Constraints

The Studio
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I wanted to start a thread to gauge what everyone’s go-to constraints are when it comes to composing/producing. As we all know, these are what often promote creativity and can lead to increased self-discovery when making music. Forgive me if something similar has been posted before, but I’d love to know some of yalls favorite ways of “limiting yourselves“ during the creative process

Hope everyone is having a great week

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I am limited only by time, and the tools that I have on hand, (which are few, but not really limiting.) I don’t set it intentional limits.

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I’ll set it up to force me into a certain direction if I want to explore that sometimes. Like, if I want to mess around with genre then I might choose dark techno and say OK that has to be

  1. 125-135 bpm
  2. has a lowpass filter on the master and the song has to sound good with that on
  3. adhere to the common genre conventions of techno (kick over bass, agressive dirty sounds, etc).

Or I might do a sound design session, enjoy a particular sound, and say to myself that I have to build a track that fits this sound.

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interesting stuff. i also find it’s important to take wildly different approaches for different tracks to stay nimble

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That’s one way of thinking about it. For me, music is something I’ve been doing long enough that if I’m not careful I end up treading the same ground repeatedly and just get bored. That leads to me not working on or finishing my songs which is the opposite of my goal.

So if I can force myself to do new things and that keeps me excited, then I have a better chance of keeping up the momentum and finishing what I start.

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I’ve dabbled in it, to varying effect. I think it’s a neat tool to send you down different paths, but I also think it’s important to know when it’s useful and not, and make sure you don’t make yourself miserable doing it.

I wonder if the value in constraints tracks with self-perceived adherence to genre. Like the more rules you’re supposed to play by, the more you need to find ways to bend and reinterpret them. Most of what I make for my own pleasure nowadays is firmly in the experimental camp (in that it’s only sort of musical) and I rarely feel the need to constrain my process because the seeds of those tracks are born out of focused experimentation with design and process (which I guess you could argue is a specialized form of constraint), instead of a “I’m going to start with 4/4 and a Reece bass” ideal that has a ton of history behind it.

I think it’s valid to use constraints as a way to re-contextualize familiar things and see them in a new light. But I also think, with insight and discipline, you can just choose to approach things differently, think about the things you do in different ways, without all the hand wringing about not using specific tools or techniques. At least for me, these days, “I can only…” doesn’t get me nearly as far “what if I…”

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