My Creative Process: Creating Music

The creative process can sometimes be the hardest or easiest part when creating music. There’s no right or wrong way to be creative and every artist, producer and songwriter has a different approach. The goal is to be able to transpire whatever you’re feeling into lyrics and melodies. For me, it depends on my mood, time of day and/or what I’m trying to accomplish. For instance, writing this blog about the creative process is just one of many examples to start.

Creative Environment – Isolation

The most important thing for me is isolation. I often find myself locked in a room pacing or sitting in a corner with the beat looping in the background or in my headphones. Depending on how I’m feeling, I may have the lights on or just the light from the computer screen. When not writing in my cellphone, it’s placed on silent and flipped face down to keep me from getting tempted. This helps me focus more on the task and minimize the distractions. At the same time, I’m observing things around me while silently findings ways or things to use as inspiration.

Creative Concepts or Ideas – Brainstorming

Next is finding the right concept or idea. This is the tricky part because I try to make sure what I’m writing about is relevant, relatable and thoughtful. Understanding that everyone perceives and processes information differently, is something you always want to keep in mind. Everything written is not taken as expected but knowing it will reach someone is key. This could be a simple recap from a conversation, a third person point of view, an object, a desire or whatever you want it to be. Just trust when you find the write concept, ideas and thoughts will start pouring fast.

Adding Creative Ingredients – Put It All Together

Now it’s time to put the song together. I try using different patterns and/or melodies with random words to find what sounds best to the beat. I’m either humming gibberish in my head or saying them out loud while moving throughout the room. I may even use my body language as a sign to uncover a desired feeling with the right word usage. Bringing my emotions into the process helps develop the song into something relevant, relatable and thoughtful. This then carries over to the recording process, which involves many other moving parts that will more than often spark more creativity.

Time to listen and release when it’s all done. The best thing about the creative process is you get to share your results. Music plays a very important role in everyone’s life and being able to share is amazing. Every song is not always good, I know we’ve all heard our share of some bad songs. The point is the creator thought it was good enough to share with us and they did. The creative process can be hard or it can be easy, but the approach is up to you. This is what works for me, but it may not work for you. These are just some of the things I do to spark my creativity side. What are yours?