Im losing it. What should I do?

[pauljaw]

I am beginning to feel my lack of motivation and inspiration creeping in.

I spend too much time wandering around the internet in and out of forums OK i also watch tutorial vids on music production which is ok, I guess, but its not making music. I'm sitting on a very powerful studio, but when I open Logic my heart sinks.

I think part of the problem is that I have TOO MUCH equipment. I set up my studio over a year and a half ago and have tons of stuff: Virus TI; Liquid mix; Logic Pro tools LE and a million and one synths and effects. But I can feel a lack of motivation coming on.

I have been here before with my painting and art. I put the brush down about 2 years ago and havnt picked it up since. The difference now is that a brush and paints cost £50 and my rec studio cost a lot more.

So what do you do when you lose your muse?

[Dirty Halo]

Force youself to JUST start.

A beat.

ANYTHING.

Tell yourself it does NOT matter what it is and where it goes.

JUST start...



- andrews

[balaperdida]

I felt that way for awhile... "post-gear-acquisition dysphoria." A lot of the problem was I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of gear I got and didn't really how I liked to use it yet -- where it fit into my workflow. My advice is pick one piece of gear, learn it completely, then move to the next. Needless to say, I don't buy in bulk anymore.

When I'm really stuck, I play with an old sequencer or drum machine -- something that plays while I'm still writing on it (hope that makes sense...). If I get interested enough in a beat or a phrase, I can usually count on being interested enough to flesh out an arrangement or even finish the song/jingle. Hope it works for you, too. If not, just accept that you aren't feeling it, and wait until the malaise passes. I don't know any musicians that have fallen out of love with music permanently.

Cheers

[Unclenny]

When I find myself in your predicament....which I do every so often, I shut things down and back away for a while.

Sometimes sitting in a dark studio can free you from the confines of your gear.

Wait it out........you can't push the river.

After a while sit down at a piano and see where your fingers fall or pick up an acoustic guitar and brush the strings lightly.

[manthe]

This is a tough one and I'd venture a guess that a great many of us go in and out of it. I operate a decent home studio for clients, but I am 1st and foremost a musician/writer. I go through fits and spurts all of the time. I love all of my gear. I keep piling it on.

I see a lot of people talk about paralysis caused by over consumption. On the surface, I usually agree. But, as I think about it harder, i might just be using that as a cop out for good old fashioned writers block! In fact, I am *just* coming off of a year-ish long dry spell. Songs are starting to come again! it feels good.

I'll tell you this, there have been plenty of other 'sabbaticals' over the last 20 years...most of them had absolutely nothing to do with too much gear or too many choices. It just is what it is, regardless of my circumstances. I think having a nice little studio with a lot of gear simply drives the point home a little harder. It also probably adds a new dimension of guilt to the equation. I mean, you gots all this kick-ass audio bling that you've dropped a second mortgage on and it is sitting cold, right? It only exacerbates a condition that *still would have existed otherwise!!*

Don't beat yourself up! It'll come back. If its real, it will always come back. 'Fake it 'til you make it' is not a bad suggestion from Dirty Halo. Going through the motions may not produce anything worthwhile, but at least you're keeping your creative muscles from atrophying!

Just ride it out...

[Brian Middleton]

I've been through a long phase like this, and I feel like I'm just climbing out of it.

My advice? Take long walks. I've always found that walking is the best cure for techno-dysphoria. Let the rhythm of your moving body and the sounds of the world around you lead your brain toward the music you want to hear.

Of course, easier said than done, as with everything, but it has helped me, so FWIW.....

[andychamp]

Too much freedom (in the form of too much gear) can be disorienting. From time to time I think it's healthy to impose some limits on oneself and try to make the best of it.
Try stuff like using only 1 mic /pre/comp for a whole track. Or making all sounds with the same synth. Or limiting yourself to 4 tracks and bounce down when you run out.
The thing is to get your brain back into problem-solving mode, also known as "creativity". Too many possibilities don't offer a challenge anymore.
I also always have a guitar handy, that I can noodle around aimlessly on, if I ever get in a rut.

Hope you work it out, all the best

[drBill]

Aside from eating right, exercise and getting enough sleep.......

I'd suggest a fun hobby. For me? Riding off road motorcycles.....fast. Really blows out the cobwebs.

Then, there's the nuts and bolts music stuff.

Whenever you sit down, make sure you archive any ideas - good or bad. Sort them out in catagories, and keep them ready when you have lack of inspiration. Sometimes when you don't feel like starting from scratch, a little snippet of an idea will spark all the inspiration you need.

Second, you need to write. Just write. Forget the art of it. Forget if it's going to be a master work that will last decades. Writing is a craft that needs to be polished and honed. It doesn't matter how GOOD the piece is, as long as it gets finished.

