I’ve been digging portable music for years and tried a lot of different things, all of them being failures because the units where either not really portable, either full of unsinspiring junk sounds, eating batteries like mad (thanks QY100) or just unsusable in situations (try booting a laptop in the queue of the post office and doing something).

On day I discovered the world of 8bit gameboy music and one belgian artist called lo-bat doing quite interesting stuff with it, so I decided to give it a try. An important point here is that I found not hook to a retro vibe (although I had nothing against that really) but an excellent tracker (LSDj) that would allow me to do music and any awkward moment: in the bus, walking in the street, at the post office, waiting for planes: doing music when there’s is absolutely nothing else to do, which is exactly the best frame of mind for me to be able to lay down something. It is amazing how freaking fast you can lay down ideas with the combination of a joystick and a few knobs. I find it HUGELY faster than anything revolving around that stupid mouse.

Since then, I got a little bored of the gameboy-only-sound but wouldn’t let go of the tracking music making abilities I had. So 3 years ago, I decided to roll up my sleeves and write my own tracker, using all of the gameboy paradigms but based on samples rather than on a sound chip. Littlegptracker (http://www.littlegptracker.com) was born.
I can now walk around the streets with a portable 8 monophonic channel ministudio in my pocket and it’s a full blast.

As a hobbyist musician it’s not as if a film or a label is going to be giving me any deadlines that I need to adhere to, so it’s easy for me to put it aside and let the various bits and pieces collect virtual dust on my hard drive. I always find that finishing something, even if it’s not a stellar piece of work, really helps put me in a place where I feel less compelled to make excuses and often results in-gasp- me actually finishing a few songs, not just one!

On the flip side, once I start choking myself (metaphorically speaking, of course) it often becomes self perpetuating. I make excuses, don’t finish any tracks, then, after a time, I look back on my lack of identifiable progress and have more fodder to keep me feeling uncreative…

Long winded post, but there’s a group of musicians who started a project, or challenge if you will, for musicians to sign up and write and record an album in the month of feb.
If it sounds appealing, check it out at http://www.rpmchallenge.com Full disclosure- I’m one of the people helping to organize it this year (it’s in it’s 4th year), but it is on the level, it’s not a cover for a big record label and it’s not a crass attempt to collect email addresses to spam you if you sign up. No spam at all! It was created by musicians and the local alternative weekly here in seacoast NH and it’s really become a cool phenomenon of sorts, last year we even had a guy at McMurdo research station in Antarctica sign up and send in an album. I’m happy to share more info if you like, but most of it can be found on the site. I think it ties in with your post in that this project was created precisely to break through many of the excuses that independent musicians often create for themselves.
(If this sounds too much like a promotional spiel I understand totally if you hit the ‘delete’ key, but it seemed to be a relevant place to put in a good word…)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies

Set aside an hour to go into the studio just for making new sounds (as in synth/drum/sample sound presets). Pick a piece of gear and just start working it.

The success (at worst): you’ll have spent some time honing in the craft of getting some new raw material to work with.

The success (at best): it doesn’t take to long (or too many sessions) before you’re loading up a couple of sound presets and building out something interesting like a song stem, or a full out track.

Either way, the secret is in making busy… even if you’re not inspired… when you are inspired, you’ll have all the elements ready to express exactly the sound / emotion / song you’ve got in your mind.