10 Rules of a Zen Programmer

A friend of mine who is a software developer shared this article with me recently.  While it's about software coding, I think it applies to just about any creative endeavor, including writing music.  I'm definitely going to attempt to apply some of these principals to my workflow and see if I can't improve my productivity a bit.

[via Grobmeier.de & Music of Sound]

Helpful Site for Learning Apps Key Commands

Adam sent me an email about an extremely helpful website called keycommands.info.  If you've learned key commands for apps you use frequently, you know what a time-saver they can be.  And if you haven't?  Well, why not take a look at this site and learn a few?  Key commands for Logic, Ableton, ProTools, Final Cut Pro, Motion 5, iMovie '11. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Pixelmator, Aperture, and many more are listed and visualized in a way that makes learning them a breeze for even the noobiest of noobs.  Thanks, Adam!

The Tyranny of Choice

I remember reading an old interview with Phil Oakey on the making of the Human League's "Dare" album.    He was discussing the band using the New England Digital Synclavier and how it ended up being a hinderance because they'd waste an entire afternoon just auditioning different bass sounds instead of moving forward with the song.  This hit home with me, because I'd been guilty of doing the same thing.  Nowadays, with synths that ship regularly with thousands of presets, and hundreds of cheap or free softsynths and effects available at the click of the mouse, many of us have way more than we need.  And, perversely, it's making us less productive.  So today, I thought I'd offer some advice to help break out of this pattern.

• Have a Spring Cleaning of Your Studio/Workspace
I try to keep my studio fairly organized, but you know how it is. Receipts and invoices pile up, cords get re-routed and mixed up, and all manner of extraneous crap can invade your workspace.  It can make it unpleasant to work in, and, some believe, that disorganization may spill over into your work.  So while this doesn't have anything to do with having too many choices, I recommend it as a good first step in being more productive.  Your mileage may vary, but I always find myself more eager to work and more productive when my studio is clean and organized.

• Schedule a Spring Cleaning of Your Computer
Once a year, I sit down and have a "spring cleaning" of my plug-ins folder.  If there's an instrument or an effect that I haven't used in the past six months, it gets backed up and pulled out of my folder.  This can be hard to do at first.  It's easy to fall into the trap of "but I might need it later", but I think you'll find 9 times out of 10 you really don't.  And if you do end up needing it?  Just pull out that back-up and install it.  The benefits here are that it'll take you less time for you to find the effect or instrument you're looking for and you'll waste less time randomly trying different effects or sounds just for the sake of doing so.

• Trust Your Instincts
This is something it took me a long time to learn and an even longer time to truly implement.  When you've got so many choices in front of you, it's all too easy to waste a lot of time worrying about whether you chose the "perfect" string/bass/kick/kazoo sound.  What if there's an even better sound you could be using?! Don't get me wrong.  It's good to experiment with different sounds and effects and you can have many a happy accident this way.  But there is a point of diminishing returns where you're just spinning your wheels without any real benefit.  The same can happen with the songwriting process.  Who among us hasn't spent hours trying to find the perfect riff to accompany a bassline, only to return to what you originally had?  So try, at least initially, to be fairly quick and efficient in your decision-making process.  Don't over-analyze and beat yourself up worrying about if there's an "even better" sound you could be using.  Push forward and once you have something approaching a finished song, you can always make tweaks, if necessary.  You will probably find, however, that the song sounds pretty bitchin'.  I think the #1 thing that leads to that folder of unfinished 4-bar riffs that everyone has, is over-analysis and losing the initial spark of inspiration in a sea of self-doubt and endless auditioning.  Need evidence of this?  Guns n' Roses last album. 'Nuff said. Try the quick approach and see if it doesn't make you more productive.

• But Don't Totally Trust Your Instincts
Good instincts take time to develop for many of us.  So always have a trusted friend who will give you honest feedback regarding your music.  You don't have to agree with their opinion, but it may help you focus on some problem areas you never noticed you had.  It's extremely difficult to be objective about your own music.  So find someone who can be and let them help.  Knowing how the average person listens to your music can help you hone in on areas for improvement more quickly and can take out a lot of the guesswork that results in so much lost time.

