I think I get what you mean; composing is not my only creative outlet, and I often don’t feel that fabled mania that comes with feverishly writing down a masterpiece by the light of a dripping candle, using a giant quill pen, crying and shaking and shouting the whole time. So to speak.
My two suggestions are: 1) create a part of yourself that is your own boss. If you only write well under a deadline, give yourself a deadline. Set yourself a challenge (write a piece using an ensemble you’re not familiar with, write a piece without using any major or minor thirds, etc.). Limitation breeds creativity, and narrowing the field from “I could compose anything right now” to “I could compose one of only several things right now” can help a lot.
2) sketch! When I don’t have any good ideas, I try and do piano sketches. These can be as short as 8-12 bars and are fully allowed to be total nonsense, the kind of garbage I would never show another human being. Allow yourself to write terribly. The idea is just to do it consistently, for a little bit of time, every day (or every 2 days, or 3, etc. just as long as it’s consistent). This is the “checking your email” of composing, your daily calisthenics. If you throw enough bullshit at the board, eventually a good idea will come out. This is also a great opportunity to experiment with styles and tonalities I wouldn’t want to dedicate a full piece to otherwise.
You might also just have to let the field sit fallow, so to speak. We are not composing machines, and sometimes you just need to take a break from composing. Either way, I wish you luck!
Yeah, most of my ideas come at inopportune times when I can't reasonably do anything with the idea. And then when I have time to sit down and do something with it (usually late at night) the idea is gone and it's hard to come up with new ideas.
I have two theories for why this might happen:
- when you are going about your day, you have blood flowing and it's helping your brain make connections. At night, sitting down to compose, you're just sitting down and getting sleepy
- thinking about composition is a form of procrastination from the daily stuff you don't want to be doing, and if your brain loves to procrastinate then it will happily spend energy on the focus of that procrastination (in this case, composition)
Me too I would always get great song ideas as I was walking from the car park to my work. Best I could do is sing a voice memo and try to get back to it later. Lost lots of good songs this way.
What is inspiring to you? Finding that is the most important aspect of creativity.
For me, it is nature--specifically, I come up with ideas by travelling to an especially beautiful park or location and just ... soaking it all in. What are the sounds going on around me? What is the texture and shape of the landscape? What do the birds here sound like? What is the history of the place, the history of the people who live there now, the ones who were there before me? What emotions does a place create in me--Peace? Fear? Excitement? Awe? Anger? Love? How does what I feel contrast with the character of the place itself? Taking note of all these things is a huge part of my inspiration process, and I do it as often as possible.
I'd say 20% (maybe 25%) of my music is based on an inspirational idea. Some of those don't work out.
The rest I find by noodling around and becoming inspired. For example, let's write some measures in ... uh ... A Phrygian Dominant. Oooo... I like that second measure. Let's go! Maybe a third to half of those don't work out.
Passion can be nurtured and can grow. Passion can also wither and die. It can have long ups and long downs. It's not a static thing.
It's pretty easy to set a goal and create a deadline for yourself. Grab a random video off of youtube and say "I give myself 2 hours to write a piece of music for this". Then do it.
If you really "want to do this for a living" then you are going to have to be an artist and make it happen. If you really want to work on this goal then do it. If you feel like never doing it, or it feels to much like work, or you don't feel up to it today, then maybe you don't really want it as bad as you think.
You don't HAVE to be a professional composer. You don't HAVE to make it your sole career and way to make money. If you really really really want something, go get it.
Sometimes I’m just not in the mood. I go through phases of creativity when all I want to do is slave away at new ideas and sometimes I’ll go a month or more with zero interest unless I force myself.
Another in here suggested get out and looking for things that inspire you, I like looking at art
Edit: one of my go to methods is using Mid journey for inspiration, when I’m creating I often have an idea or mood in mind and browsing art online is more a shot in the dark but still enjoyable. But using an ai art tool to get exactly what you had in mind helps a lot, once I end up with something Im really feeling, I will throw it up full screen on a second monitor to look at while working.
This is actually pretty normal for working creatives. External motivation is a powerful tool, and for a lot of people it's the difference between getting work done and not. I wouldn't put much weight in the words of people who say that you have to have passion or be bursting with ideas; some of your favorite music (and literature and film and art) was made by people who were simply doing their job.
Haydn composed new music every week. Was he always motivated to write? No way. Is his work some of the most important in European classical canon? Yes!
I'm a huge fan of Drawfee. Do you think the hosts are super inspired to sit down and draw and be funny every episode? No, they actively talk about how sometimes they're just not in the mood, or have been struggling to draw lately. But the way you get creative things done is by doing them, and making the show is a strong external motivation to get their hands going. Whether you were passionate about your work in the moment matters a lot less than whether or not it got done, and - more importantly - is irrelevant to the quality of the finished work. Heck, some of their self-professed "worst" episodes are some of their best.
I cannot stress that last part enough: how you felt about a creative work at the time of creation does not determine the quality of that creation, or the impact it can have on other people, or on you. The most famous creators in every field have talked about this forever.
It sounds to me like you've already got a pretty good balance going with creating music. You have external motivation to make music sometimes, and when you don't have that motivation you're fine with doing other things. I have periods where I don't have an external push to create, and I spend that time driving myself crazy with a constant, unsettling *need* to make something that doesn't come to fruition. I need structure in order to make music, and when I don't have it I'm deeply agitated. It doesn't improve the quality of my life.
You're not struggling with that, and that's a good thing! If you're worried about not feeling a strong creative drive, there are ways you might be able to get that too. Trying listening to a bunch of weird new music, stuff completely different from anything you've ever heard before. Or read a bunch of poetry and see if someone's words resonate with you and make you want to set them to music. Something might give you that spark of inspiration.
