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[medieval]

I don't know how this is for everyone, but I'm sure some of us struggle with this on a constant basis. At times I've had such a hard time writing music that it got me depressed and made me lose my drive to write and play music. Often my ideas don't feel right, or good enough, and at other times I don't come up with anything at all. Sometimes it's not even bad, but I get frustrated at very small setbacks and difficulties, and give up anyway. I've been in and out of it for over 2 years and now it feels like I'm not as passionate about it as I was before.

This thread is for discussing these struggles and sharing sources of inspiration, and supporting one another! I think it's important for musicians to support other musicians in making music, and to make sure others don't give up on what is truly one of the greatest arts, and a beautiful experience. By helping others, we help ourselves

Discuss!

[MereMonkey]

As someone you has been treated medically/psychotically for mental health problems I can relate to you Ronin, though over the years I have learned a few things that work for me and hopefully sharing them will aid you and others in this frustration.

1. Looking For Perfection

As people who are working on creating audio for a living or working in any creative field for that matter, we are always pushing ourselves to our limits, always looking for perfection, when ideally it could be something so small that no one would notice it. I once read a story online shared by Winifred Phillips that she once heard which went as follows:

'In a museum gallery, a security guard walked his beat, ensuring that all the works of art were safe and secure. Suddenly, he notices that a man has jumped over the velvet rope separating the admiring crowd from the valuable painting. Worse, this vandal has produced a paint brush and several tubes of paint, and has started defacing the painting! The security guard rushes toward the criminal, shouting “Stop!” When he gets close enough, he stumbles to a halt, confused as he recognizes the vandal as the original painter who had created the work of art he is currently “defacing.” The painter, looking frantic and sheepish at the same time, stammers, “I only wanted to… there’s just this one thing I wanted to fix… just this one thing, and then it will be perfect!”

As artists we’ve all had the desire to “jump the velvet rope”, always wanting to improve our work after each listen until that last moment it has to be sent off. I guess it’s best to look at this as a positive thing since without this feeling, how can we expect to improve?

2. Overworking

This sort of ties into thee above, though it differs in a way. When we first get that first push that makes us start writing we can sometimes forget that we need to take a breather, I know in the pass I would spend all day at my desk and by the time it got to the evening I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. We have to remember we are not robots...WARNING! Low Power... soooo what I do now is take regular breaks afk, for me it's getting coffee and sitting down and enjoying it, (not taking it back to my workspace) going outside and spend a little time with my ducks *quack*. These periods of time may only last for 5 - 15mins but it helps trust me! From doing so you'll find your work flow is alot smoother, that little frequency that was annoying you at 2000Hz no longer seems to be there.

3. Inspiration

As for getting pass that moment of writer's block sometimes a change in environment can help fuel our creative juices, instead of writing in your usual work space why not move to another room, go outside or even to a public place like a cafe (sometimes sitting in a environment that has other human beings in it can be enough change to inspire). I found over the years that listening to all genres of music really helps, before I would look down on other genres that were not on the heavy side of things, which I now look back at and want to slap myself in the face haha. Sometimes writing in a different way helps the process, if you always write using a sequencer why not change it up and only use live recordings, look for things around the house that sound interesting, you would be surprised how good somethings sound. There are endless ways to change your process, just look at limitations as a good thing!

These are the three areas that have helped me hugely over the years, since at the end of the day we all love writing music and that's why we do it so why not enjoy every part of it. And yes everyone will get their bad days but don't let them stop you from doing what you love.

Best of luck to the lot of you!!  

[ArnoldSavary]

I'm sure everyone experiences writer's block at some point. Here are some things that I apply to myself and which might help you:

- Know when to take a break: if the melody of a song I'm writing gets stuck in my head to the point of obsession, if simply playing my piano doesn't feel satisfying and I feel like I'm stuck repeating the same patterns, if I feel physically tired after working on music too much... It's usually time to take a break. Like Mere_Monkey said, we are not robots and even if we might not realize it, making music can get psychologically exhausting.
- Focus your mind on other things: go for a walk, play some videogames, read a book, anything that doesn't involve you playing an instrument.
- After some time, let yourself be seduced by music again: watch a movie with a good soundtrack, watch some live performances of your favorite artists, check out a few albums you haven't heard before... Even go see a concert if you can because that's the best inspiration of all.
- Be varied in your musical output: do your composer self a favor and explore some new territories. Been working on too much orchestral music? Record a hardcore punk song. Tired of rock? Make a good hip-hop beat and collab with an MC. Used to working on music with hundreds of tracks? Try recording a solo piece for one instrument.