• Impose Restrictions on Yourself
I know what you're thinking... "Musicians have dreamed of having a fully-stocked studio with every kind of instrument and effect available to them for as long as recorded music has existed.  Now that we actually have that dream available to us, we're supposed to restrict ourselves?  Screw you, Shear!"  Trust me on this one, though.  Try to impose some limits on how you're working on your current project.  Try limiting yourself to 1 or 2 synths and using those to produce all the sounds in your song.  Give yourself a time limit in which to complete a certain part of your song.  Write something using only the black keys on your keyboard.  Not only will challenging yourself in new ways make you a more well-rounded musician, but with all those choices narrowed down for you, you can concentrate on making music and getting that song across the finish line.

What are your favorite methods of being more productive?

Expand Your Bag of Production Tricks

It can be easy to get into a rut when producing in your home studio, so it's always a good idea to try and seek inspiration from listening to the music of others. I suggest keeping a notebook (or a notebook app on your phone, if you prefer) on hand to write down the bits and pieces you find catching your ear when you're checking out other artists. Starting a new track? Pull out your iPod, throw it into shuffle and listen to the first three songs that come up. See if there is something in each one that you can apply to the new track. Maybe it's a drum fill you want to emulate, or the way the track uses reverb, or an unusual type of vocal, etc., etc. Whatever it is, see if it's something you can work into your new track. Sometimes we get too focused in working on our own music, we forget to take the time to listen to the work of others. Start every time you go into the studio doing this, and you may find yourself being a lot more productive and inspired.

Getting Unstuck

It's happened to all of us at one time or another.  You sit down to work on that new track you'd been making so much progress with and you just hit a wall.  Try as you might, you just suddenly run out of ideas and you're at a complete standstill.  Times like these can be incredibly frustrating.  The real danger, of course, is that you get so frustrated that you end up giving up and abandoning what had the potential to be a really cool song.  So today, I thought I'd share some ideas for getting yourself unstuck when you find yourself in this scenario.

1. Change the Tempo

This is such a simple thing, but it can make a really big difference in the mood and feel of a song.  Maybe that dancefloor stormer you're working on would really work better as a ballad.  Or would that slow, contemplative track benefit from the increased energy levels a higher tempo can provide?  Doubt this would make a difference?  Keep in mind that both New Order's "Blue Monday" and Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" were originally intended to be ballads.  After speeding them up, both turned out to be not only some of the biggest hits either of those bands had, but indeed some of the biggest hits in popular music period.  A tempo change can make for an interesting remix idea, too.  Front 242 did an instrumental remix of their track "Religion" on the maxi-single of the same name that was simply the track slowed way down.  You'd be surprised how different the song feels with just a simple tempo change.

2.  Frankenstein's Monster

I'm a musical packrat.  As I've mentioned before, I always have an active 'ideas' folder on my computer where I can quickly store musical ideas that I can later come back to and hopefully flesh out into songs.  Of course, a lot of these ideas end up going unused either because on second listen, they aren't that inspiring or maybe they just don't fit the sound of a certain project.  But no matter how sure I am that an idea will never make the cut with me, I always hang on to these little song snippets.  There are a lot of benefits to doing this, but one solution they can provide is a method of getting up and running again when you're stuck.  Sometimes the verse structure of a song comes out great, but you can't figure out an appropriate chorus to go with it, or vice-versa.  Having a library of unused ideas allows you to audition some of them in just this sort of scenario.  Sometimes an idea that seems "blah" on its own takes on a whole new life if inserted into a different context.

3. Shuffle Your Sounds

Many songwriters underestimate the importance of arranging when it comes to how a song sounds.  The sounds you use and where you place them make an enormous difference in how a track sounds.  If you're stuck on a song, try saving a second copy of the song and going through and changing every single synth and drum sound on the track.  You can always go back to the original if this proves fruitless.  If you have doubts about this, try tracking down some old Depeche Mode demos or the demos from Nine Inch Nail's "Pretty Hate Machine".  Some of them sound painfully lame before the right sounds and studio magic were applied.  Don't be afraid to get crazy and experiment with sounds you wouldn't normally use, either.  Sometimes the 'wrong' sound in the right context can turn out amazing.

