The Art Of Curation: 5 Essential Sound Libraries To Eliminate Creative Blocks

Why curation is the lifeblood of your creativity.

Most music creators accept creative blocks as an unavoidable part of being an artist, but what if I told you creative blocks could be completely avoided?

What if you could reduce them to small inconveniences you could easily brush off?

In my journey, embracing creative blocks as something that 'just happens' stalled my musical development for years.

The worst part about creative blocks is the downstream effects:

• You don't hear your music improving.

• Time spent working on your passion becomes less enjoyable.

• Ultimately, creative blocks delay the time it takes for you to develop your signature sound and build a loyal fanbase.

That's why in today's letter, I want to shed light on how I outmaneuvered creative blocks with a simple curation system and a shift in perspective.

Together, these will serve as your roadmap to becoming a more prolific music creator.

The best part is that these strategies aren't dependent on your:

• Skill as a music producer

• Music theory knowledge

• Innate creativity

• Expensive plugins/VSTs

It's simpler than that.

Through a strategic curation system, you'll learn to search, create and collect sounds. This backlog of sounds and musical content will then help you quickly overcome blocks by using proven ideas as a springboard and a guide for you to finish your own compositions.

But first, I want to give you some context on what led me to develop this curation and why it worked so effectively.

My 2-Year Creative Block (and How I Escaped)

For two years, I felt like I'd lost my creative spark. I was creatively blocked, feeling like I had nothing to express musically.

Despite powering through, every idea felt stale and predictable. Before each session, I'd simply start and pray for a good idea. But most times, my ideas fell flat.

For me, these blocks were always triggered when I felt like my music wasn't original enough.

Every melody, chord progression, or sound reminded of a song I'd heard from my favorite artist.

This led me to overthink and over-produce, all in an attempt to sound more original. During those two years, only a few songs felt good enough to share with my close circle of family and friends.

Eventually, this creative angst led me down a rabbit hole.

I became obsessed with trying to understand creativity and how I could develop it to create and finish more original music—music I actually enjoyed and wanted to replay or share with others.

I began to read blogs, tweets, and books such as "War of Art," "Art & Fear," and "Steal Like An Artist."

These books would lay the foundation for what I would consider my most consequential creative epiphany. These texts helped me understand how my idea of originality and my approach to creative blocks wasn't conducive to creativity— it was all backwards.

Slowly I began to apply the new concepts I learned and started to develop my own strategies in my creative sessions.

What I discovered was that creative blocks stemmed from my desire to create original music. The feeling that I was recreating something that had already been expressed led to my overthinking and kept stalling my creative momentum.

Ultimately this all led to a fundamental shift in my mindset around originality, creativity, and how a lack of curation was contributing to my blocks.

My epiphany:

I don't have to be original in order to be creative, I just have to be creative about combining the music I find original.

Creativity = Curation, Curation = Originality

If we’re free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running away from it.

— Austin Kleon

Here's the truth:

You're already creative, skilled, and knowledgeable enough to finish music without getting blocked.

This is because being an artist is more about making connections than creating something new.

Instead of chasing the elusive definition of originality, just use your favorite music as material to explore your curiosity, and naturally you'll develop your unique style.

This approach is effective because most prolific artists adopt similar perspectives.

Art, music, and culture aren't about bringing new ideas to life, but rather taking from the past and expressing them in our special way.

As an artists it's important to embrace the fact that if you do this long enough, you'll start creating a sonic identity people deem original, unique, and eclectic.

As William Plomer once said, "Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected".

By cross-pollinating your tastes and musical interests, you'll create what listeners perceive as original, unique, and innovative music.

Eventually all of this led to one of my profound revelations:

If you want to diminish creative blocks, start new musical ideas with pre-selected inspiration. This allows you to jump quickly into action without the pressure of trying to create something new.

Now, you might be thinking, "How is this original? Isn't this just ripping off other artists?"

Not quite.

This is because your favorite artists learned from their favorites, too.

Just as in life, in creative work imitation is essential. Copying is a natural human instinct, a survival tactic, and a fundamental way in which humans learn and grow.

This is because nothing is created in a vacuum; everything is derivative.

That's why curation is powerful.

It arms you with proven sounds, melodies, concepts, and music to kickstart sessions.

Without fresh, energizing ideas, you feel uninspired. Curating ideas solves that and helps you steer clear of blocks.

