I'm in a bit of a writing slump right now. You know the type, where every note you play is just the worst possible note you could have played, except for the one immediately following it.

Help a guy break out of this stuff and throw your favorite composition techniques my way.

Thanks!

Sorry to hear you're in a slump at the moment.

Personally, I find listening to as much as possible and learning to play it both verbatim and with my own spin naturally generates more musical ideas. I know a lot of jazz musos are big on transcribing pieces and solos to increase discipline as well as musical vocabulary for this same reason. I trust that if I'm constantly taking in new musical information and HAVING to regurgitate with feeling every day, it will find it's way into my own creative expression and writing without too much effort... it's a drip-feeding, nervous system type approach.

I'm fortunate that my day job means my clients are bringing in different songs every day that I have to play (on piano, sometimes guitar) to accompany them. I'll also have to transpose on the fly to suit their voice. This makes it a lot easier for my own natural workflow for my job to improve my creativity both personally and in a work context.

A more intentional thing I like to do is to take a song I like, and another completely different genre, and see if I can shoehorn that song into that genre. E.g. take a rock song, and turn it into RnB; take a happy song (e.g. Walking on Sunshine) and make it a melancholic piece in minor chords. But this requires you to innately understand the idiosyncrasies of each genre, which requires immersing yourself in as many genres as possible. I've got other things as well, but these are two things I do off the top of my head.

Not saying you don't already do a lot of this, just throwing my 2p in! Hope it helps.

Bro Josh!

Go for some long walks and get rid of the clutter. The new music will then start to froth to the top of your mind, coming from a place of relative silence.

The best melodies I've ever had came from long walks . Trilok Gurtu said the same thing...

Disclaimer: I am not a prolific writer.

For me, writing comes from really two places. The first one is from a technique exploration: Try some specific exercise and then see what happens. The second one is more about mindset. After practicing several pieces that I enjoy, I get in a space where I just want to keep playing without the backing of a known song. From here something valuable may or may not arise.

Don’t play Stick for a week. Instead, try to learn something completely new and give yourself a break. Everything will sound new again!

You guys rock, gonna give these a whirl and see what happens.

Dear Josh,

...long walks are a good idea...
...but as long you're not in a race or competition for learning the stick,
take your time...
...and last but not least, listen to good music carefully and actively...

have a good time...

Try a drum machine or something that gives a different beat. I always find inspiration from rhythm. Something usually comes up. Try to find poetry you like. Sometimes the rhythm of the words is enough to get the ball rolling. Don’t sleep...... most ideas come when you are so tired you know you should go to bed then as you are about to give up inspiration strikes. I don’t recommend this often. Play music back wards or up side down. This might inspire you. Music is like a snow ball. Sometimes all it takes is a little push to get the ball rolling into a big idea. Try effects on your stick you normally don’t use. This gets you outside your normal mind set. Pick a scale or chord you don’t use often and see if you can come up with something. Again we get stuck in a rut doing the same thing over and over. Different approaches might yield different results. Keep a verbal journal. Ie use your phones voice capture software and archive ideas as you go. I’ve got about 70 different 1bar or more ideas I can go to most are not worthy but sometimes a Jem comes out. Use this software and keep your phone handy for when you wake up in the middle of the night with this killer idea on your head otherwise you wake up in the morning kicking yourself for not remembering.

That’s enough for now