creativity issue...

[h3r3tic]

So here's the thing...

I practise lots of stuff, such as rudiments, some doubles-bass, blasts and other stuff... But when It's time to create something I just feel like struggling like I can't do anything that is creative... :( Can anyone tell me what's happening to me? Are there any solutions?

What book would you advise me to read to help find my creativity?

Hope to hear from you soon... ;) Thanks!

[prempex]

are you sleeping alright?

late nights always tend to have an effect on me and my drumming.

[Wavelength]

I can't do anything that is creative... Can anyone tell me what's happening to me? Are there any solutions?

---

What book would you advise me to read to help find my creativity?

Here's a solution: stop reading books and start listening. Listen to something you haven't listened to before and learn to play like that. Then listen some more.

[PQleyR]

I reckon just stop thinking about it. I used to worry that what I was doing wasn't interesting enough until I realised it didn't matter at all. You can do what looks like the most boring beat in the world written down, but when you play it it might sound amazing.

[Auger]

I second Wavelegnth's advice. Books and practice will give you tools and technique, but creativity comes from inspiration, and inspiration comes from music and from life.

[tak22thegoat]

Yes, listening is the best way to be more creative.
But also keep in mind that creative isn't always the best solution. Remember that grooving is most important. Play what feels good and sounds good.

[h3r3tic]

Thank you so much for your kind words!
Thank you for helping me.

I think that the my problem was that when I first started to search for things to learn on the drums (I'm self-tought) I was completly blown away on how technique could help your drumming becoming way better. For example I didn't knew how to grip the sticks correctly and I never let the stick to rebound until I learned the free-stroke on Dom Famularo's cyber lessons and the moeller technique by Derrick Pope and some rudiments from other guys on youtube. But then I couldn't stop to search for other things and the more I searched for other things the more I became away from practising on my drumset...

So I guess that I'll stick with the tools like letting the stick rebound and rudiments (not all of them ofcourse) and use them on finding my "creative sound" instead of just sitting my ass and searching for every single video of any drummer that I can find.

It's time for me to have a zen moment ;)

Thanks guys!

[volume_3]

What i tend to do is improvise along to a good upbeat track, i use something like:
Eat Static - Egypt
or 65daysofstatic - Drove Through Ghosts To get here

Mainly stuff that i like but has no relevence to the music i play with my band.
You start to do things with that music that sounds cool, different, and original. I hate learning someone else's drum part, if you shove a song on and just play, you throw in a load of new styles and improvised beats that you wouldn't have been able to think of when filtering through theory and books.

Just improvise, and then remember some of the things you play and incorporate them whenever you feel they fit.

[foursticks]

Wavelength's totally on the money. LISTEN. Too stuff you enjoy and to something completely new and the fact that you're looking for a more creative inspiration will allow to have an even more open mind than usual.
We all suffer from creative drought and locking yourself in a dark room meditating to new music seems to bring about positive results ;-)

[Wavelength]

Sometimes creativity demands methodical, even mechanical work in order to happen. You need to choose a phrase you know (be it a groove, fill or whatever) and develop it beyond its initial form: use it in a different context (for instance, play rock grooves in a jazz song and vice versa), use a different orchestration (a short snare solo on the tom-toms, replace some hand strokes with foot strokes...), use different striking implements (brushes, mallets, rods, hands...), change the dynamics (play soft things loud, loud things soft, shift accents around), rephrase it rhythmically (play the same notes, but use note values that are different from the original), change the stickings... and combine all of these approaches to create a chain that twists and turns your prior knowledge into something new and different. You'll end up with lots of bad ideas, but you'll also find a lot of good, usable ones.

Now, these methods need some material to work, so make sure you are constantly learning new and different things. I'm not talking about techniques or rudiments or anything like that -- I'm talking about real-life musical building blocks: grooves, fills, phrases, licks, solos, you name it. Pick a song and learn every groove and fill the drummer plays. Learn to play the song's drum part by heart. Take these grooves and fills, analyse them and put them through the "creativity machine". Fully processing a song's drum part might take a few weeks, even months, but you'll end up with a lot more material than you initially started with, and the creative process of developing ideas will become more and more instinctual. Eventually you'll be able to develop musical ideas on the fly, without thinking at all.

