Capture Everything!
One of the best things about having a Morning Pages practice is that you start to learn to turn the filters off in your mind.
Sometimes it's not as easy to get everything out on the page when it comes to writing music though. That's why I have to play little tricks on myself to get ideas moving through the assembly line.
One of the best ways to do this is to be willing to record yourself without abandon. You pick up your instrument and you noodle around for a bit, and then when something good comes up you can record it.
I have a Zoom H4N Pro recorder which is cool because you have the option to record your idea in fairly high quality from either the microphones or the line inputs. I've also tried the Roland R-07 which is kind of geared for this purpose and feels nice. But oftentimes my ideas go right onto my iPhone's Voice Memos app. I have so many voice memos in there, it's kind of insane.
So if capturing everything is the first step and is fairly easy to do, the more challenging step is to move the idea into the next phase. For this, the voice memos app isn't really going to cut it, so now it's time to start working with something like a DAW application in your computer, or a better multitrack device if you have one.
A similar thing happens with my writing process as well. I just let everything go in the journals, but later on I sift through everything and look for things that can become articles or posts. I also record voice memos when I’m out for walks sometimes to just get everything out of my head and onto “tape”.
It sometimes feels like you're spending more time coming up with ideas rather than finishing them, but overall it's a much better place to be in as you're never blocked.
If you have scheduled time to work on music or writing, you now have lots of options. You can start something new, or you can go through all the ideas that you've come up with and develop one of those further.
It might also be worthwhile coming up with a routine and figure out what time of day is good for coming up with new ideas, and what time of day is better for refining ideas that have already been generated.