4.  Get Lost

Although I am primarily a keyboard player, I also have a bass and an electric guitar.  I'm not a very good bass player and I am even more useless with a guitar, but I like having around a couple of instruments I am not as familiar with as the keys.  When you've been playing an instrument for a long time, I think it can be quite easy to get into a rut and have certain 'default' intervals, keys, or chord shapes that you fall into time and time again.  Having an instrument on hand that you are not as familiar with almost forces you to go in different directions than you would on your 'home instrument'.  Try some unusual stuff too, like mapping your drum pads to trigger notes on your favorite synth.  Anything to break you out of your normal way of playing can be a really valuable method for coming up with new ideas.

5. Move On

When you're stuck, probably one of the worst things you can do is to just sit there listening to your track over and over again hoping some miracle happens and a great idea pops into your hear.  You're only going to get sick of the track and feel less inspired to finish it.  So if you've tried a couple of the above ideas and it still isn't happening for you, take a break and work on something else.  Sometimes you just need a bit of a musical 'palate cleanser' to reset things.  When I'm working on an album, I usually have at least 4 or 5 songs I am working on at the same time.  That way, if I get stuck on one, I can simply move to another and still be moving forward on the album.  I realize this sounds pretty unfocused, but it's worked wonders for me and I often find that after working on another track,  I'm more eager to come back and work on the track I was stuck on in the first place - sort of a creative 'reset' button.  Remember what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder.

So what about you?  How do you get yourself unstuck when you're at a creative standstill?

5 Ways of Jump Starting Your Creativity

Have you ever found yourself sitting in your studio with tons of great tools at your disposal, but absolutely no ideas? If you answered 'no', then you're a dirty liar. Sooner or later we all have bouts of writer's block. It's incredibly frustrating, and if you happen to be up against a formal deadline, it can be even more stressful. So how do you drag yourself out of these creative doldrums? Sometimes you just have to experiment until you find what works for you personally, but here are a few ideas you might find helpful.

1.) Change Your Environment
I absolutely hate moving. Yeah, it's bad enough to have to box up everything you own and haul it in and out, but for me it also means dismantling my studio and rewiring it somewhere else. The one really positive thing that always seems to follow this, however, is that I feel creatively recharged and eager to get to work again. Your surroundings and work environment can have a tremendous impact on how you work, so if you're feeling stuck, try taking your laptop somewhere where you normally don't make music and see if that gives you a bit of a boost. It doesn't have to be anything drastic. If you normally work downstairs in your house, try working upstairs. Nice weather? Go to a park with some headphones and see if working outside inspires you.

2. Flip it and Reverse it
If you're having trouble getting started on a new song, try taking something you already completed and reversing it, either the audio or the MIDI. It may not lead anywhere, but you may just hear an unusual melody, rhythm or progression when you listen to music this way that gives you a direction to go in.

3. Art Cross-pollination
Try creating a soundtrack for a scene in a movie you like. Better yet, get more obscure and create a 'soundtrack' for a famous painting, photograph, sculpture, or city. Concentrate on representing visuals through music. Try to communicate a specific emotion solely through use of melody or rhythm.

4. Remix One of Your Old Songs
Take a song you've already completed, and do a remix for it as if you were remixing another artist. Let yourself disconnect from your usual 'rules' and self-consciousness and go nuts. Try to put the song into an entirely different musical context from the original. Once you've completed it, try taking out the vocals and any remaining melodic elements from the original and use this remix as the start of a brand new track. Or, in a similar vein, try taking a musical loop from a song you like and building a new song around that sample. Then, remove the sample and see if what you've got might be a good start on a new track.

5. Do Anything But Music
Although it might sound odd, sometimes the best remedy for running into dead ends in the studio is to get out of the studio. Go for a walk. Clean out the garage. Exercise. Your mileage may vary, but I personally find that some of my best ideas come to me when I am away from the studio. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves when we sit down to write a new song, so take some of the pressure off by getting away from that intimidating blank sequencer screen and see what happens.

