I spend a lot of time mixing for clients or working on articles for the Studio One Expert Blog. Sometimes a week can go by where I haven’t created any music. Here is some great advice from Dan Cooper to keep our creative juices flowing.
A good way for us to develop our creative skills is by setting a personal creative time aside everyday. It’s a simple rule but many of us forget to do this – myself included.
Many of us got into music production because we started as musicians, so we know that daily practise of an instrument is an integral part of creative development. Why then do we forget to set time aside for improving our creative skills outside of working creatively? Many of us that work in music production with family responsibilities know it is all too easy to not set time aside for our creativity but we should find at least 15 minutes a day that we can use to develop our creative skills outside of studio work and away from clients.
I lived with a professional chef years ago. He worked 12 hour days at some of the top restaurants in London. Every time he cooked for himself at home he took it as a golden opportunity to be creative… which led to some brilliant meals and sometimes crap ones. The point I’m trying to make here is that my chef friend understood he had to make time to feed his creativity in cooking in order to become a better chef. He took those small opportunities outside of his busy life to create, experiment and make something new.
Many of us are busy working in our studios for clients – don’t neglect yourself as a creative & musician. It is not uncommon for me to go weeks without playing the piano or guitar, which is a shame as I love to just sit back and play my instruments as for me playing the piano is a great stress relief.
Today is a Bank Holiday in the UK so I am not going down the studio to work on client material. Instead I am going to be taking my own advice – I will set some time aside today to be creative for myself.
What about you? How do you juggle between working on projects for your clients, and setting aside personal time to be creative? Leave us a comment below, we’d love to hear your thoughts!
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