Inspiration blackout

[TheSqueezer]

Ok, so the title says it all, i am having a seriously lack of inspiration when producing.

Im writing here to know if anyone of you has ever had the same and if you did how u resolved it.

The problem is that 4 and 3 years ago i did not have this kind of problem. I wasnt very good technicly, i used only presets, i didnt know anything about mastering, etc.. BUT, i could finish tracks really quickly..with a beggining, breakdowns and an end..and without copying other producers. Ok, so its true the tracks werent very good but at least they were finished, they had really good and great ideas, some of the tracks i did had 9 minutes without beeing boring..it was ambient,deep, techno, progressive...and i was so fast making them..sometimes during my 2 hours lunch time i produced half of a track..and the way i arranged things was crazy..i didnt even had to listen to the tracks/sounds, i arranged with my eyes and i knew what should be where and how.
The problem came a couple of years. I had a personal problem (reason..women ofcourse) i was some months really down. After my heart and mind healed i started to produce again..thats when the problem came...i could no more do what i had been doing..it simply wasnt coming out of me anymore, and i was like: WHAT THA F*CK!!! So..has i cought myself with that problem i decided to take more time learning instead of producing!
2 years have passed...now i know a lot about synthesis, i can allready pull out a lot of sounds that i want, i know a lot more about mastering that i did, know really more about equalizing and all those technical things...BUT i cant produce a track :(:( i just dont get out of those 2 bars loop..i have no ideas..everythings sounds wrong and bad. Its seems like that i deleted the inspiration part out of my brain and replaced it for the technical one. If in those back days i knew the technical things i know today the tracks i did would sound fantastic..but now that i know them i cant finish a track..dont know what to do...i sit in front of the computer and my brain gets all blanck and empty and i dont know what to do :( I no longer have big personal problems..2 years have passed and the lack of inspiration is the same.

If someone allready had a similar problem or has a good advice please tell me.

Sorry for the long post :p

[admin8]

women of the world aint nothing but trouble! :cool:

[River]

I can kinda relate to that, I'm unemployed at the moment and being a teacher its pretty unlikely I'll get a new job until September when the school year starts, so I have a huge amount of time on my hands.

Similar to you, I'm just not really feeling anything. Its not even just producing, I think I'm getting a bit jaded with dance music in general. I've been trying to get out (on very little cash!) to different types of nights to try and find something exciting again, you could try that. Its quite hard for me being in a fairly small town and not close enough to a big city to get out to decent nights that often, I'm a bit isolated in terms of music.

Try listening to different styles/types of music, try and get that excitement back somehow, thats what I'm doing. Podcasts/old record collections/new genres see whats out there.

[tomflynn]

There's always something out there to get you excited again, and in this day and age, it's easier than ever to find it!

[scottb]

Difficult one, I have similar problems. I try different ways to build the track (start at the breakdown maybe) or just copy my 1st 16 bars right across the track and start trimming bits as it plays to try and get close to a live mix.

[dramirez]

Great way to get some inspiration i find is to get a track you like, analyze the tempo with say Ableton Live, change it if you like to the tempo you usually work at and drag the whole thing into your DAW of choice making sure you line the track up so it starts at beat 1 of your arrangement. This is now your ghost reference track and from this ghost track you can look at the way it's arranged, the way the different sounds are placed in the mix, hell you can even copy the dam thing if you're having a really bad time with it! I find that doing this really helps when you're struggling and also that the outcome is always different to the track you're inspired by anyway.
One tip though is that if it does sound the same try and change something about it so it becomes your own - that way you'll avoid looking like somebody who's having problems and doesn't have their own ideas -)

[nikmis]

try making a song without drum sounds or a beat
see if you can do it, a challenge to inspire you maybe