Musicians block is the musicians equivalent to writers block and most people who regularly produce their own tracks or write their own songs will suffer with musicians block at some point. So if you are sitting in front of your instrument and/or equipment and no ideas are coming through, these tips and ideas may help to entice out a piece of music instead of forcing out a piece of music.

These ideas include techniques to help you look at your music and the creative process in a different way to what you would normally. Sometimes though the best thing to do is to actually come away and do something which will help to get those musical ideas flowing. This list contains ideas from both of these two different methods of stimulating your creativity…

• Change the outcome of the end result that you are trying to achieve in the track or song you are writing. Most likely you are trying to write “the best song” you can. Change this to write the happiest or saddest song you can. Lower your standards and try to write a bad tune, it may just work for you.
• Play around with your instrument and record yourself at the same time. When you have some spare time go back and listen to yourself playing. You never know you might just hear a musical phrase that you played by accident, but at the time you were playing you may not have even thought about using that phrase. On listening back when you are in a different mood, you will listen to it differently compared to when you actually played it. You can then take that phrase you found and work on it further.

• Write your music with a purpose in mind. For example think of a scene in a film such as a car chase and write a piece of music that you feel would fit well with that scene, pretend that you were asked to write the soundtrack for it. Writing music for an occasion like a wedding could be another idea or for when someone goes up to receive a medal at the olympics. Visualizing a feeling in this way may be of help to you.
• Sometimes the block can be mentally as you may not be challenging yourself enough with your music. You must have been a beginner to writing music at some point, when it was a new experience it must have been challenging because you were doing new things. So maybe you can come overcome musicians block by challenging yourself again. Set yourself new tasks or challenges, for example writing music in a completely different genre to what you are used to could be the challenge to kick start those ideas. If you write lyrics, try using a dictionary and a thesaurus to learn some words you have never heard of before. Find for example 5 words and challenge yourself to write a track incorporating those words into the lyrics.
• Limit the equipment you use to produce your tracks, I did this recently by limiting myself to creating a track using a specified list of equipment and effects and also using recorded samples from my voice only (I usually use a lot of synths). Some of the sounds and ideas wouldn’t have come about had I not limited myself. I wrote a post about this called Do Musicians Use Too Much Equipment. You may just find that you have too many options available to you with the equipment you use and so limiting yourself can let you concentrate on the actual music more. I also found doing this quite fun too and I will be doing it again.
• You often hear motivational experts talking about taking lots of small steps instead of large ones to achieve an ultimate goal. Refocusing your outcomes by concentrating on the percussion or the bassline only may be a way you may find will work for you.
• Remove distractions from your working area. If the distractions are too easy to turn to then your not going to put your full concentration into your music. Remove Playstations and TVs from the room you work in. If you working on a computer uninstall any games that are all too easy to click on or stop your email software from automatically notifying you everytime a email comes in.
• Change the enviroment you work in, move into the attic or the garden shed if you think it could help or make your current enviroment more relaxing. Maybe a better chair is what your looking for. Change your enviroment too by going for a walk, I find some of my better ideas come about whilst I am walking.
• If you use a synthesizer or soft synth, why not sit there messing around with it creating sounds and saving the settings for use later on. Some of your best sounds will come out of your synthesizer when you are messing around with it rather than looking to create a specific sound. Not only will you start creating a big bank of your own sounds, but when it comes to creating your tracks you will find that you have already created the perfect sound your looking for.
• Set up a microphone and record samples for use later on. This works like the synth idea above as you will start creating a big sample collection of your own to call on at a later date. Go round your house finding objects which make sounds that could possibly be used later on. Doing this will allow you to find samples which others won’t have, these sounds could be used in your drum tracks for example or layered with other sounds to make new sounds.
• Listen to new music that you wouldn’t normally listen to. Listen to the structure and the way that musical phrases are strung together. Listen to the production and try to place yourself in the mind of the composer and learn as much as you can from the techniques you can hear. Find music from different countries around the world and borrow ideas that you can incorporate into your own style.
• Remix a track instead of writing your own. You will find that all the ideas of the track are already there, all you have to do is bring your own style to the track. If you can’t find a good track to remix try visiting Reeemix, a web site that we recently featured which contains current remix competitions from around the world. You never know you might win one.
• Go back and redo or remix a track that you have created yourself. You may find that one of the tracks you created a long time ago has some great ideas in there, but you now know how to do things better and so can do a better job. Change a track into a different mood or genre. Do a new mix down for a track as you will have a different set of listening ears compared to when you first mixed it down and improve it.

Hopefully some of these ideas can help you if you are unfortunate enough to be going through a musicians block. You may find some of these ideas are just not for you, everyone is different but you can try them. Its got to be better than sitting around staring into space because no ideas are coming out.

If you have any ideas or techniques you use to stimulate musical creativity tell us in the comments of this post. You may just help out a fellow musicians

Article written by Edward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation.