How to get inspiration?

[iPassenger]

SP, i think yr right here, the great music manages to get both groups attention.

[bachus]

[Travis Coats]

I know this is silly, but drama and deep thoughts help me. Usually I can write an entire song in it's infancy after reading the Tao te Ching or a good movie, especially the latter. Good movies that get the thoughts going. All I need are images and deep emotions to open that gate. It seems most musicians have the need to stand staring into an enormous black hole awaiting that gentle breeze that lifts with it some transcending seed which transforms in the lower human consciousness into something beautiful but not totally grasped. I am not a God person in the least bit, but mystery (in it's most profound form) is generally the essence of becoming close to the "THING THAT PROVIDES."

[bachus]

[dewdrop_world]

[dewdrop_world]

... and the flip side of that is the somewhat silly disciple of Herbert Brün I chatted with some years ago, who said his goal was to put the audience in a situation where they would be "forced" to confront the fractures in social/economic/political organization (yeah, avant-gardism mixed with now-passé lit crit).

Somehow he overlooked the simple fact that the audience are never forced to do anything. They can always leave the room.

James

[blue hell]

[Acoustic Interloper]

[LB]

I've been having a hell of a time trying to figure out how to write lyrics.
Like, I've done poetry and whatnot before (mostly blank verse, milton style stuff), but I'm having trouble figuring out how to sync lyrics I've been writing with the music. On top of that, I always come up with the lyrics and can't figure out a way of actually writing the song...

Mind you, I've only been doing this stuff for a month now, first learning how to use my synth, then reading a good amount of theory and leraning how to use a soft sequencer, but... yeah. I've only made one song so far using the samples provided in a training DVD I got at the library, and it was lyricless...
So...

Any suggestions for coming up with the music after making the lyrics?

[elektro80]

LB!

[elektro80]

Re lyrics and musc, see if you can find VDGG - Godbluff and VDGG - Still Life. This is fairly weird material. I guess some is on iTunes as well as Youtube. PH has all of his lyrics online at: http://www.sofasound.com
The reason I mention this stuff is that none of PHs lyrics ( at least the mid period VDGG material) should be possible to bend into songs. Still.. it works.

[Wayne Higgins]

WOW...VDGG! Not too many here in the USA have heard them. Probably since they only did on gig on the continent. "Still Life" lyrics leave me confused, "Godbluff" lyrics are amazing, "World Record" blows me away. I have a video tape of them playing live on Swedish TV, they do ALL of "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers."

Peter Hammill could read a newspaper and put it to music. Baffles me.

[Wayne Higgins]

Oops, topic on Inspiration. The VDGG side-tracked me for a moment there.

I have gotten inspiration from walking in the woods and hearing a particular bird song, to a footnote in a book on Nazi Germany. I get a lot from reading, but nothing in particular. I did this thing called "Mammon Spake" based on a passage from Milton's "Paradise Lost". "The Sun, The Moon and Talia" was an idea from a book "The Uses of Enchantment" which is a study on Fairy tales and their hidden sexual meanings. "The Mystique of the Event" was a sarcastic piece I did to an old band member refering to an event that never happened, and then became a monster which would not let go of me. "70 years" is based on my father, who was a minister, yet the inspiration came from watching a DVD of the Alice Cooper "Billion Dollar Babies" tour.

What really gets to me is that once I get an idea, it won't go away until I complete it. My music is the monkey on my back.

[elektro80]

[Stanley Pain]

i'm surprised no one's mentioned the "m" word yet...

i played a gig the other night that was the most satisfying of my life. the right audience in the right venue, out to have a good time, try something new and listen to an established act that was guaranteed to "rinse" the room out.

when all is said and done, whoever persuaded those people to walk through the door did a good job. they matched the right audience to the right music...

m.. m... m..... marketing.....

[Stanley Pain]

[David Westling]

I've been tumbling around inside a quote by Samuel Beckett recently: "It is indeed becoming more and more difficult, even senseless, for me to write an official English. And more and more my own language appears to me like a veil that must be torn apart in order to get at the things (or the Nothingness) behind it. Grammar and style. To me they seem to have become as irrelevant as a Victorian bathing suit or the imperturbability of a true gentleman. A mask. Let us hope the time will come when language is most efficiently used where it is being most efficiently misused. As we cannot eliminate language all at once, we should at least leave nothing undone that might contribute to its falling into disrepute. To bore one hole after another in it, until what lurks behind it--be it something or nothing--begins to seep through; I cannot imagine a higher goal for a writer today." To concentrate on the artistic side of this endeavor, I would say that it is possible to do this "boring" in a pedestrian or a sparkling way. A workmanlike approach may do the basic job, but to do it with a high degree of inspiration makes it great art. It might be possible to do all this within a pop idiom, but I doubt it.

[Sound Maniac]

Had missed text

[Sound Maniac]

Try to make all you do as quick you can, almost random, and then try to see what you like most of all.And find ure path by that way after you've chosen keep into it and make it more serious and better.. It really helps sometimes.

PLUR

[Uncle Krunkus]

[abreaktor]

just arrived on page #2 on this great thread. wii lread it rhoroughly, but i can definitely relate to the "block" part - since my primary field of creation is writing. i had those blocks quite a few times, and never found a 100% cure for them. but they all disappeared when i shifted my attention to other fields of art; say, an exhibition or a great concert. blocks are perhaps some inevitable form of self-protection... well thats my take on this, so feel free to flame me to hell and back.

if you lie awake at night pondering over some sentence (or recently in my case, musical expression) for more than a month , that will take its toll. so, being blocked is some form of self-defense, and might be annihilated by distractions. do something that you really like; except for that insane drive of creation. its kinda hard, but i found it to be working quite well.

on to reading.

edit: #6. as one of my heroes, the german comedian and jazzer helge schneider said: "i did not prepare anything, so i cant fail", and another guy said "failure is possibility" (VERY roughly translated, due to time and wine) the "just do it" approach has its merits. otoh, fiddling around with instruments might do the trick. consider a writer doomed in that department... fiddling around with a pen has never done me anything good =(

[Uncle Krunkus]

[destroyifyer]

Inspiration, inspiration...the will to create (major), um...a mind orchestra, encounters with aliens, dying and coming back from the dead, a dreadful and/or splendid feeling of eternity...vivid or lucid dreams, encounters with demons and/or gnomes, suffering...um, staring at some chaos...eliminating bodily toxins and addictions (not inspiration but it really helps)...anything that involves geometry and patterns...making a song about a family member or someone you love or at least very much look up to.

I'll be brutally honest. If you ask me, asking a musician or artist where to get inspiration is just like asking your parents where babies come from when you're little...you're never going to get a straight answer, because to me at least it sounds like someone asking you, "where does my soul come from?"...even if you know it's impossible to explain! I know where alot of my influence comes from, but I cannot tell you where you will find yours.

For the most part I believe better music is made when the inspiration is there and you ask "how do I make music?" or better yet, simply do not ask and carry on independently. Blah, blah blah.

[blue hell]

Life seems to be project oriented to me ... I've times that music simply doesn't work, but mostly then I happen to be programming, or doing visual stuff, or social. But I do not always have a "project" ... when life is stressful there is not much room things besides just that. It's a privilege of sorts to be able to do creative stuff, or to see things ... I find it amazing at times how few people look around or are being creative ... maybe a stress thing for them too?

[abreaktor]