Less Analytical, More 'creative' Mindset

Off-Topic
7

If you’re interested in feel and groove, you could do a lot worse than begging / borrowing / stealing / buying a cheap bass guitar and fumbling through a few basic riffs. A lot of uplifting, funky house music incorporates live bass for its rubbery organic feel and when you’re feeling stuck in a rut nothing beats getting outside your comfort zone.

I’ve been playing guitar for 20 years but I’m amazed how much I’ve learnt and been inspired in different ways to approach my guitar playing while manipulating my riffs and melodic ideas in renoise for the last 2 years or so, rather than constantly staring at the fretboard (or other familiar space) where I assume the magic should be happening.

8

If writing tools is what you prefer to writing music, why to fight that? Music writers need tool writers that they can write music for, tool writers need musicians that they can write tools for.

  1. Think of what you want to do.
  2. Think how you could get that done.
  3. Do it.

Music is not just humming riffs. Tell the story. You have no direction, you are lost in the forest of possibilities that pose no meaning to you. Draw your path and walk it. Ambition, that is what you need.

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I never leave home without it!

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you’re analyzing why you analyse too much… get the point ?

start breaking the vicious circle.
Some options to consider (i’ve had the same problem and now i bring back analyse into my sound)

  • only make music if it’s making you happy. if you don’t then don’t do it !
  • put some deadline like I’ve got 2 week for this tune. deadline helps you to define priorities and melodies and musical part should be the prioritie
  • make sketchs. most of the time you know when working on a track if it’s gonna work or not : if not just ditch it
  • try to separate the part of making a track like 1 week for melodies and structure 1 week for sound design 1 week for mixdown and production
11

I guess if the beat is good enough you’ll feel the urge to continue with the song… thats how it works for me.

12

I had the same problem working with Max Msp and Reaktor… endless possibilities i made a lot of nice tools but never focused on creating a structure for a track

so i decided to take a break from programming… i went out more with friends and my girlfriend and free up my mind a little bit

then i realized that what i wanted to achieve was something else than just programming and the music is the right way to express myself but my inner lazyness was taking too much importance causing my frustration

In the end i started to look at things (music, movies, relationships) for the feelings they give to me and not for the “way something is done”

Right now i go back constantly to my tools and sounds made during programming time but i look at them as feelings and intentions and not as combinations of techniques

Breathe and feel free!

13

i can feel you.

when that happens to me I focus on not thinking and not judging until i dont need to focus on that.

judging comes from thinking, thinking is rational therefore thinking is blockin creativity. censor is very bad with everything that involves creativity.

a simple trick I use is to abstract things into simpler pieces like “what is this actualy about?” and with the result again, “what is that about?”. repeated 3-4 times I end up with a few things which are very simple, reflect the “big” idea in nature and can be easily relyed on. most time it will return to the main idea by itself without me falling back into “technical thinking”. works very well when coding stuff (like C or java) too.

using alcohol or ganja helps not thinking technically too ;)

14

I found that I end up using a lot of time sound designing, perfecting every separate sound over and over again always working on creating instruments and dsp chains to get sounds of a calibre that I don’t really need. And in the end I never work on the actual compositions. Often I don’t even get a real loop done, only a group of instruments and chains that sound crisp and clean together before I burn out on a track and stop working on it. So my current project to get out of this pattern is to make a template file that has everything prepared (instruments, dsp chains, no. of channels) so all I can do is compose the song, and use this template for ALL compositions for a month or so trying to make as different tunes as possible with it. I plan on going on with this workflow for the rest of the year. I hope it works. >__<

15

this is good advice imo. try to guess and get down as much as much as possible before you start looping it… less easy to grow tired of it. also, it’s often the whole that makes it tick, not what the ear picks out as the main part.

trying to set up a arrangement of the whole tune is also good! this is why i love the aliased slots… enables you to flesh out large parts quickly initially before you get down to the variations for each part.

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also: http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=songchallenge

17

Firstly, thank you all for so many responses!

After reading through the replies, having a think and some discussion on IRC, I believe I have found the main issue:

I was too busy trying to do things ‘right’ rather than concentrate on what’s most important (having fun!).

Essentially, a number of years ago I had much less knowledge on the audio engineering / technical side and so I would always do whatever ‘sounded good’ / ‘felt good’.

I think that as my knowledge increased I ‘lost my way’ and was following the technical side much too closely (I had a period of time where I couldn’t make music, so I read about making music). I became hyper-aware of things that really didn’t matter as in actual fact they were quite insignificant (for the level I am at).

So beware! It’s fine to read up on the recording / synth programming / audio theory, but make sure that it doesn’t become the be all and end all of the process.

Just relax and have fun! That’s what I’m going to do. If I feel like coding today, I will. If I feel like doing some djing, I will. If I feel like writing a song, I will.

