Aimless noodling
I am coming out of a period of several weeks where I didn't feel like making music at all. It happens: unless it's because I'm depressed or physically sick, I try not to worry too much about the ebb and flow of my interest in creative activities. Nick Cave says you have to show up every day and not rely on the fickleness of "inspiration", but surely even Nick Cave takes the occasional day off. Also, he's getting paid.
Now that I have the urge to play - indeed I have been mucking around with some of my gear this weekend - I'm thinking about what my actual goals are with regard to music. Right now, what I'm doing is pretty directionless, a lot of aimless noodling with various instruments and software, trying out different sounds and effects, with no real concept in mind, and at the end of the day nothing to show for it. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing: it's fun and good to noodle! But I have at various times in my life written songs of various sorts, as well as instrumental pieces and experimental oddities. Just today I was listening to some stuff I made in the early 2010s, some of it quite good (I think!), some of it just ok, some not really finished or particularly worthwhile, but all of it mine. I'd like to have some stuff I made in the mid-2020s to listen to in the coming decades.
So my goal is to actually get some stuff down on tape, as it were. I'm even considering doing February Album Writing Month, a kind of musical version of NaNoWriMo during which participants write a song (however defined) every two days. That seems doable, and there's even a bonus day this February.