(- Guilty pleasure tier: reread all the nice things people have said about your music and use that as motivation fuel. Put on Eye of the Tiger and work out till you can't, then go back to it.)

Hope that helps and hope you'll find your muse again.

[Audiosprite]

As someone you has been treated medically/psychotically for mental health problems I can relate to you Ronin, though over the years I have learned a few things that work for me and hopefully sharing them will aid you and others in this frustration.

1. Looking For Perfection

As people who are working on creating audio for a living or working in any creative field for that matter, we are always pushing ourselves to our limits, always looking for perfection, when ideally it could be something so small that no one would notice it. I once read a story online shared by Winifred Phillips that she once heard which went as follows:

'In a museum gallery, a security guard walked his beat, ensuring that all the works of art were safe and secure. Suddenly, he notices that a man has jumped over the velvet rope separating the admiring crowd from the valuable painting. Worse, this vandal has produced a paint brush and several tubes of paint, and has started defacing the painting! The security guard rushes toward the criminal, shouting “Stop!” When he gets close enough, he stumbles to a halt, confused as he recognizes the vandal as the original painter who had created the work of art he is currently “defacing.” The painter, looking frantic and sheepish at the same time, stammers, “I only wanted to… there’s just this one thing I wanted to fix… just this one thing, and then it will be perfect!”

As artists we’ve all had the desire to “jump the velvet rope”, always wanting to improve our work after each listen until that last moment it has to be sent off. I guess it’s best to look at this as a positive thing since without this feeling, how can we expect to improve?

2. Overworking

This sort of ties into thee above, though it differs in a way. When we first get that first push that makes us start writing we can sometimes forget that we need to take a breather, I know I the pass I would spend all day at my desk and by the time it got to the evening I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. We have to remember we are not robots...WARNING! Low Power... soooo what I do know is take regular breaks afk, for me it's getting coffee and sitting down and enjoying it, (not taking it back to my workspace) going outside and spend a little time with my ducks *quack*. These periods of time may only last for 5 - 15mins but if helps trust me! From doing so you'll find your work flow is alot smoother, that little frequency that was annoying you at 2000Hz no longer seems to be there.

3. Inspiration

As for getting pass that moment of writer's block sometimes a change in environment can help fuel our creative juices, instead of writing in your usual work space why not move to another room, go outside or even to a public place like a cafe (sometimes sitting in a environment that has other human beings in it can be enough change to inspire). I found over the years that listening to all genres of music really helps, before I would look down on other genres that were not on the heavy side of things, which I now look back at and want to slap myself in the face haha. Sometimes writing in a different way helps the process, if you always write using a sequencer why not change it up and only use live recordings, look for things around the house that sound interesting, you would be surprised how good somethings sound. There endless ways to change your process, just look at limitations as a good thing!

These are the three areas that have helped me hugely over the years, since at the end of the day we all love writing music and that's why we do it so why not enjoy every part of it. And yes everyone will get their bad days but don't let them stop you from doing what you love.

Best of luck to the lot of you!! 

this is all cool but most importantly you have ducks :O

[MereMonkey]

Haha indeedy, they are awesome!

[Kyle Preston]

Mere_Monkey raises some interesting points and I think psychological health is an important factor for inspiration.  

I read this book called flow a few years back, and it really helped illuminate a lot of insights for me. It discusses 'flow' and 'immersion' in scientific terms.

I may be against the grain here, but I think perfectionism will always simply be an ideal, and that no piece of art is ever TRULY perfect.  We might hear music by Rachmaninoff that is so far beyond what we are capable of creating, and emotionally moves us so much that it seems like magic. This is an amazing feeling, but at the end of the day, he worked VERY hard to get to a level of musical understanding like that. It started from inspiration and aimed at perfection, which is a goal that probably will never be reached.  To most of us, superficially anyway, the music might sound perfect, but after some analysis, there is usually something imperfect about it, however minor; and that is okay.  It's good to embrace the mistakes, the grey areas, and see a spectrum instead of black and white, or perfect and imperfect.

