About Creativity

[Reversed]

Hey DSF,

I haven't had a lot of time for producing recently since I've been studying for tests and been making live music a lot, so I sort of got a look at the bigger picture of how I produce and it made me realize that I've been limiting my creativity more and more since I began the whole writing & production thing. As in, when I've got my DAW open I don't really listen to what I've done so far and think creatively how i might proceed, but instead I just get caught in the refining process that usually happens when finishing something off.
It's like I'm just following a pattern of action that I know throughout the whole production until the track is finished instead of actually creatively listening and thinking of how I can improve the composition.
Anyone experiencing the same? How to deal with this? Don't think this has anything to do with "writer's block" or such since I can still compose stuff easily.

I also just wanted to note that I don't listen to any music of the kind that I am currently writing so I doubt that has anything to do with it.

TL;DR boosting creativity during writing general

[nowaysj]

It's like I'm just following a pattern of action that I know throughout the whole production until the track is finished instead of actually creatively listening and thinking of how I can improve the composition.

I empathize strongly with the start and fade through the notion. I definitely know what it is like to be sort of on the rails. You've got to find ways to frustrate your process. Break the train. Half way through, take the song into another daw. Or onto some hardware or something. Just something to break the train. A daw is tricky, it can, like, become the end in of itself.

I'm felling you bruv.

[Reversed]

that's a great idea! I guess taking the productions to a piece of paper in a more abstract way would also be a great variation of your idea. Might try that too.

[fragments]

I agree a bit of hardware in your life wouldnt go amiss perhaps. And there are lots of cool affordable options for serious pieces of gear these days.

Also, I try to bounce everything to audio ASAP. That pushes me to develop an arrangement and variations over endless tweaking.

[nowaysj]

I agree re audio. Further, pushing audio if tweaks are needed, confronts limitations, and surpassing those limitations often produces unexpected interesting avenues.

[zosomagik]

Break the train. Half way through, take the song into another daw. Or onto some hardware or something. Just something to break the train.

I'm considering learning fruity loops for this reason, I feel like I get stuck following a checklist in Ableton. Really crushes my creative spirit

[nowaysj]

I don't know dude. Your stuff sounds good, and you already know ableton. I'd just stick with it...

If you do jump into fl, I'd use it as a sound design environment, bringing those elements into ableton, to be then played and arranged. It is an idea

[zosomagik]

Thanks man, much appreciated. I definitely won't completely stop using Ableton, but maybe start watching some FL vids, and reading some stuff. It couldn't hurt.

[fragments]

actually been thinking of arranging in Ableton and doing the rest in FL Studio since I know it so well already

[zosomagik]

What do you like better about working with audio? especially when it comes to arranging, I feel like messing with all those little clips would kill my flow and creativity.

[nowaysj]

Dude, you should see some of my projects, millions of little clips. I was traveling over christmas, and had to work on my TUNA! song, had a lap top and no mouse, and this song had... it looked like someone dropped a 10 pound bag of jelly beans on the floor... just clips everywhere... that was a pain.

But there are techniques for dealing with little clips, different daws handle it differently. FL is actually not that bad if you really just arranging sections of the song. You can select your time range of clips, like bars 17-32 or whatever, and Shift G them, that will make a group, they'll move as a block. There are other daws that do it better imo, they have folder tracks, which will take all those clips and put them in one clip, so you can have thousands of edits over 32 bars, and it is just one clip that you can move around. I don't know how ableton handles it, never spent much time in the arrange page there. But at the least you can render out stems of your various channels, incorporating all those chuncks of audio into one piece of audio per lane.

But audio is amazing for a lot of reasons already mentioned. One of the best through, is it is fixed, it is concrete and physical. That in of itself is like half the dealio. Just not to have a synth patch anymore. It frees your synth up, too, like now you can do variations on that voice, each one can go to audio. Then you can mix or chop those in time. So now rather than a a single midi line you might have four. They can each be a section, whereas you would have just looped that line 4 times, or they can be chopped internally and mixed.