Writing for films taught me a great creative gift. With films, you have to write massive amounts of music in a short period of time - or you get fired. That's the key - you get FIRED. No-one likes to get fired. At some point in the process, the number of minutes you have to write per day starts creeping up and the amount of time you have starts dwindling down.

Out of desperation, with a gun at your head, you just start writing, hoping for the best even though you're sure what you're writing is crap. Guess what? If you have it in you (and I'll presume you do), good stuff will come out. Some of the best things I've ever written were written under such duress, with the knowledge that I didn't care if it was "the best thing I've ever written" - it just needed to be DONE.

Another technique that I've found helps is to sit down with a piano (or guitar) in a different envrionment. Sometimes amazing things happen. Bring a tape recorder, record it and head back into your studio cave to produce it.

Good luck. Being creative for a living is HARD work.

[bonnybilly]

I agree, I find writing in the studio to be a bit pointless as i end up "producing" when I am supposed to be writing. I prefer sitting in a comfortable room with a guitar or piano and hit out some riffs...try open tunings or use a capo. 9 times out of ten i hit out with a spark. i then take that spark to the studio and complete a track.

[richardswag]

I'm personally just climbing out of a deep hole that lasted over a year or so (on and off) which was initiated by personal circumstances (divorce to be precise). I'd find myself staring at the computer for ages without doing anything useful other than trawling gearslutz etc and thinking the answer to my problems lie in accumulating more equipment (largely wrong). Here are a few things that worked for me...

1) Turn off the internet. Not just unplug your work computer, but turn the modem off and give the PSU to someone else to look after until you NEED it back.

Now...

2) Set yourself a task with *minimal* equipment (and no cheating). So, as an example, take one analogue synth, one fx unit and one channel strip and try to make a rhythm from scratch by first making the best bass drum you can, then snare, then hats, then perc etc USING ONLY THAT equipment (and something to record it into obviously - preferably the simplest and least distracting). Worst case scenario - you end up with some original drum samples.

3) Get away from your normal computer setup. If you've got one (and I don't think you need encouraging to buy more gear) play with an MPC, or as others have said, sit at a piano or strum a guitar.

4) A very cliched idea (but it'll keep you occupied) is to take some household objects and see what noises you can make by sampling and processing them. Again - worst case scenario is you end up with some completely original sounds.

+1 for the walking too!


(I just read andychamp's post and he said exactly what I did in less than a quarter of the space. QED)

[Meriphew]

Buy some new albums (preferably something that's not in your usual vein - ie. if you're a rocker buy some jazz).

Jam with some new musicians.

Take a trip.

Take a break from music.

[Trancetones]

Play some live shows, travel, set some goals and write them down. A new 5 song EP by Fall of next year is a good place to start.

[Kadden Heart]

i get discouraged to.
i say DONT walk away, to hell with taking a break for a day, or a week.

go out to lunch with an engineer friend, if you don't have one. find one. go out, talk shop, eat sandwhiches whatever.

get home, pick the song you've worked on that REALLY makes you bob your head, i'm a rock guy,..so i have a song i worked on that half the tme i can't mix because i'm too busy singing along..
...play it.
rock out.

drink a beer, smoke a cigarette, force yourself to get excited and act happy for one moment, then just freaking delve into it.

grab the most expensive equipment in there, and be like "oh yeah, using the mother fu*** 1176 on this frekaing kick,...get that compression you bastard."

mix it hard, mix it long.
and have fun with that song.

fu** what it sounds like, just start throwing faders around and stuff. it's supposed to be fun dammit.
have fun with it.

mix till you're about to fall over.
then go to bed. it'l do ya good.

best of luck, and dont give up

[hduncan]

Last June this feeling hit me. I had nothing. I tried to write but nothing came. It was like there was music in my head to come out, but whenever I sat down to write it, it was lost. I realized something fundamental.


Come on man! MUSIC IS ART! ART IS SELF EXPRESSION! How tormented you must feel. How frusterating it is to feel useless, empty. Why the **** aren't you using this POWERFUL emotion as inspiration for your music? Your drought can be your rain storm.

Don't write music unless you have emotions to express. Music is expression! Tune into your feelings/emotions. Music is art, personal expression. Express yourself. Write a song inspired by your inability to write anything..


Everything is inspiration, everything is influence, everything is artistic.

You have to get outside of yourself and look at who you are and what you are feeling. Stop living in the confines of your mind. Breakout.

"If you dare to share your heart we'll nod our heads to it's beat."

[pauljaw]

Originally Posted by DarkEcho

Last June this feeling hit me. I had nothing. I tried to write but nothing came. It was like there was music in my head to come out, but whenever I sat down to write it, it was lost. I realized something fundamental.