By developing a repeatable system to capture ideas, you surround yourself with inspiring music and a guide to model.

By intentionally curating musical ideas, you build a backlog that helps you:

• Eliminate decision fatigue

• Increase speed and productivity

• Consciously steer your signature sound

• Bring back enjoyment

So now, I want to share with you how to build your own sonic libraries, so that you can outmaneuver creative blocks and begin to experience sustained periods of creative flow.

The 5 Musical Curation Libraries (How To Capture and Organize Musical Ideas)

Originality and authenticity are the currency of the creative world because it's supply is limited, it can only be created by the combination of each person's unique experiences, skills and taste.

In other words, every artist is just a human synthesizer that combines and reinterprets recycled ideas.

That's why if you really pay attention to your favorite artist's discography it has something in common, a running thread which ties it all together.

But how can you achieve this effect in your music?

This process is different depending on the artist. But for me and some of the most prolific artists I've studied, it all starts by setting time aside and diligently curating the essential building blocks of the elements which create a song:

• Loops

• Presets

• Samples

• Templates

• MIDI, chords and melodies

Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.

— Austin Kleon

In these next exercises I will teach you exactly how to curate the sounds and music from your life so you can eliminate creative blocks and begin to consciously steer your signature sound.

1) Creating Your Inspiration & References Playlists

How many times has a good song made you want to create music?

You know the feeling, a jolt of energy makes you feel capable and enthusiastic.

That's inspiration.

Now imagine having a playlist of songs that make you feel this way. Imagine reaching for that playlist when you don't feel inspired.

But let's go a step further now.

Besides the initial spark, you also need a vision, a model to mimic. Just like an artist needs model to draw a pose.

Let's call these your musical references.

Think of the difference between inspiration and references like inputs vs. outputs.

• Inspiration = Inputs, the content you consume and inspires you.

• References = Outputs, what you aspire your music to sound like.

These can also be one in the same, but if you're going for more unique and less pop centric music, the less these 2 will be related.

Here's how I create these playlists inside Spotify in 3 steps:

1. Create a playlist in Spotify called "Inspiration" and add 10 songs.

2. Create a playlist in Spotify called "References" and add 10 songs.

3. As you listen to songs in your day to day add them to their corresponding playlists.

Pro tip: Instead of playlists create folders and then subfolders within each. In the subfolders you can name each after an element that inspired you from that specific song (e.g., vocals, drums, melody etc.)

Getting specific with my folders help me remember exactly why I added each song into these playlist. Often times I would forget why a song was in the playlists.

These inspiration and references playlists will be the backbone of your sound and development as an artist. This is what you will reference for the rest of these exercises so remember to be selective with what you add.

How to know which music to add?

• Your favorite songs of all time.

• Music you can't get out of your head.

• Songs that you have an emotional connection with.

Once you finish adding songs to these playlists, you're ready for the next steps.

2) Curate Your Unique Sound Palette

Like I mentioned earlier originality and authenticity are created when the combination of each person's unique experiences, skills and taste is melted into one.

So that means taking what we like from our influences but also adding our own unique and non-replicable life experience.

We will do this by taking from inspiration and references playlists, and sampling our life.

Here's 4 exercises to get your started:

Create Custom Drum & Foley Sample Packs

Set time aside to create custom sample packs from the physical environments in your life.

This will help diversify your sound palette with uniquely recorded samples. The online world is filled with great samples, but these will be unique to you.

No one in the world will have these samples and this is what will give your music a unique non-replicable quality.

These samples packs can be recorded with your smartphone's audio recorder (as I do, with iPhone voice notes). Or you can do so with professional recording equipment.

Some examples to get you started:

• Make percussive sound with things you find in your desk.

• Record the ambiance of a park near your home.

• Sample a physical instrument you already own.

Collect Genre-Specific & Professional Drum Samples

Now you're going to actively listen to your inspiration and references playlists and collect samples that are similar to the genres and songs you listen to and create a master kit.

Start with five samples for each instrument in your drum rack.

Listen to your favorite songs and try to look for samples with similar qualities. While we're aiming for authenticity, familiarity within our sound also goes a long way. Many classic samples and sounds stand the test of time for a reason— they just work and sound good to the human ear.

Here are just some ways to find these samples online:

• Google search samples by your favorite artist name, genre specific (there are infinite options out there).

