Never suffer WRITER'S BLOCK again!
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- Опубликовано: 9 июл 2024
- In this video CH and JoJo took a pause to sit around a microphone and chat about their past and present struggles with writer's block. Christian gives some really helpful tips to build up your ‘Composer’s Deck of Cards’ that has helped him eradicate writer's block entirely.
02:19 - The One Trick Pony
02:55 - Use Your Trick
07:09 - Muse
07:48 - Deck of Cards
08:41 - Collaboration
08:58 - Makes Sounds
10:47 - Subtraction
11:57 - Tricks Story
13:20 - Time is Treasure
14:22 - Explore
15:42 - Look After Yourself
17:11 - Personal Heritage
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Видеоклипы
If a few minutes noodling with String Murmurations doesn't spark something off there's something REALLY wrong! I also find hitting a few random keys/chords in VSTs I don't normally use can work but possibly my biggest weapon is not having any music theory: I don't know what's SUPPOSED to follow what so happy, highly useable accidents can occur. Great subject and there are some interesting replies from others.
That’s a fair point, it really helped me get out of a slump as well! 😊
That’s such an amazing perspective, it makes you free to not have to worry about rules or form and lets you just fly!
Thanks for sharing, and I agree all the rest of the responses have been fantastic as well! It’s really lovely seeing the community sharing their tips and advice with each other!
I’m in the same boat…no theory except what was taught to me as a 12-year-old. Ha! Interestingly, I’ve had professional musicians in my family complain about not being able to find their creative spark. I usually have to tell them to calm down. “Ditch the theory for a bit…and see what happens!”
@@tgriffin5000it is absolutely fascinating how we can sometimes get in our own way by burdening ourselves with knowledge!
@@tgriffin5000 Good advice! Heheh. The downside, of course, is that lack of theory means everything takes an age to do, but hey, I'm in no mad rush!
"One trick pony" = "Your own trick /style" = "What gives your Uniqueness /originality".. repetition legitimizes you. Nice chat. Thanks for sharing. Stay safe.
For long my solution to tackle a writer's block or lack of inspiration is the so called 'soundmining' trip; I pick one specific library, could be any in my arsenal, and explore all of its articulations one by one, searching for gems and hidden sound treasures, where I'll have the full attention for sound itself, almost as it being something abstract. For instance playing the high and low regions within a sampled instrument might often result in finding characteristic sounding recordings, even somewhat alienated sounding. Well, it's all about being surprised and inspired by sound itself. Have fun!
Wow! Thanks for this amazing tip! I’m definitely going to try this one! ☝️ it’s like delving into the world that the developers have created. We sure will have fun! Thanks again for sharing your experiences 🙏
@@TheCrowHillCo Exactly, just fully enjoying the devotion that was used creating these sounds. I'm not a sample library creator myself, sort of way too lazy for that, but I easily spend my time delving into libraries, using it where its made for. Be well, Jeff
Actualy I do that from times to times. Not systematicaly. My other method is to stop composing or desperatly searching a tune or a theme, giving up, and instead programing a sound (synth or sample) without any pressure. Sometime this sound, weird or not, and the way I play it gives the basis for a new idea.
@@FLH3official Indeed, in those unguarded moments a inspiration partical could unexpectedly hit you, its an exciting thought. That partical could be one interval or a certain timbre. With 'programming a sound' you mean tweaking a sound to your likes I guess? I'm also using that method, its opening up another ocean of sounds, taking the soundmining to a deeper level.
@@jeffhijlkema I mean deeply tweaking a preset in a synth or more often sampling something (an object, an instrument, an isolated sound in a record, whatever) and playing with it, like a child whith his toys hence without any afterthough, without the pressure to create "something good and bankable". And sometimes, not always obviously 😁, it works, something sparkles in my poor little grey cells, I stop playing like a kid, and I play "seriously" with a project in my mind. On the other hand my hard disks are full of useless sounds and unfinished things. 🤭
With so many samples and instruments... I just out one I like or one I've never tried before... muck around with it and something emerges from the muck. The hard part is then cleaning it up into something wonderful (erm, if not passable...).
