How do you push yourself as a producer?

[anybody human]

Take a break. Maybe a couple of days, maybe a week or two. I often find that my perspective has changed a bit when I come back to it.

[friend_kami]

Simple question, I'm starting to hit a brick wall with this. I'm still making tunes and am liking them, but they are all starting to sound and feel the same. I want to try and push myself, but how does one do that exactly? Do you start projects with "rules" and try and build a track with those rules? i.e. no snare or off hi hats?

Curious to hear how you guys do it.

Take a couple of weeks off writing music and make sounds.

Turn all those samples you skip past in your library into complex velocity sensitive macro'ed up instrument racks with all manner of bizarre mappings. Get OCD on that folder full of breaks and slice all them to drumracks and make them into clips nothing like how they originally sounded. Go through the ableton presets and mangle them into something you would actually use. Make an absolute shitload of clips but forbid yourself from trying to turn them into tunes until you make a couple of hundred.

Thats what I do anyway - you'll end up with a whole new pallete of sounds and beats by the end of it and learn a lot along the way

[/ocd] [/geek]

this, pretty much.
also; read about interesting sound design techniques and experiment with them.
for example, how much do you know about psychoacoustics? not much?
well, then it's time to read about it and try it out. you can even write complete leads that aren't there but still heard. great practice, great theoretical knowledge and a good basis for experimental work.

[ciw]

How to push your limits? Try writing better tunes.

[ciw]

I'll elaborate on that. Listen to music. Find tunes that sound better than yours. Figure out what makes them better. Apply what you learn to your own. (But don't ever expect to match what you heard in your own head... even if it's equally good to other people).

Can't figure out what makes them better? Maybe take some lessons.

[kb420]

I push myself by listening to this. That's all the inspiration that I need.


Basically, I want my music to sound nothing like this at all.