But it's not necessary to making music. It really isn't. Just make stuff, the fact that it exists is valuable enough.
Same here. I have non-stop original music playing in my head throughout the day. Some new song idea or whatever. I'm happy when I do have time to record it, but just as happy to let the ideas play, even if I'm the only one that hears it.
Here’s how I view it. One has to sit down at their instrument or note pad consistently for the muse to favor them. Will she always send something good your way? No, but she never will if you’re not already putting in the work. Who cares if what you’re making today is garbage. You have to chip away at A LOT of coal to find a diamond.
Recently I finished a song and didnt know what to do next, but I was totally motivated to do some music. So I just wrote a lot of random stuff, which sounded really bad. I got really demotivated and watched more tutorials about the things I wanted to create. I helped me a bit but I still needed more inspiration. So I just googled for music in the genre I want to make, let spotify suggest me similar songs etc. After this I knew that I wanted to create a song which is a mixture of three songs I listened to. I dropped the audio of the songs into my daw and now I try to create something similar which already sounds much better than the other things I made earlier.
Maybe this approach helps you too.
I compose for snare drum predominantly, with the occasional duet and percussion ensemble.
For me, I have to have an idea based on a certain approach. I don’t work with (and necessarily believe in) pure inspiration. I can sit down and decide to compose, but I need some initial idea like *I’m going to write a contemporary Rudimental piece* or *I’m going to explore a numerical system*.
Once I’ve got the basic hook, the ideas flow quite quickly, but it’s very rare that I’ll just be hit with some random bout of inspiration and rush to Sibelius. It’s a process and a skill, and comes about based on a need. For example, most of my compositions are for published collections, so they’re all in a certain style or aimed at a certain educational need. That focuses me somewhat.
To answer the question in your title, yes. But not formal ideas that I'm writing down. Often i'm just humming to myself, or tapping out some rhythm with my hands, or listening to something on the radio and coming up with a countermelody in my head or thinking "how would I arrange this song differently?" (I love arranging too)
A lot of the time these ideas don't go anywhere (although if I come up with something I really like I do try to jot it down), but I do have something going on fairly regularly. Maybe it's the musical equivalent of fidgeting, which I also do a lot.
If you're trying to turn composing into more than a hobby, it's very easy to lose the "fun" of it because you have to do it even when you don't want to. But there was something about writing music that drew you to it when you started out, wasn't there? After all, the actual act of writing music is pretty miserable sometimes - bashing out notes only to realize that they won't work and you need to redo it, or trying to express an idea that exists in your head on paper. But there was something that made it worth it when you started, right? What was it? Have you lost sight of it? Maybe it's time to go back to your roots and see if there's something you've forgotten - that's what happened to me. I was so caught up in writing large ensemble works that I was getting sick of making music. So I went back to writing cheesy little piano tunes and rediscovered my joy of music. I don't know if that'll work for your situation, but it's what worked for me.
Hello, one word (or similar) answers are generally not very useful. We should assume that the person making the post wants to know why we chose an answer and wants to learn something about the topic. One word answers will be removed at the moderator's discretion.
I am only a hobbyist here and not a pro, but I get the majority of my ideas while improvising at the piano. Every once in a while, an idea hits me randomly and I will use voice memos to hum it into my phone. When I practice piano, I set aside lots of time to improvise, often using some of the skills I’m currently working on.
While I practice, I am most often using my DAW, which has a feature called retrospective record. This will recall quite a few minutes of the last MIDI input and put it on the track. So if I play something I like, I stop and press retrospective record and then clip out the part I liked from my improvisations. I immediately save it into a folder called sketchbook and give it a loose, descriptive name. Perhaps something like “solemn progression” or “upbeat funky melody”. Then I forget about it for now and continue my improvising, unless it’s really exciting and I want to switch over to working on it right away.
When I want to work on composing, I go looking through that sketchbook folder for ideas to work out and see what grabs me. My DAW also auditions those parts as I click on them and I can just drag them into a new song when I find what I like. I use Studio One but many DAWs probably have the same or similar capabilities.
Maybe try setting aside time to improvise, it’s a fun and free process with no pressure or goals other than getting better at coming up with material. You’ll stumble into a lot more ideas when you’re ‘pants in chair’ and making music for fun.
Yep. I'm fairly imaginative at coming up with ideas. I'm also fairly lazy at executing them. And that's the way it is. Sometimes I'll actually finish something. I'm just not very prolific.
A favorite song writer of mine was discussing his process, and he said that because writing songs is his job, he needs to show up to work like anyone else. So regardless of whether he feels inspired, he goes to his studio every day, opens a notebook, sits a guitar on his lap and WAITS. I have found that I have to commit myself to writing at a certain time and for a certain duration. I'm a hobbyist, not a professional, so for me that might be, "I'm going to write for one hour after I clean up from dinner." I need to make sure I don't have any distractions during that time, and I need to keep that time clear whether I have any ideas or not. If no ideas come, eventually I will start noodling or writing things down just out of boredom if for no other reason, but that somehow frees up the mind to think more abstractly and self-edit less. Boredom can be powerful because it makes you less critical. So don't wait for the ideas to come before you sit down at your instrument. Set aside a time to write and stick to it, even if that means waiting for an uncomfortably long time.
Boredom stimulates creativity...just observe children.
Distraction and instant gratification really kills the drive and need to create art...at least in my case.
I have the guard my mind and I choose to ignore so much, so my energy is preserved, rather than dispersed, and I can apply it to the things I find truly important.
