How to Start a Song in an Empty DAW

Most producers fumble how to start a song the first few times. Here’s how it actually works.

How many times have you sat down at your computer with the intention of producing a track, only to be intimidated and hindered by the blank DAW staring back at your face?

Creative road blocks in the beginning stages of the production process are a very real hurdle. Something I consider super close to my heart, in that I hate a blank DAW just as much as anyone else.

For this reason, I decided to develop several go-to methods for starting songs from scratch. I wanted to be able to sit down and create music without feeling like I was forcing the music out of me.

I wanted to have a creative process that not only made starting new projects fun, but also made it easy. I’m about to go deep into my creative process and share some of my favorite creativity hacks, as well as provide fleshed out examples of all the techniques shown.

The 3 Pillars of a Song

Before we get into these creativity hacks, I wanted to explain the foundation of my songwriting process. In order to create a successful song, we need three main components working together cohesively:

• Melody
• Drums/Percussion
• Harmony/Chord Progression

These three elements are the pillars of the track. At any given instance in a production, one of these three pillars is the main focal point. For 99% of the songs I write, the pillars have to work together and not fight with one another in order for the song to be successful.

Each pillar can be used to start a song. The end result is often very different depending on which pillar I choose to be the main focal point. I think it’s important to establish the benefits, drawbacks, and level of ease for starting a song based off of each of the three pillars.

Melody

Melody is a natural place to start a song. In fact, in most of the songs you know and love, the melody is the defining characteristic that keeps the song stuck in your head. We’re defining melody as any sort of hook. This means it can be the bassline, the lead synth, the vocal melody… really any part you sing back to people when identifying a song.

For this reason, starting a track from a melody can be extremely beneficial in creating a memorable song. The main benefit here is also probably what makes this method the most challenging. Once you nail a melody, you have to create all the other parts around it.

Having the melody be set in stone restricts a lot of the chord choice you can use as well as the rhythms that work in accompanying the melody. It can often be hard to find the right accompanying pieces to fit a melody, especially if the melody is more complicated.

Moving a song forward from the melody as a starting point is definitely possible, but for me it usually takes a lot more work and restricts my creativity. By no means am I saying it’s not possible, I’m just saying that if you start with a melody, you better be prepared to spend a good amount of time searching for the right accompanying pillars.

Drums/Percussion

Another pillar you can have some success starting with is drums and percussion. The rhythm section of any piece of music really drives the song forward and gets your body moving. It makes total sense to have the focus of a drop be the kick snare combo and really get the listener to feel the groove of the track.

There are even whole genres of music that are defined by the types of drum sounds used (dubstep snares, rock & roll drum kits, etc.). The biggest problem I have with starting from drums is putting too much into the song way too early. Because drums are short transient sounds, I often feel that I need much more complicated drum loops in order for my drums to sound full and complete.

This often has me running into the problem of my tracks sounding messy when I try and add other pillars to the mix. I’m almost always having to go back and remove or simplify my drum pattern to make the melody cut through or the chord progression shine.

Now you’re probably saying, “Why don’t you just keep your drums simple knowing that you have to fill in that gap in fullness with something else?” That’s a perfectly valid way to write a drum section when starting a song. I just know from personal experience that my drums always tend to sound less full and complete when I purposely leave them a little open for other elements.

Something about forcing myself to leave something incomplete sounding just lends itself to a more incomplete sounding final product. All of us are different, but I think that being able to finish the completeness of each pillar before moving onto the next works really well for my songwriting process.

For more on how to develop your rhythm section and build momentum, check out our guide on 6 tips for effective EDM build-ups.

Harmony or Chord Progressions

As you’ve probably guessed, my favorite way to start a track is with the harmony pillar. For me, harmony is the most important factor in my music. The chords chosen often dictate the emotional appeal of my music the easiest.

It’s often the chords in other songs I like that I’m most drawn to. Now I make more pop oriented electronic music, and emotion in chord progressions is everything. If you’re doing crazy festival trap drops you might not need as much harmony emphasis as I’m preaching here (although combining both is a pretty cool sound).

For me a chord progression makes the most sense to start with for several reasons:

• Chords can make building melodies and rhythms really easy.
• Chords place me into a creative mood quickly.
• Chords are the backbone to good popular electronic songwriting.
• Chords can feel full all by themselves.

Pro Tip: Unlike starting with a specific melody and building a chord progression around it, starting with chords allows for much more variation in melody when composing. For any given chord progression there are basically infinite melodies to write.

