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You all know the feels: long ruts, a goal in mind, and when you finally get to pick up that guit/bass/vi/drumstick/keytar/xylophone mallet, you end up a million miles from where you want to be.
And it pisses you off.
But you persist.
Maybe you end up somewhere better.
Maybe you just want to put the fucking instrument down after 10 minutes and perhaps never pick the bastard thing up again, as though it was responsible for destroying the thing living inside you, although deep down you know that your relationship with it has been strained by neglecting to grow.
Or just practice and acquire the discipline needed to make the inner sounds a reality.

In my instance, I need to find a patient and open minded drummer to jam with.
And I probably need to either abandon the sounds and concepts in my head and get back to playing with feeling or practice more to overcome the obstacle of frustration.

What do you guys to immanentise your inner musical forms, unmake the erudite and reclaim vibratory state release?

Are you struggling with 'ability'/'proficiency' or with the creative/habitual parts? Is it muscle memory or muscle atrophy?

Muscle memory is a bummer to work with. One solution is to alter a familiar instrument. Remove half the strings; alternate tunings; put duct tape on the strings at the bridge to kill sustain; use an Ebow; use something other than a pick; learn a new scale; &c.

If it's physical ability: eh, not a big deal (to me, anyway). The faster/better/more agile school of thought tends to turn playing instruments into a sport rather than a creative act.

Anyway: what gets you amped up? Finding new textures? Discovering a new technique? New sounds/chords/intervals?

I get pumped by unusual intervals and rhythms, so I look for things that'll do that for me. Short sustain, staccato notes; palm muting, arpeggiators, pitch shifters, rhythmic delays, taking strings off so I can more easily play simple diads or triads with big intervallic jumps, &c.

Also yeah definitely play with a good drummer. That'll push you in weird directions, force you to play with different emphasis, voicings, &c. If I can ever get my fucken recording rig up and running, I'll send you some scratch tracks with a metronome and BPM to try and warp your brain.

WE NEED AN INSTRUMENT
TO TAKE A MEASUREMENT

Best thing to do for me in these situations is to put the instrument away for a while and pursue other interests. Kind of think about it like lifting weights, or running, too much and you get overtrained start getting worse. You improve when you rest. Largest bumps in creativity and skill/technique in playing always come from taking pretty good breaks (in my experience). As far as muscle memory for fine motor skills, I think this is something that once you have, it never goes away. Maybe gets a bit rusty but coordination there comes back quickly after years and years of lying dormant.

Invisible Man wrote:Are you struggling with 'ability'/'proficiency' or with the creative/habitual parts? Is it muscle memory or muscle atrophy?

Sort of a combination. I'm in a rut stylistically, but really trying hard to push past emulation and into "discover the riff secrets, dismantle them and build your own". Which is actually way more difficult than it sounds.
I'm more interested in the feel of a passage at the moment than what it sounds like, but sadly the stuff that's feeling right is hard to stumble across while avoiding the feeling of treading familiar ground.
My chops are fairly neglected also, but its more of a mental hurdle.
Plus, there's this burgeoning sense of never actually playing in a live context again that is eating away at me like dread almighty. It's frustrating because its something I desperately need to do again for my sanity but I know nobody I used to jam with/are friends with who has time and convincing randos that a weekend warrior dad is a good investment for a band mate is basically pushing shit uphill. I've toyed with the idea of joining a band and just being a lackey but that sort of negates the purpose of the exercise and peeps in their early 30s into doom/heavy stuff with kids that can deal are sort of hard to come by. because there's no way a bunch of 20 somethings are gonna have me around.
I refuse to give up, though.
Really, I just need to find a like-minded drummer in a similar situation and go balls out 2 piece.

Invisible Man wrote: Muscle memory is a bummer to work with. One solution is to alter a familiar instrument. Remove half the strings; alternate tunings; put duct tape on the strings at the bridge to kill sustain; use an Ebow; use something other than a pick; learn a new scale; &c.

If it's physical ability: eh, not a big deal (to me, anyway). The faster/better/more agile school of thought tends to turn playing instruments into a sport rather than a creative act.

Yeah, I'm over the sport metal approach. It's more an inability to communicate the idea clearly from brain to hands. Its as clear as a bell in my head, but it doesn't some out that way at all when playing, as though it goes missing from A to B.

Invisible Man wrote: Anyway: what gets you amped up? Finding new textures? Discovering a new technique? New sounds/chords/intervals?

I get pumped by unusual intervals and rhythms, so I look for things that'll do that for me. Short sustain, staccato notes; palm muting, arpeggiators, pitch shifters, rhythmic delays, taking strings off so I can more easily play simple diads or triads with big intervallic jumps, &c.

I'm set on textures, and while new techniques are cool, I think I'd be more about the sound of songs as a whole at this point.
Really I'm struggling with exactly WHAT the fuck it is inside me that needs to get out and perhaps, if its even what I think it is.
Apologies for being cryptic/full of hubris but there're a lot of mechanisms at play I guess and I can't decide which are metal detritus and which are actually devices I've employed for a reason along the years (as in shit filters).