Thanks everyone! :)

NB: I understand the irony of analysing it this way :P

18

No, no, no. The solution is to stay in the analytical mode and give up the creative aspirations. More specifically, the solution is that you keep developing those sweet tools of yours for the benefit of my creativity!

19

love these discussions.

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:(

:P

21

Funny guy, programming is a creative endeavour too. But with a name like “Drop Shadow”, it’s obvious you rely on cheap technical tricks

22

I have to say I do know where you’re coming from. More and more I find myself realizing I’m much more an engineer than an artist and often find it hard to get into the groove to be “creative” these days. Still enjoy DJing and putting on parties and can generally be quite good as a facilitator between people who might have a similar(ish) artistic ideas. But actually doing my own thing I often drown in the technicalities. The thing to do is learn to be happy with that and I’m sure spontaneous moments of creativity will always come your way, whether they be in an artistic manner or a way to solve a long-standing problem nobody has thought of before.

23

Not an advise, but some thoughts on the matter…

Analysis is, in other words, observing someone, someplace, or something.

Creative by a broad definition, is making decision based on analysis.

Plenty of examples that can easily get pornographic, violent, or sublime.

Personally at this day and age, I would categorize applied music in two worlds. Theory and Signal Flow.

Theory, for me is like water and Signal Flow is the container that holds the water.

Theory, is paper and pencil, blueprints, which means I should be able to apply that theory to different containers or Signal Flows.

I can see how Signal Flows and emerging technologies has a creeping hindrance to finishing something, but that’s the idea that’s asking to be accepted.

Music Theory is so old, arguably dating back to paleolithic times, that its pretty much all said and done.

A lot of the methods and techniques have been documented. Whereas, Signal Flows are almost in a constant state of flux. Yin and Yang.

Some more additional thoughts better exemplified as videos…

Pixel Documentary, how much information do you really need ? HD vs 8bit, that sort of pondering.

Counterpoint Music and Counterpoint Boxing…

Steps to Kicking ass, Affect Control Theory, that sort of pondering.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2ILcVJQqFI

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:) really good idea. This does work well too.

25

really important realization for me was that inspiration, true inspiration, is either incredibly rare, or in fact non-existent (in its television/romance form). so on to answering your questions with this premise.

I seem to get “distracted”: you’re mind is following what you find most interesting and entertaining; this is actually what I would call genuine focus! there’s no reason to fight this, since I believe I’m safely assuming you’re enjoying yourself in some way when doing this.

I get stuck in the analytical mindset: this is certainly something i think happens. this almost always stems from a perfectionist approach to your composition process. you begin with a concept in mind, and 100%, without fail, whatever you’re making doesn’t sound like you had intended. why you ask? you’re pitting a very honest and pure idealism against what’s actually real and in front of you; the longer you hack away at this process, the more separate your creation becomes from your idealized intent. why this isn’t a bad thing: what you’ve made is still your work, and your frustration only arises from these comparisons. the only thing you have to “do” in this case, which is definitely a personal learning process, is to pay attention to the thoughts that jump into your mind each second. a rabbit is jumping past your window, and you’re common approach is to treat it like it’s interrupting both you and “your process”; in reality, you don’t “have” a “process”, you are the process. go play with the rabbit :)

if this metaphor and premise is non-intuitive, there is a less poetic solution: settle. “this sounds good, but I want to keep at it until it’s perfect”, once you catch yourself thinking that, it’s time to add something new. you have to force yourself away from the possibly more entertaining “tweaking” to the more productive “producing”. (1) this is your goal if you want it. (2) you will never make something “perfect” or exactly what’s in your mind. you’re not copying music from your head, you’re engaged in a highly dynamic creative back-and-forth with your environment. you’re having a conversation, not giving a speech.

enjoy making some tunes :D

26

wanted to comment on this.

the world is inherently meaningless, and it can be immensely enriching to take this very seriously. with art, you can create meaning where there is none, but… the world is inherently meaningless. while you can create personal meaning in your life, it’s a massive task to try to create meaning in percussion and melody. while certain chords and patterns are mathematically pure, and some melodies or sounds are given meaning culturally, this meaning simply does not exist objectively. artistic “meaning” (in a language or communicative sense) necessitates context. realizing the “absurd-yet-real” relationship with creativity is an alternative composition method. recognize the fruitless and time-consuming tinkering you’re trying to discard; chances are they have a significant relationship with cultural context. as the poet can go mad through his crippling dependence on semantics and syntax, so can musicians and every other artist. I’m not suggesting you recognize your artistic potential through writing in a made-up language with your feces; it’s highly probable somebody has already done this (and called themselves an artist).

moderately, try ignoring larger themes of your context while composing.

summing up this post in the words of any phish fan: “just like go with the flow. but not like WITH IT. AGAINST it, but like, with it”