Yeah it's funny, in context to myself I've never had any serious writers block, but I do find myself wanting to write things I can barely play, or can't play. So yeah, composing isn't in my case practicing at all, it would be more about sitting down and learning new scales, technical skill oriented over creative. When you do have free time, I mean a nice block for music, it's sometimes hard if you're wearing multiple hats to remind yourself to do the basics. Spent the last couple months messing around with a studio recording of my band learning how to mix drums etc. and want to delve right back into writing, but practicing is important as well.acidpenguin wrote: What's also important is to practice well, stating the obvious but sometimes it's easy to forget. Practice needs to be focused and ideally challenging. One has to do the things that are hard to improve, learning new scales or songs, trying new techniques, whatever. I think it's a mistake people easily make that just 'cos they've spent X hours in front of a computer making tunes that counts as practice when very often if you examine how you spent the time very little of it would count towards that kind of improvement.
Personally breaking it down into small chunks often helps, half an hour seriously getting my head round a new concept or learning a new song and then walking away from it to let my brain recover works a lot better for me than bashing away at something for hours. Found that was also the way I got over writer's block at one point.
Writers block for me only happened when I felt completely self conscious about my own abilities and it wasn't helping me to practice more, but making everything I wrote sound horrid to me. Having a sense of vision about what you want to do to peoples minds when they hear your music is for me a key element, that and constant thought about what I think are amazing breaks, bridges, choruses etc.
no doubt.