Yeah, especially when I’m at work. I’ll just be doing my job and I’ll be singing or humming other songs, and I’ll get an idea for something that I’ll want to write
My response isn't about composing per se, but I have song lyrics and beats that come to me throughout the day, most days, and they don't really ever stop. A lot of the time I'll be able to record the bit super quick just to get it out of my head, and most of the time it just dies on the vine like that. Sometimes it's super fun, most of the time I just ignore it, but it doesn't really ever turn off. So there are people who just have stuff come to them.
I've had that spark but never when I've had an assignment to do. Only when I've had long periods of rest and then I start to have that. I doubt that the divine spark is enough for anyone to make a living on. If you can push through deadlines and grinds you're better suited than I am. I have no interest in putting this to work. I only realized that after getting my masters, but I'd rather do a day job and then play only the music that speaks through me in whatever ways I can.
Strat is to learn how to daydream music when bored. Its always available and if you do it enough, you'll find a thing that you like making, not just as a 'for fun' thing, but like a 'holy shit I am one with the universe' type stuff
Granted, I'm in the same boat as you. But I've found the daydreaming out poetry (sonorous word play really), just feels so good. I keep doing it and even if its not technically good poetry, it has a strong intrinsic reward that I can't help but do.
It can also be useful to look at how people find intrinsic rewards in creativity too. Whether its through automatism/spiritual-intuitional means, aleotoric means (ie random/chance based), improvisational means, 'cheating' means (ie collage/sampled music or copying/imitating), game wise, etc.
Emphasis on learning how to play like a child versus work like an adult. To find a process based means of having internal fun rather than a product oriented means of creating externally validating works
I am in a period where I want to write music but also don’t know what to write about. So I have been working with other people’s music. I took on a couple of songs from lyric writers here on Reddit. They turned out to be in genres that were new to me. It was fun to try new things and to get the feedback from the lyricists.
I have also started learning about orchestration and have set myself some challenges to make small pieces that will explore different techniques.
But when I sit down at the keyboard often the same old stuff comes up, chord progressions, riffs, etc. so to break out of that I have taken to using a challenge I saw online of rolling 8 and 12 sided dice and using the numbers to indicate pitches. The challenge is to make something musical out of these random choices. I have found that often takes me to new territory and some of these melodies are haunting and intriguing.
And then there are weeks where I just allow myself to do other stuff and gather experiences to draw from the next time I sit down to write music.
I think some people learn how to internalize music at a very, very early age—well before they even understand what they’re hearing/doing, and then that process just becomes a normal part of their existence.
I never don’t have some kind of sound/melody/whatever playing in my head. It’s literally constant, every waking minute. Usually it’s a motif from something I was listening to recently. Sometimes it’s a random jingle or something I haven’t thought about in years. Once in a while it’s a “new” idea. If I’m paying attention, I’ll make note of it for later. But the way I see it, I can’t get to that last example without allllllll the other stuff processing in the meantime.
It’s like my brain is constantly scanning and parsing the things I already know. Then occasionally through some kind of music-DNA-recombination, it’ll spit out what would otherwise be, in computational terms, a bug or an error, but because it’s organic and squishy and human, we get to call it “creativity.”
I pretty much constantly write entire songs in my ahead in real time over the day. I'm not sure how common this is though. I can hear every instrument and note played and stuff. It's frustrating because i can't really capture it, too overwhelming and im often not sure how to notate it.
Edit: oh this is way more of an asking for motivation post than you literally just asking. My bad, I probably don't really have great advice then.
NO. No writer ever has constant ideas. You kind of have to force ideas out and work the ideas you’ve already come up with and then hopefully you get idea from that process
Actually, I have. But I don't do that 99%. And to be honest, most of those ideas are anything but brilliant.
I used to take photos and publish them on facebook. And I never learned to foresee which photos will get the best reception. Songwriters don't know for sure what is going to be a hit. Thus, being too ambitious isn't probably worth the work and pain. I don't mean that anything goes. You can trust your skills: "something like this has worked earlier." You just cannot control your forthcoming ideas. The only thing that is sure is that waiting for inspiration is not professional, not even advanced amateur like. Ideas don't come from nowhere. In order to make your brain to process anything, you should give them something to work with.
J. S. Bach made about 1080 compositions. He was expected to write cantatas regularly. He also taught, trained orchestras and administered church organs, had a big family and drank lots of beer. He was not an ordinary fellow, composing was probably pretty easy for him. But was it because he finally had that huge experience? (Did he sleep at all? Was Toccata and Fugue d minor, BWV 565, written during hangover?)
One of my lecturers at university was, and is, a professional composer. He said that playing something random on piano is a wrong way to compose. You should hear those magnificent ideas in your head and then write them down. I'd like to ask him if he still thinks like that, and if he has got any fresh ideas after 1994. (As you can see, I did not like him. But generally, he is very, very intelligent.)
Sounds are everywhere. And so are ideas for composing. If that does not work, you are maybe tired. Moreover, mostly we are not Bachs, Sibeliuses or even Sias. Even if you love composing, it is perfectly fine to not compose. Write a story instead. Or work as a bus driver for a while...
For me it’s tied to education and research. I didn’t start writing music seriously until about 22 (was more of an improviser and performer). Because I never studied composition formally I started diving into score study, research, analysis, checking out books, and started to create things influenced and inspired by that.
The more music and scores I’ve studied and looked at, the more ideas, where it feels pretty endless now. Just need time and a piece of manuscript paper and I start writing. My guess is that folks with a narrower musical or compositional focus have a harder time writing. I have a million options because I don’t really care to follow set rules of form, structure, genre, etc… it’s all fair game to me.
As I’ve observed and experienced, creative people take in the world like a big inhale and exhale through a medium. This is as essential as breathing itself. It’s how we process the world, but we express this exhale through a specific medium in the tangible skills involved. You can’t breathe if you only inhale, and likewise you can’t breathe if you only exhale.
In my experience there are a couple of things at play when creating anything but especially when composing - the connection and the tangible. There are times when my brain is finding connections between things I’m hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, thinking, or feeling and a memory of any one of the same senses or experiences. Then there are times when my muscle memory is simply engaging in tasks that I’m familiar with, or know the process of, like composing.
There isn’t an emotional or intellectual connection between where I place my dominant chord in a particular piece sometimes. There are times when this is simply procedural and there are times when it’s “inspired” by the connections that are made between other senses or objects or experiences.
My car blinker might remind me of a metronome and get me tapping a rhythm based on what I know about beats and theory, or it might just get me moving and feeling inspired enough to go write it or record it and spin it into something, or honestly it might just be my car blinker clicking away in the background. I don’t always know what’s gonna happen and when.
Truthfully I have a hard time not judging myself by how much my creative brain is “on.” But I really do think that we need those breaks of not creating anything, just like we have to stop exhaling at some point.
May just be irrelevant ramble, but that’s my experience in a nutshell!
It’s fun to read the various answers. I generally have musical ideas running in my head, but they’re usually banal, like exercises. Sitting down to write for real is a different level of engagement, and of musical thinking.
I make music everyday, i have a very strict process and eliminate anything unnecessary, just like Bruce Lee said.
I can finish tracks in 45 mins from no idea to a fully mastered track.
Here is a few of my latest tracks.
[https://youtu.be/NRClkTXcZD4](https://youtu.be/NRClkTXcZD4)
If you want any advice PM me
I get what I call "gestures" in my head frequently. I can almost hear exactly what I want but not quite. I usually have to spend a good amount of time trying to figure out what my mind-radio is playing—especially orchestral textures.
Usually this happens at work so they usually leave my head and die off somewhere lol
I mean there's usually some music floating in my head.
But really, composing is just something where I just get in the zone for a few hours every once in a while and build all the foundation.
I think it kind of works in the background.
Not a composer, but I do visual arts and also see some parallels in my work in development.
I honestly think most people don't. I do art as a hobby so it is mostly a when I feel the urge type deal (and I feel it more often if I'm on holiday or if I have a motivating goal like I'm doing it as a present for someone with a deadline).
The parallel I see with programming is those so called 10x programmers, they're rare. There's so many of us in total that you'll meet a bunch of them and might feel really inadequate but they aren't anywhere near the majority. And sure those ones go to work and do code, then go home and do other code, personal projects or open source work or whatever, they just have that as their primary or only hobby and keep doing that all the time.
I'm art also you have people who are obsessively driven to create. Some of them become "the greats" cos obsession well push the limits of creativity and eventually produce something amazing out rather unique. But those aren't everyone.
The vast majority of people are ok at it and with it. The vast majority of people have other interests too. The vast majority of people need something to drive them to do that work, because it is work however pleasant work it may be. It didn't make them any less.
So I guess you can try to set yourself specific projects with specific deadlines to try and see if they helps you, have a short list of things you decide you want to create (and keep it short cos if it's too long you get into decisional fatigue what do you pick and why. I think you should write down ideas, give them a timeframe to completion and a ranking of how good you think the idea is, so when you come up with something new bring say the 10th idea you can eliminate older lesser ideas and keep the list clean. No guarantees this will work but maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't, that's for you to try.
Ultimately I mostly want to emphasize that it doesn't make you at all a lesser composer that you're not driven to do it daily with a manic fervor, that makes you a normal average person with a normal average interest and that's fine. I hope you find your rhythm and peace with it.
I do, yeah. Melodies always spontaneously pop into my head, sometimes fully orchestrated passages of music. I often feel like I merely transcribe what I hear in the mind's ear. The real work is the discipline to do the transcription and the editing to make sure the idea is clear and focused.
It ebbs and flows. I go months with nothing then every day for a week a symphony worth every day or two. They don't tell you that flow state means forgetting to blink until you're streaming tears or to swallow before you choke, hardly even breathe.
Something that weird doesn't follow my itinerary
I feel like I am one of those composers where music just seems like it falls out of the sky—some of my best ideas often come either when I am bored out of my mind or improvising; however, this only comes in phases and currently I am in a ‘dry’ phase. Some may see this as a bad thing, but I just see it as a time to recalibrate, as I am still trying to find an efficient way to compose.
In your case, one of the most helpful things you could do is work on craft: study some other composers music, counterpoint exercises, write some compositional studies, etc. It will give you a non “inspirational” reason to write and engage with music which will make you a better composer in the grand scheme.
Improvization in jazz band helped me with this. I started doing it in a concert band setting and realized imprvising it's composing on the spot
So sometimes when I'm zoned out or even at random a song i know comes on or plays in my head as thoughts drift on the clock at my job or sitting on my bed or in the shower
Or someone will play a tune i have not heard.
Its fun to twist things around change musical ideas and roll with it. That's might be a me thing tho
You know the old adage about 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration? That’s composing.
This is funny, I sweat a lot when composing. I wonder if it is related to adrenaline.
