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Added this thread to the The Motivation/Creativity/Inspiration/Writers Block Thread™.

fragments wrote:Come on guys. No excuses. I am teaching three college courses and working retail three days a week and I still find time to write music and find creative energy. Yes I also have a girlfriend and a life. Cut out the TV and mindless partying ;p

Those may just be the very things that give you the energy and need to produce, though.

ye the key word is YOU. i find most of my ideas come to me when im lounging about the house doing fuck all. if im out doing something ill usually just be focusing on that. I have a short attention span

Creating is most of the time being able to throw away/discard ideas that don't work/fit. It's definitely not the same as 'working' and in that sence, imo workflow is what gets in the way of creation. If working is just 'doing', then the opposite of doing is not 'doing nothing' but rather 'forcing something' and despite how that might sound, it can be a good idea. Just saying.

Genevieve wrote:

fragments wrote:Come on guys. No excuses. I am teaching three college courses and working retail three days a week and I still find time to write music and find creative energy. Yes I also have a girlfriend and a life. Cut out the TV and mindless partying ;p

Those may just be the very things that give you the energy and need to produce, though.

Partying I can see, TV... just 24/7 soul destruction.

Noooo , you just have to divide your brain into 50% slouching and 50 % samplehunting. The samples that don't sound right, you can always put into melodyne and steal the melody by turning it into midi.

nowaysj wrote:

Genevieve wrote:

fragments wrote:Come on guys. No excuses. I am teaching three college courses and working retail three days a week and I still find time to write music and find creative energy. Yes I also have a girlfriend and a life. Cut out the TV and mindless partying ;p

Those may just be the very things that give you the energy and need to produce, though.

Partying I can see, TV... just 24/7 soul destruction.

I think he means the teaching, working, having a woman and a life.

Does he? He may indeed!

Genevieve wrote:

fragments wrote:Come on guys. No excuses. I am teaching three college courses and working retail three days a week and I still find time to write music and find creative energy. Yes I also have a girlfriend and a life. Cut out the TV and mindless partying ;p

Those may just be the very things that give you the energy and need to produce, though.

I agree I am more activily creative when I am busy. Well. The time is better spent when I have less. Maybe that is a good way to put it.

fresh air in the morning sometimes puts me in the mood, like if you just wake up and go straight out for a walk and maybe a spliff if youre into that. especially right now, cold London winter mornings are the one, so grim and harsh you just wanna get back and make some mournful beets http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtdu3mIITZg

JizzMan wrote:fresh air in the morning sometimes puts me in the mood, like if you just wake up and go straight out for a walk and maybe a spliff if youre into that. especially right now, cold London winter mornings are the one, so grim and harsh you just wanna get back and make some mournful beets http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtdu3mIITZg

People are all into this long, night sessions. Shit is for the birds. I like to get up and work when. Until mid May I've pretty much got every Wednesday off for a studio day, then on Tuesday and Thursday. I get up and teach a couple classes then home for studio time until I have to leave for my night class.

All songs made on Tuesday and Thursday will be dark, aggressive and violent as to sooth my student-stupidity wounded soul....


j/k







(seriously, sometimes...I want to strangle them...)

I'm a really slow starter in the morning. I used to drag ass, just as a normal human, but now I've got weird medical things happening. Wake up with my right hand swollen I can't really close my hand/using a mouse is not the one at this time. So I'm a slow starter, but starting early is the key to putting in the hours. But, I find the magic happens with an early start, and then the late late finish, like 20-24 hour sessions. A lot of loopmonging happens in there, but also a lot gets done.

nowaysj wrote:I'm a really slow starter in the morning. I used to drag ass, just as a normal human, but now I've got weird medical things happening. Wake up with my right hand swollen I can't really close my hand/using a mouse is not the one at this time. So I'm a slow starter, but starting early is the key to putting in the hours. But, I find the magic happens with an early start, and then the late late finish, like 20-24 hour sessions. A lot of loopmonging happens in there, but also a lot gets done.

I'm still a fan of long sessions. Ear fatigue wise it doesnt make sense, but I like to start with writing something new, then about 2/3 of the way through the period I like to work on taking a solid arrangement and adding the details (automation/chopping) or mixing a track.

I can't make good mixing decisions in the morning, lol...

Feel your pain on the medical stuff. I have back problems. I really need to spend a couple hundo on a good chair.