Basically, for any given melody there are a handful of chord accompaniments to choose from. But for any given chord progression there are basically infinite melodies to write.

This is similar with percussion. Having a nice chord progression written out first allows you to need less happening rhythmically to feel fullness in the rhythm section. It makes it easy to feel a track coming together right off the bat, even with something as simple as a kick snare kick snare pattern.

Chords really make me feel the music. Almost all the emotional aspect I love from the songwriting process comes from the chords and chord progressions used. I almost always feel like my song is lacking a musical soul when I don’t really nail the chord progression before focusing on anything else.

For this reason, I think chords really are the backbone to most modern electronic pop music hits. Yes, the vocals and topline melodies/lyrics make the world of difference, but without that emotional and well thought out harmonic pillar, I think most good music falls really short.

It’s also really easy for your track to feel full from just the chords themselves. Because chords hold so much emotional weight as a pillar, they really help fill out the completeness of a piece of music without having to even have too much sound design or a complicated rhythm. You can literally write whole songs around two chords going back and forth.

This makes the songwriting process get easier as you move through the track creation process. If your song feels full and huge with simply just a chord progression, you can really see how much easier it is to take your music further than most producers go by adding simple parts to fill in the other pillars.

Note: So, I’m a chord guy. Most of my examples in the rest of this post are going to be fueling the harmony pillar in creating a song idea from scratch. But don’t be afraid to try the same techniques on the other pillars! I do this too.

Fueling the Pillars

I’m going to be demonstrating 8 ways to start with a blank DAW and fuel your pillars. These creativity hacks will help you start the songwriting process and get serious results quickly. Here are the 8 ways we are going to start a song idea:

1. Based Off Sound Design
2. Based Off MIDI Packs
3. Based Off a Movie or Video
4. Based Off a Mood
5. Based Off an Image
6. Based Off Sample Packs or Construction Kits
7. Based Off Another Song
8. Based Off a Vocal or Acapella

1. Based Off Sound Design

Sound design can be the most logical non-composition based way to start a track. Starting with sound design is really beneficial because sound design can lead to or spark several ideas. Building a pad for instance can spark an idea for a lead or a bass.

Because software synths like Serum and Massive are so easily capable of manipulating sounds, starting with sound design really lets your creativity shine through. It’s also really important to experiment in working with what is presented to you, as opposed to trying to force your way into a song.

A lot of times certain melodies and harmonies are driven by the type of sound design used. Working with the sound design first can almost make it easier to compose because certain keys and notes will sound better.

Here are 7 production hacks that Serik uses regularly to break through creative blocks and build momentum fast.

Make sure to experiment a lot here. If you set out to make a bass, try playing it as a chord. Don’t be afraid to modulate everything.

Really try things you wouldn’t normally do here. I often spend whole days just playing inside a synth like Serum and end up coming up with only two to three awesome sounds. The more time you spend doing this the easier it will be to get professional results.

2. Based Off MIDI Packs

If you’re not the best at playing the piano and it’s hard to play the voicings and chord choices you hear in your head, MIDI packs are a great resource for you. Whether you create these on your own over time or buy a bunch online, being able to hear chords quickly and create custom chord progressions by combining and editing them makes a lot of sense.

I often spend hours listening through loads of MIDI content searching for not only individual chord voicings that I like, but also chord to chord movements that make me feel good. Things that work for my ear as just a MIDI preview sound I know can work really well with just some basic production value.

Trick here is to just make sure you manipulate the MIDI a good amount. Change the key, rhythm, or combine different progressions. Subtle changes in voicing and key can go a long way.

3. Based Off a Movie or Video

Movies and video can really aid in getting you in a state to create good music. Most of the time we naturally gravitate to certain compositions and sounds when referencing videos to put ourselves in a creative context.

Try collecting moments in movies or films of nature that make you feel certain emotions. Save these so you can bring them up while producing and use them to fuel your creativity. You can even download the videos and put them directly into your DAW.

Chords are often the easiest way to compose to a video or a scene. I’d start with a simple string patch or pad sound to start here. Make good choices with your composition. Don’t be afraid to use more music theory knowledge here to really help obtain the emotion of the scene you’re watching effectively.

4. Based Off a Mood

Try starting a song off of a mood. Unlike starting the song from a physical medium like a lot of the other concepts explained, a mood is a much looser term.