Emerging from the muck is an incredible line and sounds like a funkadelic track name! The hard cleaning up part is almost always forgotten as part of the process too! Thanks for sharing this with us 🙏
Enjoyed this! I'd still say let's not forget the value of 'old school' skills like melody and harmony. While sampling, sound design and plugins are important, they shouldn't overshadow the essence of creating great music.
100% agree! That’s why continuing to keep learning is so important! Thanks for sharing your advice with all of us! 🙏
I studied with the excellent acoustic guitarist Martin Simpson and he always advised “when you pick up the guitar, do/play something you have never tried before”
Really weird watching this today, finally got my DAW working and a spare 1/2 hour, felt desperate to write something. it had gone...STOP... quick walk around the garden and decided to go back to college days... Vaughan Williams, got out some pocket scores (I purchased back in the 80s at a second hand music shop), rescored an opening chord sequence, changed the chords slightly and yeah off I went. Thank you Ralph (which incidently was the name of my late father). Inspiration comes from doing things and for me always making mistakes.
I'll go for a walk, or a jog, and I always bring my phone to hum into it. Because, for some reason, all the best melodies and rhythms comes to me when I'm NOT in the studio. I'm also a hobby musician working with Cyber Security full time, so my studio time is very limited and I like to be as productive as possible when I sit down (often late at night when the rest of the family is sleeping).
All good advice. One of my ways to deal with a lack of inspiration is to do something short, like 20 seconds and completely off the wall. I find it helps to clear your mind. I think you can get in your own way if you keep telling yourself you’ve got writers block. You tend to wait until it’s passed, like a bout of flu or something. Read, excercise, walk, don’t listen to music but do listen to talk radio. It all helps. Well, it helps me anyway. And do enjoy yourself too, see your friends, go out with them have a good time. I don’t mean drugs etc, I mean a drink, a meal, a gig, cinema, that sort of thing.
All great advice from you too! 🙏 as you said it’s that really wholistic approach of getting out of your own way and looking after yourself! I love the idea of the short piece, I’ll give that a go!
Those are all great techniques for over coming a creative slump. What I’ll often do to get out of it is pull up my entire music library organized by song, give it a few scrolly flicks, and hit play without looking at the track. More often than not, a song I know I like, but maybe wasn’t something I would have chose to listen to will get my brain working in a totally different direction. It’s like hitting the reset button on my creativity.
Thanks for watching and enjoying 😊That’s very interesting! Do you do this with a library of your own music or your complete library of music that you listen to?
@@TheCrowHillCono never my own music. It could be Aphex Twin, Stevie Wonder, Talking Heads, or Can. The more removed from my current frame of mind, the better.
You have inspired me to knock out my self-editor for a while. Thank you so much!
My trick to come out of writer’s block is to go through presets of my synths and instruments. There will be something that inspires and almost writes itself. Great stuff guys, inspirational as always!
me too and ill try to "get out of my head space" and change angle of attack :D
Finding something that plays itself is so useful! Thanks for your support and tuning in 🙏
@@bobfrodeI tried doing dub reggae with synths the other day ... totally out of my comfort zone, but really interesting result 😁
Great video. I find one of the best things for writers block I've found is retrospective recording in a DAW. If I have actual record on, I get a bit nervous and aware that I'm recording and play differently (and worse!). So I just noodle on piano for a while until I stumble across something I like, perhaps just a weird chord change or a small segment that sounds good. Then I paste in the midi and isolate the part and work on that. Somehow the fact that I'm not recording in the first place takes the pressure off.
Far from being presumptuous I use the 'Mozart quote' which states that silence between notes is as important as the notes themselves. Music needs to breath. Using silence at the right moments will alter / inspire a myriad of compositions. Studying orchestral music composed of many instruments which are on and off many times during the listening of a piece has helped me tremendously. Composing is the most wonderful and most fulfilling adventure one can take on. Surprising the listener is also paramount: write with your soul. Come back many times to your piece until you feel it. Never force anything.
