Deliberately copy snippets of a work you’re interested in as a study – e.g. transcribe it – and experiment with elements you find interesting (rhythm, chords, synths, effects, whatever) in small test pieces to make sure you understand what’s going on. Let the ideas stew for a while and then much later try to use the techniques you learned in a real piece.
That’s what I do anyway.
Definitely! I usually name my files starting with
YYYY_MM_DD
(which makes it easy to sort by the date I started making the file), a number for which entry it was on that day (1,2,3,4… plus sometimes a letter too if I want to keep multiple drafts), and a few words if I have other details I want to remember. e.g. “transcribe_song_by_artist
” or things like “cont_YYYY_MM_DD-entry
” when I continue working on a piece from a long time I ago. Sometimes I add a title after that too if I wanted to give the piece one.