I’m talking about any feeling or state your body goes through on a given day. Are you feeling tired? Are you pissed off at your roommate? Did you go on a really good date recently?

Any feeling you can remember feeling or that you are currently feeling can be great fuel for creating an emotional piece of music.

The trick here is to pick a mood and assign traits to it. What types of sounds best represent this mood? What sort of tones and instruments feel like they describe this mood?

What kind of melodies and chords really make you feel this mood. All of these questions can be answered and essentially guide you into choosing the right tool for the job. I recommend writing down some ideas so you don’t forget.

From there, every time you add a sound make sure you can justify how it’s adding to the mood in a beneficial way. Don’t just throw things into your music because!

Think about the composition, sound design, and mixing choices when you’re trying to create a mood. Do they fit?

Pro Tip: Try making a playlist of 5-10 songs that match the mood you’re going for, then listen to it before you open your DAW. You’ll start producing with a much clearer emotional target already loaded.

5. Based Off an Image

Making music from images is awesome. An image can be almost a creative guide in the music production process. The goal here is to take an image that inspires you and break it down element by element.

You want to essentially map out aspects of the picture to certain instruments, sound design, effects, etc. You should be able to creatively think about how an image can be represented with aspects of music production.

We can analyze an image and decide what sort of instruments will represent the different colors.

Maybe we want a big brass horn section to fill the midrange like red splashes filling up the majority of a painting. Then maybe the blue pockets could be represented by soft string stabs that act as a call and response to the brass hits.

Maybe the whole song has a very crash based drum section with lots of crescendos to represent the explosion of color and texture.

If your image is complicated don’t be afraid to write down what you decide. Sometimes it’s easier to figure out your whole pallet of sounds to choose from before you start the writing process.

It can help you not be distracted by lots of plugins and samples. At the same time, don’t be afraid to deviate from your plans either. The whole point here is to just help aid the starting process for your track.

You can see how taking the time to study an image and think of logical ways to represent that image in musical form can go a long way in creating the building blocks of a track.

6. Based Off Sample Packs or Construction Kits

Using sample packs and construction kits is not cheating! Don’t let people convince you otherwise. Anything you can do as an artist to get inspired and speed up the creative process should be taken advantage of. Clearly just don’t steal.

Collecting loops and samples that are fleshed out a little more in terms of composition can be a really fun tool for creating an initial idea. Try taking a loop in audio and then pitch and mangle it. Make sure to mess with chopping up the melodies to make them your own and playing with warp modes and formatting to change the timbre of the sound.

You should be able to spend some time with sounds you like to create a completely different sound from the original anyway. And the best part is that you can always replace the chopped audio or the sample that you are using in the end, especially if you feel like it is too similar to the original.

Pro Tip: Pitch-shifting a loop up or down a few semitones, reversing it, or time-stretching it to half tempo are three fast ways to make a sample completely unrecognizable. Do all three before you decide it doesn’t fit.

7. Based Off Another Song

Using another song can be fun for coming up with ideas that are unique, but still have the flavor of something you like that already exists. Sometimes this can be a little limiting because you can easily go overboard with trying to make your song sound too similar to the original, or use too much of the original song as a focal point in your track.

The best way to do this is simply to take a song’s chord progression. You can spend lots of time finding your favorite song’s chords online with tools like Hooktheory and Chordify. Take the chords and change them around to make them your own. Invert them, add voicings, change the order or rhythm, spread them out on different instruments, etc. There are so many quick and easy ways to make chords from other songs your own.

Or, try taking a section of a song you like that isn’t that full and adding to it. Then strip away the original song so that you’re only left with your music. This can be a really cool way to skip the initial spark needed to start completely from scratch. I only really use this method when I’m not feeling super inspired compositionally. Although, it often always leads to inspiration after a little time adding to something that already exists.

You can also use a song as a tool for the arrangement. Although it’s not super necessary to start a track, having an idea for where the arrangement should go or what it should be definitely helps move the songwriting process along further.

To go deeper on using existing music as creative inspiration, check out our post on 10 ways to steal like an artist.

8. Based Off a Vocal or Acapella

Probably the most common way I start a song is from a vocal. Vocals are so important in modern electronic music, so it’s really important to make them sound good in your music. This means that not only do they have to be recorded and engineered well, but they also have to have a good harmonic pillar around them. Nothing is worse than hearing a great vocal in a crap song.