So there are some ideas to get you started. Do you have a personal method of breaking writer's block that you prefer? Tell us about it!

What's Wrong With This Picture?

I realize most of you have never been in my studio before, so the answer might not be obvious, but my studio computer is gone. If you've been reading this blog recently, you already know that my studio computer recently stopped powering up reliably. I took it in to get fixed, and although they didn't locate the problem, I have an idea what the problem might be, so I'm picking it up today.

But this isn't my point. The point is, for the past two weeks, my computer was in the shop and work on my album and single pretty much came to a stop. This has become a bit of an unwanted tradition for me. For the past few albums, every time I am in the last few months of work, something happens to keep me from working on it. Last album, it was a flooded basement.

Obviously, this sort of thing only adds to the stress of coming up against a deadline all the more intense, but I've come to realize sometimes this isn't the worst thing in the world. For the past couple of weeks I did something I hadn't done in ages. I just sat down at my keyboard and - played. It used to be that I played and improvised all the time and this was primarily how I wrote new songs. In recent years, however, I've tended to write in my head and only sit down to the keyboard to translate the ideas I've been kicking around into full songs once they've developed for awhile. Not only did I realize how much I had missed just playing for the sake of playing... I actually ended up coming up with a great new song in the process.

This reinforces a theory I have had for many years now that one of the best things you can do now and then is to try a creative process that is different from your normal routine. Try working in a different DAW. If you normally write on guitar, try writing on piano. If you generally save vocals for last when working on songs, try recording them first to a dummy track and build your arrangement around that. If you have been writing music for a long time, it can be easy to get into a creative rut. It's important to shake things up now and then. I think I lost sight of that and it took a 'forced vacation' to make me remember.

Hitting the Ground Running

I don't know about you, but I always seem to have about a thousand things to juggle all at once. In addition to all the writing, recording, and touring for my band, I do a lot of mixing, remixing, and production for other artists as well. Add into this designing the merchandise, running my band's online store, maintaining the website and social network sites, answering e-mails, and - oh yeah- writing this blog, you get the picture. I'm a bit busy.

Inspiration, when it strikes, usually does so out of the blue, and almost always when I am in the middle of doing something else. Since time is not a commodity I have a whole ton of, I wanted a way to be able to get ideas down quickly so I could get back to whatever the task at hand is. My solution was to create a template for my DAW with a basic layout designed to let me get my idea down fast.

This has been something I've done for years, but now Logic allows you to save different templates that come up whenever you open a new file. Regardless of your DAW of choice (others may have this feature too, I'm just not familiar enough with them to know for sure), all you really need to do is set it up and save it as a song file you can load up whenever a cool idea pops into your head.

What your template contains will largely depend on what kind of music you make, but try to make it as flexible as possible to suit any sort of idea you might need to jot down. You just want to create channels of software instruments that are preloaded with the types of sounds you need just to make a basic sketch of a song. Don't worry too much about picking cool sounding patches, you want something pretty generic and boring just to get the idea across. You can worry about the sounds themselves when you actually start working on the song later.

I usually start with a drum loop of some sort so that I have a rhythm to write to. Nothing fancy, just a four on the floor kick, snares on the 2 and 4, and an eighth-note hi-hat line - something that can be used with just about any idea. Then I make a channel with a generic synth bass, one with a generic lead sound, one with a generic pad or string sound, and one with a piano sound of some sort. This way, I have pretty much every type of sound I need to get the very basics of an idea down. All I have to do is have an idea, open up my template, play my idea into the sequencer, save it to a separate file (don't overwrite your template!), and I have a (hopefully) cool idea I can come back to later to flesh into an actual song when things are a bit less hectic.

This technique has another advantage as well. Because you're using the same sounds every time you sketch an idea out, you aren't distracted by fancy presets or ear candy. Instead, you can concentrate on the actual musical idea itself to sort out whether or not it's as good as you initially thought it might be. It's often been said that a proper song is something you can sit down and play with just a guitar or piano. This isn't quite that extreme, but it plays to the same basic principle: sticking to a few generic sounds will make you concentrate more on the music itself and less on the gimmicky parts of a song (as fun as those may be).