Such sage advice from the maestro himself! Thanks for sharing this with us!
It really is such a wonderful journey and it’s even more incredible that we can all come together to chat about it and talk about what helps us get through the tough moments 🙏♥️ thanks again for sharing!
my only problem as a non professional is not having enough time to record all my ideas. should I ever stuck with something, i will apply Mr. Eno´s genuine Oblique Strategies...
This channel is gold.
Thanks!! You’re gold too! 🫵🤘
That is a flipping brilliant idea! I feel like I turn into a novice as soon as I hit record too sometimes! Thanks for sharing his advice with us all! 🙏
7:28, well I feel called out watching this video procrastinating with a piano next to me. Brilliant talk, thanks!
Thank you. Spot on.
Thank you so much for watching and enjoying! 🙏
I find limiting my choices, like creating a piece only using Labs or Pianobook etc. or loading up uncommon pairings of libraries/instruments quickly inspires, just like lighting a match, presto, light or fire… cheers!
That’s an amazing technique! It really forces you to find new paths, thanks for reminding me of this technique 🙏
That's what I have done in the past - I made a series of one minute pieces only using.... limitation can really help.
Love it! Yup, writers block loves silence... Just start making noise!
Thanks, guys. You, know, I really needed that. I also like the videos where you just sit down and talk about things. It helps me get some focus and visualizing that I can accomplish what I want to do. So much music in my head, but getting it out, is another thing. I like hearing your confimation that just saving ideas and being able to use them for demo. I am now creating a folder on my computer called "MUSICAL CONCEPTS". Thanks.
If I ever get writers block, I will usually go to an older piece I wrote years ago and re work it in a different style with different instruments and doing that usually gives me ideas to add to the piece. Back in the 90's and early 2000s I was heavily into Trance so now I will just re work one of my old Trance tracks into a full orchestral piece. Sometime the outcome is fantastic!
That is a flipping brilliant idea! It’s almost like interpolating and sampling yourself!!
@@TheCrowHillCo Yeah and also the more styles you can write the better you become as a composer.
That sounds like great advice…I will have to try that. Thanks!
👍@@tgriffin5000
I second that! It’s like Christian said, surprising yourself to the point that it doesn’t sound like you!
Perceived perfection is a major cause of writer's block; not taking a step forward because it's not what you think may be perfect. The first step may not be perfect, but the end of the journey may be pretty good.
Lots of fantastic and absolutely relatable ideas. Personally I've found my way staying out if the ditch is obsessive note taking. Which sounds bizarre, but I've just recently picked up some minor work dealing with the soundtrack for a game. The music itself I know will be heavily sample based, so instead of crate digging samples I've been making the sounds I would expect to hear from within the game - the fizzle of dying circuits, sporadic keyboard button pushing, old metal doors thunking open - and making my sample selection before composition, much like you, but fundamentally diagetic to the project world. These are all based on key notes of the projects planning, ie simply what environments? What creatures exist here? These ideas let me plan in advance what space that I personally need to fill, and what I need to make room for. Binding myself to small rules, and my own sample selection has helped me drive a bit of life into working since I'm actively coming up with ideas to be interesting - but bound, do I use fizzling circuits as an impulse response, throw it in a granular synth, or take the small plucks and make a lead out of it?
That is such a genius tip! Thanks for sharing it with the rest of us 🙏 and best of luck working on the soundtrack for a game!
@@TheCrowHillCo thank you!
"Experience is just having more cards to play. You're not looking for new interesting playing cards, you just want as many in your hand as possible."
That's a great quote mentioned by Christian, but I didn't get who was he talking about when he said it. Was it originally by Adam Tandy?
I loved "Bank Of Dave" and the soundtrack theme was great and really lifted the movie to a whole other level that it wouldn't have had without your music. Hard to believe that you would have writer's block considering how prolific you were at Spitfire Audio and with all of the composing work you've done for film and tele.
