Creative Hell

Creative block – every creative person knows what it is and has experienced it at least once in their life. To say it is horrible is quite an understatement, but what about being in a complete creative rot? Where you can’t come up with a single idea for months, and even if you do – you just don’t like it, you can’t even stand it. And it goes on and on and on. I guess at this point it would probably be safe to assume that there is something wrong within you and your mind. That’s cool, but why do I want to write about something as depressive and dark as this and discuss it?

Well, this is basically me and how I feel every day. This is going to be quite a personal blog post, so I was doubting the idea of actually putting my thoughts into words on this publicly, but hey, due to the fact that I have some sort of a solution to this, I guess it could be helpful to someone to read through – even if you, the reader, may not find my technique helpful to the slightest, at least you will know that you are not alone. And I believe that this means a lot.

My Background

When I was about 8 years old I started obsessively listening to Linkin Park, and by that, I mean every single day I would listen to only them, it got to the point where I knew their full discography at the time by heart. At about 11 years old I discovered drum and bass and downloaded a pirated copy of FL Studio 8 and “produced” my first tracks. This was the turning point for me when I suddenly realised that I want to pursue a career in music and sound. This can only mean that I actually do love music and making, hence I am getting a Masters degree in audio production, but here I am now, turning 23 next week and struggling with making new music for a few years now. Every single time I sit in front of my computer and open a DAW, I can’t come up with the ideas I like, it has got to the point where I am even scared to start up Ableton, a DAW which has been with me for more than 8 years.

Obviously, I wanted to come back to making music and actually enjoying myself without any unnecessary stress, so eventually, I started to look up advice and tips for overcoming creative block online, but nothing seemed to help. Not changing my setup, not switching the genre, nothing. It is still like this to this day – nothing inspires me, and trust me when I say that this state is scary – it really is. So through trial and experimentation, I found a way of generating ideas that I actually like, so I would like to share them with you.

Visual Stimuli Are Your Friends

It may seem counterintuitive at first – why on earth would a picture inspire and help me come up with musical ideas that I like, so let me explain. I am a visual person, so pictures that I enjoy aesthetically spark something within my brain and start blasting me with ideas of potential soundscapes. So to put it simply, I am stealing ideas from someone’s visual art. On top of that, I don’t have to come up with the emotional context of the song in my brain – it is already done by the artist, so I just have to transduce their emotions to the realm of audio and music. No more thinking to myself if this melody is good enough in an isolated vacuum, I just look at the picture and decide if what I see correlates with what I hear and if it doesn’t, then it is time to try something else. Art and photographs give me some sort of a judging point, which I can use to avoid my personal biases and listen (rather watch) to what the image tells me. So let’s look at my process a bit more in-depth with concrete examples.

Creation of Mood Boards and Its’ Utilisation

So the goal of this process is to create a mood board composed of pictures with similar aesthetics, moods and tell a story that I can relate to or find intriguing. Before going for material scouting, I usually have some sort of a starting point – be it a conceptual idea, a picture/ topic that sparked my interest or something else. After having found this initial seed, I go on the web and try to find the pictures that match the vibe – be it Pinterest, Google Images or any other resources. This can be a time-consuming process, but it lets you feel the mood of the production and revs up the idea generation process. Regarding the images themselves, it is good if there is a bit of storytelling present, as it can provide enough ideas on its’ own for a whole track.

After all the images are downloaded, I usually open up Photoshop and start compiling the images in a cohesive mood board, which involves the overall design composition, colour grading and other things. Again, this takes some time, but in the end, I am able to generate enough ideas to start mindfully composing music.

Is It A Cure?

Will this solve the underlying issue? No, of course not, sometimes even this technique fails me, but nothing will fix issues that are seated deep inside of the mental state. If anyone is struggling with depression or suspects that they are affected by something similar – I encourage you to go see a psychiatrist or a mental health counsellor. These states only tend to get worse over time and if not treated in a timely manner it may cause some serious issues. Please stay safe and take care of your mental health.