Finding My Motivation to Make Music Again

You may have noticed that I haven’t published a blog post in a little while. As I write this, I’m very aware of the irony: I wanted to write about motivation to make music, but I ended up struggling to find the motivation to finish the article itself.

Motivation is something clients often bring up in consultations. Sometimes they need a morale boost. Sometimes they need help making sense of everything that’s happening around their music. I may be a mentor, but I’m also a musician, and I go through dips in motivation too. Having my dream job as an engineer and musician doesn’t make me immune.

Different things affect me and, believe it or not, sometimes I don’t feel like walking over to my studio to work on the next project. Loving something doesn’t automatically give you the energy to do it. Even your favourite hobby or passion can feel difficult to return to.

I’ve noticed how easily a break can turn into a longer absence. When I spent time with some jazz musicians, they told me they needed to practise every day. If they skipped a day, they could feel the difference. This year, I think I understood a little more of what they meant.

If you haven’t been following what I’ve been doing, I’ve finished and released several albums. I’ve made more music this year than I did over the previous few years combined. Much of that came from running my Patreon, where I teach people how I work. Teaching means practising my own techniques, and putting them into practice sparked my creativity again. That momentum helped me finish several albums.

Then, at some point during the summer, something changed.

I wanted to write an article about motivation after working with a client who had lost all interest in making music. Our meeting went really well. The advice seemed to make a difference because, a few weeks later, he was back at it and having fun again.

I sat down to write because I thought some of the ideas we discussed could help other people. I didn’t want to share the details of a private session, just the broader points that might be useful.

But as I wrote, I got sidetracked. I put the article aside, thinking I’d come back and finish it later. Weeks passed. I reopened it and tried adding things, but nothing felt right. An article meant to help people with a lack of motivation had become something I couldn’t motivate myself to finish.

I recognized the beginning of a spiral I fall into every now and then. In 2025, I went through a creative block that lasted several months. Getting out of it was extremely difficult. The albums came after that period, and the experience made me more aware of the signs that I might be heading towards another block, or towards something slightly different that I think of as a downward spiral.

For me, creative block often feels like this: nothing I work on sounds right. Something bothers me, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Whatever I try, it doesn’t lead to anything I feel satisfied with.

There’s friction between what I’m making and what I imagine the finished piece should be. The strange part is that I’m judging the outcome before it exists. I see this with other musicians too. Sometimes, within the first few moments of working on a track, their mind is already in the future instead of on the task in front of them.

It’s like sitting in front of a block of clay and stopping before you’ve even started shaping it because you can’t see the finished sculpture. Put that way, it sounds absurd. Of course the clay doesn’t look like a sculpture yet. Why would we expect it to?

But the mind gets attached to how things should be. We look at the top of the mountain and struggle to imagine walking all the way up there.

When I think about a long hike, it helps to focus on the next few steps: where to put my feet, how to move through the section in front of me. After a while, I can look back and see how far I’ve travelled. Shaping clay asks for something similar. You work with the next few gestures rather than solving the whole sculpture at once.

Music is a little different because it’s abstract. You can see your DAW and your equipment, but you can’t see the whole song in the same way you can see a landscape or an object taking shape. When I’m starting with source material and building a small loop, it helps to move it into the arrangement fairly quickly and sketch out a skeleton. That gives me something to work with: a rough model rather than an imagined finished track.

I keep coming back to this because, in my experience, motivation often develops through movement. If I wait until I feel motivated, nothing necessarily happens. But if curiosity gets me to try something small, the work can create its own momentum. The more interested I am in little details, the more likely I am to sit down and experiment.

When someone tells me they have no motivation to make music, I often notice how much they’re carrying into the session. They’re looking at the big picture, trying to solve problems that don’t exist yet, or thinking about what comes after the music is finished.

Planning a future for your music matters. But if thinking about that future stops you from finishing anything, it may help to bring your attention back to the track. Finish some music, then decide what you want to do with it.

Over the past month, I’ve found that part especially challenging. The music industry feels as though it’s constantly shifting. I usually feel fairly steady when facing change, but trying to keep up this year has made my head spin. Between what’s happening in the world, changes in music distribution, and people questioning their direction, there’s a lot to take in.