And that’s why his advice is so valid, he’s someone who’s been there and has managed to get past it! He’s such a legend! 🙏 thanks for your support! 😊
Great to finally get the story of the Inside No9 Ident piece. Love it and fits perfectly at the top of every show. Thanks for the explanation and advise.♥︎
RIGHT!! I’d been wondering about it for so long as well! Have a great day friend!
This is one of my writing processes: 1. record something, anything, don't worry if it's good. 2. do 5 or 6 other takes, but without listening to the first track or anything you've done. 3. listen back to them all playing at once, mute different tracks to hear different combinations of the takes in combination... it will be a big incoherent mess... but shapes will emerge out of the different takes colliding and little fragments will start to work, you can then begin to rationalise some of the sections that work into key with each other, adjust the phrasing, eventually probably re-recording everything.
True. This is similar to the idea of listening to something in the car, while driving with the windows down. The wind, the traffic noise, your attention switching between the music and the traffic…all that’s gonna cause you to hear things in the music you didn’t before.
@@tgriffin5000 I used to make sample college type of music, instrumental hip hop etc and just observed that perhaps part of the reason once can get some great, unexpected results doing that is because if you sample several records, none of the musicians performing on those records ever get to "hear" what the musicians on the other records you have sampled are doing... so it's maybe a way of recreating that kind of unconscious element just by yourself.
@rekindle Artists like Amon Tobin and DJ Shadow are great at that. I’ve always said I was going to experiment with that technique one day.
Great video to watch before starting writing for a new project, which is exactly today :D Thanks team !
Christian, you should do Crow Hill App.
Sharing, collabs, lessons, ..... all that Jazz
Yep, crows everywhere upon the Earth. Each one King of the Hill
Ooo that is a tasty idea! I’ll share this idea with the group 🤘🐦⬛
This was a really inspiring conversation you had. Very helpful!
Thank you! As the person in the room hearing it 1st hand it was INSANELY inspiring! CH is a legend!
Perfection is the enemy of doing. Just start. Study the Cult of Done. It helps.
“Perfection is the enemy of doing” 🤯 am I okay to steal this quote and put it on my fridge? Thank you so much for sharing this!
@@TheCrowHillCo Go ahead!
Absolute gold comment! Thank you!
Thank you for this inspiring discussion.
Thank you for tuning in and enjoying! As the person listening to his advice, it was incredible hearing all this sage advice from a maestro!
Anytime I see that show I know I'm getting top music and top comedy from THE best comedy writers today.
It really is a match made in heaven!
I have a weird writing block. I can bash out plenty of decent melodies and arrangements all day long, my big problem is I rarely have the drive to do it anymore, or if I do I never do anything with it. I'll get something nice into the DAW, then just can it because what's the point. The thought of arranging an orchestral backing used to be exciting, now I usually think of it as a grind.
I have those days…when I’m just not feeling it that day. Or I’m in the middle of a client project that has simply gone on too long, and I’m ready to work on something else already! Yeah, the inspiration can be hard to find on those days.
Maybe its time to venture into a new genre... Discard those samples and arrange it for saxophones... go to a charity shop and buy some toys to sample. See how beautiful you can make it with a cheap violin you can't even play but can scrape a few samples out of?
@@TheCrowHillCo Ok, thanks. Worth a try.
I have a “vault” of stuff that I created as a kid. Crude, quirky, beyond amateurish. Basically just me playing around at my first keyboard and drum machine….with NO INHIBITIONS! Those cringeworthy “sessions” are the last thing I want other ears listening to. But over the years, they’ve provided me so many creative ideas and jumping-off points. I would go there time and time again to get unstuck…or just to get going. These days, the only issue is that by age 53, my childhood “vault” has pretty much been stripped-mined of ideas. Hah!
That is a gem of a vault! There’s something really liberating about the creativity of children how it’s made without inhibition; it’s really incredible that you’ve managed to capture those, keep them, and use them for inspiration! Hahaha maybe there’s a different vault you can listen to, you must have some gems from your 20’s as well!