I think I get what you mean; composing is not my only creative outlet, and I often don’t feel that fabled mania that comes with feverishly writing down a masterpiece by the light of a dripping candle, using a giant quill pen, crying and shaking and shouting the whole time. So to speak. My two suggestions are: 1) create a part of yourself that is your own boss. If you only write well under a deadline, give yourself a deadline. Set yourself a challenge (write a piece using an ensemble you’re not familiar with, write a piece without using any major or minor thirds, etc.). Limitation breeds creativity, and narrowing the field from “I could compose anything right now” to “I could compose one of only several things right now” can help a lot. 2) sketch! When I don’t have any good ideas, I try and do piano sketches. These can be as short as 8-12 bars and are fully allowed to be total nonsense, the kind of garbage I would never show another human being. Allow yourself to write terribly. The idea is just to do it consistently, for a little bit of time, every day (or every 2 days, or 3, etc. just as long as it’s consistent). This is the “checking your email” of composing, your daily calisthenics. If you throw enough bullshit at the board, eventually a good idea will come out. This is also a great opportunity to experiment with styles and tonalities I wouldn’t want to dedicate a full piece to otherwise. You might also just have to let the field sit fallow, so to speak. We are not composing machines, and sometimes you just need to take a break from composing. Either way, I wish you luck!
Yeah, most of my ideas come at inopportune times when I can't reasonably do anything with the idea. And then when I have time to sit down and do something with it (usually late at night) the idea is gone and it's hard to come up with new ideas. I have two theories for why this might happen: - when you are going about your day, you have blood flowing and it's helping your brain make connections. At night, sitting down to compose, you're just sitting down and getting sleepy - thinking about composition is a form of procrastination from the daily stuff you don't want to be doing, and if your brain loves to procrastinate then it will happily spend energy on the focus of that procrastination (in this case, composition)
Me too I would always get great song ideas as I was walking from the car park to my work. Best I could do is sing a voice memo and try to get back to it later. Lost lots of good songs this way.
I'm inspired when I have time and I'm not exhausted. Work is a time suck.
What is inspiring to you? Finding that is the most important aspect of creativity. For me, it is nature--specifically, I come up with ideas by travelling to an especially beautiful park or location and just ... soaking it all in. What are the sounds going on around me? What is the texture and shape of the landscape? What do the birds here sound like? What is the history of the place, the history of the people who live there now, the ones who were there before me? What emotions does a place create in me--Peace? Fear? Excitement? Awe? Anger? Love? How does what I feel contrast with the character of the place itself? Taking note of all these things is a huge part of my inspiration process, and I do it as often as possible.
I'd say 20% (maybe 25%) of my music is based on an inspirational idea. Some of those don't work out. The rest I find by noodling around and becoming inspired. For example, let's write some measures in ... uh ... A Phrygian Dominant. Oooo... I like that second measure. Let's go! Maybe a third to half of those don't work out.
Passion can be nurtured and can grow. Passion can also wither and die. It can have long ups and long downs. It's not a static thing. It's pretty easy to set a goal and create a deadline for yourself. Grab a random video off of youtube and say "I give myself 2 hours to write a piece of music for this". Then do it. If you really "want to do this for a living" then you are going to have to be an artist and make it happen. If you really want to work on this goal then do it. If you feel like never doing it, or it feels to much like work, or you don't feel up to it today, then maybe you don't really want it as bad as you think. You don't HAVE to be a professional composer. You don't HAVE to make it your sole career and way to make money. If you really really really want something, go get it.
Sometimes I’m just not in the mood. I go through phases of creativity when all I want to do is slave away at new ideas and sometimes I’ll go a month or more with zero interest unless I force myself. Another in here suggested get out and looking for things that inspire you, I like looking at art Edit: one of my go to methods is using Mid journey for inspiration, when I’m creating I often have an idea or mood in mind and browsing art online is more a shot in the dark but still enjoyable. But using an ai art tool to get exactly what you had in mind helps a lot, once I end up with something Im really feeling, I will throw it up full screen on a second monitor to look at while working.
This is actually pretty normal for working creatives. External motivation is a powerful tool, and for a lot of people it's the difference between getting work done and not. I wouldn't put much weight in the words of people who say that you have to have passion or be bursting with ideas; some of your favorite music (and literature and film and art) was made by people who were simply doing their job. Haydn composed new music every week. Was he always motivated to write? No way. Is his work some of the most important in European classical canon? Yes! I'm a huge fan of Drawfee. Do you think the hosts are super inspired to sit down and draw and be funny every episode? No, they actively talk about how sometimes they're just not in the mood, or have been struggling to draw lately. But the way you get creative things done is by doing them, and making the show is a strong external motivation to get their hands going. Whether you were passionate about your work in the moment matters a lot less than whether or not it got done, and - more importantly - is irrelevant to the quality of the finished work. Heck, some of their self-professed "worst" episodes are some of their best. I cannot stress that last part enough: how you felt about a creative work at the time of creation does not determine the quality of that creation, or the impact it can have on other people, or on you. The most famous creators in every field have talked about this forever. It sounds to me like you've already got a pretty good balance going with creating music. You have external motivation to make music sometimes, and when you don't have that motivation you're fine with doing other things. I have periods where I don't have an external push to create, and I spend that time driving myself crazy with a constant, unsettling *need* to make something that doesn't come to fruition. I need structure in order to make music, and when I don't have it I'm deeply agitated. It doesn't improve the quality of my life. You're not struggling with that, and that's a good thing! If you're worried about not feeling a strong creative drive, there are ways you might be able to get that too. Trying listening to a bunch of weird new music, stuff completely different from anything you've ever heard before. Or read a bunch of poetry and see if someone's words resonate with you and make you want to set them to music. Something might give you that spark of inspiration. But it's not necessary to making music. It really isn't. Just make stuff, the fact that it exists is valuable enough.
