Ableton Forum

ive been on ableton for a couple months now and ive hit a wall and just cant make anything right now. lost my creativity atm.. Any tips on getting past this wall?

Drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.

A new bit of gear or a fresh location never fail me.

Collaborate with someone. Either-

A) fresh ideas will be a great source of inspiration or
B) you'll be itching to do something on your own again.

Can't lose.

forget about being inspired, just keep working, inspiration often pops up in the process

collab with someone

take a break, smell the roses

try a new genre, i fall back to ambient

organize your stuff, housecleaning

pick up an actual instrument

........

Watch some production tip videos on Youtube or a documentary about a band/style or era of music, go see a few live shows, download a vst, try covering a song, both in a different style and as accurate to the original as possible, try going back through old unfinished material and see if you can do anything with it. Most important thing, don't open a DAW until you have an idea of what you're going to do, sitting at a computer screen is never inspiring.

give up, hang out in the lounge, and surf for memes all day

Watch tutorial vids on Live or any plugins you might have. You’ll learn more about production and find out about new techniques that could inspire new songs in the process.

set timelines for yourself and stick to them... that way you won't get mired in dabbling & knob tweaking.

Sage wrote: Most important thing, don't open a DAW until you have an idea of what you're going to do

only bit i cant agree with, everyone has different ways of working though...some of the most rewarding pieces ive done have sprung from just grabbing things you would never think would go together...like an improvisation

funken wrote:

Quadrix wrote:ive been on ableton for a couple months now and ive hit a wall and just cant make anything right now. lost my creativity atm.. Any tips on getting past this wall?

did you use another daw before or are you new to it all? Either way, 2 months is nothing. Take it easy, do some tutorials, just get to know Live, the world's greatest music making software. Read my website if you're bored and not feeling creative. Just concentrate on learning different things. You could spend a day just on my Easy ways to control Live page, practicing all the keyboard shortcuts and commands. Tunes will come to you when you arent trying too hard.

Yes, ive used Fl studio for like 9 months before that.

Thanks for all the help and you guys are right about learn about an instrument, it really helps. i know how to play a couple instruments. but i would like to learn piano, i know how much it would help me to learn piano.

First thing is to just relax

It's normal to anticipate how cool it's going to be cranking out music, you finally get the gear together, and then...

No ideas!

So don't sweat it. Have fun, that's why Live is so great, everything you do can be cut up and reassembled so easily...so you can just jam on ideas. When you mess around for a few hours and don't know what to do next? Save that project for another day, open up a new one and get started. Remember that nothing ever gets lost...it's all on your hard drive and you can go back to any project at any time and start working on it again.

In the meantime, developing a work ethic of sitting at the computer every day and doing something helps more than you might think. You should be ready to start recording ideas quickly and there's always more to learn, so fire up Live and work through all the tutorials if you can't think of anything better to do.

doghouse wrote:First thing is to just relax

It's normal to anticipate how cool it's going to be cranking out music, you finally get the gear together, and then...

No ideas!

So don't sweat it. Have fun, that's why Live is so great, everything you do can be cut up and reassembled so easily...so you can just jam on ideas. When you mess around for a few hours and don't know what to do next? Save that project for another day, open up a new one and get started. Remember that nothing ever gets lost...it's all on your hard drive and you can go back to any project at any time and start working on it again.

In the meantime, developing a work ethic of sitting at the computer every day and doing something helps more than you might think. You should be ready to start recording ideas quickly and there's always more to learn, so fire up Live and work through all the tutorials if you can't think of anything better to do.

Thanks! you have no idea how much you are on point. this really helps out.

truth is that there are no artists in history who have not run into this, regardless of medium...take picasso for example, most would agree that he was prolific as hell when you look at all the works he created in his lifetime, but on the day-to-today he went through various periods of little or no output. you just cant sustain productivity and creativity at max pace all the time...'the candle that burns twice as bright......."

and if you are even thinking about music making while doing other things, or getting ideas while passively listening to other peoples stuff, that is a form of 'work'