Starting a new song can be one of the most paralyzing things in music production because everything and anything is possible.
Somehow this freedom makes it harder to start.
You audition a few presets, nothing clicks, and 20 minutes later you’re still at zero not because you lack ideas, but because you haven’t given yourself anything to react to yet.
The sounds don’t excite you yet.
The melodies are not pleasant to your ears.
The vibe to take the idea further doesn’t seem to be there.
You try to solve this by just pushing through (even when there’s no excitement behind what they’re making). You accept this is just part of the process. Open the session, start something, and then see what happens.
Sometimes that works, but more often the blank canvas doesn’t spark creativity, it just creates unnecessary friction.
But there’s a better, proven method that changes the whole dynamic:
The 15 minute ritual.
This is how it works…
Before you start a new song, set aside 15 minutes for only curating the idea of the song. Not producing, not arranging, just gathering ideas and ingredients.
Pull a chord progression from a reference track that has the feeling you’re after.
Drop in a sample or a field recording that sets a mood.
Find two or three reference songs that live in the same emotional space as what you’re trying to make.
Drag them into the empty DAW project and let them marinate in there.
The magic here is that now you’re not starting from nothing. You’re starting with something.
A direction, a texture, a reference point.
The session has a shape, an intention, and a vague purpose before a single note is even played.
This is how writers work before they write.
How directors work before they shoot.
The idea precedes the execution, and that order matters more than most artists realize.
But that’s not all, the main benefit of working this way is that creation starts to feel like assembly. Eventually this assembly of ideas will create sparks and help you come up new novel ideas.
You’ll come in with a chord progression borrowed from somewhere else, and halfway through the session you’ve taken it somewhere entirely your own.
You drop in a sample for mood and it ends up becoming the backbone of the track.
This is because the references you gathered don’t constrain the music, they give it a starting point, and starting points have a way of evolving into something unexpected specially when we put our twists into them.
A big lesson I’ve learned is that not feeling inspired isn’t really about inspiration, it’s about not having anything to react to. Simply give yourself something to react to, and the work starts moving on its own.
To get started with the 15 minute ritual in your next session, just keep it simple:
One reference track, one sample, one mood word written at the top of your notes. That’s enough to give the session a good foundation.
Begin to treat these 15 minute ritual before a new song as part of the session, and watch your songs come together more effortlessly.
— Hermes
P.S. This ritual became such an important part of my own process that I wanted a dedicated place for references, moods, field recordings, fragments, and unfinished ideas to live before they became songs.
That idea eventually turned into Song Ritual, the environment I now use to build momentum before I ever open a blank session.
Because I’ve realized the hardest part of creating usually isn’t making the music itself, it’s entering the session with enough emotional and creative direction for the work to start pulling you forward.
Learn more about Song Ritual here —> https://beta.songritual.io/
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