10ish Ways to FIGHT Writer's Block

0:01 What's up, it is Scoobert Doobert, is good to be back on the microphone.Yeah, I took a little bit of time off for the Memorial Day weekend, the long weekend,went on a lake, you know, relaxed, gathered myself, grew my creativity once again, and

0:29 I got, I got some heat for you today, I got some good, good stuff, honestly, this mightbe the best pod that I've done so far, not because I'm going to say good words, but becauseof the content.I really thought about this one, I was thinking about it on the lake, and it all comesfrom a Reddit message, so just like I say at the end of every single podcast, reach outto me.

0:54 I'm happy to answer questions or like, talk about a subject or anything like that.One dude, I'm not going to say his name because, you know, he didn't ask me to, he askedme, what do you do to stay, you know, in the zone?How do you keep coming up with new ideas?How do you stay excited?How do you keep doing it?

1:17 And I thought about it for a long time, and there's a whole bag of tricks that I have,that I go to all the fricking time, and I'm sharing with you, because I want you to makemore music, and if you don't make music, this literally applies to anything that youdo creatively.It's about like changing perspective, and while these techniques might be a little bit,

1:38 you know, specific, you can take the concepts, and this might give you an idea for a newway of looking at a problem, come into something, and bring a new creativity.So number one, go listen to a lot of music, get outside of your comfort zone with whatyou put in.My dad would always say garbage in, garbage out, he'd be talking about like junk food

1:59 or swearing or something like that, but like it's a good sentiment, which you put intoyou, your inputs become your outputs, and so put in a lot of cool music and think outsideyour genre.You know, one of the things I've been doing is I haven't going back in like musical history,I'm listening to more classical music, I'm listening to more jazz, I'm listening to

2:17 like field recordings and things, you know, that have different tonal systems like that,this might be a pod at some point, where I'll, or maybe a series of pods where I'll gothrough a bunch of different history, because I'm stoked about it, and it helps me, becauseit helps me get outside of my frame of mind, and it always, always, always, always gives

2:33 me new ideas, because I hear something in it, and I go, oh, if I just took this kind ofrhythmic vibe and applied it to the thing that I do, all of a sudden it's a completelydifferent picture, and that alone can become a whole EP or an LP, or you know, even likeyears of musical cycle, and it's not, I'm not saying like a go appropriate, I'm saying

2:51 like let it, let it open your horizons, and engage with musical traditions in a deep, deepway, let it become part of you, and then because it's part of you, you are going to bringsomething new to what you do, so it's just, it's simple, get to know your history, youknow, and then eventually, once you get to know this history, there's going to be more

3:13 things and flavors that you want to try, that you possibly have time on earth to try.That's how I feel right now, that's part of the reason why I make so much music, becauseI feel this like sense of like, oh my God, there's so much I want to make, there's somany things that I want to do musically, and I have limited time and scope to do it, so

3:34 I need to be fast, I need to like, go, because there's all of this stuff that I want to do,and so getting a little bit of that drive really, really helps.And you do that through history, through influences.

3:48 The next one, this is like, this is like kind of a game changing thing, I honestly thinkit applies to any creative undertaking.

3:57 Start something, and then abandon that idea, butlet it lead you to the next idea, let me give you an example, I will be, I'll be like,oh, I have a chorus idea, I'll start noodling the guitar, maybe singing, and I'll write down that chorus idea, I'll record it or whatever. And then I'll think, okay, what kindof post-chorus, this other catchy thing that follows a chorus, would follow this bit.

4:22 And a lot of times what I end up writing second is more interesting than what I sat down tostart with, and then I'll turn that post-chorus into the chorus, and abandon that first ideaentirely. The way that I think about this is like authors, you know how they do in mediares, where it's in the middle of the action.

4:42 And you're just dropped into this universe, this happens in movies all the time too. You're like, dropped in James Bond, and it's thechase scene, and you're like, you know, flying from roof to roof, but you don't know why he'sbeing chased.

