Hi Audiosexers,
recently I have started practicing piano a lot (well, not a lot by common standards, but still), about 1-2 hours every day. The thing is, after that session, there's little incentive to do any sort of creative work, only to go on a break. And then when I return to make music, no ideas are flowing in.
When I skip practicing for one day, it's usually easier to think of creative ideas.

Does anyone has tips on balancing those activities?

A.

 

That's a lot, Andrew! :O My advice is maybe to combine the two; but difficult to know how without knowing what "practice" consists of? I just choose a mode at random, try to improvise for a while. Learn. Then forget everything :D Repeat. I guess I'm ok technically (never gonna be a pro w/ my attitude =) but I hope I can improve gradually by "doing". It really helps / fuels creativity. I guess it's that whole thing of: you only learn from mistakes. Kinda.

 

Hi @Andrew

In a funy way, and maybe it can be of help, I kind of have the opposite problem. When I start practicing piano I can't seem to stick to the exercice I've decided to achieve (for example work inside a specific scale) or to the song I'm practicing, I always drift as creativity and ideas come to me from the exercice or the song I'm working. I end up making a beat rather then sticking to practicing piano.
So maybe try practicing while keeping in mind that the two activities don't have to be separated, and your practice can lead to creativity. (@famouslut post arrived as I was hitting "post", I guess it's the same kind of idea)...

 

I tried random, but no good results in long time, so I decided to invest into guided training. And after 1.5 month, my sight reading has improved quite a bit.

Possibly correct, but the nature of the practicing doesn't allow much flexibility in that sense. When there's an exercise, I tend to finish it as much as possible, without drifting elsewhere and slowing down the learning process. Maybe I'm too hard on myself, but after years and years of neglect, I absolutely have to make progress to get better.

 

There's something to be said about taking a writer stance when it comes to composition. How long will it take to get to a competent level where your fingers AREN'T in the way of your ideas? You kind of need to be at a Keith Jarret level. It doesn't really matter HOW the notes get into the DAW...

"I heard the opinion of someone with insight on music explain why Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote such pablum. He is a poor pianist they said. If the piano is your composing tool and you have poor piano skills it inevitably limits your ideas."

"It was interesting to see Schubert compose. He very seldom made use of the pianoforte while doing it. He often used to say it would make him lose his train of thought. Quite quietly, and hardly disturbed by the unavoidable chatter and din of his friends around him, he would sit at the little writing-table, bent over the music paper and the book of poems (he was short-sighted), bite his pen, drum his fingers at the same time, trying things out, and continue to write easily and fluently, without many corrections, as if it had to be like that and not otherwise."

~ Albert Stadler - Schubert's friend

 

I understand. I practice and do training just for my own sake and for fun, piano is an awesome instrument, my playing would gain from being more fluid but it's in no way vital so when I practice it's kind of in my own terms and in a relaxed state of mind. Learning piano as a kid is a bad memory since my teacher and her teaching was really uncreative, all learning theory, practicing over and over( fortunately I had a great guitar teacher a bit after that)...It surely brought me a lot, but man I didn't enjoy it one bit and I try to stay away from that type of method even if I still learn.

 

Exactly.

Years most likely, but it can be accelerated by taking many small steps frequently rather than bigger steps slowly.

 

I dunno if its for everyone but I try to do a little of everything each day, kinda like the guy that keeps the plates spinning on the sticks.....

But I focus on one area for the bulk of the time I have available, be that tracking, mixing, mastering, writing/creating, playing/practicing guitars/bass/keys/vocal/drums/banjo/mouth organ/triangle depending what I'm working on requires now or next.

Most important bit tho is is making sure that during the process I'm having fun, thats the bit that keeps the whole train moving.

 

I got same problem long time ago when I only start to play piano and looping ,after each play I lost my creativity completely
but the best advice is just to go doing Yoga and meditation it help me a lot
and it happen only because your body mind need to adapt to it ,

my best tip for you.

1.take one melody. and practice only with one melody all the time
2. go do yoga and meditations , it will help you to be relaxing
3. just don't take it hard it will come sooner or later.
4. I suggest you to go and buying for yourself simple synthesizer with battery power
now you can go easy to some nature or Sea or some remote place and practice there

 

FTR, I use Piano Marvel for practicing.

Tried that, as an idea it's great, but such practice repeated might develop bad habits with seating and finger postures, as seating is not quite regulated in the wild.
However to solve temporary lack of creativity, it's a good idea.

 

for me it's not bad habits , I feeling always amazing after it my energy is boosted , I go a lot to meditations even today for couple day's
and it's amazing thing , just try it
but not couple weeks rather 1 year , and you will see result and progress .
it will help you to learning how to be at rest , including /mind/body/spirit

in your case is just a lack of energy and nothing more being next to computer / electronic device to much is not good !
our body always need a breaks from all electronic device around us !

