My latest idea is to view creation of music with similliar methods like software engineering. Like splitting up the creation of a tune into several building blocks.
For example the only really creative step (and the first) would be inspiration gathering & lockdown of central ideas. This cannot really be forced, but when inspiration comes, idea is to fix its essence in a very raw form of a prototype song.
Next steps could for example include expanding the prototype into a full song structure, with doing this arrangement only for itself, and no other stuff in between. Then work out variation/automation as next step, filling the repetetive passsages with something more interesting. As next step maybe insert breakdowns/drops into the thing. Then working out concentrated on the FX aspect of the song. Finally Mixdown. Each step could be reverted by itself if you found your stuff just doesn’t work out and you’d like to try something else. Version control file saving greets you. You can even split steps up to their components, i.e. view tuning of FX of each instrument as a step of its own.
I’ll try to view each step as a working module, trying to not interrupt it with some in-between-distracting stuff. This can also be viewed as a “looping” method, i.e. before mixdown go back to a previous step and then work through till the step you interrupted your work. It happens often you find Ideas coming while working on something - either ignore and work on, or go back in the circle and implement. Like one could also collect “prototypes” and put them together to whole tune in this manner if they somehow fit together really well.
When you see it like this, you’ll notice that real creativity is bound to the first inspirational/prototyping step, and the rest is just rather braindead applying of techniques, i.e. the 95% labor that comes after the 5% inspiration. You could even do a schedule which steps you’re about to try to accomplish.
I’ll see how this will get my productivity back to sane measures.