of comedy that he might use onstage, then develop it over time. Jerry is the consummate professional that works hard at his craft off stage. He knows that he has to sift through hours of shit to get to the good stuff.
Not being a musician, I know that I am merely panning for musical gold every time I’m in front of my gear. So my expectations are set quite low. I know your struggle but hope you don’t ever quit. Lower the expectations or maybe just shift one of your drum or melodic tracks one step to the right on your sequencer to change shit around. Brilliance is often right around the corner. Keep whittling away.
Time to buy something else or time to do a hundred sit up and a hundred push up or invite a friend over.
Hmm, i am not into Autchere in any way, but that snip actually resonates with me. It gives a melancholic and trippy feeling - i dont want beethoven when i listen to electronic music - i want feelings transportet - and your track just does that. If youre bored from your stuff - i understand that - for me music is a fun hobby i treat as if i had a job, and that has its up and downsides to it.
I can recommend that you find a team mate to make music with - it is just more fun, and you have to work around each others musical taste and find something in the middle, where everyone is happy - that can be quiete a challenge - but you learn things - and learn acceptance, of your own stuff, and what others do - you roll with it. Seeing it as a conversation, that is what music actually is.
Even if somebody is more or less skilled - be a teacher or be a student - either way you can learn something.
This I find interesting. I think I’ve had about three dreams (I can remember) in my life where my brain made a new song I could hear. And I didn’t try to make them afterwards.
Outside of that I’m not sure I ever have music appear in my head, sadly. Maybe some ideas. I’m jealous of people that can write a symphony in their mind!
But it’s probably not helpful to compare making machine sequences of sound with daw composition.
Personally it’s reacting off that first nice sound and seeing what other sounds the brain chooses to go with it. Then at some point there’s enough sounds that it should start communicating something.
hearing 4 bars on loop for a few hours would depress anyone.
Definitely switch things up and give your ears a break, when you come back it’s far easier to identify/remove what isn’t working based off your memories expectation.
Cool thread for seeing how different brains deal with it!