How to Reconnect with Your Creativity in Music
This short guide to creativity comes from a simple intention: to help you reconnect with the instinct to let go and create. It draws inspiration from some of the ideas found in The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin—a book we deeply resonate with, and an artist whose studios we’ve had the pleasure of supporting with our acoustic solutions.
Think of this as something to come back to when you need a push. Something to read before stepping into a session, when you want to clear your head and reconnect with why you make music in the first place.
Creativity Is Something You Allow
If you’ve been making music for a while, you’ve probably experienced this shift. At the beginning, everything feels open. You move fast, you trust your instincts, and ideas seem to come without effort. Then, over time, things start to slow down. You question more, you compare more, and what used to feel natural starts to feel heavy.
That moment is often misunderstood. It feels like creativity is fading, but what’s really happening is that the process is getting crowded. Expectations, habits, and overthinking begin to take up space that was previously free.
Creativity doesn’t disappear. It gets covered.
“Living the life of an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not.”
–Rick Rubin
The goal is not to “become creative” again. It’s to return to a way of working where creativity can happen.
Creativity Starts with Listening
A lot of creative blocks come from trying to do too much, too quickly. You open a session and immediately start adding, changing, building—without first understanding what’s already there.
A more effective approach is to slow down and listen.
Let the track play without touching anything. Pay attention to where your ear goes naturally. Notice what feels complete and what feels unresolved. Often, the direction is already present—you just need to recognize it.
This kind of listening is not passive. It’s a trained sensitivity.
“Look for what you notice but no one else sees.”
–Rick Rubin
Over time, this becomes your main creative advantage. Not how much you can add, but how precisely you can perceive.
Your Environment Shapes How You Perceive
Every decision you make in music is based on perception. And perception is always influenced by context.
The space you work in, the way sound behaves around you, even the level of distraction in the room—these factors quietly shape how you hear and interpret what you’re doing. When that perception is inconsistent or unclear, your decisions become unstable. You hesitate more, you adjust things that don’t need adjustment, and you lose connection with the original idea.
On the other hand, when your environment supports clarity—even in a simple way—you spend less time interpreting and more time deciding. You recognize relationships between sounds more quickly. You stay closer to the intention.
“We create an open space that allows it. A space so free of mental clutter that it functions as a vacuum.”
–Rick Rubin
That sense of space is not just internal. It’s something you build around you, and it directly affects how easily ideas take shape.
Stop Chasing Originality. Start Recognizing Taste.
Trying to be original is one of the fastest ways to lose direction. It shifts your focus away from the work and toward an abstract goal that’s impossible to measure.
What actually matters is taste.
Your taste is already specific. It’s built from everything you’ve listened to, everything you’ve paid attention to, everything that has stayed with you over time. The work is not to escape that—it’s to refine it.
When you make decisions based on what genuinely resonates with you, your work becomes more direct and more coherent.
“The goal of art is not to attain perfection. The goal is to share who we are.”
–Rick Rubin
And over time, that consistency becomes your voice.
Limitations Create Focus
Having access to unlimited tools and sounds can feel like an advantage, but in practice it often creates hesitation. Too many options make it harder to commit.
When every direction is possible, nothing feels definitive.
Introducing limitations simplifies the process. It forces you to work with intention. You stop browsing and start shaping. You engage more deeply with fewer elements, and that depth leads to stronger ideas.
“Do what you can with what you have. Nothing more is needed.”
–Rick Rubin
Limitations are not restrictions. They are a way to stay focused on what matters.
Consistency Beats Intensity
It’s tempting to wait for the right moment to create. The right mood, the right energy, the right idea.
But creativity doesn’t work well under those conditions.
It responds better to consistency. Showing up regularly, even for short sessions, keeps your connection with the work active. It reduces pressure and allows ideas to develop over time instead of forcing them all at once.
Some sessions will feel productive. Others won’t. That’s part of the process.
“In terms of priority, inspiration comes first. You come next. The audience comes last.”
–Rick Rubin
When you keep showing up, you create the conditions for inspiration to appear—without needing to chase it.
Let the Work Lead
In the early stages, ideas need space more than precision. If you start correcting too soon, you risk removing what made the idea interesting in the first place.
A better approach is to follow the energy of the idea.
If something feels alive, continue in that direction. Let it grow without interrupting the flow to fix every detail. Trust that refinement can happen later, when you have distance and clarity.
“Each work is a work in progress. It is helpful to see what we are working on as an experiment.”
–Rick Rubin
This mindset keeps the process flexible and reduces the pressure to get everything right immediately.
Finding Your Voice Through Sound
Your voice is not something you define once and then protect. It emerges over time, through repetition and attention.
It’s shaped by how you listen, how you decide, and what you choose to keep.
When you trust your perception, patterns begin to appear in your work. Certain choices repeat. Certain directions feel natural. That’s your voice taking form.
“As artists, we are looking to restore a childlike perception.”
–Rick Rubin
A more direct, less filtered way of experiencing sound—that’s where your identity lives.
Keep the Process Moving
At its core, creativity is not about reaching a perfect result. It’s about staying connected to the process.
Removing friction. Trusting what you hear. Allowing ideas to emerge without forcing them.
“All that matters is that you are making something you love, to the best of your ability, here and now.”
–Rick Rubin
If you can stay close to that, the work keeps moving.And if you need support along the way, talk to us.