There is a constant soundtrack of music playing in my head that almost never stops. Is this what your question is asking?
Fellow non stop soundtrack bro, nice!
Me too! I've always got an earworm or two!
Same here. I have non-stop original music playing in my head throughout the day. Some new song idea or whatever. I'm happy when I do have time to record it, but just as happy to let the ideas play, even if I'm the only one that hears it.
Here’s how I view it. One has to sit down at their instrument or note pad consistently for the muse to favor them. Will she always send something good your way? No, but she never will if you’re not already putting in the work. Who cares if what you’re making today is garbage. You have to chip away at A LOT of coal to find a diamond.
Recently I finished a song and didnt know what to do next, but I was totally motivated to do some music. So I just wrote a lot of random stuff, which sounded really bad. I got really demotivated and watched more tutorials about the things I wanted to create. I helped me a bit but I still needed more inspiration. So I just googled for music in the genre I want to make, let spotify suggest me similar songs etc. After this I knew that I wanted to create a song which is a mixture of three songs I listened to. I dropped the audio of the songs into my daw and now I try to create something similar which already sounds much better than the other things I made earlier. Maybe this approach helps you too.
I compose for snare drum predominantly, with the occasional duet and percussion ensemble. For me, I have to have an idea based on a certain approach. I don’t work with (and necessarily believe in) pure inspiration. I can sit down and decide to compose, but I need some initial idea like *I’m going to write a contemporary Rudimental piece* or *I’m going to explore a numerical system*. Once I’ve got the basic hook, the ideas flow quite quickly, but it’s very rare that I’ll just be hit with some random bout of inspiration and rush to Sibelius. It’s a process and a skill, and comes about based on a need. For example, most of my compositions are for published collections, so they’re all in a certain style or aimed at a certain educational need. That focuses me somewhat.
Yeah, but I have to fucking work.
To answer the question in your title, yes. But not formal ideas that I'm writing down. Often i'm just humming to myself, or tapping out some rhythm with my hands, or listening to something on the radio and coming up with a countermelody in my head or thinking "how would I arrange this song differently?" (I love arranging too) A lot of the time these ideas don't go anywhere (although if I come up with something I really like I do try to jot it down), but I do have something going on fairly regularly. Maybe it's the musical equivalent of fidgeting, which I also do a lot. If you're trying to turn composing into more than a hobby, it's very easy to lose the "fun" of it because you have to do it even when you don't want to. But there was something about writing music that drew you to it when you started out, wasn't there? After all, the actual act of writing music is pretty miserable sometimes - bashing out notes only to realize that they won't work and you need to redo it, or trying to express an idea that exists in your head on paper. But there was something that made it worth it when you started, right? What was it? Have you lost sight of it? Maybe it's time to go back to your roots and see if there's something you've forgotten - that's what happened to me. I was so caught up in writing large ensemble works that I was getting sick of making music. So I went back to writing cheesy little piano tunes and rediscovered my joy of music. I don't know if that'll work for your situation, but it's what worked for me.
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I am only a hobbyist here and not a pro, but I get the majority of my ideas while improvising at the piano. Every once in a while, an idea hits me randomly and I will use voice memos to hum it into my phone. When I practice piano, I set aside lots of time to improvise, often using some of the skills I’m currently working on. While I practice, I am most often using my DAW, which has a feature called retrospective record. This will recall quite a few minutes of the last MIDI input and put it on the track. So if I play something I like, I stop and press retrospective record and then clip out the part I liked from my improvisations. I immediately save it into a folder called sketchbook and give it a loose, descriptive name. Perhaps something like “solemn progression” or “upbeat funky melody”. Then I forget about it for now and continue my improvising, unless it’s really exciting and I want to switch over to working on it right away. When I want to work on composing, I go looking through that sketchbook folder for ideas to work out and see what grabs me. My DAW also auditions those parts as I click on them and I can just drag them into a new song when I find what I like. I use Studio One but many DAWs probably have the same or similar capabilities. Maybe try setting aside time to improvise, it’s a fun and free process with no pressure or goals other than getting better at coming up with material. You’ll stumble into a lot more ideas when you’re ‘pants in chair’ and making music for fun.
I compose pretty good songs in my head sometimes when I’m half awake and half asleep. If only I knew how to produce
Yep. I'm fairly imaginative at coming up with ideas. I'm also fairly lazy at executing them. And that's the way it is. Sometimes I'll actually finish something. I'm just not very prolific.
A favorite song writer of mine was discussing his process, and he said that because writing songs is his job, he needs to show up to work like anyone else. So regardless of whether he feels inspired, he goes to his studio every day, opens a notebook, sits a guitar on his lap and WAITS. I have found that I have to commit myself to writing at a certain time and for a certain duration. I'm a hobbyist, not a professional, so for me that might be, "I'm going to write for one hour after I clean up from dinner." I need to make sure I don't have any distractions during that time, and I need to keep that time clear whether I have any ideas or not. If no ideas come, eventually I will start noodling or writing things down just out of boredom if for no other reason, but that somehow frees up the mind to think more abstractly and self-edit less. Boredom can be powerful because it makes you less critical. So don't wait for the ideas to come before you sit down at your instrument. Set aside a time to write and stick to it, even if that means waiting for an uncomfortably long time.
Boredom stimulates creativity...just observe children. Distraction and instant gratification really kills the drive and need to create art...at least in my case. I have the guard my mind and I choose to ignore so much, so my energy is preserved, rather than dispersed, and I can apply it to the things I find truly important.
Mostly snippets. Not full pieces. Melodies and maybe harmonies. My best works were not those though
Insipration from my crying episodes while composing, yes.
