Getting Out of Your “Box”: Overcome Creative Blocks – For Music Producers
Writer’s block. Artist’s all over the world experience this at least one time in their careers, and it can be a defining moment. Some people who have taken a craft up as a hobby may realize it’s not all it’s cracked up to be once they hit that first block. Maybe they continue to fight through, or try and figure out a way to beat it.
There’s millions of creative artists now in their own respects, and I’m sure every individual one has a way to deal with their own creative stresses and inhibitions. But I think if we are going to figure out exactly what could cause a creative block when it comes to audio production, we may need to dig a little deeper.
Creative blocks can come from anything; a girlfriend stressing us out before a session, racing thoughts about other life things you may have to deal with after our session, just not catching the vibe when you’re in front of your favorite synthesizer or sampler, the works. When things like this happen, we tend to stick to what we know more or less than branch out & try new things, especially with a proverbial monkey swinging around in your head that’s stopping you from coming up with anything at that particular moment. Sometimes there is a very clear reason why this could be happening that we tend to ignore as producers & creators.
The Comfortable Phase.
Every producer has gone through it and if a producer tells you they haven’t they’re lying. The Comfortable Phase is something that can be just as, if not more common than a creative/writer’s block solely due to the principles of how we work. Sometimes, as producers, we find a sound we like. This may not be “our” sound in particular, but it’s something that at any time we feel we could go into a session and make something in that pocket of sound. Now sometimes what happens is that we can get so stuck on that sound that we become comfortable with essentially switching the cast up from time to time with the same script, metaphorically speaking.
The more you stay in this pocket of sound that’s easy for you to make, the more you are limiting yourself. While it’s important to know your style and what works for you as a musician, you have to continue to branch out to exercise your mind, so it’s not working in the same cadences and patterns when you work on music. What happens after time is you start to run out of ideas within that sound, & sometimes you can get trapped into thinking you can’t make anything else as a producer.
When blocks like this happen, though the explanation may be as simple as what’s within this post, sometimes it can be much more complex. Sometimes when we aren’t expressing ourselves in certain areas in life others can falter; especially our creativity.
A mentor of mine told me “a creative block is my mind’s way of telling me to go outside.” Sometimes that’s all we need, a break from the dungeon and a DEEP… DEEP breath of some fresh air. Other times it could be a little more than that. Sometimes we need to just try something different in the studio & experiment; the best musicians & instrumentalists on a technical level didn’t get there by playing what they were comfortable with all the time. Either way though, the best way in my personal opinion to get past a creative block is to go experience life, and come back to my work when I have something I feel is worth sharing.