Do you use templates to get down ideas? What's in yours?

Facebook as a Name Generator?

So, I finally gave in a started a Facebook account. I'd been resisting it, but I'm pretty sure if you don't get one, eventually they send troops armed with cattle prods to your house. I've actually been pleasantly surprised to find it's not nearly as annoying as MySpace, and I've actually heard from a lot of old friends I hadn't talked to in ages, which is nice.

Like most social networking sites, until you've verified your account so that it knows you're a real person and not a spam-spewing computer, whenever you send a message or add a friend, you have to enter a captcha - a basic challenge and response where you have to type in the letters or numbers shown to you in an image. What's different about Facebook's is that it generates actual words. After doing this for awhile, I realized a lot of the captchas it comes up with sound like band names, song titles, or even psuedonyms for band members. Here's a random selection of ones it gave me (and you can keep asking it to generate new ones as long as you like): Service Lass, Of Trust, Broadway Tomb, Puss McNabb, 35,000,000 Hives...

So the next time you're stuck on what to call your latest IDM masterpiece, give it a try. (Conversely, you could even use it as an idea generator. Let it come up with some word combinations, and then try to create what you think a song with that title would sound like...)

Future-Proofing Your Songs

When most of us are recording our music, we rarely think much further than whatever deadline we're up against. The reality is, however, that with the rate music technology changes, often your mixes will end up being in 'obsolete' software within a couple of years. Most DAWs are pretty good about backwards compatibility, but problems can still arise if plug-ins you used no longer work in your current OS, if you change DAWs, or if, as is the case with Logic, you need your old dongle to open files created in the old, dongled version of the software. What happens if you lose it?

It is useful to try to think ahead and plan for this when you are recording in the event that you need to come back to the songs at a later date (to remix, to make a more up to date version to use live, or for an 'Early Tracks' type compilation like I am about to put out). So here are a few things you can do to help in that regard.

1.) Document, Document, Document!
I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. When you back up your songs (and trust me, you'll want to do this as soon as you're finished), take time to document as much as you can about it. Include the date of recording, the BPM of the song, the version of software you used to record it, the version of software you used if there is any data compression like .SIT or .ZIP. If you use multiple mics regularly, mention which you used on this project. Mention any hardware synths used and back-up their patch files as sys-ex data embedded in the MIDI tracks. It may seem excessive, but no one has ever been upset by having too much information when they revisit a song years later.

2.) Safety in Numbers
When you bounce down your tracks as audio, take the time to make note of the starting bar of each track. This is most easily done in the track name itself. If you recorded an SH-101 bassline that started on bar 17, for instance, name the audio file 101bass(17).wav. Many DAWs will do this automatically when you bounce down softsynths, but not when you're recording external audio such as vocals, hardware synths, guitars, etc. Just get in the habit of doing it. If you end up changing to an entirely different DAW in the future, you'll be able to easily reconstruct the track by importing the audio and dragging its start point to the appropriate bar. Another option is to simply record every single track for the entire length of the song, but this is a bit wasteful of disc space, if you ask me.

3.) Save Every Version Separately
When you're working on a song, any time you do something major, take the time to save it to a new, separate file. This way, if you make a mistake and ruin something that was fine before, all you have to do is call up the earlier version and you're good to go. All you need to save is the song file itself with the appropriate number on it. It's not a bad idea to keep a notebook or file on your computer indicating what the differences are in each version. You might be able to remember that easily now, but in a couple years, I guarantee you probably won't.

4.) Print Those Effects
If you want to really ensure your mixes will be replayable on your system at a later date, it's not a bad idea to bounce down all your audio complete with the effects on once your mix is completed. I'm kind of borderline on this one since it does take up more disc space, so what I generally do is bounce down anything where a specific plug-in is integral to the sound. If it's something that just won't sound the same using another similar plug-in, bounce it. This saves you the headaches of dealing with abandoned plug-ins that never get an update to a current OS or plug-in standard.