I’d just focus on getting the best chord progression you can sounding great on a piano with the vocal. From here you can produce out the track in any way you want. Ultimately, if you can make an acapella sound good with just a piano playing, anything you do to further the production from there will sound fantastic! It’s also probably the simplest setup that you could justify as a full song.

No singer yet? Grab something from our list of free vocal samples and build the chords around it.

Combining These 8 Methods

The best way to use these methods is probably when you combine several of them. There is no reason you can’t utilize MIDI + movie references + seeking a certain mood or vibe you are currently feeling to create one hell of an idea.

The same logic applies to finishing. Once you have the spark, here’s the workflow that makes getting to the finish line less painful.

Making music from a blank DAW doesn’t need to be complicated to start. After getting comfortable with these 8 methods of fueling the pillars of your song, you can start to experiment with more complicated but justified methods of starting the track.

Understanding all of these methods fully will aid you in figuring out how you can use the best aspects of each to make life even easier. It’s also important to figure out which methods don’t work for you. Don’t spend tons of time on any one of these methods if you know it doesn’t work for you creatively, or if it diminishes the speed and quality of your creative process.

Between starting a song with these individual tactics, plus combinations of these strategies, you essentially have an unlimited arsenal of entry points into a music production session.

Want even more ideas on how to start and progress a track? Check out our post on 103 music production tips.

At the end of the day, every one of these 8 methods works. The one that works best for you is the one you’ll actually use. Figure that out and you’re already ahead.

17 More Ways to Start a Song

The eight methods above are about what a song gets built from. These are about getting yourself to sit down and start at all, which is usually the harder part.

Have you ever paused to consider the amount of decisions that need to be made in music production? Chances are you’ve been too busy making music to count. But there’s no doubt about it, from initial conception through final mixdown, from sample choice to EQ moves, from composition to arrangement, the decisions number into the thousands.

How many times have you stared at a blank DAW and decided “not today”? Maybe the pile of decisions in front of you seemed too insurmountable to even begin.

There’s another secret that professionals know, no matter what the discipline may be. It may seem counterintuitive, but hear me out: Constraints breed creativity. Or in other words, limitations = freedom.

Here’s why: When you’re faced with infinite options, decisions are hard. The mind is too busy weighing the costs of each viable option to actually move forward. As soon as you start making decisions, and committing to them, you are on the path of writing and finishing the song.

So choose your BPM. Choose a key. Choose 3-5 reference tracks that inspire you, that are targeted to the type of music you want to make. These decisions are prerequisites for anything that comes next.

Where a song starts is less important than the fact that you’re making progress. The important thing is to get started, and to keep moving forward to the best of your ability. Many well-remembered songs were written quickly because hesitation is the death of creativity. Once you’ve identified the vibe you’re working with, you can use one of these fire-starters to get the track moving.

1. Embrace a Change of Environment

Any opportunity you have to step away from the studio is a chance to use observation and awareness. If you work from a laptop, head to a cafe or park every once in a while. Breathe in the fresh air, and see what ideas the open sky and environment inspires.

Keep your ears open. Are there snippets of conversation that catch your ears? You can take this even further and hold a songwriting retreat with friends. Rent a cabin for a weekend, and pick three samples to work from. Everyone has the same kindling, it’s fun to see what types of fires get started.

2. Sample From a Song

Don’t just take it from me. Mark Ronson put on a phenomenal Ted Talk about how sampling has changed modern music, and it’s well worth the watch.

Sampling is an art form, and there are entire genres where it’s the default mode of starting and advancing ideas. In order to embrace the art of sampling, you need to be comfortable with bending the rules. It’s an important step to reach as a producer. Once you give yourself the greenlight to Steal Like an Artist, the world of recorded music becomes your playground.

Think about how fun it would be to dig through records, searching for a texture or snippet to introduce into your own music. Not to mention the ways you could go about processing, warping, re-pitching, reversing, and manipulating the sample. I’m getting excited just writing about it.

3. Use a Pen and Paper

It can be really helpful to take a step back from the DAW when you’re trying to start. Especially for those producers writing their own lyrics, it’s so much easier to work ideas out without being locked into a backing track that may not even be complete.

You can also use a pen and paper to become clear about your direction, otherwise known as defining your aesthetic principles.

4. Choose Your Palette: Define the Aesthetic Before You Begin

One of the biggest mistakes new producers make is using samples that simply don’t sound good to begin with. Think about it: if you were a painter, and you chose dull, lifeless colors, it would be damn near impossible to create something vibrant and illuminating.

