If the crisis is severe, I just stop creating music for a while and do something else. If you're really not motivated, nothing will get you motivated except for some time off. During that time you might even find a new goal, outside of music, and pursue that.

I knew a professional dancer that got tired of it, went for a financial/economics masters and is now working for a bank... Anything goes really.

 

Last edited: Apr 22, 2022

Open an old unfinished project. Check it out quickly, and delete everything that is not working for you. If there is any question, it's gone. Think about it like a new manager approaching a new business and your parts are the previous owner's poor employees. "What's that? don't want to hear it, pack your shit". "I'm back, and you're fired".

You will probably have half a track sitting right in front of you already. Plow through it with fresh ears, and finish "someone else's junk". Call it a wrap and move it to your Complete folder. You just finished a track and freed up hdd space maybe. The magic number of "completes" may be 10 for you, or 500 for someone else; before you see things differently. But a sense of completion, and repetition can help you become un-anchored from one project.

I don't know many other fields of interest or lines of work where "I just don't feel like it today" does anything for anyone.

 

Last edited: Apr 22, 2022

Read a book. I will admit freely that I rarely actually take my own advice but actually sitting down and reading a paper book as opposed to even looking at a Kindle screen makes a tremendous difference in my general outlook.

 

You could try a nice book about the music business:

https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Card-Table-Treatise-Manipulation/dp/0486285979

 

Don't combine emotional issues with music. Music is a separate being, outside the human mind. You don't need to go inside yourself and solve your psychological problems in order to make music. It would be only a waste of time.

Music is like war and you are a soldier. You just have to fight and not think about anything else but before that you need to know the war and learn fighting. The rest will be battlefield, destroy and kill.

 

Gawd no. That's kind of the opposite of anything I would want to expose myself to to calm my mind down.

 

I'm forty now. I've been composing music since I was 16 y.o. I never knew a shit about music. Just had the feelings music made me feel and I wanted to express myself through music. Then I started learning (by myself, nobody taught me) and finally I could be able to write my compositions.
There has never been anybody to show my music to (not everybody has that privilege). I made it for myself. I ended up realising that it sounded really good. But I never had anybody to refute this thought, though. BUT I never stopped composing. Trying. Imagining. Feeling... There's some other variables that have an influence in my creativity, though: I noticed that when I'm feeling alone (no couple) that inspires me. I stopped rolling joints two years and a half so far. That made me loose some sparkle, some bright or creativity when making music, kind of some ease when trying to have an idea and translate it into notes. But that has not ever made me stop doing this, which is my passion. As BEAT16 said to you: do it for yourself, which means: for YOUR pleasure.

 

Because you haven't met me before. If you did, your current fantasied Imaginations did not exist.

 

.

 

Last edited: Apr 23, 2022

Literally just waiting for the "press button to make full track" VST

 

Very Stupid Technology

 

Regarding the 'Very Stupid Things' or 'Very Stupid Thoughts' categories...
No-one here should ever dare to dispute EEOC-Foster's truly intimate 1st hand expertise.

 

He's tweeked the character now to be bitter, mean and argumentative.

 

that may be true but there is a valid point somewhere in there. if you are doing nearly anything of "artistic worth" (or whatever you wish to call it);
you should have absolutely no problem finding someone who does not like it.

So either they don't tell you, or you don't listen.

 

@Ad Heesive and @Lois Lane

Why do we have to falsely pretend that we like sth when we don't actually like it?

A mixing engineer removes all the bad sounds during the mixing process. This shows that he does not like those sounds in his mix, but he does it without uttering them.

Likes and dislike are done every day in the real life, but people do not talk about it. Unfortunately, society turns humans into secretive and deceitful beings, because it deprives them of the permission to show their dislikes.

 

We don't. (well I don't). I will tell you straight every time (if asked) what I do or don't like.
BUT that's NOT the same as asserting what is 'true of false' or what is 'good or bad' or what is 'right or wrong'.
It is ONLY what we "like or don't like"

I'm just as happy to say when I DO like. e.g., I DO like your question above, and I think the issues that it raises are interesting.
We almost certainly share a contempt for political correctness (and those are JUST our preferences)

BUT the context really does matter and the ideas really do matter.
Think about the gigantic differences between preferences and facts. e.g.,
If someone prefers chocolate and I prefer strawberry, I won't be stupid and start ranting to them about "you're wrong!"
But if someone says "gravity doesn't work on Sundays", I will first criticise the dumb idea, I will claim the idea is 'simply wrong', it's not an just an opinion, and if they can't handle the dumb idea being criticised, I won't hesitate to call them an idiot.

Three things that can really irritate...
[1] Someone telling someone else "they're wrong!" when the topic is just about personal preferences.
and the opposite...
[2] Someone telling someone else "it's all just about personal preferences" when there are important brute facts being ignored.
and finally...
[3] When people are too dumb to understand the difference between [1] and [2]

 

Last edited: Apr 24, 2022

I've shown you my feeling of dislike with the supplied button. Thank you for freeing me of my secret and deceitful ways.

 

What is fact?
When something repeats itself over and over, it becomes a fact.

Gravity didn't exist a few billion years ago as a fact we know now. Gravity was created later. The materials decided to attract each other. What process led the materials to make such a decision is not a matter of debate.

Stupidity has now become a fact. A lot of preferences also stem from stupidity.

A force is needed to be created as anti-stupidity which weakens it.

 

Last edited: Apr 25, 2022

Whether gravity is an actual particle, an attractive force or simply a geometric side-effect of mass is (at this time) still a matter of some conjecture. However, I've never read or heard anyone (other than you, here) suggest that it only sprang into being a mere few billion years ago - 10 billion years after the generally accepted origin of our universe @ approx. 13.7 billion years. This is a clear example of the grey matter of the brain being distorted by the nebulous dark energy of an egocentric imagination.

Indeed, the presumed gravity of such a bizarre, baseless assertion as fact confirms merely that the net effect of ignorance & stupidity is practically identical.

 

Last edited: Apr 25, 2022

When your foundational conceptual layers are as deeply misguided as that - your worldviews are inevitably built on quicksand;

and when your worldviews are built on quicksand, your brain can easily generate astonishingly absurd stuff with no connection to reality whatsoever - like this...

Occasionally, by accident, you might randomly hit a bulls eye of truth.
Like this one - obviously based on your own saturated 1st-hand experience.