Fortnightly Furry Musicians Newsletter!

Nice. X3

Thanks for the feature! ^^

Also, I hear ya regarding music fatigue. I sometimes can't listen to music for a week, let alone compose it, and something stressful or profound boosts me back up.

That's a very interesting topic. There's a whole lot I could say (or write), so I'll try and be (relatively) short and to the point.

I have had very rough periods (do I hear giggling in the back again?), when I couldn't come up with anything original for months. Or at least I thought I couldn't.
I often experience this kinda funny phenomenon, that I'll listen to music and think "Damn, that sounds awesome, and it's so simple." And I realize that I probably would not have liked it, if I would have come up with the same idea myself.

If anyone would ask me for advice, I'd tell them this:
I think it's great, if you're always trying out new ideas. But if you hit a writer's block or feel burnt out, try to define "new", before you throw it all in the trash. Doing "something new" and doing "something you haven't done before" aren't necessarily the same thing. Often times thinking smaller and simpler can be the way to go.
Many musicians get caught up on the idea, that each new project has to be "better" than the last one. And that's great, if it helps you develope skill and learn how things work. But you're gonna slam head first into a brick wall at some point, if don't hit the brakes once in a while.
Listen to your music and try to keep this in mind: There is no "better" or "worse" and possibly not even "new". Does your music sound good? If so - great! If not - try "different", rather than "better".

A good friend of mine always says: "Everyone knows only one song." And he's right. At some point you and everyone else are going to do the same thing over and over again. You can only try and make it sound different. There are only so many notes, lol.

Damn, that was a lot. I hope I'm not just talking nonsense to you. Anyway, I hope that helps in some way or another.

This is really solid advice, SJ. I agree wholeheartedly.

For myself personally, I find I try to balance songwriting with learning songs by other artists on guitar or vocals. I find that it takes your mind off of the composing aspect of music for a bit until you get inspiration again.

I also find that rushing or trying to get an album or EP completed can harm the songwriting, as it is putting you under pressure, and if you are not productive, it stresses you out even more. So what works for me is that if I get a burst of inspiration, I take advantage of it until the ideas stop coming. Then I take a break from it until I feel I could have a go at it again.

This is rather strange (and has happened lately for lyrics), is that I'll think of something in a non-musical environment like at the university. I'll be writing something related to chemistry and then I'll think of something for lyrics. It could happen also in the bathroom, on the bus, while walking, while doing 69...wait what?! XD

The hard part of making music for me is, time management. Since I am a little bit immune to multitasking concerning about households and stuff (or especially when I have a job someday)

But also, creating your own chord progression, making melodies, or harmonies can be stressful too, but I am trying to get inspirations from some of my favorite songs and musical arrangements and create my own.

Even though I don't have a guitar in real life to help me do chord progressions and stuffs, I use humming or thinking some ideas in order to put in on my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and start arranging it. Usually making a full music can make me end it for days, or even months to complete.^^

I completely agree and understand how that works. I've gone back through my hard drive before and found a bunch of abandoned projects that I could never really come up with anything I liked to put it all together. I think my biggest remedy is just to grab my guitar and start jamming. Just play over what I have. As someone who does mostly chiptunes at this point, the vast majority of what I have come up with is by transcribing guitar riffs into 8-bits. The problem again is I'm so used to writing and jamming on short riffs that if I do come up something I like, it's maybe like 20 seconds. Now what? I got to fill around that. This is when I walk away and try to just hear in my head what would come naturally after a particular riff and try to transcribe that later.

I do agree with the above comment from Scared Jellyfish in that not everything has to be better or more ambitious than the last piece. I get caught up into that way too much and forget that K.I.S.S. is really good way to keep things catchy and memorable. I've got some pieces that after it was all said and done I really didn't like it as much since I felt I tried to put too much effort into coming up with such unique melodies. I just strained myself too much thinking that it was bad if it was too familiar.

Leaving and coming back is one of the best ways to clear your mind from all the clutter of writing something. This is my way to ensure an idea just doesn't sound good at that time. More often than not, what I think is cool now, isn't that cool later on.

Thanks  PascalFarful for feature. Actually I am living a creative hiatus about musical material, since my last álbum (https://proyectozider.bandcamp.com/.....end-of-the-day) but i working on a radio web proyect to compensate for my musical fatigue XD

Wise words... and I find it is the same for writing...

V.

It is very important to remember that the pressure you feel to create should come from within. If you are uninspired, it means you need to spend time ingesting music - listening to the layers, style, nuance - and figure out how the musicians accomplish it.

My way of solving the music block is by straight up re-creating other people's songs as close to the original as possible. Sometimes I just want to look at a drum track, or bassline, or a particular method of presenting strings or brass. It takes away the pressure to create something "new" or "original" and focuses on simply producing music. This act of copying is parallel to the artist who copies the masters - to learn from them and incorporate that skill into future projects.

I have two examples that I love to tell people about. One is the song "Undisclosed Desires" by Muse. I rebuilt the entire song in Reason within about 4 hours one afternoon, sans the lyrics, and realized that when I'm not concerned with composing new chord progressions and melodies, I can really turn out some decent sounding tracks.

The other example was a portion of "The Bioluminescence of the Forest" from James Horner's Avatar soundtrack. 3 hours of intense listening and layering resulted in only 30 seconds of finished music, but most listeners can't hear the difference between the original and the copy unless they have a trained ear.

The results is a confidence boost to your sense of skill. It hones your ear to detect details within music. It introduces new musical elements to your personal palette. And it keeps your head in the music game. Don't allow too much time to go by without music creation or the fluidity of creation will dry up. It's a lot harder to pick up again after a hiatus than you want to deal with, trust me.