Elektron-Users

bauer wrote:
this is great advice. i'm part the way there, and you've just reminded me why i moved from ableton to hardware. must start recording those jams again!

Ironically, Live has enabled me to do just this. It has the function of the platform that everything is recorded to, and everything is processed within when I'm turning ideas into tracks. Btu I've always had a firm foot (or ten) in hardware, so Live never gets in the way

xmit wrote:
As for our friend tIB : Andy is clearly a machine How the hell you do a full weeks work & then turn out stuff of such quality with such regularity is simply incredible. Prolific is not the half of it.

This.

I work full time and struggle with the same thing, last week i had to force myself to get the smallest thing done, i hit a wall so to speak. mostly i find myself wasting time on this forum and a few others I want music to pay the bills really bad but its going to take time and hard work so i keep chipping away.
I am always the most creative and focused when i have a deadline or a solid goal in mind. An upcoming gig always gets me in action, the crunch of feeling a performance on the way makes me analyze the set and want to make it better. As already metioned recording really helps me even though i have a block agaist it sometimes. Its sometimes makes the direction of the song much clearer to listen to it while not tweaking the boxes, and new ideas spring out that otherwise would have been missed.

Goggleboy wrote:
i hit a wall so to speak. mostly i find myself wasting time on this forum and a few others .

Hot tip: disable the internet connection in your studio. I have.

This was posted on livepa.org and I think it should be everyones mantra to watch prior to working on music or any creative project...

http://youtu.be/3ResTHKVxf4

I went from a large home studio space with tons of gear and a lot of time and no productivity to a new smaller space in addition to getting (re)married and having a fulltime+ job as well.
Dealing with kids, house, spouse, and music is challenging. A couple things might help -

I try to carve out time in the mornings when I first wake up, before work, before the kids get up to do work in the studio. It's not every day, but 2 to 3 times a week. Not a lot of time, usually it ends up being 45 to 90 minutes. Initially I hated it because it was never enough time to get anything done. I didn't have the luxury of spending 30 minutes creating a patch on the PPG or reading up on trigless trigs or something.

What changed was partly attitude and partly workflow.

Attitude - I am happy for spending any time there and getting anything accomplished. I find the rest of my day is better when I do get time and instead of getting frustrated with not finishing, I am happy I was able to work on a chunk of music.

Workflow - I can turn on 3 power strip switches and all my gear is powered up and ready to use. Audio patchbays with normalled connections and a MIDI patchbay with all the default routes are set. I don't need the computer up and running to play around or to record work in progress (I have an Alesis HD24 for that). If I want to burn an mp3, the computer powers up with the audio interface software running and I start up Tracktion with a default 'record a stereo track' project loaded so it's a few clicks of a mouse to record and then save to mp3.

Also - not every day I go into the studio results in audio. Sometimes I'm really not feeling like working on any music so I take out my other list of studio tasks and try to knkock off one or two items. I'm sure everyone has a list like that for their setup. All the drudge work like backing up files, creating templates, updating OSes, reading a manual and learning more about an effects unit, rewiring stuff, fixing broken gear, etc. Keep a 'left brain' list of things to do when your right brain isn't feeling engaged.

Finally - even though you may have the funds to buy gear, resist as much as possible. What you need is a streamlined workflow that aids productivity. Bringing in too much gear too quickly will completely shut down the creative process.

Instead, work on setting up what you have in an ergonomic way and *after using the setup for a while* figure out what the weak links are and upgrade/buy those first.

Always be able to record quickly - you should be able to record anything in your studio pretty much on demand. if you can't or if it takes a lot of recabling and booting up and fiddling around, that's an area to focus on first.

OLDGEARGUY great advice for those of us with kids... I have thought about getting up early as well... Currently I get up at 6:00 AM to get ready for work and the kids to daycare... How early do you get up and how do you do it so your not waking up your wife?

^
my little flower tends to like to get up at around 6am....I don't fancy getting up at 5am to do an hours music personally !!

Think we're all different - I tend to grab a few hours over the weekend when the rest of the family are out doing typical weekend stuff. Plus I prefer the quiet of the night - yeah it means working on cans but that's ok for programming, pulling stuff together etc.
I've always been a night person - I like all the darkness outside & the lights blinking on my machines...
This is where changing to working from home has helped - if at 10.30pm or something I suddenly have an idea, or get the urge to power the gear on I can...when I used to work in my commercial studio it had to be pre-arranged & is a 20 minute drive from home for starters - this added the pressure of having to 'complete' something when I was there. Of course the plus side was that I was using a beautiful, air-conditioned, acoustically accurate control room with £2,500 -worth of monitoring...loads of lovely outboard....& now I'm working in a cupboard, literally

Wouldnt change it for the world though.

cosmosuave wrote:
OLDGEARGUY great advice for those of us with kids... I have thought about getting up early as well... Currently I get up at 6:00 AM to get ready for work and the kids to daycare... How early do you get up and how do you do it so your not waking up your wife?

Alarm goes off at 5:30am, my wife heads to the shower, her daughter (when she's with us) sleeps until 6:45.

I head down, turn on the coffee, go into the basement and power up the gear and firgure out what I'm going to work on. Go back upstairs and pour coffee #1. Head down and typically work/play until 6:45 (with headphones), then head up to shower and go to work.

I do find other one-off times like when my wife and the neighbors have a book club meeting or her daughter has a track meet or something. I also have some time in the evening when they are getting ready for bed and she's putting her daughter to bed.

One word of caution I will advise to married people - do not take away from any alone time with your wife for music. Do not work in the studio when she's ready to settle down or go to bed in the evening. That time is precious for you and your marriage. Music is great and important and makes you feel good, but your marriage is more important than that. (I learned from the first time around...)

Relationships throw a bad kink into my workflow. Never been tied the knot but girlfriends have pulled me away from music worse than anything (at least anything thats legal...), though i have been very inspired by my list of ones gone wrong haha. I feel for all you married ones and think its amazing and awesome that you are still finding time for music along with family. I always tell myself im married to my gear

i'm going the easy route and suggesting some very good, short reads on the subject:

http://the99percent.com/tips/6585/10-Laws-of-Productivity

http://the99percent.com/tips/6736/The-Top-5-Qualities-of-Productive-Creative

http://the99percent.com/articles/7168/In-Praise-of-Slow-Mastery-10-Great-Ach

if i could add or echo anything it would be show up everyday and make music... everyday even a little. it's as much about being habitual as gettign something done. getting up earlier is a profound way to guarantee you will get work in and your mind will be empty and fresh.

also, take action. the minute you think of it, go to the studio, sit and begin making sound. don't hesitate.

one famous author wrote that inspiration magically appeared at 9 am everday. meaning he went to his studio and sat down and started writing at 9 am everyday.