Visualization is a really great technique for jump-starting your inspiration, I think. I often use it to help remember musical ideas; a similar topic was brought up on reddit this week and I remembered visualizing a very bizarre scenario in order to remember the idea:

I was asked to write music and sound design for a 'Caveman' game.  So I came up with a nice melody, then realized I had to go to my other job. I wanted to expand on the idea while riding the bus to work; so I hummed the melody over and over. On my way in, I thought of that melody and how it sounded very 'tribal', which is what I was going for initially.  Then I visualized a big burly caveman in a spotted leotard with a club, sitting by a camp fire surrounded by big boulders. He was being serenaded by John Lennon humming the melody while strumming some chords on the guitar.  I started changing the chords Mr. Lennon was playing to see how they meshed with the melody and I imagined those emotional changes on the caveman's face.

You can use similar ideas and techniques to get started with ideas. Seriously, the weirder the better. It'll help you remember the idea better, and it'll help inspire you more.

I also was watching this behind the scenes of South Park, where Trey Parker was writing an episode, and he was addressing why he and the team only spend a week per episode.  He mentioned something that was so true, at least for me.  It was along the lines of "Yeah, we could spend more time on the show, I could spend more time writing, but we get the majority of the work done in the week, so I might spend 3 more weeks writing and the episode would only be 5% better."

Since I come from a heavy science background, I pictured this with math; his productivity is not linear, it's a negative reciprocal, which you can see if you copy and paste this in google: "graph (-1/x) + 1000"

Anyway, knowing where/when you get your best work done can really help you fine tune your inspiration process and ultimately save you from writers block.

[dr_hwbd]

It is definitely not something that you can just force to be there. What I do is, I listen to the type of music that I wish to write and keep listening, and for me it usually comes quick that I just feel the need to pick up a pencil, some paper, and a guitar and not start writing a song right away, but write down any ideas that I may have. Definitely just experiment with word-play and different chords as you write down these ideas. I seem to work alot differently from everyone else though haha, so I hope maybe this helped! 

[CasePortman]

Many, many brilliant points said in this thread, and well said too.

I don't want to repeat the points said in this thread as it's pretty much everything I would say I will however mention I few things I do to bring back inspiration or just get the creative juices flowing..

1. Change of scenery. Yes, it's been mentioned but I feel like this is top priority over anything sometimes, I often go for a walk just around my area, find a quiet place (if possible) outside and just sit/lay, look into the clouds, take a walk through them woods you've never been to.. new place will always generate new ideas, so it's something I tend to do a lot.

2. Listen to different styles that might interest you, ask friends and family what they're into and if it's not too far from what you like, open up and give it a listen, you never know, it might spark up some inspiration there and then.

3. Never force it, if it's not there, it's not there, it will come back eventually, if you try and force something you'll just end up disliking the thing more and more and eventually will drive you away. You wouldn't force yourself to eat if you weren't hungry/well fed, but you'll get hungry again later, so save it for then.


Hope the block vanishes for a while!!

[Jasmine]

So much great advice. I definitely know which thread to go to if I need motivation!

One technique I use to garner inspiration lost, is..

1. Rest. Don't write for a few days. Do something that doesn't pertain to music in the slightest bit. Kind of like shutting the computer down, or giving it a reboot. There have been many times that the reason I couldn't write was because I didn't let my gears rest.

You start thinking that if you're not composing, something is wrong, but everyone needs a small reprieve now and then.

Another thing I'll do (which I've commented on in another thread, I believe) is..

2. Write with an unabashed flow. I compare it to unclogging the toilet. There may be a feeling I am going for, but it's barred because of a thick, waddy, mental substance. Perhaps if you simply wrote, with no expectations, merely putting "notes on paper", you could reach a new level of insight!

[PythonBlue]

Very insightful thread, speaking as someone who suffers from musician's block almost persistently. I think part of my problem is that when I open my iTunes library, I tend to listen to the same stuff, no thanks to seeing the same items every time I start it up; a lack of inspiration from new work, in other words.

As for taking breaks, I'm hoping that the fact that I'm taking a few more classes as of last week will help there.