[Mr. Pasquini]

It comes from inside, Cliche as it may be don't sit down to play a song and go "I can use THIS technique", decide what will sound good. If I sat around all day just trying to incorperate flam drags in to every pattern I play I would have no creativity.

[Wavelength]

If I sat around all day just trying to incorperate flam drags in to every pattern I play I would have no creativity.

If you're incorporating new sounds to the phrases you know, you are combining different elements in a new way. How is that not creative? Creativity is all about working with what you have -- it's not about pulling hip phrases straight out of your Equus asinus.

[Mr. Pasquini]

I'm just saying there's no reason to force it in; use it if it sounds good but don't force a technique just for technique's sake.

[Wavelength]

I'm just saying there's no reason to force it in; use it if it sounds good but don't force a technique just for technique's sake.

And how exactly will you know if it sounds good if you don't take the time to experiment with it?

[fat in the middle]

Try going for walks. When i go for a walk, its amazing how many ideas come up, and the sounds on ones travels can help too. Record field sounds, engines, birds anything that provokes..We can only be ready when inspiration arrives.

[Deltadrummer]

On the DW website. Peter Erskine has this exercise for creativity where you start with an ostinato pattern and just keep on thinking of new and original ideas to play over it. It's nice because you come up with unique and new rhyhtms.

[PQleyR]

And how exactly will you know if it sounds good if you don't take the time to experiment with it?

Sounds too much like work to me. Nothing wrong with that, but in my experience creativity comes from not thinking about it and doing something you never would have planned.
Technique makes this easier, that's why it's important.

[Wavelength]

Creativity comes from not thinking about it and doing something you never would have planned.

Creativity is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts -- the approach you described sounds more like stumbling upon something randomly, or playing by luck. Creativity always requires some brainwork, be it in a flash of inspiration or in hours of experimentation and exploration.

[komodo]

When i hit this creativity block i eventually overcame it by playing to music and also playing beats improvising beats and fills. Also, you can take a beat, then extemporise it (think thats the right word), in other words add little bits while maintaining this beat (such as ghost notes,crashes etc). I also took rudiments and applied them around the kit to try and find good cool sounds that i could use, then i incorporated these in fills

[blade123]

Just sit down at your kit and PLAY. I can't believe how many people don't do this. That makes up the bulk of my practicing time, just sitting and grooving to whatever comes to mind.
If it happens to be a simple boom chuck boom chuck, then just play that and try to spice it up, add a few ghost notes, hi hat hits, take away a hit. And listen, as the others have said.

And remember, most things that you deem as really creative, impossible to think of, just started off of a simple straight forward pattern.

[foursticks]

Just sit down at your kit and PLAY. I can't believe how many people don't do this. That makes up the bulk of my practicing time, just sitting and grooving to whatever comes to mind.


That doesn't sound like a very good way of practising...
But, in the case, a groove out session doesn't seem like a bad idea.

[fourstringdrums]

That doesn't sound like a very good way of practising...
But, in the case, a groove out session doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Well if all you're doing is just playing with no structure, that is a bad idea. You need to have some structure to focus on things that you want to improve. But having time devoted to just playing and being spontaneous, everyone should do that.

[foursticks]

Well if all you're doing is just playing with no structure, that is a bad idea. You need to have some structure to focus on things that you want to improve. But having time devoted to just playing and being spontaneous, everyone should do that.

That's what I meant :-) Thanks.

[fat in the middle]

Can we really control creativity, or is it randomness, I feel it is a lifestyle we design for ourselves. Can we control grace? We just have to be ready for it. Read books, paint a picture, 'ideas come from the exercising of the brain, not the muscles' [Gavin harrison quote] I feel if we work on things like books etc, we may get there, but its art, not sports. Play a melody witht the drums, get weird sounds from them,,experiment...

