8 Ways To Break Out Of A Creative Rut Musically

Matthew Davidson wrote a great post today over at his blog, Stretta, that looks at eight ways to break out of a creative dead end musically. 

Eight Techniques to Break out of a Creative Dead End

  1. Pretend you’re a film composer
  2. Create a piece of music using only one piece of gear
  3. Don’t use MIDI
  4. Eschew polyphony. Think contrapuntally. 
  5. Create ten new sounds
  6. Transcribe a piece of music/make something exactly like….
  7. Buy yourself a gift – very often a new toy is inspirational. 
  8. Consult Eno’s Oblique Strategies.
You’ll have to visit Davidson’s site for the full list, but here’s my vote for number 9:
Do Something Wrong 

It seems like a lot of the most important ideas in electronic music come out of people either naively or intentionally doing things “wrong” – things like twiddling 303 knobs to create acid basslines, ambient music’s use of “guitar” effects on piano, Eno’s use of asynchronous tape loops, glitch music’s exploration of “broken” sound and Reich’s use of phased repetition.

What can you do that’s “wrong”?

Let me know if you’ve got other ideas to help get inspired. 

3 thoughts on “8 Ways To Break Out Of A Creative Rut Musically”

  1. I know a great way to do some things wrong: Turn off the output!

    Program a drum beat for instance, without hearing anything. Preferably you should synthesize most of the drum sounds yourself. Do as much as you got nerve and listen AFTER you’re done. I can guarantee you’ll have a very interesting starting point right there! Keep the interesting quirks and just polish the result to make it sound a bit better.

    Better yet – do ten “deaf” beats after each other, and listen to them once all of them are done.

  2. tbr – sounds like a great way to come up with something that’s a little unexpected.

    The “deaf” beats pun, though……..

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