I usually fire up my DAW about two or three times a week, how do you motivate yourself to enter the studio to get music made?

If you have to get motivated to open up your DAW to make some music, then you're in the wrong business. You should be trying to motivate yourself to do all the other things in life that you gotta do!

But to actually give you an answer... Whenever I go to a great life show, I have this massive urge to go and make music right afterwards. Also just listening to really great songs with amazing mixes. That's usually all the motivation I need if I'm not feeling it.

And sometimes if there is a lack of motivation because I've been working on songs for ages and I'm feeling depressed due to listening fatigue, I take a few days (even took nearly two weeks off recently) to give my ears and mind a break and then come back to things. I usually find that I am really impressed by how my stuff is sounding that I get super excited and want to go on forever. However when listening fatigue sits in, it's hard to enjoy your music and enjoy the process. Then it's always time for a break.

skylightron


I usually fire up my DAW about two or three times a week, how do you motivate yourself to enter the studio to get music made?

Just to add to the advice Matt gave (which I totally agree with) sometimes you just can't get blood from a stone and you may not feel creative. However, there is always some sort of lab work you can be doing.
 
For example, one of the best (and most fun) things I like to do, is record part of covers or sometimes full blown covers just to test out sounds and experiment. There's always something you can learn from this type of "lab work" and it makes you feel like you're doing something fun too because it's already created for you. Just do your own version and have fun playing with sounds.
 
Another thing I've been trying to do which is really cool is....I open up Sonar and click on the help file and try something within the program that I have never used before. I'll be honest with you, I probably use 40-60% of the program (60% may be generous of me lol) and I have really been trying to learn all that I can. This is really a great motivational tool because it may force you to try something you have never tried before to where you create a form of music you wouldn't have dreamed of without the tools in Sonar.
 
So give some of this stuff some thought...it can really make a difference. I can still remember my first time using The Matrix. I literally wrote a song from it which was totally cool. Once I got the hang of it, I could just drop pieces of songs into it and experiment with my arrangements. For example, I come up with new ideas every day. Not full songs...just pieces of things. A drum beat, a guitar riff, a bass line, a vocal line etc. I log all these little ideas and save them in a folder. With the Matrix, I can bring these ideas in and shift them around in the cells and literally create something from these little pieces while experimenting with the placements of each part.
 
Or, I'm not one that uses loops ever because I record all my own stuff. I tried the loop thing and it was pretty cool! I would have never come up with that stuff on my own. Or spend some time going through all the sounds in Dimension Pro and see if any of them inspire you...or z3ta...the sequences in that little synth are pretty cool. So there's always something you can do, skylight. If you're not inspired to write or create, just play around with some features you may have never tried before just to put yourself outside that safety box we all find ourselves in. Or...just record a cover. You can never have too many sounds that you log for when you DO feel inspired to write your own stuff. Good luck...hope this helps. :)
 
-Danny

I have no problem motivating myself to go into my studio.  It's the writing of songs that I'm struggling with.  I listen to the Top 5 Billboard Pop songs and I hear the same old worn out progressions with the latest production gimmicks applied and I think, "Why bother."

No problem getting to my studio, as it's also my day-job office. My problem is remembering that it's my day-job office.

How do you motivate yourself to get OUT of the studio? 


Seriously, unless it's to spend time w/ my wife, I'm happy to spend the bulk of my time "in the studio".


Danny mentioned working on covers - that's one thing I really dig when I don't feel as creative to begin. And the cool thing is that I almost always end up finding an angle that'll spark my creativity. It's more re-interpreting the song and owning it than just re-doing it note for note.


I also reserve a decent amount of (late night) time to just play w/ plug-ins and synths, to get to know them and how they work, to try different things. Rehearsing songs, practicing guitar, etc.


There's all the dirty job - rendering, cleaning up samples, etc. When all else fails. Or then, just doing some critical listening to albums I dig, try to figure out how they work and why.

I don't know - I have dozens and dozens of songs I wish I had the time to work on, and even if it's all I do, I never can find the time to even get started. There's always a new idea.

How do you motivate yourself to get OUT of the studio? 

Oh my brother, how true this is.  Sometimes I  have to ask myself if this is my last day, would I rather be in here or with the really important people in my life.

Well, like most others here, I don't need much motivation to find myself behind the DAW creating.  My studio is very much, a makeshift studio (hence the name).  Unlike most of your studio pictures that I have seen, mine is kind of thrown together in several locations in my house.  I have one room that I do most of my final mixing and half arsed mastering in and another area that I do all of my acoustic tracking in....my garage.

You see, I figured out a couple of years ago, that if I did n't have someplace that I could truly call my own; where I could keep my mic's, amps and such, set up and ready to go, without the rest of the family moving them and messing with them, it was a really big hassle just to get set up and record.  So, for me, that area that no one else seems to habbitat is the garage.  Because I seem to be the only one that goes out in this space, I have everything set up to flip a couple of switches on the preamp and I am off and recording.  Taking a half a day to get everything set up inside the house was always a motivation killer.  I track my acoustics, vocals and guitar amps in this environment.  Most of the time it works out pretty well, except for these killer summer months in Texas.  So in the summer, early mornings seem to work best.

I share an inhouse office space with my wife and I have this space set up for mixing.  Sometimes I have to do a bunch of it in the cans, but most of the time I can find some personal, kid and wife free times to mix on the monitors.  I move slowly, because of a heavy family life, but I make the most of the moments I do get.  So, motivation is not the limiting factor for me....for me.... free time is much harder to come by.

I get into the studio about once every 2 years Prolifically absent

motivation is not the limiting factor for me....for me.... free time is much harder to come by.

^^^ This!

My wife would like me to get more motivated about gardening, decorating etc.