To Tired to Write and Record

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Fusioninspace

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Anyone else have this problem...

By the time I get home from work, help the kids with the homework, do my honey-do list, etc., I'm just too frick'n tired to do anything productive in the studio. The weekends are even worse.

I do get to play at church routinely - and that's a total blessing from both a spiritual and musical perspective. And I keep my chops up for that.

But beyond trying to spend a few minutes with the guitar everyday, I don't get the quality time to actually "create" something of my own. That last spurt of writing/recording was about 2 years ago :(

...and it's driving me crazy lately.

Any advice?
 
Fusion,

Man... I'm with you six ways to Sunday. Sometimes I just don't have the gumption to get into the studio. Other nights I'm so beat that even if I get myself into the studio and turn everything on, I then realize that I can hardly strum a tune. I try at least to turn those into nights of listening to good music on the monitors to tune my ear. Sometimes that perks me up enough to get inspired.

But, at least for me this is proof that my priority is work and family. The music is gravy. And sometimes there isn't enough gravy to go around. That said, I've noticed that these things come in waves. A flood of work (and child care) is often followed by a period of calm and creativity.

One reason why we have home studios is so they are there waiting for us when the planets align and we have both time and energy to take advantage of.
 
Like BudgetMC said, it seems to come in waves (more like cycles for me) and there just doesn't seem to be enough time to do all we want to. The past month has been a busy time for me, everything needed my time more than music needed it. I'm hoping as the weather cools down my life will slow down and I'll have more time to devote to music. You aren't alone on this one. I think we all have periods when we do not have enough time to do all the things we need to do and still have time for the things we want to do.
 
I can;t give you any advice, per se, but I can relate to you. I'm in a stretch at work where I've been pulling long hours for pretty much the last four months running. I've been dragging myself out of bed on average 45 minutes after my alarm goes off, quickly hitting the shower and then grabbing a coffee on the way to work, and pretty much staying in my cubicle from just after 9 until 7 or 8 at night, crunching numbers and explaining calculations and the like. I'll then roll home from work and if time and daylight permits hop on my road bike for a half hour or hour or so (at the start of this summer I was in the worst shape of my life, so doing something about that has been the priority lately. I've dropped about ten pounds and put on some muscle mass, but I still have a ways to go). After that I'll hit the shower again and grab a bite to eat. By the time my calluses harden up enough to really play again, it'll be maybe 10 at night, the point at which I try to not really turn up for the sake of my neighbors (or rather, my good relationship with them, lol). So maybe on the weekdays I'll get in 20 minutes of low volume jamming before bed. Weekends, I'm usually too busy trying to get in a longer ride or two and catch up with the friends I didn't get to hang out with during the week. Somewhere on top of this I need to find the hours to log about a hundred hours of studying for one of those professional certification exams.

Hell, I'm single and don't have kids, and even I've been having trouble balancing my life with music these days. It sucks, bro. Know that you're not alone, at least...
 
I'll go through periods of too tired/ uninspired/ no time. The good news is I'll usually have the opposite happen after the drought and get 5-6 songs in a month. it's a give and take.
 
Seems I have no problems in the creativity/noodling department. At the moment I have five or six compositions ready to "rock and roll" - but the the effort, blood, sweat and tears involved in getting 'em down on the 24 track, at any thing like a professional standard, is intimidating to say the least, ESPECIALLY, on top of a hard day at work. Just too much to deal with. But... it's nice to know it's there waitng for me. Anticipation: almost as enjoyable as the real thing! And you all know what I mean! (I hope)

K.
 
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I don't even try to do anything on the weekdays, but always make it a point to spend 2 or 3 hours with music on one weekend Day or the other. What I do depends on my mood -- sometimes fooling around on the Yamaha keys seeking musical inpiration that may or may not result in putting together MIDI chord progression backing, sometimes fooling around with the recorder developing previously recorded ideas. The result is that not much gets done, but at least something does.
 
I totally understand.
Yesterday, while my youngest was having a nap, my oldest dropped her crafts to come see what I was doing. I showed her the sequencer and played the song I was working on. She thaught it was cool and wanted to play keyboards too. I let her. Then she wan't to play games (pbskids.org!)...So, I got in about 20 minutes of recording/re-arranging a song idea.

One tip I can give is to actually schedule in some music time which your spouse/kids/etc. can all agree on (e.g. Tuesday 7-10pm) and where you are free from other obligations.

Another thing I do once in a while is take a day or half-day off of work and play at home when no one is around.

Another thing I would like to do is to get a portable sound recorder so that I can hum/strum/sing song ideas as they come, without having to go to the computer/studio.

In the end, it boils down to what your priorities are, and of course kids (and family) have to be high on the list for those who have some (or those who may be trying to have some!).

One thing that frustrates me a little bit is that for many years, I didn't really write or record anything - before having kids. Now, I've got the bug again, but have no time or money!!!

Good luck!
-Rich
 
I get too tired also, but my bigger problem is not having the time/space necessary to record - I don't have a dedicated studio space, and so have to commandeer a corner or room and do a quick setup (followed by a quick teardown shortly afterward).

If I can get past the setup threshold, then even if I'm tired, I can usually get something productive done -- progressions that sound uninspired and lifeless when I'm playing them [may indeed suck, but] often form the basis for better stuff later which would not have come into being with the precursor from the tired session.