• Inside your DAW: classic 808s, 909, stock drum machines, stock sound libraries (logic pro x, Ableton, FL studio).

• Paid sample libraries: Loopmasters, Splice, Audiotent

• Free samples: Landr, freesound (org), Google

Create Custom Drum Machine For Quick Loop Creation

For this exercise we want to combine our previous 2 sample packs.

Now you want to create and save a custom drum machine by combining your custom and proven classic sample packs.

As you can see, this is where we begin to synthesize our uniquely recorded samples, and our proven sample packs.

The idea is that not one person on earth will have this exact drum machine and sample pack (unless you share it with others)

Now you can further re-record, re-samples or re-interpret these sounds and further enhance creative control over your libraries.

Save & Categorize Inspiring Presets

Again you will reference your playlists and begin to save presets from specific sounds you hear in your favorite songs. These sounds should be the ones that catch your each and you just can't get enough of.

For easy recall I recommend you name the presets after the songs you’re taking inspirations from.

For example: “Beat It” Bass Guitar, “One More Time” Kick, “Tiesto” Hi Hat.

Organize and save your favorite sounds from pasts songs you've made and songs you love.

This exercise will soon give you a library which only includes inspiring sounds and will also promote efficiency and quick referencing when you're stuck.

Say goodby to endlessly scrolling through your infinite list of presets.

3) Curating Musical Motifs, Melodies & Chord Progressions

Melody, chords, and harmony are the backbone of your song. It’s what gives your music emotion.

It's the language of music that is universally understood by anyone no matter what language they speak.

For this exercises you will once again go into your playlists and collect:

• Chord progressions

• Melodies (or fragments of melodies)

• MIDI patterns and rhythms

Some useful resources to collect these ideas:

• Supreme MIDI

• Chordify

• Basic Pitch by Spotify

• HookTheory

• Splice

These resources will provide you with proven melodic ideas and harmonic foundations for you to build upon.

This exercise also helps you expand your musical vocabulary and it encourages learning and integrating themes into your compositions.

4) Curating Inspiring Concepts & Prompts, Life Experience

Music is not only musical but often it's about telling a story, expressing a thought, or transporting someone to a new world.

In other words, ideas, concepts, and emotions can also be a starting point.

This is where you can get creative with prompts that are unique and inspiring to you.

To get your started, here are some examples that I've come up in my personal workflow:

• Create a song inspired by an image in your camera roll.

• Write the sequel to one of your favorite songs.

• Start a song that decreases energy as it progresses.

The key here is to think of novel and interesting ways of starting new ideas by engaging your other senses.

5) Curating Arrangement & Workflow Guides

For this last step it's all about creating detailed arrangement templates based on songs from your reference playlists.

Remember, our references are what we want to model our music after — the outputs.

In this exercise, you will deconstruct a song and provide yourself with a premade outline, helping you understand effective and proven arrangement structures.

You can do this on any DAW by creating empty tracks or MIDI regions to guide the flow and length of each instrument.

Then you can save each arrangement structure as a template.

Next time you start a new project you can simply start the song in this template and if you ever get stuck on the arrangement you can simply follow the premade guides.

You can also further optimize and eliminate decision making by creating:

• Workflow guides

• Standard operating procedures

• Step by step instructions and song milestones

This can be done for every aspect of your music creation workflow.

While this might sound like a lot of work at first, it's helps bring clarity to your process. You'll also find that after some time of applying these you'll begin to use them less and less because you will begin to internalize each part of your process.

First it's conscious but then it becomes unconscious.

More Curation, Less Creative Blocks

By implementing these curation strategies, you're not just building a library of sounds, you're building a launchpad for your creativity. You're creating a system that eliminates the dreaded "blank canvas" and propels you into a world of creative possibilities through concrete and pre-selected material.

Remember, the key is to begin building your inspiration playlists, experiment with custom samples, and deconstruct your favorite tracks.

Whether you're looking to break into a rigid genre specific scene or you're trying to create unique music, you'll find it all stems from the unique intersection of your life experience and the sounds you curate.

That's all from me today, hope this was helpful. Until the next one.

— Hermes

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→ Creative Foundations Vol. 2 (Free): A 17-page starter guide to help you consistently finish more music. Inside, you'll discover the proven 5-stage creative process I teach artists—so you can overcome blocks, organize your ideas, and develop a sustainable songwriting flow.

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