99 % of people don’t understand creative freedom
99 % of people don’t understand creative freedom.
As musicians, we enjoy the freedom of writing our own music. We can do whatever we want and how we like it. It’s our creative freedom. Our artistic freedom.
But can this endless freedom burden us?
I’m sure you experienced this before. You wanted to start a new song but could not find any ideas. You sit in front of a blank page or your DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and nothing comes to mind. No melody, no riff, not even the topic you want to write about. There are so many possible songs to write, but you can’t get yourself to write one. All these choices overwhelm you.
You’re not alone!
Being of overwhelmed by too many choices is common. Not only for musicians but for every person in existence. It’s so common, it got scientifically studied.
It’s called “paradox of choice” or “decision paralysis”.
We believe that being presented with many options actually makes it easier to choose. In the creative field, we call it creative freedom. But having an abundance of options actually requires more effort to make a decision. This results in either choosing nothing or being unsatisfied with the decision we made.
How can musician like us deal with this paradox? How can we prevent this feeling?
We can imply one simple trick.
It’s creating a framework.
A framework places constrains on your creative freedom and turn it into creative focus. It pushes you from inactivity to activity.
So how do we create one?
Creating a framework in 5 easy steps
What’s your goal?
Before you start writing or going after any goal you need to ask yourself 3 questions:
What you want to do?
Where you want to go?
How do you get there?
By answering these questions, you set yourself in the directions you want to go. Without doing this your efforts will end in aimless creativity.
Nothing is worse than aimless creativity. You simply won’t make progress towards your goal.
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Defeat the paradox of choice
Let’s dive deep into the paradox of choice.
Like visiting a grocery store to buy a loaf of bread. You get bombarded by a near endless selection of products. Cheap, expensive, white bread, gluten-free and so on…
I visited my local grocery store this week and counted about 50 different types of bread in one aisle. It’s no wonder that shopping trips can drain all your energy.
To defeat the paradox of choice, you need to set yourself boundaries you can work within.
If you determinate beforehand that you only want a loaf of white bread, in the range of 1–3 €, the available choices drop from 100 to about 5. A reasonable amount to make a decision about.
You need to do the same for your songwriting. Starting a song without constrains will paralyze you.
Determinate these for every song:
Theme - What’s it about?
Mood - How it should feel?
Type of Song - Is it a ballad, rock song, …?
Starting point to kick-start creativity
These points set a direction your song follows. Within these constrains, you can express yourself freely. They will also will keep you on track.
How to kick start your creativity
I’m sure you noticed this already. Sitting down, wanting to write a song, doesn’t spark creativity. Creativity works best when it can build upon an existing idea. Sometimes it hides itself and needs to be lured out.
The best way you can do this is by providing a point you can expand on. When you feel uninspired, try one of these examples:
a chord progression
a new guitar tone
a drum groove
play an instrument you’re not used to
The mind loves new things to focused on it. Find as many different ways to start a song as you can.
Embrace novelty, avoid familiarity.
You will boost your creativity!
It will elevate your songwriting and make you a more versatile musician.
Deadlines and perfectionism
Parkinson’s Law says that work will stretch the time allotted. In other words, if you don’t limit the time you want to work on a song, you will do endlessly until 2 things happen:
You build yourself in to a creative corner
Perfectionism drives you to hate your own song
Both will end by abandoning the song with a disappointed feeling.
Setting a deadline will force you to complete songs. It forces you to focus on the creative decisions that matter. With a tight deadline, you don’t have time to waste. Avoiding lyric writing by playing with sound design for 2 hours is not an option.
Set yourself the goal of writing a song in a timeframe of 8 hours max. The song doesn’t need to be fully produced, but should be coherent. If the song doesn’t resonate with you at this stage, it won’t do if it got tones of post-production on it. And that's fine! End the song here and start anew.
Building a writing habit
Everything we’ve talked about sends you on the best way to write and finish your music.
But all these point won’t work if you don’t even write.
You need to set time aside to work on your music. Set clear goal is great, but following up is better.
Thinking about stuff is not doing stuff - strughless
Start with the smallest daily habit you can manage, and write for 15 minutes a day. The time will increase when your habit establishes.
I write a song every week and set aside 8 hours for writing. If this isn’t manageable for you, write a song every 2 week.
The smallest steps will compound in your success.
Take away
To summarize everything, we’ve talked about today, in actionable steps:
Set yourself a goal of what you want to accomplish with your music (What, Why, How)
Limit endless creative freedom by determining constrains for your song
Kick-start your creativity by giving it a starting point
Set yourself a deadline / force yourself to finish the song
Create a writing habit
Following these steps will make sure you’re constantly improving whilst keeping you on track.
