# How do you deal with creative blocks and self-criticism?



## Xenakiboy

This is something that's been on my mind lately. As a composer I know that I'm hard on myself but when YOU get into a creative block what do you do? 
Because I study music (because I want to) regularly, listen to music all the time and compose almost everyday and still get stuck.


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## Vasks

Three things from a guy who has been composing for about 50 years

1) Never worry about writer's block. It's normal and is always a temporary thing.

2) Even if you can only compose a crappy measure or two that will by the next day be rejected and tossed away, do it. 

3) Have a second project going on simultaneous to the primary one so if you have a tough block on the primary, hopefully you can easily work on the second instead.


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## EdwardBast

All good advice from Vasks.

I think the significance and prevalence of creative blocks depends a lot on ones working methods. When I am composing I like to keep most of the parameters of the work provisional or open for a long time. I don't tend to decide: I want to write a three movement sonata with a first movement in a certain form and then set about following the plan. Instead I often experiment with melodic ideas before I even know what kind of piece I might be writing. If I feel like I don't know how to continue a certain idea, I just engage in free-form transformations of whatever material I have. Trying ideas out in inversion or retrograde, reharmonizing them in a completely different way, changing the mode or expanding the intervals, and so on. Or I'll just sketch three completely different continuations and see which one looks like it might be most fruitful. I find it good to generate a whole lot of material knowing I'll reject most of it. Working this way I always feel like there is something worth sketching.


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## nikola

I deal with creative blocks mostly with screaming at the wall, crying and hitting things around myself with fists and legs. After that I take Xanax and then I take a little nap. When I wake up, I feel better.


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## Pugg

nikola said:


> I deal with creative blocks mostly with screaming at the wall, crying and hitting things around myself with fists and legs. After that I take Xanax and then I take a little nap. When I wake up, I feel better.


Go for a run I say, seems more healthy then all the pills


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## Samuel Kristopher

I like Tchaikovsky's take on it: 

"I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous."

Everyone has their own approach but I've found it best to just charge on with or without inspiration or free-flowing ideas. It seems impossible at the start but there are ways. Maybe I'll just start writing parts of another composer's composition that interests me, maybe it will give me some ideas or give me a spring board for something else. Maybe I'll just write random notes on the paper (or on Sibelius) and see what comes out.


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## Xenakiboy

I think that some of my stress is that I tend to expect to have a perfect, 100% finished piece within a few hours. I'm not sure how healthy that is, anyone else put unrealistic expectations on themselves?


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## Vasks

Good God, guy, No! Do not put pressure on yourself. Be happy if anything at all comes out of your composing session. The only composers that need to apply such pressure are those that have a deadline to meet.

And as for ever achieving a "perfect" piece? That may never happen except with the geniuses. Instead, examine the completed work some more after you finish with the final double bar. Once you've given it a few more days/weeks of evaluations with possible touch-ups, that's it. It's as good as it's going to get for where you are at that point in time.


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## Mahlerian

Xenakiboy said:


> I think that some of my stress is that I tend to expect to have a perfect, 100% finished piece within a few hours. I'm not sure how healthy that is, anyone else put unrealistic expectations on themselves?


I don't expect myself to have a finished piece of any length within a week, let alone a few hours, and no question of perfection, either!


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## Xenakiboy

Mahlerian said:


> I don't expect myself to have a finished piece of any length within a week, let alone a few hours, and no question of perfection, either!


Thanks Mahlerian, I appreciate yours and Vasks responses. I guess this thread is a bit of psychoanalysis for myself and others in similar situations.
I'm realising some of my creative habits are a bit self-destructive, I need to reorganise myself.
I've written Hundreds of tiny pieces that I don't like but I've also been working on my opus #1 since January. 
I think for me is an anxiety about make progress or lack of which gets me down.
I'm not at a lack of reading material or music to listen to, which is good though. I own a dozen scores and lots of pdf scores, and you'd have some idea of my CD/vinyl collection :lol:

I would say I'm an ambitious composer but I'd also say I'm an unrealistically restrictive one too. Thanks for your comments


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## nikola

Well, if you can't compose half hour long piece in 5 minutes you're obviously not serious musician. Why bother with music at all then!? 