The same goes for productions: you must hold an extremely high bar for the samples you’re using (that’s one reason why sampling from an existing song can give you a leg up). Assemble a collection of great sounds to start with, and the track will practically write itself.

You can take this idea a step further by applying it to the message of the song. Freewrite for 10 minutes, pure stream of consciousness, about any subject or destination that strikes you. Keep the pen moving. The only mistake is to hesitate.

Read through your freewrite, and circle ten phrases or words that interest you. Now consult your favorite rhyming dictionary (mine is b-rhymes.com), and find 5 rhymes for each. At this point, you’ve emptied the jigsaw pieces onto the table, and you’ve got the box in front of you. All you need to do is assemble the pieces.

Pro Tip: Before your next session, spend 15 minutes curating a short “palette” of 5-10 sounds you love right now. Drop them into an empty project and just play. You’ll be surprised how often a session that starts with sound exploration turns into a finished idea.

5. Go On an Inspiration Quest

This is a tip from Ari Herstand from his book How to Make it in the New Music Business. Have you ever tried being intentional about seeking out events and experiences that will inspire and invigorate you? Create a list of Inspiration Quests that you can embark on with the intention of gathering details and experiences for a song. Here are some of mine:

1. Get outdoors for a run or hike. Be open to what the world has to say.
2. Go to a concert, show, or performance. Artists you love are always worth it, but it can be just as fun to experience something new. What about dance, or the theater?
3. Get physically active in a new way. Try 80’s night at the Roller Disco, kickboxing, or taking a trampoline class at the local Trapeze gym.
4. Wander through a used bookstore.
5. Spend a day looking for (and taking) photos.
6. Surprise someone you care about. You’ll be surprised yourself at how much it opens your heart and mind.

6. Use a Reference Track for Arrangement

Take one of the references you decided on in pre-production, and drag it into your DAW. Change the tempo of your session to match the reference track, and then create arrangement markers when each section begins (for example, intro, verse 1, buildup, hook, etc.). Once you’re done, you can delete the reference track, and you’re left with a roadmap for structure. At this point, you can change the session tempo to anything you like, and the markers will retain their same relative positions. I also create blank MIDI clips for each section so it’s easier to visualize.

7. Record a Field Noise

Not only is recording field noises a ton of fun, it also gives your track a unique edge that can’t be copied. The second I drop one of my personally recorded ambiences into the DAW, I instantly feel more connected to the song I’m working on. It creates a shared space where everything can live, and not just any shared space, somewhere I stood and breathed.

If you’re really struggling to start a song, get out of the studio and go hunting for sounds. You’re bound to come up something that takes you in an entirely new direction, and with our current state of technology, you really have no excuses. Even your iPhone will get the job done when it comes to recording real world ambiances and atmospheres.

8. Commit to One Hour of No Plugins

One of the most insidious blockers to finishing music is getting too deep into processing before the track is complete. It can feel like you’re making progress, but if your computer is struggling for CPU and all you have is an 8-bar loop, you’ve ensnared yourself in the trap of too many plugins too soon.

Songwriting is not called “idea processing.” You need to make progress by adding layers and structuring the track before you get deep into your mixing plugins. If you struggle with this, simply set a timer and commit to one hour of writing the song without using any plugins.

9. Write with a Purpose in Mind

Give yourself a reason to finish the track. Do you have a show coming up? Is there an online contest or giveaway you want to submit to? I find that having a purpose for the song I’m writing helps me execute and make decisions quicker.

If you’re struggling with this, make a bet with a friend. Set a date when you’re going to play your finished tracks for each other, and stick to it.

10. Throw a Song-Starting Bash

This is one of my favorite techniques. Instead of spending all day working on one song, give yourself no more than 90 minutes to create an initial idea and to take it as far as you can. This is especially fun with friends, where you can bounce ideas off each other and improvise. Once the timer is up, save the session and create a new one.

Writing this way takes the pressure off of starting a “perfect song.” They’re all simply ideas, and you come to trust your idea generation muscle in the process.

Pro Tip: Set a rule for your song-starting bash: no going back to edit anything until the 90 minutes are up. Forward only. The goal is quantity of ideas, not quality. Quality comes later.

11. Get a Beat Going

Creating a beat is the bread and butter of starting a song. It’s like running. Once you start those muscles in motion, your body instinctively takes over. If you’re really stuck staring at a blank DAW, start by putting a snare on the 2 and the 4 as the backbeat. Pencil in your kickdrums on the first beat of every measure.