@@TheCrowHillCo Ha! Going to college is what essentially put my musical creativity on hold…all the way until I picked up GarageBand in my mid-30s! So yeah, there’s probably some crude stuff from around that time too. Vault #2…thanks for the suggestion!
The garage band archive! That sounds like a well of inspiration! Anytime 😊
👏👏👏
Great advice boys !
Thanks Andy! You gave us some flippin sick advice on the livestream too!
You can overcome writers block by listening to Seth Godin elaborate on what Steven King said. "Writers block doesn't exist"
Trust me , it's a good one!
If you understand the function of the amygdala part of our brains it helps come to terms with how we think creatively and why we self doubt/sabotage on a simple medical level.
Thanks for the recommendation! I’ve screenshotted this and will find the interview! 🙏 thanks for sharing this resource with us!
5 Top Advices To Be a Film, Media Composer or a Writer in the UK.(Nowadays)
1. You need to own a detached home, 2. You need to have a good bank account, 3. You need to have a good knowledge and understand the business, 4. You need to be open for a large amount of patience and understanding of the arts 5. You also must be Organised by schedule and Original with your craft. Ivan Klass
I do what Christian says, I just do something everyday , no matter if I think its good or not, on top of that I play keys and drums at the church, and dont know if you have been to an African American Pentecostal church, I mean we do a lot of improvising, so I do home and listen to what I have done and as well as some of the other musicians, and sometimes I build on that,
It’s that consistent approach! Love that, it’s so much fun improvising with other people and feeling what they do, you must have to almost do crate digging on your own performances every Sunday!
@@TheCrowHillCo We really appreciate the vaults, thank you guys for that
You’re very welcome! And thank you for taking the time to tell us that, it really means a lot to us!
Hi Christian. Great video as always. On a side note, I've seen you throw samples into logic's sampler on some of your videos, but it's not an actual tutorial. However from what i've seen your method is interesting. Would it be possible to do a tutorial video in the future about this topic. One problem though is that I think you use Cubase now, so I understand if it's not possible. Thanks Mas
I write a lot of my music by hand. When dealing with writers block, I’ll transcribe Gregorian chants into modern notation.
There’s a great RUclips channel, GradualeProject, that has beautiful recordings along with the original notation.
If you get writers block, put a radio on in the background very very low. you’ll be surprised what starts to happen!
I’ve never heard this one before! 🤔 will definitely try this one! I like surprises!
@@TheCrowHillCo it’s tapping into the subliminal.
A wise teacher once told me that writer's block just means the technique you have been using isn't working anymore. Same as the deck of card analogy. Develop as many techniques as you can for generating ideas.
It's like being a DJ. You collect all kinds of music for different occasions and learn the art of when the best time to play each one is. Even the biggest hit record can be a disaster if played at the wrong time.
Switch instruments and switch rooms. The idea that we sit in the same room with the same instrument and expect ourselves to come out with something different is just absurd. Even Einstein said that doing the same thing twice and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity. Give yourself a chance to be inspired. If you’re stuck on guitar, move to piano, synth, write a to just a drum beat etc etc. Everyone will always find some sound that sparks their creativity again.
Audio's a little quiet.
I don't believe in writer's block. I've never heard of electrician or plumber's block. It's a job. Get on with it. Change the composition later but get it down.
That’s a great way of putting it! So much of it is getting the tools to get the job done!
In my opinion writer’s block doesn’t mean that you have no ideas and can’t think of anything to write at all, it‘s that you can’t find anything you like or think is good enough to keep as an idea. I guess that happens in every creative job like composing, writing, painting…, your only goal is to create something unique which others should be impressed by, so it makes sense that you may sit in front of a blank page and feel like you can’t come up with anything you think is worth keeping/working on. a mechanic wont think about stuff like this, if the car is repaired, its repaired.
There's no such thing as a writer's block if you have a deadline.
Hmm
Because you don’t write, you record?
Dang Christian, you gad your share or women ,lol, you a breakin up dude, mlol
😂😂 the Casablanca of composers!