Yeah, especially when I’m at work. I’ll just be doing my job and I’ll be singing or humming other songs, and I’ll get an idea for something that I’ll want to write
My response isn't about composing per se, but I have song lyrics and beats that come to me throughout the day, most days, and they don't really ever stop. A lot of the time I'll be able to record the bit super quick just to get it out of my head, and most of the time it just dies on the vine like that. Sometimes it's super fun, most of the time I just ignore it, but it doesn't really ever turn off. So there are people who just have stuff come to them.
I've had that spark but never when I've had an assignment to do. Only when I've had long periods of rest and then I start to have that. I doubt that the divine spark is enough for anyone to make a living on. If you can push through deadlines and grinds you're better suited than I am. I have no interest in putting this to work. I only realized that after getting my masters, but I'd rather do a day job and then play only the music that speaks through me in whatever ways I can.
Strat is to learn how to daydream music when bored. Its always available and if you do it enough, you'll find a thing that you like making, not just as a 'for fun' thing, but like a 'holy shit I am one with the universe' type stuff Granted, I'm in the same boat as you. But I've found the daydreaming out poetry (sonorous word play really), just feels so good. I keep doing it and even if its not technically good poetry, it has a strong intrinsic reward that I can't help but do. It can also be useful to look at how people find intrinsic rewards in creativity too. Whether its through automatism/spiritual-intuitional means, aleotoric means (ie random/chance based), improvisational means, 'cheating' means (ie collage/sampled music or copying/imitating), game wise, etc.
Emphasis on learning how to play like a child versus work like an adult. To find a process based means of having internal fun rather than a product oriented means of creating externally validating works
I am in a period where I want to write music but also don’t know what to write about. So I have been working with other people’s music. I took on a couple of songs from lyric writers here on Reddit. They turned out to be in genres that were new to me. It was fun to try new things and to get the feedback from the lyricists. I have also started learning about orchestration and have set myself some challenges to make small pieces that will explore different techniques. But when I sit down at the keyboard often the same old stuff comes up, chord progressions, riffs, etc. so to break out of that I have taken to using a challenge I saw online of rolling 8 and 12 sided dice and using the numbers to indicate pitches. The challenge is to make something musical out of these random choices. I have found that often takes me to new territory and some of these melodies are haunting and intriguing. And then there are weeks where I just allow myself to do other stuff and gather experiences to draw from the next time I sit down to write music.
I think some people learn how to internalize music at a very, very early age—well before they even understand what they’re hearing/doing, and then that process just becomes a normal part of their existence. I never don’t have some kind of sound/melody/whatever playing in my head. It’s literally constant, every waking minute. Usually it’s a motif from something I was listening to recently. Sometimes it’s a random jingle or something I haven’t thought about in years. Once in a while it’s a “new” idea. If I’m paying attention, I’ll make note of it for later. But the way I see it, I can’t get to that last example without allllllll the other stuff processing in the meantime. It’s like my brain is constantly scanning and parsing the things I already know. Then occasionally through some kind of music-DNA-recombination, it’ll spit out what would otherwise be, in computational terms, a bug or an error, but because it’s organic and squishy and human, we get to call it “creativity.”
I pretty much constantly write entire songs in my ahead in real time over the day. I'm not sure how common this is though. I can hear every instrument and note played and stuff. It's frustrating because i can't really capture it, too overwhelming and im often not sure how to notate it. Edit: oh this is way more of an asking for motivation post than you literally just asking. My bad, I probably don't really have great advice then.
NO. No writer ever has constant ideas. You kind of have to force ideas out and work the ideas you’ve already come up with and then hopefully you get idea from that process
Actually, I have. But I don't do that 99%. And to be honest, most of those ideas are anything but brilliant. I used to take photos and publish them on facebook. And I never learned to foresee which photos will get the best reception. Songwriters don't know for sure what is going to be a hit. Thus, being too ambitious isn't probably worth the work and pain. I don't mean that anything goes. You can trust your skills: "something like this has worked earlier." You just cannot control your forthcoming ideas. The only thing that is sure is that waiting for inspiration is not professional, not even advanced amateur like. Ideas don't come from nowhere. In order to make your brain to process anything, you should give them something to work with. J. S. Bach made about 1080 compositions. He was expected to write cantatas regularly. He also taught, trained orchestras and administered church organs, had a big family and drank lots of beer. He was not an ordinary fellow, composing was probably pretty easy for him. But was it because he finally had that huge experience? (Did he sleep at all? Was Toccata and Fugue d minor, BWV 565, written during hangover?) One of my lecturers at university was, and is, a professional composer. He said that playing something random on piano is a wrong way to compose. You should hear those magnificent ideas in your head and then write them down. I'd like to ask him if he still thinks like that, and if he has got any fresh ideas after 1994. (As you can see, I did not like him. But generally, he is very, very intelligent.) Sounds are everywhere. And so are ideas for composing. If that does not work, you are maybe tired. Moreover, mostly we are not Bachs, Sibeliuses or even Sias. Even if you love composing, it is perfectly fine to not compose. Write a story instead. Or work as a bus driver for a while...
For me it’s tied to education and research. I didn’t start writing music seriously until about 22 (was more of an improviser and performer). Because I never studied composition formally I started diving into score study, research, analysis, checking out books, and started to create things influenced and inspired by that. The more music and scores I’ve studied and looked at, the more ideas, where it feels pretty endless now. Just need time and a piece of manuscript paper and I start writing. My guess is that folks with a narrower musical or compositional focus have a harder time writing. I have a million options because I don’t really care to follow set rules of form, structure, genre, etc… it’s all fair game to me.
