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I work in a few different ways, especially since I now have a family and full time job.

First off, I rarely ever start a new track when I’m working on another track (and I’ve always been like this, even before life got more real with a family/teaching job :zonked:). I like to finish a track up completely before moving on to anything. I always try to have a plan before I sit down to work. For instance, last night I spent time transcribing drum patterns from a couple of old tracks from the MnM to my recently acquired AR. This was something I could easily get into and not have to worry about what I was doing too much since the overall idea was there for me to copy/paste. Some evenings, I have to tell myself to quit because my output turns counterproductive at a certain point as I lose pieces of work with silly mistakes (accidentally deleting patterns etc).

As for inspiration, I often work in the evenings as I typically have the most flexibility to work because my wife is kicking back doing her thing and my son is asleep. Now, it can sometimes be hard to be creative at this point because I work with 5th graders all day and also I am usually the one to put my son to bed, but I get bits of progress out as long as I have a goal in mind. If I am really beat, I try to focus on creating patches/kits or doing something that doesn’t require a whole lot of focus/energy.

I really really prefer working in the morning because I have the most stamina at this time and can really get into what I want without hitting a wall. I sometimes will wake up at 5-6am to get an hour or two of uninterrupted working time.

As for my ideas, I rarely have an explicit idea that I want to flesh out, other than knowing the scale or time signature I want to write in. I pretty much just start working without any real idea of what kind of track I’m making. I just try to make it sound interesting, different, and good. As long as I am working towards finishing a track, I’m a happy camper.

Some days I will just experiment nonstop, usually when I have a new piece of gear…and my working space is in the garage with an A/C unit for the summer and heater for the winter. I sealed the garage doors, so it’s pretty comfy. I have a couple of lamps, so it’s pretty dimly lit and calm. I have a small window I can pull the shades up on in order to get natural light in…but no window to open as the A/C unit takes up the window.