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Try to separate the left and right hemispheres of your brain. What is probably happening is your analytical side is starting to dominate a little too much now that your technical knowledge has advanced. I have a huge problem with this myself. Try to keep them separate and don't let your analytical side bud in and fuck up your creativity and vice versa. Eventually you will do the technical things automatically and you can let your creative side do most of the driving. Another suggestion would be to just take some time out of the day to forget about production and just play music. If you have a midi controller, or better yet a hardware synth that is not even connected to a daw (less chance for that analytical side to trick you into a production sesh) put an interesting patch and noodle around a bit, or alot. It works for me... There is also the method of humming/beatboxing what you want your project to sound like and attempting to recreate it. That moves you even farther from analytical thinking when creating ideas because it is completely spontaneous, and then you can be fully analytical when breaking it down. Everyone gets discouraged from time to time and I am sure the next time you rip out a tasty, inspiring riff, it will fade pretty fast.

Good luck mang..

really if you decide that you want to continue making music, you've just got to push through, learn as much as you can about the structure of music-- melody, rhythm, harmony--and as much as you can about the tech sides of engineering, and then know enough-- and have written enough-- to let it all go and just get the work done.

ie, learn your tools, and practice until this stuff gets innate. The best soccer players don't think about which leg to shoot with, or how much spin to put on the ball-- that's all happened in practice. you've got to do the same w/ music, so that when you've got a melody on a synth sound that's really bright but has more edge than you want, you instantly reach for an opto compressor to smooth it out, rather than spending 35 minutes with a multiband whatever. Same goes for structure, melody, etc-- you've just got to get to a point where the basics come naturally.

i guess coca cola is the answer

I suffer from the same thing, but it's getting better. I think of it as a start from scratch sort of thing. When you first started, you didn't know what you were doing, you were just letting ideas flow. But now that you know more about production, you care about stuff that you didn't even know about before. So now you're basically going through every technique there is in production and learning it, so you can use it again like you did before when you didn't know anything. It's basically you're just going through production trying to figure out what it was that you did to do that cool thing in your early work, and why it does what it does. That goes for music theory too, in terms of melodies and stuff.

I have definitely felt like this before. It's a shitty feeling, like you've lost interest in the one thing you're passionate about in life. Guess it could do you in if you let it.

My suggestions: Separate sound design time(technical time like building racks, organizing samples, synth patches etc.) And music writing time. I do this and it helps. My workflow used to be all over the place. But when inspiration hits you nothing kills it faster than searching the browser for a compressor or eq'ing a kick drum. And once your inspiration is gone it's fucking impossible to get it back, and your left w/ a half-ass clip of a promising melody and a muddy kick. At this point most people will say fuck it and quit. I always did and I still have 300+ projects chill in on my HDD like that. But if you use your sound design technical time i.e.. the time when your not overflowing w/ musical genius to fill up your library w/ all your own awesome sounds then when inspiration does hit you'll have all that shit at your fingertips. You'll be like a mad scientist in his (splendidly organized) laboratory.

Personally, I enjoy both sides of it so it kinda came naturally to me to just sit and build patches and racks and stuff when I wasn't inspired. Of course I saved all that shit and ended up w/ an awesome collection of my own sounds. Also, when you have this collection of your own unique stuff it's awesome because you'll never sit there w/ a MIDI sequence browsing thru pre-sets again. That's the worst and you never really find what your looking for when your browsing hundreds of factory presets because they were made at a factory, not by you! If you wanna realize the sounds in your head it's not gonna happen unless you make those sounds. The arrangement of these sounds into a dope ass song that people dig is the creative part. Arrangement for us producers is really the writing of a song. For me, arrangement is the funnest part. the part where I'm in the zone, and if I have to stop to compress and eq a bass patch, poof I'm right back staring at an empty palette, feeling overwhelmed w/ options. Leave the mixing for the mixing phase, which for me comes after arrangement.

There's actually a buncha other stuff that has helped me out too but the scenario above was one of the biggest road blocks for me.
Sorry for the novel. Happy producing

I think by nature of just being at a computer making music it takes away from just being able to improvise which is 90% of what makes most music have some sort of feeling. It's amazing how the way I make music has changed over the past year since I began producing. Prior to dubstep and production I used to sit at a keyboard/piano and try to write a song. Melodies/Harmonies were foremost in my mind. Now, I fire up drum rack every time and try to make noise and atmosphere with no thought to melody/harmony whatsoever. It's become more about sound design and figuring out how other artists in the genres I like put their songs together. If I look at the two methods separately I can see why the former would have me producing more music and the latter would leave me without much direction. It's pretty tough to play your computer like an instrument. I think one of the best things I've done was to get some kind of control surface (APC 40) to control my daw on the fly and give me a little more room for improvisation. Granted, I still have to design sounds, make my own loops, etc, but putting it all together is a lot more fun.