Saving Hardware Synth Patches in Your DAW

One of the things I really like about making music on a computer is that when you open your project, everything you need is instantly recalled. Effects settings, softsynth patches... it all loads up when you open up a song on your DAW. This might not seem like a big deal, but for those of us who cut our teeth in hardware based studios, it is definitely a big improvement over the old days.

That said, I still like using hardware synths, too. So when I open a project in Logic, it has all the patches for my softsynths, etc., but obviously, this is not the case for my hardware synths. If you make a lot of sounds for your hardware synths, it's not difficult to see that you might eventually overwrite patches you used in a project from years ago. So what if you suddenly need to open that project and have the original patches on your hardware synths? The solution to this problem is Sys-ex.

Sys-ex is short for 'System Exclusive' and is a part of the MIDI specification. Its purpose was to allow manufacturers to send data over MIDI that was specific to a certain model of synth (ie, data that was exclusive to that system). While this could mean a number of things, it was most commonly used to send patch or bank data from synth to synth (of the same model) or some other form of storage device. Since Sys-ex is just MIDI data, you can use it to store your hardware synth patches as part of your DAW project file. Here are some tips:

1. You need to make sure your synth is set-up to send and receive Sys-ex messages. Consult your manual about this, as every synth is a little different.

2. Generally, you record Sys-ex data just as you would any MIDI track. Set up a MIDI track on your DAW, assign it to the instrument whose patch data you wish to store, hit record and follow whatever procedure the synth in question requires to send the patch data as Sys-ex (again, consult your manual... this usually involves either a menu selection or a combination of key presses). Once the synth is done dumping the data, hit 'stop' on your DAW and you now have a back up of the synth sounds for that hardware synth that you can save as part of your project file for easy recall later. Repeat the procedure (on different MIDI tracks, obviously) for any other hardware synths used in the song.

3. To restore the patches to your hardware synth, make sure the synth is set up to receive Sys-ex data, solo the MIDI track with the patch data on it, and hit play. In a minute or two, the bank you saved will be restored on your hardware synth.

One important thing to keep in mind is that some synths (especially older ones) have a hard time keeping up with the Sys-ex stream if the tempo of your project is set too high. To be safe, I recommend temporarily lowering the tempo of your project to around 60 BPM to avoid any problems.

Not every synth will let you do this. For anything pre-MIDI, you're pretty much out of luck, and even some of the early MIDI synths don't recognize Sys-ex, but for the vast majority, this will work fine and can save you a lot of heartache if you need to restore a project years down the road...

Back That Thang Up

If you work on a lot of music, you probably know the importance of backing your work up. Hard drives are notoriously unreliable as long term storage solutions, and there is nothing worse than the realization that you just lost a year's worth of work in the blink of an eye. Still, most musicians are pretty bad about this until it actually happens to them. (And it will sooner or later...)

Even if you're bad about backing up works in progress, chances are you've filled up your audio hard drive a time or two before and needed to purge material to make more room. Personally, I'm a believer in keeping everything, so any time I need to do this, it means I've got a date with a stack of DVD-Rs and Toast. (Believe me, I've had worse dates!)

I think it is very important, however, to think ahead when you are backing your projects up. You may need to restore a project for one reason or the other 5 years down the road. If that happens, you're going to be really happy if you document the contents of your disc thoroughly. This is also useful if you need to send a project to another musician, producer, etc. How you do this depends entirely on your own workflow, but here's what I do.

Name of Act
Name of Album (if any)
Name of Song in Quotations
Name of Producer/Engineer
Is the song a demo, pre-master, or master?
Backup Medium (CD-R, DVD-R, DVD-RW, Tape Drive, etc.)
Date of Back-up
What DAW format and version number is the project in?
If there are other proprietary file formats, what software and version number was used?
If the project is for a client, it's not a bad idea to include their contact info. Make sure to write this info on the storage medium itself too, as CD-R's and DVD's frequently get separated from their cases one way or the other.