[Snail_Man]

I've had motivation issues while writing music for a couple years now. I don't know exactly what brought it on, but I suspect it has to do with my skill at piano playing.
You see, I've always been a a bit unorthodox in my piano playing style. I basically found a way that I could play comfortably, and I've never had reason to change.
Now, about two years ago, I was playing a lot, and getting better rather rapidly. At the time, I could only play one or two actual pieces of music (Pushing Onwards from VVVVVV, Heart and Soul, and the theme from Mortal Kombat), but I could write music extremely easily, as I could basically just doodle around on my piano until something sounded good. As the months passed though, I began to listen to more music, I listened to some music theory lectures, and I found that I was able to play pretty much any song on the piano, once I figured out the basic chord progression.
Unfortunately, the collusion of these three otherwise helpful things played havoc with my head. With my new musical theory knowledge, I could instantly identify most chords into their basic type. Having listened to more music, I could remember more chord progressions, and being able to play those chord progressions basically made it so whenever I started playing a catchy chord progression, my mind would lock on to a song with a similar one, and I'd begin playing that. Anything that I managed to write sounded like a direct copy of another song, and this drove my motivation through the floor.
I began to write intentionally strange chord progressions, but they never sounded 'good'. There is a reason why the C-G-Am-F chord progression is used so much, and that's because it sounds nice.
I think I'm beginning to come out of the fog now, but it's still difficult not to slip into another song while trying to compose. I'm just realizing that just because my song might have almost the same chord progression as the first half of the chorus of a song I heard on the radio ten years ago, it doesn't mean that it's derivative garbage.

So this was long and rambling, and it didn't exactly have much point, but tl;dr: I couldn't write for a while because everything I wrote sounded like something else, but I think I'm getting over it.

[Kyle Preston]

1. Rest. Don't write for a few days. Do something that doesn't pertain to music in the slightest bit. Kind of like shutting the computer down, or giving it a reboot. There have been many times that the reason I couldn't write was because I didn't let my gears rest.

You start thinking that if you're not composing, something is wrong, but everyone needs a small reprieve now and then.

Totally agree with you M4uesviecr! When I do this, I always seem to come back to music with fresh ideas and a very passionate desire to write anything and everything.

[battlerager]

Listen to a lot of music (but only when in the mood), sit yourself down and give it some time. Also mess around on instruments, even those you can't really play (well)! Sometimes something great can come from a simple 4 notes.

[Bakuda]

Best motivational tool?  A deadline!  Nothing gets you writing into the wee hours of the morning like a deadline 

Anyway, I always begin my sessions with my soundcloud feed.  Listen to what everyone else has done while I look around the different forums I follow (that's actually what I'm doing now, Case's new song just popped up).  If my inner composer is still hungry I'll turn to my iTunes library (Video Games Live is awesome!).  I don't know why, but I always have more productive sessions when I start by listen to awesome music and then go on to write my own.

[medieval]

You guys,

Thanks for all these amazing replies. I haven't had time up until now to fully take it all in and as such I can't respond to anything specific; since last week wednesday I have a full time job (first one I've ever had) so I've been very tired and have a lot less time.

One thing I can say with certainty though: too much time isn't good for you! Life is bleak, boring and depressing when you have the whole day to do nothing with. It doesn't help you find inspiration either. So with my new job my life is basically taking a 180 degree turn.
And if there's one thing that the muses enjoy, it's change! (i need about $3,50)
Music always speaks to us, but we don't always listen.. like a child who doesn't listen to their mother. But I'm coming home

[Felx325]

VALVE. I think they have the most creative stories in video games, with so many variables and loop holes. It is admirable, they are my real inspiration.

[Dibur]

Everyone already nailed the essential answers.  Busying yourself, and keeping your mind busy (in general, not just in regards to music) is one of the best ways to recharge creativity that I've been able to find.  Being away from your craft can sometimes be a good thing for your craft.  I think that's why we come up with a lot of awesome ideas in impractical places like in the shower, on a car ride, during lunch break, etc.

And now, for my potentially polarizing two cents:

Beer! I come up with my best ideas when I'm a bit looser.  Be careful; your mileage may vary!  Too much booze, and that phenomenal piece you wrote last night won't sound so phenomenal the next morning

Anyway, best of luck!  Sounds like you're on the path to kicking writer's block in the heiny. :3

[Audiosprite]

expand your repertoire. listen to new music. transcribe music you know. learn to perform a new piece. get the score of something you love and analyze it.

[GarrettB]

I don't know if this will work for you, but it does for me - if I'm frustrated or bored of working on something, I take a long walk outside. Then I put down the project for a little while, and when I'm ready, I'll listen to a reference song that I really like. Then I'm usually inspired to make something like that song, and I'm ready to tackle the project afresh.

[Voltz.Supreme]

I tend to come up with more ideas when I'm working or can't get to the studio. Have a recording device with you (phone) so you can record ideas as soon as you get em. Time out is definitely a good one. Walks or activities that let your mind relax and think, not tv, movies or games which tend to be inspiring at times but don't manage to pull me out of a rut.