Also, I have two older kids, one of whom is pretty musical -- I record him whenever I get the chance. We just recently had a baby, who's now approaching two years old. She 100% deterministically has to be on the scene whenever I pull the stuff out, so I just brought her into the act -- she helps out with setup and teardown (closely watched :D) and plays instruments like shakers and the tambourine (or even the tap-a-tune http://www.littletikes.com/toys/baby-tap-a-tune-piano.aspx ), and does vocal tracks. The results are awesome to me anyway, and also provide some justification to the wife for the whole enterprise -- those in a similar situation can spot the value in this :)

(most recently, I remixed and did some re-tracking for our Girl from Ipanema cover, which features the singing of my non-musical older daughter - I learned a lot about auto-tune ("pitch-correction" in Logic) :D -
- another bonus is that if the little one is fussy in the car, I can play our songs like this on the stereo, and there's an instant mood reversal)

RichJ said:
Another thing I do once in a while is take a day or half-day off of work and play at home when no one is around.
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absolutely -- I don't get to carry over vacation time, and I always wind up burning weeks of it at the end of the year -- there have been plenty of times when I probably could have run home and had some extremely productive hours.
 
My kiddo has grown and flown, but one thing I've found that works for me is to take a power nap of 15-30 minutes when I get home from work; I'm usually good to go until midnight or so if I do that.
 
It's frustrating. I think about music - hear it in my head - all day long at work and when I get home I'm just washed out from the day. And there is always stuff that needs to be taken care of at home after work. I do try to carve out 1/2 hour per day just to get my hands on a guitar and keep the fingers limber. But during the week I just rarely have the time at night to do anything creative. I feel rushed and that kills the mood.

Every so often I will declare a weekend as a chore-free zone and make clear my intention to be buried in the studio. It usually works best when the girls are occupied away from the house, especially when I have vocal tracks to record. ;)

This is one aspect of retirement that I'm really looking forward to. I've got several years to go but I won't have any problem filling my time. :)
 
Like most of the posts above, I have the same problem that seems to be fairly common for people who have regular jobs and what not. I dont have any kids but I still feel like I have no time to devote to recording or writing for that matter. I havnt done anything productive since december or thereabouts. What I have found has helped me in the past is listening to music that inspired me in the first place. Jason Lytle is one I listen to a lot becuase he made a good go of recording at home to some comercial success. More than that however, is my friends that also record. I feel that when they are producing quality recordings, it pushes me to try and do the same.
 
Riffmaster said:
I'll go through periods of too tired/ uninspired/ no time. The good news is I'll usually have the opposite happen after the drought and get 5-6 songs in a month. it's a give and take.
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Too true. I was in India for about two months last year on business, with no guitar. I was kind of at my wits' end in a songwriting drought when I left, and I came back and wrote maybe four songs in the first two months.
 
It can be very difficult to find time to do all the things we would like to do while holding down a day job, raising a family, etc. etc. etc. It can also be very easy to justify why we can't do this or that because something else demands our time.

It really comes down to priorities. I tend to group things into three catagories: 1) Must do 2) Should Do 3) Would like to do

Certainly putting in the 40-60 hours that most jobs require is a must do (if we want to eat, pay the rent, etc.) and spending time with family is a must do (if we want to have a strong family relationship). Finding time to eat, sleep and maintain a reasonable level of personal hygene would likely be must do. Paying the bills and taking care of that type of personal business is a must do.

Beyond that, there may be a lot of should do (exercise, mow the lawn, clean the house, etc) and perhaps several like to do (watch TV, read the newspaper, or Mix Magazine:D)

The key is to determine if writing/recording/gigging is a should do or like to do (or perhaps for the real gearsluts a must do). Then it is simply a matter of setting or re-arranging prioities.

Personally, I sleep less, watch less TV, spend less time with the wife (and I made a decision long ago not to have kids - because I was alwasy gigging and never home), limit the number of hours I'm willing to give to my employer (which has cost me in advancement potential) and have eliminated all the other "hobbies" to make time for writing/recording/performing.

Unfortunately, this in turn has made me a rather one dimentional person - with no hobbies or interests other than music (and no friends - other then musicians)..........I suspect many would consider those types of trade offs too steep a price to pay (I know from time to time I question if my prioities are in order).
 
Make a schedule, run it past the boss, and stick by your guns.



This is yours, you earned it, and you need to stand up for it. Nobody else is going to.
 
It seems to me that recording and writing, when we are the writer, producer, technician and musician...well this actually can be stressful and take a fair amount of time to complete the tune and recording. So after a trying day at work and chores at home no wonder we can loose the zing to do something we like. Who wants pressure to produce when its getting near bedtime? I find I'm prime when I'm well rested and have the time. Plus you've got to feel the groove of what your doing. Its takes a little warmup to just to get to that point. Life is what it is, it is about survival. If you have some time and money to pursue your hobby thats a good thing. Its not a requirement to maintain your living status though. Food, roof, family come first. Your hobby needs come only when you can find the time and energy to persue them. If it were too easy then we'd get bored fast. It is a challenge to write and record and for that your batteries need to be charged.
 
RichJ said:
Another thing I would like to do is to get a portable sound recorder so that I can hum/strum/sing song ideas as they come, without having to go to the computer/studio.
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I know what you mean. The digital Tascam Pocketstudio 5 4-tracker I used is long discontinued now, and only supports proprietary compressed recording so getting the tracks out individually to mix on a PC is too much of a pain to comtemplate. But it fits nicely in a drawer where it remains ready to capture ideas -- setup takes about a minute for "hum/strum/sing" of ideas - a little longer if I go for more quality by using external effects of preamp.
 
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