Creative Block.

[simmerdown]

thats would be awesome, sign me up! my nearest user group is 500 miles away, lol

[JuanSOLO]

+1 on starting a band Angstrom.
even if it's just collaborating with 1 other person, in person.

I get "unfinished project" build up from time to time.
if it gets too bad, I throw out everything. Not my custom Racks or presets, but failed arrangements, or arrangements that no longer get attention.
I rather let go clutter a move forward on a clean slate.

For me, 99% of my best songs over the years were conceived, drafted, and almost completed within a day.
so if stuff starts stacking up, it wasn't precious to me to begin with.

I try not to get married to my creations, and listen to them as if a friend gave it to me to turn me on to some new band.

[Vios]

Making music is like a lot of other arts - to be/get really good at it you have to do it every day. I think a good comparison is writers. They may have days where they only write 5 pages over a few hours of staring at computer screen. Then they'll have days where they could do 100 pages in a day. They never know which type of day they're going to have before they sit down to write. Thus it is with music production, I feel.

When I'm not feeling creative, or I'm not getting anywhere, I work on my effect racks, or go find some more tutorials for my website. Finding tutorials for my website makes me watch some more tutorials and gives me ideas. Often times the new effect racks give my ideas that turn into new tracks. You can do the same. When you feel like you've run out of creative juice, spend the time to further educate yourself! Music writing gets easier the more you know (I feel).

I have a lot of projects that are constantly evolving. I often make something, then add something that matches that part, but not another part. One major thing that keeps me moving is to keep working on the composition parts of tracks until I get to the production phase. It's like this: I'm not going to apply surgical EQs to my kick drum when I don't even know what my bass part is. So many people get caught or waste time doing production work before they've composed their track, ie have the main parts laid out in arrangement view. This tutorial changed how I do my productions, I hope it offers help to you:

5 Steps to Writing Better Music Faster

[convex]

I have a 5 minute a day theory.
if you do something for 5 minutes a day.
no matter what, you have to do it for at least 5 minutes.
you will be a bad ass in 6 months to a year.

I agree with the spirit of your theory, but the math doesn't amount to much. At that rate, you'd only spend 30 hours a year doing whatever the thing is - that's not even a full work week. It would take 333 years to reach Malcolm Gladwell's theoretical 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in a chosen field. I don't know about you guys, but I'm not that patient.

Song sucks? Write another one.

[convex]

duplicate post

[Eric C.]

I totally get this way. It seems sometimes like it's easier to start fresh and then you do, but then the same thing happens...Other times I get something really good happening. For me, I think part of the problem is that I can only work a couple of hours every day - if that (maybe more on the weekend). I think this constant in and out of a project might stop the idea flow. One thing stays the same though - I do love doing it. I guess maybe there has to be some goal setting as to when a track should be mixed down. Good luck. I'm older than most here, I'm sure, new to Ableton and I love it! I try work at it at least 6 days a week. It's only been a year.

[billz270]

thanks for starting this thread billz270.
this is good stuff, I'm doing a workflow workshop in like 3 hours.
definitely going to tell everyone about this thread.

keep it all flowing

no problem
keep me updated when you upload your workshop. im looking forward to it

peace be with