I'm not sure if this goes here so feel free to move it if necessary Anyway, I've been learning how to produce for a little less than a year now and lately I've been having a lot of trouble coming up with song ideas. I think I know enough about the program I use (reason 5) to make a decent sounding song but I can't think of anything. I usually just end up making a bunch of different synths and bass lines and never use them cause I can't think of any way to put them in a song. It's becoming very frustrating and it definitely hurts my confidence when it comes to producing I have a couple projects I was working on and I pretty much hit a dead end on all of them. I guess what I wanna know is how do you guys find inspiration when stuff like this happens to you? I mainly wanna make electronic music in case anyone was wondering haha and heres the link to my soundcloud if you wanna take a listen to a clip of something I'm currently working on Sam Hernandez_'s sounds on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free I'd really appreciate some tips or motivation or anything that might help me get rid of this "writers block" Thanks
I would work on trying to get a workflow - so if you are better at just messing around with sounds and putting it together then refining, etc. you can just keep trying various progressions with sounds and whatnot until you've got something you like - on the other hand if you're someone who can create cool progressions and sounds in your head then you need to be able to learn how to translate stuff from your head onto paper, with this route you'll probably have to learn some music theory and a bit about how certain sounds are achieved. Use the internet to find how your favorite artists and people you think are doing good stuff get what they get. Try working on structure and then you can expand from that, I know you may not doing pop structured stuff but it's simple to grasp. So create short intros into a verse into a prechorus or chorus then back into the verse into the prechorus or chorus a bridge and then an end chorus. 32 bars on the verse, 32 on the chorus, 16 or 32 on the bridge and 64 bars on the end. There's plenty other combos (32 verse 16 chorus 32 verse 32 chorus 16 bridge 32 chorus, etc), but this will help you start to see stuff in a bit of a different way. You want to then work on the build of this, so the verse is lighter then the chorus stronger (with different progressions but they should tie together), bridge should be a bit different you want the bridge to help give a different view of the song.
Like the other guy said, just gotta figure out your work flow. Some people need to start on different parts of the song than others. If you are only using reason you should find a more dynamic daw for arranging. That should help some with the workflow as well.
Any suggestions on which daw to use? I also have logic but I haven't actually tried to learn it yet. I hear a lot of good things about it though. As far as structuring a song thats also something I need to get used. I'm gonna start taking some music classes next semester that deal with production and music theory so hopefully that helps. Thanks for the replies
1. keep trying new ideas until you finish your WIP 2. keep making bunches of synths and bass lines 3. you eventually make a part you like and like more 4. add more parts and it is your next WIP