That brings me to another thing I keep noticing in conversations about motivation: disconnection from a community. Many of the people I work with aren’t having enough meaningful exchanges around music. They’ve drifted away from their community for different reasons. Some have too much work and no energy left to go out. Others haven’t found an inspiring local event in a long time. For some, it’s parenthood or health. Others are still looking for their people.

You can love a particular genre and have no one nearby who shares that interest. Your community may exist entirely online, and figuring out how to connect with people there can be confusing.

The irony is that we have so many tools for connecting with one another. We can reach people we once couldn’t access, yet everyone seems saturated with messages and requests. Meaningful exchanges can be hard to find.

I read the emails and messages people send me across different platforms, and sometimes it’s difficult to tell who’s interested in a connection and who wants something from me. Every now and then, someone starts a lovely conversation. A few exchanges later, I realise they’re trying to sell me something or want help with a specific problem. It makes me question the interest that started the conversation, and I become more hesitant to connect with someone new.

In my own case, living outside Montreal has affected my motivation. I live in the forest, and my friends here aren’t necessarily into the same music I am. My opportunities to perform have dropped considerably this year. From where I stand, meeting people in person seems to make a real difference in keeping those opportunities alive.

The people I see getting booked and maintaining strong networks are often spending time with their community, whether at a particular venue or at local events. Building those relationships entirely online feels much harder. Our networks may be large, but our attention is scattered.

It’s rare for someone to reach out simply to ask how you are and really want to hear the answer. I feel something similar around sharing music. With so much being released every day, getting people to spend time with a track can feel difficult.

That leaves questions hanging over the process. Is it worth making music if hardly anyone listens? Is it worth spending months developing something when I worry it could be used to train an AI model? How much space do I want those worries to take up in my motivation to keep going?

For me, the answer to whether making music is worth it is still yes. I still believe there’s value in making it and putting it out into the world. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably heard me come back to that idea more than once.

The first reason I make music is that I love doing it. I also want to hear music that I have trouble finding elsewhere. My motivation comes from that need to make something. When I stay connected to it, there’s a little fire I can keep feeding.

Things become more fragile when I lose sight of that need and start making music mainly for other people, for a release, or for money. Those goals can have a place, but when they take over, my motivation starts depending on someone else’s response. If the attention or feedback doesn’t come, it can hit like a tonne of bricks.

I have no problem making music for ten people if those ten people enjoy it. Chasing an audience of 50,000 can expose me to a lot more frustration than sharing music with the ten people I already know want to hear it.

I know that might sound like a small ambition to some people. But I think about people gathering around a piano at home, playing for friends or making music together. There’s something in that experience that I want to keep close.

I’d like my music to have that kind of immediate place in the lives of friends. Ideally, I don’t have to keep pushing it towards people. Someone enjoys it and shares it with a friend. I notice that I’m often more willing to listen when a friend recommends someone else’s music than when an artist asks me directly. I can’t fully explain why, but I notice it in myself.

For me, finding motivation again often means easing the pressure I put on the outcome. If I have a very specific idea of what a track should sound like and every session reminds me I’m not there yet, I’ll start feeling deflated.

One thing I notice with clients who struggle with motivation is that their expectations can become difficult to live with. There’s a gap between what they’re doing, what they want to do, and what they believe should already be happening. Part of my work is helping them question beliefs that have become obstacles and find a healthier perspective on their music and the industry around it. Sometimes that gives them room to move again.

I think of motivation as a muscle. A little regular effort can feel more useful than waiting for the perfect moment to do something big. In music, that might mean spending a few minutes exploring a sound, returning to an unfinished idea, or simply keeping a small appointment with myself in the studio.

There is a boring side to it: coming back, doing a little work, and coming back again. There is also a human side: reaching out to the friends who care, sharing something, and making room for an exchange that isn’t about promotion.

That’s what I’m trying to return to myself. A little consistency, a little curiosity, and people I can share the experience with. It’s how I keep that small fire going.