Insahn wrote:I think by nature of just being at a computer making music it takes away from just being able to improvise which is 90% of what makes most music have some sort of feeling. It's amazing how the way I make music has changed over the past year since I began producing. Prior to dubstep and production I used to sit at a keyboard/piano and try to write a song. Melodies/Harmonies were foremost in my mind. Now, I fire up drum rack every time and try to make noise and atmosphere with no thought to melody/harmony whatsoever. It's become more about sound design and figuring out how other artists in the genres I like put their songs together. If I look at the two methods separately I can see why the former would have me producing more music and the latter would leave me without much direction. It's pretty tough to play your computer like an instrument. I think one of the best things I've done was to get some kind of control surface (APC 40) to control my daw on the fly and give me a little more room for improvisation. Granted, I still have to design sounds, make my own loops, etc, but putting it all together is a lot more fun.

This is why I LOVE Ableton!!! It's an instrument and one can build anything they desire and just play it. I have an APC40, Launchpad and an Axiom 25. Thats enough knobs, buttons, pads, sliders for me to control more than I could on a synth and it's custom.

I agree w/ your insight on "sitting in front of a computer." I come from playing guitar and singing in punk bands so obviously the writing process was much more organic melody (music) based. One similarity is the happy accident element, except before it happened when multiple minds(drummer, bassist, guitarist) just locked into some random chord progression. Now it happens w/ just me, a machine and lotsa plug-ins.
A time comes, eventually and after much frustration, that all the technical and creative stuff just kinda comes together naturally. Like you can just open a blank set and dive in and you don't have to think about tech stuff, your mind just instinctively knows what to grab and so on. At that point the ENTIRE thing becomes THE CREATIVE PROCESS! It's all one. I've tumbled into this zone recently and only after years of shite!
The thing that separates the artists who are in it because they love to make art and the ones who are in it because they wanna be famous and make $$$ and fuck bitches is the threshold of pain and tolerance. Most people who are in it for the wrong reasons will give up once they realize how difficult it actually is. The ARtist will soldier on because they live for their art and, well, THEY HAVE TO. There's no choice.

Theo Void wrote:My suggestions: Separate sound design time(technical time like building racks, organizing samples, synth patches etc.) And music writing time.

Definitely going to try this. Probably the best way to revert myself to my prior musical self.
Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

python453 wrote:

Theo Void wrote:My suggestions: Separate sound design time(technical time like building racks, organizing samples, synth patches etc.) And music writing time.

Definitely going to try this. Probably the best way to revert myself to my prior musical self.
Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

Werd. Worked for me bro

Slighty off-topic, but here's some food for thought about the 'left' and 'right' side of the brain. Knowledge of the little things vs wisdom about the whole (track).

Thanks for that. Agrees entirely with my observations of myself, and how I work. Not necessarily a good thing.

i'm the same way

and it has already been said in a variation of ways but i think it's because back then there was nothing for the creative part of your brain to clash with. it was just creative creative creative with no time to stop and think if it "should" be like that because you didn't know any better.

Skang wrote:Slighty off-topic, but here's some food for thought about the 'left' and 'right' side of the brain. Knowledge of the little things vs wisdom about the whole (track).

Wow. What a classic, gonna keep this one bookmarked!

I feel ya OP..the more I learned about production the more intimidated I got, but in the end it'll just make you a better musician IMHO

Study music theory

tell you what, the more i learn about the production the less enthused i am with other peoples tracks. Nothing worse than not being able to switch off and hear the music for what it is rather than its individual parts

I cant even listen to Saxon anymore by C&S and I used to love that track ha

Lucifa wrote:tell you what, the more i learn about the production the less enthused i am with other peoples tracks. Nothing worse than not being able to switch off and hear the music for what it is rather than its individual parts

I cant even listen to Saxon anymore by C&S and I used to love that track ha

I totally understand this, but am surprised by the ammount of people who say they cant switch off 'producer mode'. I find it quite easy.

BudSpencertron wrote:i guess coca cola is the answer

Coca Cola is always the answer.

Lucifa wrote:I cant even listen to Saxon anymore by C&S and I used to love that track ha

Lol i loved that when it came out, now all i hear is a cheap sounding brutal electro patch.