How to Take a Macro Approach to Music Making

There are few things more intimidating to an artist than a blank canvas. Vincent Van Gogh spoke of its 'paralysing stare' and the Dutch painter recommended we 'just slap anything on'. In music, we can apply this same theory to overcome blank pages and empty DAW projects. To do this, we're going to maximise our creative time with a macro approach. By focusing on the creative process as a whole, we demystify and eliminate the blank canvas with lower-level tasks until we slip into our workflow.

man sitting at a computer with a notepad

Be the Creative Overseer

If the magic of music making is causing you grief, it's a great time to step away and take a macro approach. This strategy is all about looking at the writing and production process as a whole. Think of yourself as the overseer of that process, rather than the isolated artist from whom everything is supposed to come naturally.

The creative process is inherently varied, so you needn't always do the same tasks. Pick and choose what you want to do and when, especially when you're tired or lacking confidence. Just listening back to, organising, or renaming your files can be a rewarding (and relaxing) way to spend your spare time and assuage creative guilt.

Image of a save dialogue box in Ableton Live

Save Early, Edit Often

For the best results, it is important to save everything. This includes any ideas you think are better off forgotten forever. The worst-case scenario is a lacklustre track/sample serves as a valuable lesson or marker of your progress. In most cases, these will become a library of songs and ideas to be dug through and reworked.

To edit, collage odd bits and pieces together. Try running your chord progressions and melodies backwards, slice up your grooves and switch their rhythmic emphasis, or simply swap in different samples and see what comes. Try your songs with different tempos, keys, and instrumentation. Be ruthless and open-minded.

Dump Ideas En Masse

A more immediate approach is to dump a heap of ideas into a recording device before editing them into usable chunks. For this to work, you probably need to lower your standards. Think of it as 'getting rid of ideas' rather than trying to capture something masterful. To find a diamond in the rough, you need a whole lot of rough.

Let the recorder run as long as you feel comfortable, and don't be afraid to 'tread water' for a while as you explore the same ideas from different angles. Once you have a sizeable recording to work with, go back and look for happy accidents, half-formed ideas, or moments of brilliance to use as a starting point for your next track.

Mangle Your Samples

A similar way to find inspiration is mangling samples. Start with samples you've downloaded, found in your old projects, or recorded fresh for the task. Throw them in your DAW and play around. Run them backwards, shift their pitch up and down, and loop them at different speeds with different start and end points.

Slice up longer samples and recombine them so the parts are out of order. Use this concept to try making melodic samples rhythmic, and rhythmic samples melodic. Tune samples and layer them over each other, run them through effects, and resample (rerecord) them. Paste your new sounds into a sequencer to make patchwork drafts.

Do the Housekeeping

When you simply don't feel up to the challenge of making music, there is always housekeeping. You should have plenty of material to keep organised and devoting time to these little tasks will make everything easier once inspiration strikes again. There is literally nothing to lose with having everything in its right place.

Start a naming system for your files, catalogue them in folders, and try grouping projects in genres, vibes, or some other identifier. Build templates for typical DAW projects, effects chains, and plugin settings. Save some basic synth patches, sequencer patterns, or effects presets. Do anything that makes turning ideas into songs easier.

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