How I deal with writers block.

How I deal with writers block.

I often see people asking me how I deal with writers block so figured its easier to post here so everyone can read and hopefully get inspiration to get over this challenging hurdle. Touring life as a DJ is fun, I get to play and see some amazing parties around the world but the downfall is fatigue from the constant long haul flights and late nights that causes havoc on your inspiration and self worth when trying to make music in the studio and this is when the dreaded writers block tends to hit me. On these dark days I can spend hours watching the curser go round in a constant loop in my software having no idea what to do, no vision, no inspiration that triggers those self doubt voices in my head. When this happens I snap myself out of it before it takes me further down that dark path of thinking I’m a worthless producer and start to question if I will ever be able to produce music like my favourite artists and doubt anything and everything about my production career.

I absolutely love my studio and spend most of my time here so its important to ensure that any self doubting doesn’t turn this into a negative place and why I instantly snap myself out of it. When I step into the studio I want the room to feel good and instantly give me a positive feeling that will inspire creativity, It’s so importantly to keep this intact around your workstation zone no matter where it is. There’s many ways I do this from serious to silly fun as per my social post the other day when I was going through dog barking samples making my dog confused and barking back, it instantly turned a stressful moment of writers block into a really fun experience for my room.

As soon as writers block hits me, I completely put aside any expectation of me writing/finishing a track so this instantly takes away any pressure hanging over me and eliminates any negativity, I need to turn this around to be fun and back to being inspirational. Most DAWs (music software) come armed with plenty of plugin synths, drum machines, Fx, tools and 1000’s of samples that we hardly ever touch, I then spend hours digging through those samples and presets that I’ve never touched and discover many awesome sounds. Its amazing how different all these samples sound when you listen to them with different mindset and no pressure of trying to find the perfect sound to slot in the track you’re currently working on after hours of mind numbing flicking through hundreds of sounds/presets only to fail and its these moments that can easily trigger writers block. Instead you listen to each and every sample in a completely different way as you have blank canvas, instead your brain focuses on the design/dynamics of the sample/preset, the roundness, the harshness, slamming tail, short attacking punch and understand their purpose. I then save all these findings in banks of sounds and name them so in the future I know exactly where to look for the type of dynamic sound I’m after. It’s so rewarding and satisfying doing this and brings positive vibes back because I know I’ve made good use of time and this will improve my workflow and save time in future sessions.

I’ll also dig into synthesisers or plugins that I’ve hardly used and have a jamming session, adjusting the parameters to see how much I can dig inside and make my own sounds, for example for years I ignored Logic Pro’s built in ES2 synthesiser, then one day had a tweaking session and realised this synth is one of the most powerful out there and a programmers dream and found 100 wavetables built inside, I use it on almost every track and was rediscovered on one of my tired days, that turned into joy. I love these hunting sessions and keeps me inspired and positive flicking through presets to see what I find, I also go and download demos of synths/fx etc that I’ve heard hype about and really enjoy the experience of clicking round a new ‘toy’.

I’ll also often turn to Youtube, there’s 1000’s of tutorials out there, once finished I’m keen to try out new techniques that I’ve just learned on a blank project, so I’m armed and ready with new tools for when I get producing again.

The main take away from this is keeping your studio/workstation a positive place to be so when you walk in the room you’re ready to create. These are the things/techniques that work for me and keeps my studio having a good ambience filled with good memories of things I’ve achieved, even if it was a day sorting kick samples, it was still a good day and am thankful because along the line when working on a track in the future, I’ll instantly know where to find the perfect kick drum for that track, saving me hours of painful searching.

We all go through it, never doubt yourself. Learning how to produce music is a very long complex process, but well worth it. Never give up.