:devil:


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## Xenakiboy

nikola said:


> Well, if you can't compose half hour long piece in 5 minutes you're obviously not serious musician. Why bother with music at all then!?
> 
> :devil:


Unless you're Phillip Glass! :devil:

Sorry


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## KenOC

Xenakiboy said:


> I think for me is an anxiety about make progress or lack of which gets me down.


Patience is a virtue. To quote Brahms (from memory) when asked what he had done that day: "I spent the morning inserting an eighth-note in the first movement; I spent the afternoon taking it out again."


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## Xenakiboy

KenOC said:


> Patience is a virtue. To quote Brahms (from memory) when asked what he had done that day: "I spent the morning inserting an eighth-note in the first movement; I spent the afternoon taking it out again."


Nice quote, reflects well on perfectionism.


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## Xenakiboy

I just want to thank you people for your responses, as a large part of why I joined this forum was for discussion like this, means a lot!  :tiphat:


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## Crudblud

Xenakiboy, can I ask how old you are and how long you've been composing? You may have said this elsewhere, but I'm curious, because your attitude towards yourself as a composer reminds me of how I was when I was a teenager. It took me some years to get past that, and it wasn't that long ago (I am now 26), so I still remember relatively freshly the sense that all I could do was never enough, that to be prolific, to be fast, was all important. I would beat myself up if I wasn't getting results, and often that was the case, so generally I would feel like crap, but when I did get the quantity I wanted I was always paying for it with quality ─ not that I really knew what quality was when I was that age, but I was frequently failing to live up to even my paltry best because of this mantra of "do more and faster all the time." I don't really have any advice other than to work through it, it will suck and most of the work you'll be producing will suck as well, but you'll learn, and you'll slow down, and you'll get better.

By the way, if I've been presumptuous about your age, I apologise, but I definitely recognise your situation from earlier on in my own life.


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## nikola

Anyone who want to make some quality work should love what he is doing. When I force myself to make sometthing, I become only frustrated. When I do things because of fun and enjoyment, the results are better. Time is not important. What is important is that we can enjoy in what we do. Nobody is paying me for composing music, so I don't have deadlines and I do it for myself primarily.


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## Samuel Kristopher

I like what you say about loving what we do Nikola, although I have to add that I can love composing music generally, but absolutely hate or get frustrated at particular moments, and I don't think it's a bad thing necessarily. Normally, the creative process works for me like this: I experience a period (usually fairly brief - a few hours at most) of blissful inspiration in which I can write down as much as 10 pages of musical material, but in a very dense, kind of like concentrated juice format. Now since these inspired moments rarely come more than once a month, the rest of my writing process is often quite mundane, disciplined, and laborious as I take those inspired moments and mould them into a structured and organised piece. Even then, I usually need to polish it off with dynamics and expressions in another inspired state.


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## Xenakiboy

Crudblud said:


> Xenakiboy, can I ask how old you are and how long you've been composing? You may have said this elsewhere, but I'm curious, because your attitude towards yourself as a composer reminds me of how I was when I was a teenager. It took me some years to get past that, and it wasn't that long ago (I am now 26), so I still remember relatively freshly the sense that all I could do was never enough, that to be prolific, to be fast, was all important. I would beat myself up if I wasn't getting results, and often that was the case, so generally I would feel like crap, but when I did get the quantity I wanted I was always paying for it with quality ─ not that I really knew what quality was when I was that age, but I was frequently failing to live up to even my paltry best because of this mantra of "do more and faster all the time." I don't really have any advice other than to work through it, it will suck and most of the work you'll be producing will suck as well, but you'll learn, and you'll slow down, and you'll get better.
> 
> By the way, if I've been presumptuous about your age, I apologise, but I definitely recognise your situation from earlier on in my own life.


I'm currently 22, I've been composing for 9 years, mainly self-taught from scores and composer-analysis books, though I did excel in my music classes through college (Or high school depending where in the world you are)


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## Xenakiboy

Samuel Kristopher said:


> I like what you say about loving what we do Nikola, although I have to add that I can love composing music generally, but absolutely hate or get frustrated at particular moments, and I don't think it's a bad thing necessarily. Normally, the creative process works for me like this: I experience a period (usually fairly brief - a few hours at most) of blissful inspiration in which I can write down as much as 10 pages of musical material, but in a very dense, kind of like concentrated juice format. Now since these inspired moments rarely come more than once a month, the rest of my writing process is often quite mundane, disciplined, and laborious as I take those inspired moments and mould them into a structured and organised piece. Even then, I usually need to polish it off with dynamics and expressions in another inspired state.


