I would like to hear some perspectives on my situation.
some experiences with the problem I will discribe here.
and maybe other people will be helped also.
The problem is, inspiration and lack of lust to compose.
I don’t have the same lust to compose lately,
and wonder where this comes from.
At work, on the road, I sometimes have great ideas for a new tune,
I record it on my phone (beatboxing or singing te found melody)
but when I come home, the Idea is gone.
doesn’t have that energy anymore (or something)
sitting in front of renoise just toying around is also not like it has been.
do I expect to much? is it not satishfying enough? was I gone doing other shit to long?
To be honoust, there is a lot of stress surrounding me,
but when I was a young naive Tracker, nothing stopped me to produce tunes of which I was very proud of. (and still am)
Now it al not good enough, always second guessing myself.
Don’t know, maybe it has to do something with ageing…
I’m in a same situation… kinda. Every now and then I can get some nice sounding drumloop/melody/bassline done. But that’s it. I can’t expand my ideas to make a whole track. And that just kills my motivation.
I am going through some rough personal issues right now, so it could be the problem. Althought it would be so nice to see these fairly strong feelings as my source of inspiration.
And yes, also every idea I get seems to fade away when I launch renoise.
I for example, expect way too much from myself. So my advise is to relax. Take a break. Don’t even think composing for like a week. And after that, go radical. Mess around. Do something weird. “Free your mind.” Don’t be so hard on yourself.
Also my opinion is that the music you are trying to compose should be something outside from your favorite genre.
I came to this conclusion not long ago.
High expectations of yourself can stifle some of your best work. I often think “nah, that’s crap, it sounds nothing like what ______ does”, and in my case it’s usually autechre or aphex twin or venetian snares or someone equally unattainable.
a very good recipe:
check out some subcultures (e.g. graffitiscene, demo-scene or others).
its helpful sometimes to get an eye (attitude) for up to now unknown things.
and that gives me new masses of inspiration.
ps: or try to build some vst on your own. that will give you new approaches for musical stuff.
Creativity comes in spirts. When it is good, you have keep on a song or it could be gone the next day. Ride the wave When creativity is low here are a few tips to create creativity.
I read about Billy Joel’s technique.
He forces himself to write a sketch everyday (on his piano of course), he takes say 20-30 minutes and writes something quick. He developes a huge library of sketches this way, some are good, most are bad. But his driving force is quanity over quality. He keeps this up and picks out a few of the ones that have potential and develops them more.
There are at least two main techniques for inspiration. Depeche Mode favors sitting at a piano or guitar and writing music. Then taking that music into synthesizers etc. to add color and production.
The other technique is looking through sounds and writing songs inspired by various synth patches or sounds. How do these sounds make you feel?
Another way for inspiration is to develop a theme to your music. Daft punk did this with their awesome album “discovery” as did boards of canada with “geogaddi”. You can create an “image board” by taking various inspirational images and putting them together to look at for inspiration. Collect cartoons, song books, and sitcom jingles from the 80s if you want to create 80s music etc. Basically surround yourself with your inspiration
Finally, analyze a song you like, or want to sound like. If you want to be original analyze two different genre songs and combine them in your own song. analyze the chords, instrumentation, composition, and production. make an excel template showing what you analyzed. Now rip it off and add your own flavor to it! This one takes more time, but works really well.
Hope these tips help somebody.
btw, using these tips i have grossed exactly 0 dollars in album sales and concert sales, nor have i been played on mtv but at least i have a few songs i can play for my friends.
