Summary of How to Think Outside the Box - Tips and Tricks For Musical Creativity

Summary

The video "How to Think Outside the Box - Tips and Tricks For Musical Creativity" offers practical advice and techniques to enhance musical creativity and overcome creative blocks. The creator emphasizes the importance of training the brain like a muscle and provides several methods to stimulate creativity.

Key Techniques and Concepts:

Creative Block: Acknowledges the struggle of being creatively stuck, often referred to as writer's block or beat block.
Brain Training: Suggests treating creativity like a muscle that needs regular exercise.
Self-Challenges: Recommends setting specific challenges to foster creativity:
- Time Challenges: Create a track within a limited timeframe (e.g., 30 minutes or 1 hour).
- Instrument Limitations: Restrict yourself to specific instruments (e.g., just piano and drums).
- Genre Exploration: Attempt to create music in genres outside your comfort zone without following tutorials.
Practice and Experimentation: Encourages continuous practice and the exploration of new ideas that emerge from these challenges.
Learning Instruments: Advocates for learning a musical instrument to enhance decision-making speed and creativity.
Sample Library Management: Advises keeping a small sample library to avoid shifting from creative to analytical modes, which can stifle creativity.
Creative vs. Analytical Mindsets: Suggests maintaining clear boundaries between creative and analytical thinking during music production.
Form Before Function: Encourages creating without predefined goals and then analyzing the results to find new sounds and techniques.

Steps for Enhancing Creativity:

Set time limits for music creation.
Limit the instruments used in a project.
Try composing in unfamiliar genres.
Learn to play a musical instrument.
Keep sample libraries small to maintain creative flow.
Separate creative and analytical phases in music production.
Experiment with sound creation without predetermined outcomes.

Featured Contributors:

Alin Neuro (inspiration for the video)
Astro Bear (inspiration for sound design techniques)

The video ultimately highlights the importance of experimentation, practice, and maintaining a flexible mindset to unlock musical creativity.

Notable Quotes

— 01:07 — « The brain is like a muscle and much like any muscles if you want them to perform their best they do need to be exercised. »

— 03:30 — « The key to take away here is not just to make a track that you're going to release every day, it's to practice and practice and practice. »

— 10:37 — « You can kind of think of it like a massive sort of snowball avalanching down the mountain; as it gains momentum it becomes more powerful. »

— 12:40 — « The whole idea of creating the form first and then fine-tuning the function is a technique that a lot of traditional artists use. »

— 16:44 — « I'm sure this came up with people just experimenting with test tones and running test tones through effects and seeing what they will do. »