I have creative vision and passion sewn into my head deeper than anything but I see part of the problem that you wonderful people are helping me with here is ridding myself of bad practices I've been developing over the past few years. 
Good or great ideas can come at anytime spontaneously, and with that, part of my problem is forcing too much expectations onto myself and music before learning to nurture my ideas. This website too is becoming a really good way to figure this stuff out, thank you!!!


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## Samuel Kristopher

Xenakiboy said:


> Good or great ideas can come at anytime spontaneously, and with that, part of my problem is forcing too much expectations onto myself and music before learning to nurture my ideas. This website too is becoming a really good way to figure this stuff out, thank you!!!


I was a bit nervous about this website when I first started out because I had some bad experiences with snobbish classical music enthusiasts at University and fell into that urban-myth thinking that it was a normal thing in the classical music world. I'm so glad to say I haven't encountered any of that here, even if it does exist somewhere. I've learned so much about music and composition here, possibly more than I ever have by self-study!


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## Xenakiboy

So at the moment the things I'm trying to do to combat this are:

Learn some Bach fugues on the piano (G minor currently) to keep my mind functioning contrapuntally (and counterpoint).
I'm going to give myself the challenge of composing at least 4 small 30 second - 1 minute pieces per day.
And work slowly on my bigger projects to give them focus. (I have a suite for piano and a piano concerto in progress, started in January)

Do you people have any more advise for daily practices?


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## SeptimalTritone

A 30 sec - 1 min piece per day, let alone four of them, is a lot.

Remember that Webern might have taken a year or two on a typical 5 minute core work.

Of course, your and my hobby composer music won't be remotely as precise and exacting as what Webern was doing and therefore shouldn't take as much as a year to write to write a 5 minute piece, but it's still best to take one's time, even when writing small works.

Also, reading music theory or history books helps a lot. Thinking critically about what makes certain kinds of music work is highly useful. Be critical, even towards the great composers... (and yet realize that their music is great for very different reasons).


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## Xenakiboy

SeptimalTritone said:


> A 30 sec - 1 min piece per day, let alone four of them, is a lot.
> 
> Remember that Webern might have taken a year or two on a typical 5 minute core work.
> 
> Of course, your and my hobby composer music won't be remotely as precise and exacting as what Webern was doing and therefore shouldn't take as much as a year to write to write a 5 minute piece, but it's still best to take one's time, even when writing small works.
> 
> Also, reading music theory or history books helps a lot. Thinking critically about what makes certain kinds of music work is highly useful. Be critical, even towards the great composers... (and yet realize that their music is great for very different reasons).


Really??, I personally can handle 4 fine. The idea is to not develop the pieces. Take an idea as far as you can, without getting too focused or attached to it, write the 30 secs - 1 min, then walk away (once it sounds alright). Composing is my intended career, its my expertise. 
My problem as stressed in the past few posts, is that I need to harness my composing in a way that doesn't result in creative burn-out. I have had the problem for a while, of composing a 10 minute piece in an hour - 2/3 hours and hating what I composed. and spending long periods of time composing music you aren't happy with (to any degree) can result in large creative blocks and the feeling of wanting to give up altogether.

Also, as stated above (somewhere here), I am regularly reading books on theory (analysis of composers particularly) and scores. For the last part, I find myself cynical about the idea of an objectively "Great Composer", where they are elevated to a God-like status. Despite there being many amazing masterpieces.

:tiphat:


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## Samuel Kristopher

I think everyone writes music their own way, and if it works for you to write that much per day, that's great. Personally I'm more prone to linger over small sections of music because the way I write it the first time may sound good, but changing a single note here or there could make something even better, so I tend to write a small section then mess around with it for a while to explore the other possibilities. I also find this process lends itself to thematic development as well, since if I like several variants, I'll copy and paste them or write them out on another piece of sheet music and work it into the development sections somehow. But that's just me 

I don't know who elevates composers to God-like statuses, but I don't think that means we can't use the term Great Composer, even objectively. Why can't we objective say that Mozart or Bach had an objectively significant impact on Western Musical tradition? I'm not an overly big fan of either, at it happens - I appreciate their music but don't listen to it for enjoyment. Still, they were part of the journey to the music I love most - they're "great" to me! Then again, it's my subjective opinion that they are objectively great.... where is this post going? Hmm...


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