When you’re inspired, the creation of electronic music can feel effortless. Every sample you select is the perfect one, falling into place on your DAW’s timeline like magic. Firing up and triggering a synth instantly inspires a bassline or hook. MIDI notes and audio build up to create a composition you never could’ve planned. Once those creative juices are fully flowing, it feels like the music is writing itself.
If you’ve experienced this zen-like state, you’ve probably been through the complete opposite, too: those times when a blank screen remains overwhelmingly empty, and every technique is doomed to fail. The harder you push against this creative drought, the more stress builds up. If you do push past this ‘writer’s block’ somehow, you can end up with a track that has all of the functional elements of a track (drums, bass, chords, etc), but lacks the spark and magic of something truly special. Though there’s an art to making music, us electronic musicians are lucky in that we have technology on hand to help us. The secret is recognising when your gear – hardware or software – is hindering your creativity, then hacking that tech to get around the problem.