Beautiful girl with art colorful make-up and notesMany musicians, writers, and artists have experienced a period of creativity block or have gotten stuck in a rut at some point. It can be extremely frustrating and you may start to think you won’t be able to break out of the cycle of attempting to create something and coming up with nothing. I’ve gone through it many times myself but have been able to have some success in overcoming it with a few different methods. The following are a few things you can do to try to spark your creativity.

Five Ways to Push Past A Creative Block

  1. Switch up Your Approach. Change the way you approach and start your project. For example, if I typically lay down a drum track as the first layer in a song, I’ll try to start with a melody instead and build everything around that. This forces you to take a new approach to creating a song and you may find yourself building the song in a completely different and refreshing way.
  2. Try Out a New Space or Rearrange Your Current Space. The setting in which you create can have a huge influence on your inspiration and creativity. If you have a portable setup, try moving it to a new room or working outside. Just being in a new space can help inspire some new ideas. If you have multiple instruments, pieces of equipment or a dedicated home studio, it might not be possible to bring all of it into a new space easily. Instead, try to reorganize everything and lay it out in a way that fits your workflow. You might be surprised at how it can affect your creativity!
  3. Collaborate With Others. This is a very powerful and effective way to break out of a creativity block. Collaborating with others, especially people you haven’t worked with before, can push you in all sorts of new directions. They may bring new ideas to the table that you never considered or build off of your own ideas in a way you couldn’t imagine before.
  4. Seek New Experiences. A huge amount of inspiration comes from having experiences out in the world. Artists can often get stuck inside working on their craft and it can start to become counterproductive to their creativity. Getting away from creating for a while and having new and different experiences can feed your creativity in new ways.
  5. Take a Break. When all else fails, taking a break can be helpful. When you take a break, ideas and the desire to create have time to build up. When you return to creating, you will be more excited to do so and you’ll be able to come at it with a fresh perspective.

I hope that these methods can help you break out of a block and open your creativity back up. As always, feel free to reach out with questions or comments at contact@nickelcityrecording.com.