Hi! Today i'm going to show you some of my favorite lifehacks i find out by doing random things. Some of these lifehacks is pretty simple, but some could be a really life and time-saving advices. I hope you endjoy! :D
Maybe i'm not the best blogger, but i have a bunch of ideas i want to make real - and usually it's pretty difficult. I would like to represent this practices on music making process, but i belive everyone find them useful!
First of all, i have three main rules:
Usually, i never make my composition out of nothing - when i have free time i make some chords, melodies, and synth just for fun - than put them in my ideas bin, which is just a directory on my hard drive, exporting my melodies and chords as MIDI files, and synth sounds as preset files. Talking for some other arts, it could be sketches in your sketchbook, or some 3d model templates you want to use to make a bigger projects. When i cannot come up with new ideas for my music, i just put this melodies and chords one by one, stacking them and i got some base for my future ideas.
I think there's no one who would like to listen to some 4-bar chords loop for 5 minuites or more (unless you find some really awesome one), so we need to make a bunch of variations for our project - usually i make 5 diffirent melodies based over one chord progression and combine them to make one interesting song - adding, subtracting and changing my sounds.
Trying to make one song in a few sessions could be really stressfull and hard work, so your barin just cannot find something interesting - take a little break. Coming back to the same idea after week or two could be a great motivation, and looking for ideas from a diffirent angle. I'm forgetting about my projects for months, and than i comming back with "Oh, this is so quiet, i know how to do it better!" or "Holy Nature! How could i forget about this awesome melody i made? This is a song, and i release it!" - because with time i'm growing up as artist, and you too!
And remember - Everything starts with a really simple idea, like 2 chords progression, and not all chords are great, but if you do them long, they are turning into a great ideas. Skrillex and Dillon Francis, while working on a song Bun Up The Dance make a really big ammount of demos and little idea, which evolve into a great and catchy song.
Sometimes, when i'm watching anime, i see some really beautiful landscapes, or wondeful character design, and because my hobbie is painting, i would like to redraw some of these pictures in my artbook - so i could make my own drawings out of these samples. Sometimes, when i was bored, i find myself scrolling throught my screenshots folder, seeking for ideas to do something.
Usually, in this messy world we have so much around us, so we usually forget about important things to us - just make notes, even if it's a name of movie you want to watch, or some really creative idea. Making notes could improve your memory and creativity with time, in the future you could get a really good memory, so you don't need to make notes about everything. This is a good exercie not only to remember, but to improve yourself in writing.
In today's world it's really hard to live without backups - almost every part of our life is located in a digital space, so i think you never want to lose all of your family photos archive. Just make backups and file copies, even if it's on a few USB flash drives, or dedicated server in your house. Don't rely on cloud services, you could forget password, or just don't have acess to the Internet everywhere. They are collect so many personnal data, so i never trust them my family photos and documents.
Recently Windows formatted my HDD, when i'm trying to plug it when my computer is in sleep mode, so i lost my collection of music and films, but it's a lot better, than lost things that really important to me.
Even if you already know your favorite activity, it's good to have a few hobbies - not because you should be universal, but just because it's a good way to take a break and have fun.
You are a great programmer, but why not to try drag some random images in photo editor, combine them and make some unusual patterns, or even an album cover? You shouldn't be a pro to have pleasure of doing something new, but in depressive moments of life, all this little things like a few hours of making some chaotic pictures, make characters in VRoid Studio or download a LMMS and just put some preinstalled samples and instruments in a sequencer could make a really great memories at the dark times.
Since i live in a military zone, every night could be the day i need to leave my living place, so i prefare to have a backpack full of the most important things - my notebook, hard drives, a bottle of water, documents, my meds and some snacks. Since my backpack is large enough, i also store my notepad, pencils, artbook and some important things for me, like pen my friend gifted me, or my childhood plush toy. In a stressful moment this things could help you in a hard times.
You shouldn't put everything in one backpack, but you could also have some large bag to store clothes - if you are have a good packing system, it shouldn't weight too much. Usually, i can put almost everything in my room in 15 minuites or less.
When i vist my parents, in our countryside we don't have a good Internet connection (right now we don't have it at all for a few days), but i have a hard drive and USB flash drives full of some funny pictures, Youtube videos, some books and videogames.
You shouldn't download absolutley all the Internet on your hard drive, but it's nice to have someting you want to see in the near future. Like i downloaded NitroFun's Complextro Tutorial, and trying to learn something new rewatching and recreating this project file. Then, i put the USB drive in our TV and watch some anime. There is a lot of nice freeware visual novels, like Radiata, Katawa Shoujo and True Remembrance, or your own Steam library. Also, you could download websites with you WebBrowser page downloader, or this wget command to download website with all of it's content. I wish Internet could be as clean as my own hard drive, without any distractions and multitasking. Luke Smith is have an awesome video on this topic.
I feel a pure pleasure when i cannot listen to song i want at any time, so i need to enjoy music i hear in a movie, videogame or my little CD collection (2 CDs).