ilovefuzz.com

If all else fails, pack your shit up and leave it alone. Wrap up your cables, put everything away like you won't be using it. Sometimes I find that when I'm in a rut and I pack everything up, I'll still be thinking about making music, and eventually some urge or idea will spark me to take everything back out again and start having fun again rather than be frustrated. This has helped me a lot in the past 6 months or so.

I make the noise too. When I'm stuck in a bit of a creative rut, I try and stay awake for a couple of days and fast also. Just coffee, cigarettes and water. After a couple of days of no food and sleep you have real a fucked up state of mind and start thinking things you wouldn't normally think. That's when you start coming up with different ideas than the norm. It works for me.
Also listen and jam along to music you wouldn't normally listen to. Good luck and good hunting.

KaosCill8r wrote:I make the noise too. When I'm stuck in a bit of a creative rut, I try and stay awake for a couple of days and fast also. Just coffee, cigarettes and water. After a couple of days of no food and sleep you have real a fucked up state of mind and start thinking things you wouldn't normally think. That's when you start coming up with different ideas than the norm. It works for me.
Also listen and jam along to music you wouldn't normally listen to. Good luck and good hunting.

I'll definitely try the jamming idea. Staying awake for a few days sounds like hell and I already have trouble with insomnia haha.

Caffeine, by Faith No More, was created when Mike was on a caffeine-fueled no sleep bender.

@ryan summit, which burroughs documentary? interested. have seen a few things about cut-up technique but not much else.

the advice from noeonblack-chankgeez re trying an out-of-your-comfort-zone pedal is good i think. works for me sometimes.

or switch from guitar to keyboard or recorder or anything. not because you are necessarily going to use that instrument for your gig (though you might) but because it will make you approach what you are doing from a new angle.
your fingers get muscle memory if you use familiar scales on a familiar instrument all the time. so your default becomes 'predictible'. maybe that's where you are and why you are feeling frustrated and impotent. in which case engineer yourself into a situation with 'a sound producing object' that will rule muscle memory out. get some ideas happening, then switch back (if you want) to resolve these new ideas in your prefered medium.

eno's oblique strategies always good (spacelordmother already posted link).

re kbithecrowing packing up your stuff. that has the oposite effect for me. badly. you then have ideas but may be too tired or too short of time to unpack, so the ideas just get lost in inconvenience. i would probably say the oppostie in fact. remove impediments to doing.

i found this recently. some well expressed ideas and thoughts re the creative process from 58m-end of this (ten minutes, worth your time). especially the 'don't be afraid to fail' thing. which is maybe the best advice i could give. failure is a necessary consequence of learning. people give the word a stigma, like it's to be avoided. but it's to be embraced if ever you want to achieve anything. 'failure' is a much maligned concept. failure will lead you to interesting places that getting things 'right' all the time never will.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djA3ZG3dHj0[/youtube]

“I was taught that to create anything, you had to believe in failure simply because you had to be prepared to go through any idea without any fear. Failure, you learned, as I did in art school, to be a wonderful thing. It allowed you to get up in the morning and take the pillow off your head"
(malcolm mclaren).

Why has no one suggested an herbal remedy?

blakestree wrote:Why has no one suggested an herbal remedy?

such as?

Oh, I think you know.

Stop thinking about it.
Guitar > fuzz > amp, or guitar > fuzz > filter > amp. Something simple. Skip the modulation/verb/delay for now.
Setup your phone or other means to record as a scratch pad. Lofi to save space. Turn it on and put it where it wont clip.
Let it record a few minutes of silence while you go grab a beverage.
Back by your rig/recording...turn on tv and watch with the volume down; look for something with action.
If you're into sports at all then that's my recommendation.
Something fast paced and urgent, basketball or hockey is ideal...this is the time of year for it*
Watch, try to get into the game while riffing, practicing, just playing whatever without thinking about it.
Works like a charm when I'm in a rut. I'll start wandering around to new areas of the fretboard.

* As an NBA League Pass subscriber, and general fan of hoops at the pro level...I personally think the current NCAA product is unwatchable.
For now, anyway. I'll check in at the elite 8...no brackets here, just racket

Oh, also, listen to some kind of music that you usually wouldn't listen to, like Kaos said. Maybe even something you think you wouldn't like.

neonblack wrote:Oh, I think you know.

oh that. i thought you meant a nettle enema or something.

trouble with 'you know' is that it becomes an end in itself and you end up noodling yourself to death and not noticing that you've been playing meaningless shit for days.
i've never been for it. the few times i tried it i always felt it took more out of me than i got out of it. just a personal thing.

i get more done with a clear head. though i probably feel my frustration more than someone who is numb. it's all down to what you can handle i suppose. i can handle frustration but i can't handle that 'you know' fogginess. it's claustrophobic.

one of the reasons i gave up bands for a long time was band members turning up stoned and useless. when you are trying to get some energy going in the room and someone is just flopping around saying 'whatever dude' and playing like shit.

but some of my favourite bands did their best stuff off their tits, so not saying it doesn't work for some. just not for me.

Some damned good advice already. One fun idea if you have the means to do it: take an existing song, whether one of yours, someone else's, something you love or maybe not so much. And find a way to play it backwards and see if it does something for you. Keep trying a few until something grabs you. The Stone Roses did a few flips early on, for example--Don't Stop was based on Waterfall, with an attempt to makes the backwards lyrics semi-coherent as forwards lyrics.

blakestree wrote:Why has no one suggested an herbal remedy?

Or some mycelium.

[quote="ancientbones]
I'll definitely try the jamming idea. Staying awake for a few days sounds like hell and I already have trouble with insomnia haha.[/quote]
Hell is exactly the mindset that I'm talking about. You want to get as far out of your normal mindset as you can to get really creative. You could just cheat and use drugs but I don't want to promote that idea that you need drugs to get creative.

tabbycat wrote:

neonblack wrote:Oh, I think you know.

oh that. i thought you meant a nettle enema or something.

trouble with 'you know' is that it becomes an end in itself and you end up noodling yourself to death and not noticing that you've been playing meaningless shit for days.
i've never been for it. the few times i tried it i always felt it took more out of me than i got out of it. just a personal thing.

i get more done with a clear head. though i probably feel my frustration more than someone who is numb. it's all down to what you can handle i suppose. i can handle frustration but i can't handle that 'you know' fogginess. it's claustrophobic.

one of the reasons i gave up bands for a long time was band members turning up stoned and useless. when you are trying to get some energy going in the room and someone is just flopping around saying 'whatever dude' and playing like shit.

but some of my favourite bands did their best stuff off their tits, so not saying it doesn't work for some. just not for me.

I'm not necessarily advocating for you know if it's not your thing, but part of the issue I experience is that "uninspired" usually means "trying too hard." If you can find a way to just let go and play for awhile it's hardly meaningless. Just enjoying the feel of your instrument and the sound it makes can lead to new ideas and in the end is really what we should be doing when we play.