One final thing to keep in mind is that occasionally DAW programs go under drastic changes in their native formats (such as when Logic Audio Platinum went from version 4 to 5), that may make your project unopenable in a future version. One option here is to keep every version of the program on your hard drive. I think the better solution, however, is to restore your old projects and convert them to the new format and then re-save them on a fresh DVD/Tape, etc. If you are really serious about keeping all of your old projects, it's not a bad idea to do this just to save it to new media every 5-10 years anyway. That's probably a bit anal if you store your backups well (in a cool, dark place), but no one ever regretted backing things up too much. The same can't be said for those who don't do it enough.

Mac Software for the Weak of Will

Found via The Music of Sound:

The other day I read an article that said when the average worker checks their email during the work day, it takes them an average of 16 minutes to get back to the task at hand. The irony of this is that I was reading the article when I really should've been finishing a remix I was working on.

If you're a Mac user and are easily distracted by shiny things on the internet, a new utility called Freedom may help. Basically, the program deactivates your network connections for a user-defined period of time, so even if you WANT to, you can't check your email, sign on to chat programs, or waste hours arguing with people you don't know on Fark. The program is free to try, but the author asks for a $10 donation if you find the program useful.

5 Ways to Combat Writer's Block

If you've been writing music for any significant period of time, chances are you've encountered writer's block: that temporary inability to come up with anything musically or lyrically interesting. This can be frustrating enough if you're a hobbiest, but if you happen to make your living from music, it can be a disaster. So it's good to have some strategies in place for when it happens to you. Here are a couple to get you started:

1.) Restrict Yourself
Back when my studio set-up consisted of nothing but a single sampler, I dreamt of the days when I would be able to afford more gear. Surely that would solve all my creative blocks! What I found out was just the opposite. Sometimes, having too many options is actually counter-productive. If your studio has grown to include several hardware or software synths, you may find yourself just auditioning bass sounds all afternoon instead of committing to one and moving on. So impose some restrictions on yourself. Try making an entire song with nothing but a single synth. Make the drums and everything from scratch. Not only will you improve your sound programming abilities, but you'll likely end up with a track that sounds utterly unlike anything else you've done.

2.) Explore the Unfamiliar
Try making a track in a genre you are unfamiliar with. Track down songs that are popular within that genre and deconstruct them to find out what makes them tick. Once you have a rough idea of what makes the genre sound like it does, have a go at making your own original track in that style. Remember, no one ever needs to hear the song, this is just an exercise to get your creativity flowing. And even if you end up not being fond of the song in that particular genre, you can always adapt it back to your usual style after the fact. Or who knows? Perhaps the track could be your first steps into a brand new side project!

3.) iShuffle
If you've got an iPod or similar media player that offers a 'shuffle' function, you can use it as a way to stimulate your creativity. Fire it up and hit shuffle and listen to the first song it plays. Take some element of that song and apply it to whatever you are working on. It can be something as simple as copying the feel of a percussion line, to mimicking the structure of the entire song, to using the same types of sounds, etc.

4.) Raising the Dead
You keep every idea you sketch into your sequencer, right? RIGHT? If you don't, now is a good time to start. Keep EVERY idea you come up with, no matter how lame it may seem to you right now. What might seem kind of lackluster now, may turn out to be the perfect chorus or bridge for a song you are stuck on in the future. So if you find yourself feeling uninspired, go back and listen to some of those abandoned ideas and see if there is something you can work into an interesting song, or even just part of the current track you are working on. Context is everything, so what sounds 'bleh' on its own, may sound brilliant played against an existing riff in the song you are struggling with now.

5.) Be Productive
My motto in the studio is 'always be working on something'. You don't always have to be working on your next number one hit. If you get stuck on a track, try doing something different to clear your head, but try to make it something that might help you further down the road. Program some new sounds into your favorite synth. Sort your sample library so sounds are easier to find when you're looking for them. Make some new presets for your favorite plug-in effect. It's possible that none of these things will benefit you immediately, but they'll surely save you work further down the line, and you may just find that taking a short break from writing music recharges your creative batteries.