4:55 He's just like being chased by a vaguely Russian man, you know, like thiswhole thing, and then, so that it sets up this feeling of mystery and intrigue, but I swear a lot of the time is that authors do that. It's because they wrote like 14 chapters,and then they got to chapter 15 and went, oh crap, it'd be cooler if I just started here.

5:14 And then through way the first 14 chapters, one of my grandpa's favorite things was, youknow you're doing well if you're leaving stuff you love on the cutting room floor. He waslike a, he'd write speeches and stuff.

5:31 And he was all about, if you're editing, like F Scott, F Scott Fitzgerald, it means that, you know, you're being, you're really being in touch with whatmatters and the right flow of pace of things.

5:46 And so by, by starting an A section, writing a Bsection, and then writing a completely different A section, you've taken an on ramp into a universe and then you choose to focus the listener onto a different part of that universe, but it givesyou an on ramp. So it's basically like saying, there are no bad ideas. There are just starter ideas.

6:09 And if you're making something, you're like, oh man, this is so cheesy. Think about, okay,so I wrote a cheesy chorus. What would be like a cool post-chorus that would make that cheesy chorus,not as lame, you write that cool post-chorus, then you abandon the cheesy chorus. And now yourpost-chorus is your chorus. Same thing with like verses or, you know, anything.

6:28 So it's like letting your brain, not editing yourself from the jump, but instead, you know, letting that first quote-unquotebad idea be the appetizer into the actual thing that you're starting to make. And I swear,that's, that's like the biggest thing for me because it stops you from stopping. It creates momentum.

6:52 All right. Now I'm going to get into some more nuts and bolts stuff. Another good one,been doing this a lot recently. Change the settings on your master bus. So for those of you that don'tdo audio stuff like I do, engineering and production and mixing and mastering, first of all,listen to the other podcast because it'll give you good context and what that, those words even mean.

7:19 And I'll do more pods on them because it's like one of my favorite subjects. But there is a master bus, a thing through which all things flow, the thing that sums it all, thesum, summer, some bus, that that affects the way that everything else sounds. So sometimes onthat master, I will throw tape saturation, most of the time.

7:45 Sometimes I'll throw a bunch of days after saturation. Sometimes I'll have nothing. Sometimes I'll have really severe compression.Sometimes I'll have no compression. What that does is it allows me to affect everything. Soit's like putting the whole song into a frame of mind.

8:02 And it's a great way to, you know, generate new ideas. If you run it all into a cassette tape emulator, now the whole thing sounds like a cassettetape. So now any drum that you pull into your session is going to have cassette tape modulation andweirdness. The same thing with the vocals that you record. It's going to have that weirdness.

8:19 So it creates a vibe for everything. And if you don't like it, then you just take it off. And now thevibe is completely different. Those head space changes, especially in the early, early parts ofrecording. This is not fun to do when you're mixing. I sometimes do it. It sucks. But it has,sometimes it has to happen. But it creates a different frame of mind for everything.

8:38 Another, another like recording trick. And recording is a great way to come up with ideas because you'reable to play with yourself. That's the whole reason why I learned so many different instrumentsis so that I could be a one man band via a computer because my, you know, my friends,they all left for college. And here I am in San Diego lonely and whatnot and having to jam with myself.

8:59 So you learn these new instruments. That's, I guess, number four on my, my hit list,learn some new instruments. That's super fun. Now doubling. This is one of the best waysto start having things bounce off of each other, even if you only know one instrument,even if you only know bass, even if you only know guitar or keyboards or anything like that.

9:21 Try doubling and try doubling using the stereo field, pan something over to your left,

9:27 pan what you're recording over to your right, and then try and bounce off of each other.Sometimes the most beautiful harmonies happen when you're kind of playing the same part,but you kind of forgot it. And so then it kind of sounds like two guitarists doing doing something.And they're kind of dancing with each other. And here's the next step.