Invisible Man wrote:Also yeah definitely play with a good drummer. That'll push you in weird directions, force you to play with different emphasis, voicings, &c. If I can ever get my fucken recording rig up and running, I'll send you some scratch tracks with a metronome and BPM to try and warp your brain.

Dude, I'd love that.

repoman wrote:Best thing to do for me in these situations is to put the instrument away for a while and pursue other interests. Kind of think about it like lifting weights, or running, too much and you get overtrained start getting worse. You improve when you rest. Largest bumps in creativity and skill/technique in playing always come from taking pretty good breaks (in my experience). As far as muscle memory for fine motor skills, I think this is something that once you have, it never goes away. Maybe gets a bit rusty but coordination there comes back quickly after years and years of lying dormant.

Yeah, I think because I only get to play sporadically and in short bursts its sort of still there, but not at peak levels. Once upon a time I was one with my guitar (or as close as I've ever felt to that), and while it doesn't feel foreign to me now it's sort of telling me I'm faking it, or at least that it wants something better.

Tanks to you guys for taking the time to reply, definitely some great advice.
My situation is probably not unique, but it is a little more complicated than I originally stated maybe.
Hopefully your words have helped out some other people's around here.

Well yeah I'm in a similar spot. There are tons of musicians around where I live, but most of them want to take it seriously as a career, which I have done and am now done with; don't understand the requirement of adulthood (i.e., I am lame and proud of it); like music that I cannot abide by; have nowhere to be noisy, putting me in the position of music dad with a rad basement. I NEED TO GET OUT, not to host a bunch of people while my family suffers extreme volumes upstairs.

Invisible Man wrote:Well yeah I'm in a similar spot. There are tons of musicians around where I live, but most of them want to take it seriously as a career, which I have done and am now done with; don't understand the requirement of adulthood (i.e., I am lame and proud of it); like music that I cannot abide by; have nowhere to be noisy, putting me in the position of music dad with a rad basement. I NEED TO GET OUT, not to host a bunch of people while my family suffers extreme volumes upstairs.

if only you were closer to me, haha.

that's exactly the kind of person we wanted to play with us for so long.
mostly good although bassist is a flake.

try a new instrument/listening/learning a type of music outside of you comfort zone like maybe joint a poka/ska/folkmeal band

Please tell me folkmeal is not a typo. Cannibal-themed folk.

O-Phobe: yeah. I'm sure those people are findable, but who's willing to go to all that effort to find randos who fit the bill? Gotta start with at least some people you know. Basically want to fart around IRL like we all do here. There's a high # of Michiganders here, but we're still pretty scattered.

I get the most satisfaction out of writing and recording songs, and for about a year I've felt like there are no songs in me. I tried focusing on other hobbies, new instruments and tunings, playing outside my style. I get sick to death of what I'm playing before I even fully develop the idea. It's really hard to convince myself to follow an idea I don't feel excited for. If I spent as much time working on songs in 2016 as I did reading books/webs about how to facilitate motivation and creativity I might have actually gotten something done. I've just been letting myself noodle and work on sound design which at least is something, but it's really frustrating that I can't just Do.

Invisible Man wrote:Please tell me folkmeal is not a typo. Cannibal-themed folk.

the tyuio keys on my computer doesn't always work, it is an issue...

I find writing my ideas in guitar pro is really helpful. Because you've written them down you don't have to waste time memorising them just to have material to work with in the future. Also it makes arranging really easy. Just copy paste stuff. Again, this lets you test ideas and really work with songcraft without burning yourself out on the sound of your own riffs. You can mute parts, try different timings, different tunings... it's awesome.
You can also program drums when you are done with arranging the song. Export the midi file, import it into logic or whatever, then run a plugin like addictive drums or ez drummer. Crank the volume then jam with a pretty decent simulation of a drummer to your own jams.

Another thing I'll do in songwriting terms when I'm stuck is to think in terms of other other bands. So if I'm stuck on a vocal melody I might sing the lyrics to Rusty Cage and see if that fixes the rhythm, or maybe gives me an idea with the melody. Or if I'm stuck on a bridge I might chuck on some Morbid Angel and listen to how the bridge in a tune I dig relates to the preceding part. Then I'll start doing something similar. As it gets worked into the song it gets less and less like the source and more like your own material. Or it doesn't work at all and you scrap it. But at least you have worked through an idea which might help when you scrap it and start back at square one.

Another thing I have is a little text file on my phone and as soon as I hear something cool songcraft-wise I'll write it up. It can be bullshit simple stuff, like "drop out the guitars for 1 cycle, just bass and drums" or "blastbeats over clean arpeggio". Whatever. I think I've got maybe 30 or so small notes. And that's a cool resource for working through song ideas.

I'm burning diesel burning dinosaur bones

Invisible Man wrote:

NSFW: show

I'm burning diesel burning dinosaur bones

One of the main reasons I vote green, out of respect to me saurian brethren.