It’s bare bones, sure. But from there you can start embellishing and adding details. The important part is to start and let the beat take on a life of its own.

12. Use an Alter Ego

If I asked you “How would Batman start that song?” you could wear your imagination hat and make believe, just the same way you did when you were a kid.

The concept of alter egos is tremendously powerful: it’s really just human nature, but you see it everywhere among top performers. Just look at Beyonce, who went by Sasha Fierce. Or David Bowie’s character Ziggy Stardust. Deadmau5, Daft Punk, Bruno Mars, Lana Del Rey: these are just a handful of artists who have embraced the idea of an alter ego to be intentional about how they are showing up on their field of play.

If you’re interested, you can pick up The Alter Ego Effect. But again, the idea here is to pretend to be someone else. Try writing something out of your comfort zone, something YOU would never write. The results might surprise you.

13. Play With the Idea of Negative Space

Rest. Pause. Silence.

These are some of your most essential tools as a songwriter. Embrace them!

One of the best ways to advance a song is to experiment with leaving holes in one instrument for other sounds to occupy. It creates a push and pull, a tension and release. Your chords don’t need to be sustained for the entire measure. Creating a sense of groove in music is all about the interplay between staccato (short) and legato (sustained) notes.

14. Build a “Superloop”

Keep stacking layers and ideas, one on top of the other. Once you’ve got your drums, add the bass. Once your rhythm section is down, add your high frequency instruments like pads, guitars, keys, and strings. This is the part of the process where you say “yes” to adding new things.

Once the superloop is complete, copy and paste it across your timeline. Now mute out layers to create new sections. It takes some smoothing out the transitions, and there’s no doubt you still need to write and craft from here. But at this point, it’s all about moving with the big legos first.

15. Use the Collision Exercise

This was included in an earlier post: Writer’s Block Isn’t Real. It bears repeating here, because I’ve found this to be a useful exercise in songwriting and producing.

Create two columns on a sheet of paper. The first is a list of adjectives you want someone to feel within your production. The second is all the elements that make up your song.

Now the collisions begin! We’re looking for the strange and unusual pairings here. What would washed out vocals sound like? How could a gritty field recording enhance the vibe of your track?

The collision exercise can also be used in the lyric writing phase to combine adjectives and nouns in new and interesting ways.

16. Harness the Power of Words

Perhaps there’s an image or phrase that speaks to you. Have you ever heard the story of King Midas? Midas’ story is about the sadness of gold.

Macbeth teaches us about the danger of greed. Every great song is a story. Every story follows a trajectory that can be reverse engineered and filled in with your own words, examples, and life experiences.

I find that it helps me to narrow the message of my song down to a simple, memorable phrase. “The Sadness of Gold.” “Leaving Too Soon.” “Over Waiting for an Apology.” Even if you’re not writing lyrics, finding a phrase that anchors you to the story of your song can help you make decisions and get the idea off the ground.

17. Schedule a Time to Sit Down and Do It

I saved the best for last. This is the most important one of all. You can’t rely on inspiration to write your songs for you. Just like a day job, what’s important is that you show up regularly and on time.

What’s important is that you try, that you go through the motions of creating a loop, starting a beat, writing the chords, structuring to a reference…what’s important is that you start. It doesn’t matter how you start, just that you do. And one of the best ways is to schedule a time and to show up to it.

If you want to hear more about why showing up consistently is the actual secret to finishing music, this one’s worth a few minutes of your time.

This is about consistency and effort. If you love music as much as you say you do, don’t you owe it to yourself to make it a priority?

The Only Starting Point That Matters

The best creativity hack isn’t a technique. It’s sitting down and using one. Any one.

It doesn’t matter if you start from a chord progression, a sample pack, a movie clip, or a field recording of rain outside your window. What matters is that you start. The blank DAW is only as scary as you let it be, and every single one of these 8 methods is a proven way to get past it.

Whatever you do, avoid the trap of “loopitis,” where you’re listening to your track on repeat without making any changes. Music is the change of sound over time, so you need to keep things moving, changing, and evolving as you write.

Pick whichever one sounds most appealing right now. Open your DAW. And make some noise.

Heads up: some of the links below are affiliate links. If you buy through one, we earn a small cut (costs you nothing extra). But we'd point you at this exact gear whether we made a dime or not. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.