A completely normal and usually transient problem, the soul-crushing malaise of writer’s block is something that every music producer comes up against from time to time. Here are some pointers to see you through it – keep them bookmarked for the next time you run into the wall.
Listen to some music
Our first tip almost goes without saying: when slow progress on a project is dragging you down, one of the easiest ways to refocus your creative vision is to listen to some music you love/admire/respect/aspire to. However, while that’s unarguably a winner for getting yourself fired up to produce, straying off the beaten path and exploring tracks you’ve not heard before, perhaps in genres you wouldn’t normally choose to frequent, might be in fact more likely to spark new compositional ideas.
Consider, also, putting on a movie or TV show as fuel for the imagination – the fusion of sound and vision that audio-visual media delivers offers a whole other kind of inspiration.
Get out of the studio
For the brain-drained artist working in any media, stepping out of the studio and expanding those sensory horizons can be very effective for recharging the mental batteries. Even a ten-minute mid-session walk could be enough to make your track-in-progress feel ’new’ again; but if you can spare an hour or more and get out to the countryside, extended exposure to green space has been shown to promote creativity. Put your phone on silent or turn it off, so as to not be distracted by potentially stressy calls, texts, DMs and emails.
The resulting energy boost might not last long, so upon returning to the studio, get your project progressing quickly – write fast and don’t worry about finessing the details until later. As long as your excursion gets you over that hump, it’s achieved its purpose.
Use your tools
There are few things more anxiety-inducing for the rut-stuck electronic producer than a blank piano roll, but the panoply of assistive MIDI gadgetry made available by today’s software and hardware presents copious options for filling it up. The ‘key snapping’ and chord generator functions offered by many MIDI controllers, DAWs and plugins (quantising the keyboard to a specified key or scale, and automatically playing chords based on single-note input), as well as the more comprehensive likes of Mixed In Key’s Captain Plugins and Plugin Boutique’s Scaler 2, make superb writing aids for those less versed in music theory. And when you’re not feeling it on the keyboard, step and pattern sequencers are ideal for quickly cooking up basslines, riffs and chord progressions – not to mention being great fun to just play around with (particularly when hooked up to a pad controller such as Ableton Push or Native Instruments Maschine), which can be inspirational in itself, of course. Don’t overlook the randomise features built in to many of these systems, either, which can take you down all sorts of unimagined avenues.
The magic of MIDI files
There’s a limitless supply of commercial and free MIDI files to be found online, providing pre-made, editable melodic and harmonic phrases in all genres, so don’t hesitate to throw one at a track when you’re stuck in the musical mire. Obviously, the idea is for the MIDI file to serve as a starting point, rather than be employed as is, so move the notes around manually and using your DAW’s MIDI transformation tools to make the part your own. And if you end up changing it beyond recognition, so much the better!
Phone a friend
For a fresh perspective on a flagging song idea, why not get someone else involved? Whether you invite a like-minded musical partner into the studio to work directly on a choon with you, or share a project file online for a bit of back-and-forth collaboration, two creative heads are often better than one – and potentially revelatory if you’ve only ever flown solo before. Naturally, this does mean the piece is no longer entirely ‘yours’, but it could also mark the start of a fruitful artistic relationship in the longer term.
On a less hands-on level, even simply playing a stalled track to a partner, friend or random Reddit user for their opinion can prove informative enough to get things moving again.
Do something else
With the ongoing expansion and maintenance of sample and preset libraries being so intrinsic to modern music making, you can always take a break from actual ‘writing’ and still be highly productive in the studio. Load up your favourite synth and set out to design, say, five awesome patches by the end of the day; build a beat with no particular musical agenda in mind; grab a real world instrument or any other object capable of producing sound and sample it; take the walk described earlier and capture some environmental noises on your phone or mobile recorder; or cull that sample pack you bought months ago down to its most exceptional content for adding to your personal library. The audio housekeeping never ends!
Ditch it and move on
If all else fails, and the track you’re working on refuses to click, shut it down and start a new one. Don’t place any limit on yourself in terms of how often this can be done, or at what rate – it’s perfectly fine to burn through ten tentative song ideas in a day if that’s the pace your muse wants to move at. Don’t throw any of these embryonic compositions away, though, as context can be everything, and returning to them on a different day, with a different mindset, could reveal something compelling that you missed or weren’t in the right creative frame to appreciate the first time round.
What tactics have you successfully employed when writer’s block has taken hold? Let us know in the comments.