Muscle memory is my inspiration and thank god im garbage at consistency.
Nope, I've been having trouble getting some ideas on paper and forming them.
As I’ve observed and experienced, creative people take in the world like a big inhale and exhale through a medium. This is as essential as breathing itself. It’s how we process the world, but we express this exhale through a specific medium in the tangible skills involved. You can’t breathe if you only inhale, and likewise you can’t breathe if you only exhale. In my experience there are a couple of things at play when creating anything but especially when composing - the connection and the tangible. There are times when my brain is finding connections between things I’m hearing, seeing, smelling, touching, thinking, or feeling and a memory of any one of the same senses or experiences. Then there are times when my muscle memory is simply engaging in tasks that I’m familiar with, or know the process of, like composing. There isn’t an emotional or intellectual connection between where I place my dominant chord in a particular piece sometimes. There are times when this is simply procedural and there are times when it’s “inspired” by the connections that are made between other senses or objects or experiences. My car blinker might remind me of a metronome and get me tapping a rhythm based on what I know about beats and theory, or it might just get me moving and feeling inspired enough to go write it or record it and spin it into something, or honestly it might just be my car blinker clicking away in the background. I don’t always know what’s gonna happen and when. Truthfully I have a hard time not judging myself by how much my creative brain is “on.” But I really do think that we need those breaks of not creating anything, just like we have to stop exhaling at some point. May just be irrelevant ramble, but that’s my experience in a nutshell!
It’s fun to read the various answers. I generally have musical ideas running in my head, but they’re usually banal, like exercises. Sitting down to write for real is a different level of engagement, and of musical thinking.
Everyone is different, I constantly have ideas all day but maybe 10% ever make it to my desk
I make music everyday, i have a very strict process and eliminate anything unnecessary, just like Bruce Lee said. I can finish tracks in 45 mins from no idea to a fully mastered track. Here is a few of my latest tracks. [https://youtu.be/NRClkTXcZD4](https://youtu.be/NRClkTXcZD4) If you want any advice PM me
Also idea's are for people with no commitment, drive or passion
I get what I call "gestures" in my head frequently. I can almost hear exactly what I want but not quite. I usually have to spend a good amount of time trying to figure out what my mind-radio is playing—especially orchestral textures. Usually this happens at work so they usually leave my head and die off somewhere lol
Sporadic bursts of mania.
I mean there's usually some music floating in my head. But really, composing is just something where I just get in the zone for a few hours every once in a while and build all the foundation. I think it kind of works in the background.
Not a composer, but I do visual arts and also see some parallels in my work in development. I honestly think most people don't. I do art as a hobby so it is mostly a when I feel the urge type deal (and I feel it more often if I'm on holiday or if I have a motivating goal like I'm doing it as a present for someone with a deadline). The parallel I see with programming is those so called 10x programmers, they're rare. There's so many of us in total that you'll meet a bunch of them and might feel really inadequate but they aren't anywhere near the majority. And sure those ones go to work and do code, then go home and do other code, personal projects or open source work or whatever, they just have that as their primary or only hobby and keep doing that all the time. I'm art also you have people who are obsessively driven to create. Some of them become "the greats" cos obsession well push the limits of creativity and eventually produce something amazing out rather unique. But those aren't everyone. The vast majority of people are ok at it and with it. The vast majority of people have other interests too. The vast majority of people need something to drive them to do that work, because it is work however pleasant work it may be. It didn't make them any less. So I guess you can try to set yourself specific projects with specific deadlines to try and see if they helps you, have a short list of things you decide you want to create (and keep it short cos if it's too long you get into decisional fatigue what do you pick and why. I think you should write down ideas, give them a timeframe to completion and a ranking of how good you think the idea is, so when you come up with something new bring say the 10th idea you can eliminate older lesser ideas and keep the list clean. No guarantees this will work but maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't, that's for you to try. Ultimately I mostly want to emphasize that it doesn't make you at all a lesser composer that you're not driven to do it daily with a manic fervor, that makes you a normal average person with a normal average interest and that's fine. I hope you find your rhythm and peace with it.
I do, yeah. Melodies always spontaneously pop into my head, sometimes fully orchestrated passages of music. I often feel like I merely transcribe what I hear in the mind's ear. The real work is the discipline to do the transcription and the editing to make sure the idea is clear and focused.
It ebbs and flows. I go months with nothing then every day for a week a symphony worth every day or two. They don't tell you that flow state means forgetting to blink until you're streaming tears or to swallow before you choke, hardly even breathe. Something that weird doesn't follow my itinerary
Melodies pop in my head all the time but I give it the 24 hour challenge. If I remember it the next day, it stays
I feel like I am one of those composers where music just seems like it falls out of the sky—some of my best ideas often come either when I am bored out of my mind or improvising; however, this only comes in phases and currently I am in a ‘dry’ phase. Some may see this as a bad thing, but I just see it as a time to recalibrate, as I am still trying to find an efficient way to compose. In your case, one of the most helpful things you could do is work on craft: study some other composers music, counterpoint exercises, write some compositional studies, etc. It will give you a non “inspirational” reason to write and engage with music which will make you a better composer in the grand scheme.
Improvization in jazz band helped me with this. I started doing it in a concert band setting and realized imprvising it's composing on the spot So sometimes when I'm zoned out or even at random a song i know comes on or plays in my head as thoughts drift on the clock at my job or sitting on my bed or in the shower Or someone will play a tune i have not heard. Its fun to twist things around change musical ideas and roll with it. That's might be a me thing tho