For me at least, because I'm so inexperienced I view being in the DAW as studying. sometimes I open and nothing happens and that's okay but now with the forum here I can at least try new techniques and see what they sound like and how to do them. That's how I figured out parallel compression and stuff like that. So forcing yourself to dedicate time is more important I guess. if you don't make music you at least better be learning something new. So I try and work on music very often even if nothing fruitful happens in terms of an actual song as long as I learn something.

Constantly working on production skill until something clicks is how I go about it.

I spend hours hashing out different variations of something until it clicks, or I just have to move onto another project. getting to a point where I feel an amount of achievement, and personal investment in the project feeds my inspiration and allows me to focus on a track more diligently. like kill the noise twitted, "good music writes itself." same thing as following the muse. just getting a composition to sit tight and flow can spark more ideas/inspiration. I

I think it's important to practice at some interval and approach it with tenacity and dedication. But if all you're doing is music, that kind of makes for a boring person with out much versatility.

life should be about music, but your life shouldn't be music.

It's one sided and short and eventually leads to frustration if you don't know when to ease off the accelerator. Some times you may need to even do an activity that's completely different than music in order to get your mojo back.

Not to mention, doing things other than  music brings about a completely fresh perspective than if you were tunneled into one a narrow field of view.

You gotta draw inspiration from any where and any thing. Gotta learn yourself before you gain confidence.

Which will help to make music every day and/or when you're inspired.

I think, especially when starting out, you need to just sit in your daw and grind out the hours.  It's like learning any new skill, it just takes time.  I always try to make sure I have at least 2 hours to sit in Ableton and do whatever, whether it's sound design or mixing or writing

Quote from: Shew on January 08, 2016, 08:15:53 am

I think, especially when starting out, you need to just sit in your daw and grind out the hours.  It's like learning any new skill, it just takes time.  I always try to make sure I have at least 2 hours to sit in Ableton and do whatever, whether it's sound design or mixing or writing

i think this is a really important thing to realize: yeah, eric prydz can get away with creating only when he's inspired. but if you haven't unlocked the prydz mastery achievement in your music production journey, it's unlikely that following that rule is going to work as well for you as it does for eric prydz haha

that said, i think what OP is doing implies he's still working on music in some way shape or form regularly - just not starting out for the purpose of writing music every time. i think that's a fine approach. just sitting and doing music production in any capacity is what most of us should be doing

personally, i think i spend a little too much time in the DAW as i'm  very consistent in working on music but i could probably spend more time reading/refining my stuff in other areas :x

Yeah I definitely agree in that case too.  I usually always open up my daw with the intent to write something, but a lot of the time I just don't feel the flow so I work on other aspects.  There's plenty of aspects to master to keep us occupied

I recommend working on music daily. Even if you're bored, just try to sit down and do something with DAW. Maybe you could be inspired just by trying to work on something. 

Even if you're not working on a track, if music is your passion you should be looking for ways to practice and grow no matter what. Reading manuals and experimenting with your synths and effects, building up loops, or just dissecting tracks you enjoy instead of just listening to them will give you knowledge and experience that you can use the next time inspiration hits.