5 Tools to Hack Your Music Creativity.

When you have to come up with new and exciting music on a regular basis, getting stuck creatively can be a problem. So how do you get out of that creative rut and find inspiration again?

Here are 5 tools I use to help creatively with my music compositions.

1. Arpeggiators

Arpeggiators may be more commonly associated with synth and electronic music. But when looking for that great ostinato rhythm for your string section, or an interesting 16th note triplet pattern for a high hat, why not put the vst through an arpeggiator??

I use the Logic Pro X midi arpeggiator in particular, but there are many other arpeggiators out there that you can plug alternative instruments into and get some very creative ideas.

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2. Delay

Delay is used in many different ways, particularly when it comes to the production side of music. For example, applying a delay to a hi-hat, snare, vocals and panning the vocals one side and the delay the other can create some very interesting effects and movement in a piece of music.

Here are a few plugins that I find particularly helpful creatively when it comes to delay.

• UVI Relayer 
• Valhalla Freq Echo 
• Output Movement 
• Waves H-Delay 

3. Looping, splicing & manipulation

I'm talking about rhythmic ideas quite a lot here and I suppose not being a professional drummer this is an area that I feel I have to work on the most. It's also an area that inspires me the most to write music. So here's another fun way to get the creative juices going!

Take a loop of any kind, this could be a drum loop, synth loops, bass, whatever it is, chop it up and mess around with it, some ways you might chop it:

• If the loop is 4/4 why not chop it and create a different meter? 3/4, 5/4, 7/8. Something this simple will push you in a completely different direction with a piece of music.
• Apply distortion/bitcrusher. If you take a drum loop, why does it have to stay as a drum loop? With a creative application of distortion and EQ and even tuning this can be turned into another musical element in your piece.
• Take a drum loop and import it to a convolution reverb such as space designer to add some strange and interesting elements to your reverb!

4. Shock your harmonic ideas

So you're writing pieces, you're comfortable with chord progressions and movements, you know how to move a mood from one extreme to the other, but you keep going back to the same ideas. How to shock the system:

• Begin the piece with melodic content only and build from there.
• Experiment with quartal harmony (building chords with an interval of a perfect 4th)
• Experiment with polytonality (polychord consists of two or more chords, one on top of the other.)
• Find a piece of music which is really interesting to you and something that it is highly unlikely you would write, break it down, understand it and try to create a pastiche. This will not only expand your understanding of the composer's process but give you experience writing something different to your normal pieces.

5. Collaborate!!

This may be a very simple concept. But there is nothing better than giving someone one of your music ideas and asking them to jam with it, or come up with their own ideas or interpretation. This works particularly well with players who can improvise well and take direction. After all, as a composer you can be expected to understand the ins and outs of every instrument you get your hands on, so working with others, understand how they approach their instruments and articulations can be a hugely inspiring process.