9:46 So record something, pan it off to your left ear, double it, hand that over to your right ear.Delete the first thing. So take the thing that you have over in your right ear,delete the left ear completely, move your right ear over to your left ear and then double it again.

10:05 Same, same, same, same, same exact idea as the whole get rid of the first version of your chorus.Don't do that always, but it's creative idea.

10:14 Do the same thing with doubling.Because sometimes I find this a lot, I feel more confident when I'm doubling something.And my initial take where I'm not doubling anything doesn't feel confident.So when I get rid of that, and every take that I've done is to a double, the whole thing sounds more confident and intentional.

10:36 And it gives me new ideas because that sometimes I won't play it exactly the same.And I'll go, oh, I like the way that I played it when I was doing the double,because I had something to balance out, balance off of and balance with.

10:46 And the thing that was just, you know, alone with the click track in the vacuum of space and time,

10:53 you know, that's not what music feels like. You know, when you're just playing to a click track,that's kind of sucks. But when you're playing to other musicians, then you're playing music,because you're talking to each other, you're talking to yourself. I'm like, I'm doing right nowwith this microphone.

11:08 But it opens up like a vocabulary and a flexibility and a confidence that sometimes just having a confident next step allows you to take the step after that.

11:18 And that's the whole process of arranging. It's just taking step after step in that cave withthe flashlight to eventually find something cool. Or you don't. But who cares? Even if you didn'tfind something cool, like at least you made a thing, at least you did the work and then go makeanother thing. And guess what? Maybe this thing leads you to another song that's super cool.

11:38 So even if you made something cheesy that you hate, you still made something. And it's likethose chapters one through 14. Now you got chapter 15 that's actually burning. Throw away chapterone through 14 and now start the whole book at chapter 15. But call it chapter one. No one's goingto know. All right. Two more for you. Change your posture.

11:59 There's like, there's like a thing, then this is, you know, this is holistic. Not just change your posture about how you're holdingyour instrument, but change your posture, how you're singing. Change your, the way that you areinteracting with whatever instrument. And it's going to change the way that you approach it.

12:18 This is like not something that like a clarinet teacher would tell you, but you're going to playreal different if you're slouching or if you're straight or if you're chilling in the chair. It's the

12:28 okay. So you know what people think that you're better at music or you're worse at music when you'reyou're high, you're doing drugs or anything like that. I think that that is a compound. I thinkthat it's actually, it's actually confusing two things. When people are like high or people aredrunk, they approach the recording process differently.

12:50 All you have to do to get the same different vibe is just to approach the recording process differently. You don't need to be drunk.You don't need to be high. You just need to like bring that mentality to what you're doing.If you are drunk, you're confident. You don't care. So bring that to your recording. You don'tneed to be drunk to do it. If you're high, you're chilling, you're slouching, you're laid back.

13:12 So bring that to your recording. Just do it. You don't need the substance in order to do the thing.That's the whole point with the posture thing. Bring a different headspace

13:22 in on that one. Go for a walk. That's a free one. Big deal. Go for a walk. Take a shower. Dolike other things. Change your shirt. Sometimes it can be a real good place to start. If your motherand mother fan, that's what you do. Final one. This is a big one. This is a scary one. Change the tempo.

13:42 Don't do this late in the process. That sucks. Don't do that to your recording engineer. Thatdevil sucks. If you've already finished arranging a song, go change the tempo. I am talking on thesongwriting part when you're struggling to find melodies or the next step. Try changing thetempo. Funny little secret. A great song. A great melody. It doesn't matter what tempo it is at.

14:07 It is still a great song. Tempos just allow you to have different windows into it. If you end upwriting something truly great, tempo key doesn't matter. It's great. With that, go make some stuff.I'm gonna go make some stuff too. If you have any questions, reach out to me scoobertdoobert.pizza.

14:35 You can find all my links. Reddit DMs, IG DMs, email, whatever. I'll do a plot on it and alsolike we can talk and whatever. Thanks for listening. I hope this helps.