I think sometimes this is a superpower of having lived through the hardware only days, you realize it's productive to find a few synths you like and concentrate on them simply by experience. Personally it doesn't mean I don't mix it up, or use randomly any number of the dozens and dozens of synths and samplers I own, but I went for years and years using mostly Absynth, Zebra, the Memorymoog, Kontakt, and a few free synths and FX. I could use a few Reaktor instruments alone and be happy.Which brings up an interesting question for ghostwhistler - don't you have favourites, aren't there some synths you just want to use all the time? Instruments you just love the sound of or that are great to work with? I have a handful of synths that I love using and I almost have to force myself to look beyond them sometimes, to the hundred or so other VSTi I have but rarely use. If all I had was Union, Thorn, Olga and bx-oberhausen, plus the stuff in Studio One, I'd be perfectly happy making music for the rest of my days.
My routine with writers block is to go back to research, study how to use your DAW, synth, or just basic songwriting, do the technical annoying work that gets in the way when you don't have writers block. Keeps you doing something creative.I see it more as a lack of commitment from someone who thought it would be easy but is finding out it takes more effort than perhaps he/she is willing to put in. Because if it meant as much to them as it means to you and me, they wouldn't be having these kinds of problems, would they? I had a long period of what you'd call writer's block, probably 6 years or maybe longer, but it never felt to me like it was anything but my own lack of motivation to make it happen. I got it back eventually, it was just one of those things.
I really do not know about the commitment thing, I think you're right to a degree, but some people just think they want to write music, but they don't have any idea how creative ideas happen, and to a degree the fact that writers block happens to people who can write says there's something there that's not really quantifiable, some sort of ability to subjectively focus on randomly filtering all your musical taste into a melody etc. and it's not inherent in everyone, or at least it seams a really buried trait at best in most people.
In other words I heard music in my head that was close to what I ended up writing years before I had the equipment to write. I don't think that's true of everyone, some people are more like sponges that love a certain style of music, but they don't know what they could contribute to it, they just want to. Sometimes the answer is to find a partner that can write, and sometimes it's to realize there are all kinds of things you can do to contribute to music in general besides write, session musician, folly, sound designer, mixer, mastering engineer, manager etc.
I mean I have a musician I've worked with for dozens of years, fantastic drummer, very creative with percussion, but I don't think I've ever heard a single thing he's done on bass that blew me away or did more than fill in a slot in a song already written, he's a great contributor, but not a solid composer of melodies. It's not weird or a failure somehow to know your limitations. I'm certainly not beating him on a live kit, but I would much rather let him help with the arrangements, not the melodic parts.
Statistics: Posted by machinesworking — Wed Apr 17, 2024 2:34 am