It just brings a whole extra layer of manipulation. I mean, you certainly don't need to do it. You could do your entire song STRICTLY in midi, and that is an interesting project in of itself, but, doing a bunch of midi work, then going to audio, and then doing a bunch of work to audio, just brings a whole other dimension, technique, texture, thought, intention.

You get the picture.

And as an afterthought that is just another scratch on the surface of this audio issue, you can manipulate audio in ways that you can't manipulate midi. Like pitching audio, you can get really different sounds from repitching audio, different artifacts from various types of algorithms, as well as weird beatings withing the sound as it it stretched. Again, it is all about just more nuance to your sound and composition.

It is not necessary, it is just more.

[zosomagik]

I feel what you're saying, I actually was curious and starting working with some straight audio clips just now, experimenting, and got some pretty weird results. I might work with audio some more, I just hate having to unfade everything when dropping in drum hits. BTW fuck clicking around in your DAW without a mouse, that in itself is like the biggest creativity killer I can think of. You're a braver man than I.

[nowaysj]

I do what I got to do. I am also very fast.

[JackSawyersMusic]

I feel what you're saying, I actually was curious and starting working with some straight audio clips just now, experimenting, and got some pretty weird results. I might work with audio some more, I just hate having to unfade everything when dropping in drum hits. BTW fuck clicking around in your DAW without a mouse, that in itself is like the biggest creativity killer I can think of. You're a braver man than I.

You can set it in Ableton not to apply fades when you drop an audio file into a track

[zosomagik]

I feel what you're saying, I actually was curious and starting working with some straight audio clips just now, experimenting, and got some pretty weird results. I might work with audio some more, I just hate having to unfade everything when dropping in drum hits. BTW fuck clicking around in your DAW without a mouse, that in itself is like the biggest creativity killer I can think of. You're a braver man than I.

You can set it in Ableton not to apply fades when you drop an audio file into a track

Yeah, but I record in Ableton a lot more than I work with percussion clips, so having the fades there already is more handy for me than not having them there. Either way I just can't win

[gen_]

I have that regularly. It comes and goes in waves. Sometimes everything I churn out is soo awesome (I feel like I'm like that right this second) but for the last 2 years of study I made like 3 serious tunes all year and they were all shit, mainly because over the course of the same years I had to make 30 odd shitty tunes for my Music degree for shitty rappers and I got to the point where I dreaded opening my DAW.

What fixed that long 2 year stint of making crap for me was learning to play piano, and collabs. Getting in the room with a like minded soul who is still making things that are 'interesting' does a hell of a lot to jump start your inspiration to do things differently, as they are never going to have the same workflow as you and seeing that reminds you that the rails you ride aren't the only ones to the station.

[Reversed]

I've actually worked with just audio before, and liked the result (especially mixdown wise, it got exceptionally good for some reason), I might just try to dive back into that.
Too bad i live in a rural area and the only other producer around here I know prefers producing alone, so I guess collabs aren't really an option (and i don't know how to feel about collabing with someone over the internet)

great suggestions so far, keep the ideas coming

[zosomagik]

Do you keep a notebook of ideas? That helps me a lot

[OfficialDAPT]

I've recently began to think about this problem. I'm working in ableton and it just seems like all the tracks I make are extremely stale, so I've begun consciously glitching up my tracks and making small variations (bouncing audio really does help, it opens up a whole new array of options!) What I'm hoping will happen is if I do this enough, it will start coming naturally in the future.

I think the root of the problem is how I began learning how to make music. Every tutorial I watched when I was learning how to produce was the same way: 16 bar intro, 16 bar buildup, 32 bar 'drop', 16 bar whatever. I think that over time, I have turned these guidelines into laws that can't be broken which leads to stale tracks and uninteresting arrangements. The same concept applies to writing melodies and arranging MIDI notes. You're going to want to do it the same way you've always been doing it. In my opinion, in order to break through these barriers, you have to force yourself out of your comfort zone on a daily basis so that it becomes a natural thing. Once you accomplish this, your creative mind won't be restrained by what you've always been doing and it will encourage you to switch things up whenever you open a DAW.