[Just Drums]

There's many approaches to being more creative so you'll get many different answers. One very easy (for me) to "explore" is simply use a 4 & 4 or an 8 & 8 structure.

Keep time for 4/8 bars and then improvise for another 4/8 bars (stay in time). It helps you to "solo" around a melody or something that matches the type of groove you're playing.

Hope this helps.

[PineyplayParadiddles]

This is a good thread, lately I've felt that my drumming as become very repetitive, great advice!

[caprisun3484]

yeah this is a really good thread

I like the idea of listening to something new or even really listening to something you already like and taking ideas from that.

Also if you have some books try and think of new ways to use them and go beyond just the written text.

[LiveGoat]

What I'm finding is that sometimes the sound or style of a band will require a specific way of approaching drum fills. My last band was a very driving punk-pop band sort of like Taking Back Sunday, and that kind of style dictated to a certain extent how my playing and fills were. A kind of driving, precise, drum machine style, which was cool but I had to learn to adapt as I'm naturally a more looser, reckless kind of player. The guitarist I'm playing with now has a sort of spacey, Pumpkins, Flaming Lips, Jimi Hendrix thing going and I find I can play looser with a lot of jazzier type fills that just wouldn't fit with the other band.

One approach to breaking out of rut that helps me is when your working on a new song, ask the band to let you go hog wild on the song. Overplay the heck out of it. Make a fool of yourself and try ambitious fills that you have no business attempting and are doomed to trainwreck. Record it and take it home for a listen. Usually you'll find some ideas in the mess and even learn to play some of those monster fills properly the next time. After all, the rehearsal space should be the one place where you should be allowed to fail and learn from it.

But Wavelength's right. By listen to all kinds of music you'll get an idea of what kinds of fills work for certain situations and styles. Plus you can steal all those ideas for yourself!

---LG

[PQleyR]

Creativity is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts -- the approach you described sounds more like stumbling upon something randomly, or playing by luck. Creativity always requires some brainwork, be it in a flash of inspiration or in hours of experimentation and exploration.

But those hours of experimentation would ultimately result in the flash of inspiration, yes? The hours themselves are a means to an end, rather than the creative end result...
Creativity is by definition unstructured, isn't it? I'm not suggesting that the only way to achieve it is to wait for it to happen, but it's not something that can be planned. You can just get better at making it happen.

[Tutin]

I find that the things I think are most stupid or simple tend to be the things I end up using that set me aside from different drummers. Even if I don't use them I end up hearing some great drummer using them eventually. There's a lick Thomas Lang uses all the time; he plays triplets with his hands and feet (one hand on the tom, right foot, left foot). I remember I played this a lot when I was about 13 but I always thought it was stupid and a bit boring, and now I hear him play it all the time haha.

[Pete Stoltman]

Go listen to some LIVE music. I find it especially helpful to attend a performance of music outside the style I normally play. Sometimes it doesn't matter much what it is. I can draw some inspiration from just about anything new that I'm exposed to. Watching videos and listening at home is fine but there is no substitute to the experience of capturing musicians doing what they do in person. There is an energy factor there that is inherent in the live performance. Works for me.

[rhythmjunkie]

So here's the thing...

I practise lots of stuff, such as rudiments, some doubles-bass, blasts and other stuff... But when It's time to create something I just feel like struggling like I can't do anything that is creative... :( Can anyone tell me what's happening to me? Are there any solutions?

What book would you advise me to read to help find my creativity?

Hope to hear from you soon... ;) Thanks!

"The Artists Way" I don't know the authors name, but this is a great book to develop creative ability.

Being fearless, having a clear mind, honesty with yourself and with your expression, inspiration and exercise all will enhance your creativity. Check that book out.

[Deltadrummer]

"The Artists Way" I don't know the authors name, but this is a great book to develop creative ability.

Being fearless, having a clear mind, honesty with yourself and with your expression, inspiration and exercise all will enhance your creativity. Check that book out.

I did that book, the author's name was Julia Cameron.