Hi guys and girls,
first of all I'd like to apologize for my recent absence from the forum (which I still consider the single most friendly and resourceful place for any songwriter). I had lots of stuff going on with moving house and settling in with a new job and all.
Which brings me to the reason for this post. While moving, I had to leave almost all my musical equipment, instruments, gear, DAW etc behind and can only access all that every couple of weeks. For the rest of the time I'm down to my acoustic guitar, that's it.
The problem with all that is: Sitting in front of the DAW and being able to experiment with recordings and synths, shifting tracks around, manipulating audio and obsessing over tiny details of an arrangement is and has always been my main source of inspiration, my way of being creative and writing songs.
With all that gone for most of the time, I'm facing a bit of a dilemma, as I can't seem to be able to get any writing or composing done. I absolutely envy and admire all of the musicians and writers on here who can come up with fantastic material by just sitting down with their guitar or piano. I can write simple chord progressions and riffs on guitar, but that's about it. Apparently I lack the imagination required to actually "build" any kind of arrangement in my head, let alone write a song based on just a simple acoustic guitar track, as so many here manage to do so wonderfully. I need to have it all visually summarized the way it is in a DAW.
Maybe this is a result of the availability of semi-professional tools and software, the fact that practically every layman can build their own more or less advanced "studio" in their bedroom these days. (Although maybe I am a bit too young to credibly be using phrases like "these days" ;-D).
What I'm saying is, I feel like I've never learned the real trade of songwriting, the skill to create words and music simply by using one's imagination instead of soft- and hardware that allow you to basically cheat your way through an arrangement. And now that might be coming back to bite me in the ass.
I'm writing this for two reasons:
To ask all you guys here, who may or may not have had similar experiences for any kind of advice or suggestion on how to deal with this problem, how to properly learn to write and how to gain some distance from the technological aids and obstacles.
And to start a discussion on said tools, how they help and hinder the songwriting challenge, how they have changed your writing process.
I'm very much looking forward to hearing all your thoughts
Cheers
Michael