Triple that for a good chair.

yea fair enough if mornings not your thing, i think i have this mental connectio between music an sleep, i always work best either in the morning right after sleep or late night just before going to sleep

late night sesh <3. I dont sleep that well so i wear myself out mangling loops or something.

Office chairs are like crazy expensive right?! Though mine is such shit pretty much anything would be an improvement! It could easily be 15 years old as it came from the office in my parents house when they still ran their business out of their living room.

Fuck it. I am buying a new one next week when I get paid. Cant FAWM with a shit chair.

I agree with Jizz and though...there is this weird state that near-sleep and post-sleep put me in that let me think in a certain way.

@Sinestepper: have you considered changing your diet, when you eat, caffiene intake, alcohol/drug intake to change your sleeping situation?

honestly, i hate my chair. I moved to brooklyn a few months ago, and my dope chair is hanging out in my mom's garage on the west coast while i'm here with this shitty ikea chair that's like one step up from a folding chair - shit kills me! Also, not much mindless partying over here - my wife works for a booking agency, so there are times we go out (usually she's in "work" mode) and it's all good, but I don't go out that much. TV? don't have one. occasionally i'll binge on every season of something on netflix or somthing, but not very common.

I'm getting out of it - creativity comes down to taking risks, and those risks reduce the possibilities of what a work will be. To elaborate - you make a dope 5 bar drum loop, and then you have to decide to let go and make it 8 bars, then from there you take another small leap to make it 16, 32, etc. Then you start writing melodies, bass, whatever (this is just my process). Once again, as you continue to make decisions and take these small risks, you're reducing the possibilities of what the song can be, until the very last little bits are the ONLY little bits that fit that song - and thus, make it what it is.

I've got a friend who's a music supervisor in LA - he's been asking for short 90 second tunes for tv and shit - it's a good outlet for me - quick turnover and always the prospect of money in the bank - so for now i'm using that to push me

oh that and all this fucking dope music from australia - lol i guess people are calling it "melbourne bounce"? whatever, good music and deffo inspiring me.

It's really just a matter of finding my footing after moving I think. I've decided to have some compassion for myself - between moving to NYC right before winter, from southern california; just getting married, and getting to know producers over here - I'm feeling a lot more connected to my external world, and thus, my internal world is solidifying in my new environment as well. I always had a bit of disdain for san diego - there's hardly any culture, it's not even really a city, and somehow, after I'd moved there, I ended up sticking around for 10 years. Now that I've left, I'm realizing what a difference having roots in a city makes - even if it is san diego

cheers for all the advice - every bit has helped quite a lot really - especially nowaysj - man, still freaks me out how well you know me. if you're ever in the NYC area, i owe you a beer, guy

fragments wrote:@Sinestepper: have you considered changing your diet, when you eat, caffiene intake, alcohol/drug intake to change your sleeping situation?

Im definitely not a healthy individual. Probably just down to the broke student lifestyle tbh. I m often awake until silly o clock round my mates flat. I honestly tried to fix my sleeping pattern but its hard because apart from going in to uni to do work, my life has no structure so to speak.

nowaysj wrote:

Genevieve wrote:

fragments wrote:Come on guys. No excuses. I am teaching three college courses and working retail three days a week and I still find time to write music and find creative energy. Yes I also have a girlfriend and a life. Cut out the TV and mindless partying ;p

Those may just be the very things that give you the energy and need to produce, though.

Partying I can see, TV... just 24/7 soul destruction.

Well, even that. Some people are just so busy in their lives that they may recharge their batteries by zoning out a little. Though I did refer to fragments' work/teaching, etc, yeah.

fragments wrote:

Genevieve wrote:

fragments wrote:Come on guys. No excuses. I am teaching three college courses and working retail three days a week and I still find time to write music and find creative energy. Yes I also have a girlfriend and a life. Cut out the TV and mindless partying ;p

Those may just be the very things that give you the energy and need to produce, though.

I agree I am more activily creative when I am busy. Well. The time is better spent when I have less. Maybe that is a good way to put it.

Yeah the jist of my argument I suppose is that how people live their life outside of production can affect their actual production, but that this is highly individual since people gain energy from different things. You need a fast paced lifestyle to keep the well from running dry, but other people can get overwhelmed or lose their own creative energy through that.

A creative slump may be indicative of an overal slump, but how to get out of that slump will be different for each person.

Old thread.