daw mental disorder !

anyone ever had this feeling ?

STARTING PROJECTS, WRITERS BLOCK AND NEVER FINISHING
This has happened to me for the last twenty years ,approaching 700 unfinished songs now , i think i have actually managed to finish and master about 30 tracks , not a bad average of 1.5 a year lol .
No matter what i do ,
bite me fingers off ,push my thumbs as far up my nostrils as possible ,throw myself at a brickwall, jump in front of a milk float ,nothing can remove that mental blockage and allow me to finish those 700 songs .It is the most craziest annoying feeling in the world.But something just something that i can’t put my finger on has kept me going for the twenty years and some times i’ll open up a song that i started 10 ,15 ,20 years ago and add a track and get the blockage ,close it and start a new song .
Ive heard of a writers block but this is just dam right crazy .I still plod on making sounds that blow my mind away and enjoy every minute im with my keyboards programming ,sequencing(with cubase ) ,recording,sampling and am a very luck person to have the time on my hands to do this as a hobby BUT i swear there is a daw mental disorder that stops you from finishing projects …FRUSTRATING is not the word its MENTAL !!!

lol, I know what you mean although it’s not really that bad for me.
I usually finish the basics of a song and then can’t be bothered to make a proper intro/ending. That or I don’t get past the ‘interesting chordscheme’ part of which I have a dozen lying about as well.

For me the problem isn’t inspiration but pure laziness… and a fair amount of disdain for the recording process itself (tuning guitars, setting up mics, programming drum tracks, endless retakes… etc etc)

Hi :slight_smile:


It’s a crazy and annoying feeling, it’s been keeping you going for twenty years

You CAN add a track, THEN you get ‘the blockage’

Then you start a New Song.

I’m trying to make more detailed sense of those phrases.

Dealing with these things in writing is always less immediate than chatting in the room on on the phone.


Where do you feel the crazy and annoying feeling? is it static or moving? does it come in waves, or is it constant? is it spinning, and if so, what speed and direction?

How has it been ‘Keeping you going’ for twenty years. That phrase itself triggered my curiosity … ‘keeping a person going’ USUALLY has a positive connotation, one of support and sustainance. Yet you are describing the feeling as part of a ‘problem’. Are there areas in yuor life where this feelign is Highly valuable and appreciated? Are there times in your life when you have Wanted or Needed that feeling? Where it has been, in some context, the Precise feeling you need?

Maybe to help you move on, or to do or achieve something else?


Sequence … you CAN add a track to the old song before you get the blockage.

What makes this a problem, rather than needing to go and do something else for a while before adding ANOTHER track, then hafve a break … maybe of a few weeks or months then add a FURTHER track?


How do you manage to NOT FORGET to have this block? If you needed to tach ME to have this block, what would be the essential things i’d need to do, say to myself, feel, ‘see in my minds eye’ or ‘hear in my mind’s ear’, for it to happen? To trigger it to happen?

In similar detail, like you had a PsychoCubase projec window open … time goes from left to right, and you’ve got paralel tracks with different parts of the process … and you can zoom in. You’ve already given me ‘I open a a song I started’ … then ‘Add a track’ AND ‘Get a blockage’. If those are on the project page, and you zoom in … what is the attack ramp of the blockage? when it reaches a peak, how long does it remain there before it begins a ‘Decay’. Does that decay OVERLAP going into the next song? or is there something else happening in between them? When you say ‘AND’ between add a track & get a blockage, do you mean ‘AND THEN get a blockage’ … as in time-bound sequence? or does ‘AND’ signify SIMULATENEITY?

Those are just the first questions off the top of my head begin to solve this now.


When I say ‘solve this’ … I might be presupposing a problem which is not there. Are these 700 unfinished songs WORTH finishing? I’m not challenging your musicianship. Far from it … are the ones you DO finish, in your opinion, superior to the ones you don’t? Is what you’re calling a ‘Block’ no more or less than a highly Irritating Quality Control which steered you to gravitate toward your 30 Best? Even though you might have hankerings after some old ideas you had worked on?

Is there quality control at all, or is there some habit operating OUTSIDE your musical judgements?

Teasing it apart, finding out to what extent it is clear and obvious, and to what extent is it a tangle will prevent solving it either too soon or too slowly, and will minimize the risk of throwing any babes out with the bathwater.

If you want to answer these questions, I’ll be happy to organize them in my mind to make my best attempt at useful response. If, however, you just want to sort thoroughly in and through them in other ways, I will be happy to lend a hand or simply enjoy hearing how you are getting this sorted.

Best wishes
Glyn

PsychoCubase

Love it! :wink: :laughing:

Oh ya, and I have hard drives full of unfinished ideas, I can totally relate, not so much a block in my case, sometimes it is time constraint then the thrill is gone, and other times, laziness. I look forward to what “Doctor” Zenda will prescribe! :wink:

Ah, In the old days life was so much easier for the strolling minstrel with his lute and a song in his heart, I’ve been through all you speak of, half way through a project I would be bored stupid with it an never finish so I thought “who am I kidding” no-ones ever going to hear this crap so I piled all my keys and controllers in a heap and do everything on the fly, I’m an improviser at heart so that is what I do, I use Ableton live as a glorified drum machine and start at the beginning and when I stop that’s the end, result no unfinished tunes, most of it is rubbish but the delete button is my friend, I love my time in my musicroom making noises etc. But I’m a bit f’kin weird, this wouldn’t suit everybody.

Well, I don’t feel quite as bad now. For me there is some laziness, but I can usually nail down a song eventually, even if I have to come back to it some months (or years) later. My main issues are different (I won’t mention them here 'cause they are in another post), but many of my symptoms are close enough that I can relate.