Come on man! MUSIC IS ART! ART IS SELF EXPRESSION! How tormented you must feel. How frusterating it is to feel useless, empty. Why the **** aren't you using this POWERFUL emotion as inspiration for your music? Your drought can be your rain storm.

Don't write music unless you have emotions to express. Music is expression! Tune into your feelings/emotions. Music is art, personal expression. Express yourself. Write a song inspired by your inability to write anything..


Everything is inspiration, everything is influence, everything is artistic.

You have to get outside of yourself and look at who you are and what you are feeling. Stop living in the confines of your mind. Breakout.

"If you dare to share your heart we'll nod our heads to it's beat."

Thanks for the replies guys, and Dark Echo you are right, but that leads to what to do when you might have gotten it right.

I' ve written at least one song out of twelve Ive written over the past two years which other musicians have said, in reviews, could be a hit, (and funnily enough like you said, was written from the heart when I was pissed off about life (again!!), but what chance of that these days? - given the recording industries general supposed collapse.

Although i'm not that bothered about the money, nevertheless I'd like the general public to get a chance to hear it. But im not a performer (or at least my studio is not portable - I did perform in the past), just someone working in my studio. Although I am working to get my music out there as far as possible on the internet. I don't want to write songs that will just sit on my hard drive forever. I want them to be heard by the general public. At the moment it feels like i'm the only one who is ever going to hear my music. And that is adding to my general lack of motivation.

[peeder]

Originally Posted by balaperdida

I felt that way for awhile... "post-gear-acquisition dysphoria."

That's good! thumbsup

I like to have the mastery of a specific piece or aspect of gear as the motivator for completing a project, usually for someone else. So on one project it might be BFD2, on another it might be Elastic Audio, etc. Doing projects for other people lets your muse sneak in the back door out of your sight. It's not as much about you anymore as it is about just making them happy.

Now it's very easy to get hooked on that and lose a lot of your independence, but what's happening is you are developing a level of mastery with the medium which will give you more confidence with your own work as it comes. And you don't have to force it to come. You can encourage it without scolding yourself. Let it all hang out a bit.

And if you don't have projects lined up for other people, doing covers can get you some easy momentum.

Oh and as for being heard: sure, we all want to be heard and it gives us some sense of closure on a project and relevance. I think you have to ignore being ignored to make a go of this given the flood of material online. Just put your best stuff out there and invite others to appreciate it. If you have an authentic hit, word-of-mouth can spread like wildfire from a single spark.

[davedarling]

What great responses.
Perhaps you can take some comfort just in knowing how common this
dilema is.

For me ....back to my old records, and cds for a listen - always inspiring !

good luck - Dave Darling

[theblue1]

I suspect that this is a lot more common than a lot of us would like to admit -- or remember.

I've had a few dry spells.

One of the most perplexing (at the time) was one similar to yours. I'd spent all this time putting together my little ADAT project studio. I was satisfied with the rig, finally, but a little exhausted. (I would later take some clients but I hadn't started yet.)

Since my old 8 track 1/2" tape had been broken down over and over most of the several years I'd had it -- I felt like I had a backlog of recording to do.

I'd expected to hit the ground running. But after the first few test runs and noodly little things... blank-o.


I guess I just searched around in the blankness of my mind until I found something that felt vaguely like a bootstrap and yanked. I think I was reading something in a recording mag and I thought, hey, that sounds kind of cool. And then I thought -- and now I have the technology to do it.

And I kind of juiced that enthusiastic impulse, nurtured it like you'd cradle a flame in a storm in the woods with no matches, and tricked myself into spending a few hours in the studio.

It was a little hump kind of thing. I didn't really turn out anything compelling -- but it made it easier to snag a little inspiration the next time... and the next.

Life... sometimes it's a game of inches.

[mikeynyuk]

I have a great trick that has wored for me a few times. Set this goal, Write, record and mix a ditty in 4 hours! Decide when your going to start and race that clock! I've done this a couple of times and its always workd. At least you can say to yourself afterwards "well, all this gear isnt a waste, I made this" It mightnt be great, but youll be suprised at how motivated racing the clock makes you.

Also, perhaps you dont have one, but I recommend using an MPC for sheer hands on fun and ispiration....although buying more gear right now may not be the solution your looking for.....

But MPCs are great...

Do the 4 hour thing, in four hours youll have a song!

[richardswag]

If Akai quote this thread in an advert I want royalties along with mikeynyuk!

[piranesi]

As an artist and illustrator I've all too familiar with the terror induced by a blank sheet of paper. I get edgy, I snap at the family, I feel tired.....

But then I've been there so many times I know just what to do.

I just find a little area to start on. Set myself a limited goal.... and before I know it the concentration kicks in. The paper gets covered- and no one can talk to me for the next 12 hours.

Easy peasy!