 

Well, learning songs per se doesn't give you much scope. But the idea of training ur fingers doesn't have to be so inflexible. I mean, for me, I want to improve my non-dom playing, so I have to force myself to play arpeggios. Which is boring af. Doesn't mean I can't use right hand to improvise still. Which is less boring! Etcs. Maybe adapt practice ideas? I guess (to me) rote playing can make you a bit sick of music, whereas (even) making lots of mistakes by improvising randomly is quite wax on / wax off, as well as inspirational. I do find that practising a lot of (say) one genre makes you want to react almost in the opposite direction; write (ie) "complicated" melody after listening to "simple" ones & vice versa. Maybe try that approach - practice kinda "the opposite" / conflicting style of music?

 

Import a track, ad a bandpass and loop 8 bars. Now play your instrument.

Edit: When you have played something exciting, hit capture, ditch the loop and go from there.

 

Last edited: Aug 13, 2018

This is actually a very good question. I find that I struggle with this as well, but not to such a detrimental degree.
First and foremost, I get any and all creative ideas down first. Creative ideas take precedence over practice; This may be something incredibly haphazard and rudimentary--maybe an idea for a bass line and a vague idea of what will be around it, maybe a vybe that a particular sample, horns or strings might give the track, a general rhythm, etc.--and I'll lay down the best take that I can, but I only do one *maybe two takes--the point is simply to put it down for later reference. (I know that can be difficult to; I always want to fix stuff on the spot, but you have to push past that.) I know that you have some you burning desire to attain a firm position at the pinnacle of some peak with a small summit of its own, but, honestly, you can always practice.
That being said, some days are made to simply pour everything musical that is bouncing around out onto the proverbial table.
Skip practice when you find a new idea popping up everytime that you add/tweak/play something and you must get it all down. Now, if you are something amazing, and are akin to Frank Zappa or something, and find that you always have ideas flowing out of you (which I doubt, at least, that's not how it is with me,) then, yes, alott time to practice no matter what.

This happens with me as well. I always just go with it. Again, creativity taking precedence.

This sounds like me. I play multiple instruments and I had this same problem coming back to any instrument that I had all but forsaken--guitar, drums, piano, etc.--due to having to much going on in my life, and every time I picked an instrument up angain I was instantly angry that I wasn't up to where I was years or even months back; I instantly felt as though I could only give myself a week to fluently improv a lead in the Harmonic Minor scale like I used to be able to do or I had to be able to be play some flam-paradiddle-fill-thingy by Saturday or I was never going to get back to where I was and, thus, progress farther. It is a self-defeating thing, wallowing in the "I-Should-Be-Able-To"s.

This is true....to a degree. I find that, though I am a much better drummer and guitarist than a piano player, I have gotten to the point where, if I know what I want to hear, I can suss out how to play it, and after maybe a day of fooling with it while working on other projects, I usually can get it up to speed (even if it takes fifteen or twenty takes.) I'm just saying that from a purely creative/songwriting perspective, you just need to get to a point where things aren't impossibility.
So, yes, try and improve as quickly as possible, but remember: First; your mind can only retain so much information a day before it needs a rest, and resting doesn't necessarily sleeping (though that is highly recommended,) it just means turning your brain away from whatever you have been working on. At some point, even if you are repeatedly playing a run or a section of a piece, even if it feels like you are cementing it in your head, that's not, in fact, the case. You do reach a limit of how much you can learn before it needs to be sent to central processing. Basically, come to a place where your not worried about the end result, but are enjoying the journey. and? Leading with the last pseudo-zen bit, enjoy yourself. If all this becomes a job, a chore, or even something that is lending you some form of stress due to some incredible goals that you have set for yourself that may not even be possible to reach--or at least not in a timeframe that you deem acceptable--you need to ask yourself if it is worth the stress.I have seen improvements happen a lot mpore often when I am in a good place.
As you may have expected (or should have,) there is no one, clear answer for this, especially since no one here is actually around you and knows how you work/think, but at the end of the day, have fun and make time for both, *when it feels right.* As musicians we are subject to the arduous chore of self-managing our musical journey, whether as a hobby or a career. That being said, I don't do anything musically unless it feels right and, though I have made slower progress than some strictly regimented people that I know, I'm still fairly fluent in a few instruments and I still piece together songs/beats/pieces quite often, mix and master them (at a journeyman's level; like most things in music, some things only really come into their own after years of experience,) and, most importantly, I have learned to enjoy the journey.
Good luck with all of this.
(I just realized that I wrote a novelette above. It's a good thing that I type fast.)

 

First, you can't train your fingers with standard synth keys. That simply doesn't work. You'll need at least a master keyboard with weighted keys, a piano is best, of course.

I tried to play several instruments in my life and apart from a very few songs, I never used songs for training/excersises only technical 'runs'. This kept my creativity from being 'contaminated'. Even better, I could integrate these runs in variations into my, let's call it 'compositions'.

 

Check. A88 in my case for this purpose.

What seems to be contaminating my creativity recently is adhering to all harmony principles which I had no idea about 4 years ago.

 

Do the one while you're not doing the other, but one invariably leads to the other anyway. I can't practise without getting some new ideas

 

Ignore them. Knowing them can be helpful if you need them, but if they distract you, close your eyes and just play.