Hey ,
Are you sick of feeling like you’re always fighting this uphill battle when it comes to your creativity and generating inspiration?
Where it seems like no matter what you do, these two things remain ever elusive and always something that disappears as quickly as it appears?
First of all, you’re not alone. This is something I’ve struggled with too!
Here are a few things that have helped me be more efficient in the studio, and also work with my creative process a little bit more, so that it feels less like an endless uphill slog.
1) Scheduling my time in the studio
On days where I don’t feel “creative” aka don’t feel like arranging/composing, I allocate these days to sound design- I generally have a list of common elements I use in every track, and I just spend a few hours on one of them, for example, either leads, pads, sfx (whatever you want really).
And then after, I just dump them into a folder in my sample library and after a few of these
‘uninspired’ days, I end up with my very own custom sample pack, but also more often than not, one of the sounds from these sound design days ends up giving me the inspiration I need to start the next track!
More than that however, it saves me time when I DO sit down to arrange and compose- rather than faffing about tweaking knobs and parameters in my patches and then losing my momentum (which, let’s be honest, we’ve all done), I just drag and drop the sounds I’ve made into the track and VOILA, the track writes itself! (not quite, but you get what I mean)
2) Sample library organisation
And on days where I REALLY don’t feel creative, and 100% cannot be bothered to make sounds at all, I do things like organise my sample library (I know, I know, super unromantic and boring, but you’d be surprised how much time a well-organised sample library saves you.)
Things like grouping all your sounds into their respective elements (e.g. drums, and then subfolders of kicks, snares, and then subfolders again of loops and one-shots etc.) so when you need a drum sound you just go to that folder (duh!)
3) A rose by any other name…will probably end up with you wasting more time than you’d like
I’ve also begun adopting a naming convention that I first heard from Thys of Noisia. He does this thing where he names the samples and sounds he’s created based on their characteristics, so “big noisy bass with metallic tones” for example.
The reason for this is because, much like the reasoning behind organising your sample library into the different elements of your track, it speeds up the process when you’re working on a track and you know you need a particular sound with a particular aesthetic.
Rather than racking your brain trying to remember whether that one sample was called sample 89037 or sample 89375, you just type into the search function of your DAW the characteristics you need this sound to have, and up pops all the sounds that are metallic and big and noisy!
4) And finally…the dreaded…
Do anything else BUT make music.
Go outside, go for a walk, get the blood pumping, breathe some air that isn’t stale studio farts (just me?).
You’ve probably heard this one a million times, but it works for a reason!
Taking your mind off the ‘problem’ creates a bit more space for your unconscious mind to work in the background and connect the dots, so that when you do come back to it, a solution just, somehow presents itself.
Anyway, give those a try and see if it helps!
If you’d like to learn more about the creative process, and how to work with it instead of against it, but more importantly to begin creating an environment that promotes FLOW rather than CONGESTION, I’ve just released Module 1 to my online course, “This Will Change The Way You Think About Sound” which covers all this and MORE.
Head to this link to learn more about it.
Spark your creativity, think more laterally, get inspired!
As always, wishing you lots of creativity and joy in your practice,
Arthur
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