George Snow
Cortona

[dubrichie]

don't worry about the recording industry, feck it cos it's allegedly fecked anyway.

don't worry about the mortgage, or the second mortgage for the gear.

don't worry about the gear. don't worry about it sitting there idle.

get a musician or two into your studio, leave everything OFF and play man, play.

play a bunch of other people's tunes that you dig, the few that you would love to play in a covers band.

buy new records. listen to your favourite records.

sell some gear. give away some gear. what do you really need to make a great record of great tunes anyway?

don't worry about writing songs, just PLAY.

just do it because you dig it. balls to the rest of it. any other reason for playing music is window dressing it, expanding on it, doing something with it, etc., you know yourself. same goes for writing it, but in the meantime, if you don't feel like doing that, just play it and, you guessed it, balls to the rest of it.

don't worry about it.

dig it?

[hanuman]

The director of the company that allowed me to make an important soundtrack would say: 'Despair, it is a part of the process', it gets you there'.

In the play his company staged the main character said to his wife: 'And what do we do if the vision forsakes us for weeks?' Wife: 'We kneel down and pray Mr. Blake...'

Compliments to all the contributors to this thread.

[dubrichie]

and relax it!

[NorthernDigStar]

Interesting post. I have written an article on the issue here Exploring the digital world of today

Feel free to read it and consult yourself. I think you'll come to the same conclusion as I did. Best wishes to you and your material.

[mdme_sadie]

Pick up a simple instrument that you enjoy playing, and play it, forget about all the kit, it's just background there to record the instrument, so focus on the instrument again rather than the kit. Maybe write some poetry and put it to music, or sing a song, hum a melody and put that down, focus on the music and not the kit, the rest will come.

[hduncan]

I think you may be missing the point of music. As an artform, it's self expression. If you have something to express, and music is your mode, go wild.

It seems like you are more concerned with producing music to be heard than producing a message, or conveying an emotion..

Perhaps your musical problem is that you have nothing to say?

I may be a hardass when it comes to people writing music for entertainment and nothing else. I realize that I am the minority on this one. But really. Write the music, first and foremost. Dont care who hears it, or if it will be a hit. That is the last reason anyone should consider for writing a song.

If that is what concerns you, then I cannot help you, and neither can music.

Music is a medium to express yourself, share your feelings with others, help others collect themselves, show them they arent alone. A song provides you someone to talk by listening. The right song can tell you that everything is ok, that you arent the only one, when you have no one to talk to.

Ask yourself: are you glueing your heart to guitar strings and banging your frusterations out on the keys of a piano? Or are your strings untainted by true feeling? Do those strings just resonate freely for no other reason but to vibrate the cash out of the clutched fists of the audience?

[redddog]

I'm going through a huge drought right now. It's more a writrer's block than a lack of enthusiasm although the two are closely related, I think. For me, I get pissed because all the stuff I write starts to sound the same. Every single song. Then I never end up finishing.

If there is one thing I need to do, it's finish the song. I end up scraping the thing after basics. You have to fight through a little.

One thing I've done this time was read a book about song writing. The author interviews all of the greatest songwriters ever - Neil Young, Petty, Dylan, Lennon, Emilou, Bono, Costello ...just everyone. They ALL have the same story; the best songs they ever write come fast and are done in a blink and if you don't put in a ton of time writing even when you're hating it, you'll never be consitantly good.. Neil said he wrote Harvest from start to finish in a weekend while he was in bed with the flu. He said he was delirious with fever. And that the absolute KEY to writing great songs is time and effort. Petty writes for 8 hours a day. Every day. It's his job. This was by far the most common fact. Every great songwriter spends tons of time at it. And if you don't, then you're simply not putting in enough time to consider yourself a songwriter.

You can't casually write a book. You can't become a doctor in your spare time. Now I'm not saying that you need to leave your wife and quit your job to be able to write a good song but you do need to ask yourself if you really think you're putting in the appropriate amount of effort. It was kind of comforting to me to know that everyone of my favorite writers has experienced what I do. They've all angrily scrapped a song out of frustration realizing it sucks. But they all keep pushing. And that's what differentiates the great ones from the rest. Sonny Bono was kind of a joke but he wrote some great songs from sheer effort.

It's not easy but even if I HATE the way a song is coming, I finish it. Some of the songs I hate the most are people's favorites.

Write, write and then write. And if you can possibly find someone who you can partner with, it's a huge benefit. You can push each other and it's not so solitary.

[morebutter]

sell some gear. use only one or two instruments. limit the amount of equipment you use. KEEP IT SIMPLE. you dont need all that stuff. it's keeping you from being productve and it's producing anxiety. dirty halo's advice is very good too.

Pick up a new instrument (preferably acoustic) and embrace it!

Coming from a synth geek, btw.