Category Archives: creativity - Page 14

roll with it

Posted by on August 28, 2009 No comments

The ol’ bag of tricks feels like it has gotten a significant upgrade lately. Making a list of track names before I have any music at all has been brilliant for tricking me into getting started in the studio because with a working title it feels like there is more of a plan. When I look at the list of titles, I have some idea of how that track should sound and because it’s in a list there’s an apparent functionality to it due to its placement. There are some of us who still believe in albums! But what I’m learning is that although I have motivated myself by believing that there is a plan, there is, in fact, no plan.

I was dead certain that what I was doing last night had to have a certain instrumentation to it. When I read the title I knew, I mean I really KNEW that it was destined to be something in particular. My hands didn’t agree. In fact, nothing agreed. The more I played around the more I saw that it had to be something else entirely. Trying to force preconceived notions onto a muse (or whatever) is a losing battle. Sometimes you’re going to paint the Mona Lisa and sometimes you’re going to paint a helicopter. There’s not much wisdom in trying to make one out of the other.

um...

Learning to roll with it is something that came to me relatively easily. It’s one of the few life lessons I got from doing plays (the other one being don’t date actresses unless you absolutely must). Even as a high school student in front of a crowd of friends and parents the addictive nature of laughter and applause quickly teaches give and take. Interpreting lines or melodies based on reactions and things that are truly outside of your control is an excellent skill to have. Now my home studio is about as far from a stage as you can get but the same lessons apply. I’m the only person in the room but my internal editor, the part of me that does the composing, and my hands all have equal say in what gets done. When two of them are stacked against the other, changes are made. Adapt or go read a book!

Last night I went from wanting to write something very sparse with little melody to something that sounds like Adrian Belew in a surf band. Tantalizing? It probably doesn’t sound like that at all, but when I go to pimp my album you’d better believe I will mention it. I really enjoy the result and I look forward to working on it more today. But it isn’t what I thought it would be. It turns out that’s OK. My new working philosophy is more about doing the work than doing the work I plan or envision. I know I’m supposed to be doing something but until I do it there isn’t much point in fretting over it or getting set up for a particular result. This is something that I will revisit soon.

In other completely unrelated news, it seems that Apple shipped Logic Studio 9 without telling me. I am not the kind of guy who keeps his head in the sand when it comes to software so I was a little unnerved when this was sprung on me by a buddy of mine. I’ve gotten a dozen emails from Apple about Snow Lepoard which will set me back $49 but nothing at all about a $199 upgrade to the new Logic? Not cool, yo. It’s a tradition (since Leopard…shut up, this is Texas and if you do something twice it’s a tradition! Or maybe that’s just A&M…) to go to the Apple store on the day the new OS is released so that three generations of nerds with the same first and last name can buy the best commercial UNIX package out there! I might have to sneak over and pick up Logic while I’m out. It’s not quite like dropping a pack of Juicy Fruit into the cart while mom isn’t looking but the requisite skills for successful execution are the same (does my wife read this blog? I should check the logs). In any case, the new audio editing features are something out of Blade Runner‘s “enhance image” scenes. Being able to push audio around like that is the stuff of dreams for a music tech grad student in 1995. It’s the kind of stuff that will be bread and butter for pop music but a powerful tool for expression in the hands of someone willing to use it in unconvetional ways. And don’t get me started on the new guitar stuff. That pedal board feature makes me giggle. Really, it does. Expect more chatter about this as events warrant.

what am i doing?

Posted by on August 26, 2009 No comments

It seems that the web around me is abuzz with people who share my frame of mind right now. A whole pile of things have shown up that completely click with where I am and what I am working toward. First, I should say that my untitled album project is moving along nicely. It’s a little strange that it’s going as well as it is and that I’m really enjoying the material even a week or more after calling it “done-ish.” I have some strong opinions on why that is. More about that as the project moves on.

Despite the fact that things are going well and I’m producing solid work on a regular schedule, I really miss posting things as soon as they’re mixed. It was nice to see people downloading mp3s and sending me email to let me know how it was going. But I am beginning to subscribe to the theory that if I want to create a collection that has continuity and should be taken as a whole, I need to be sure that it all goes out at once. It’s like telling someone about your great novel idea before the book is in any kind of draft state. There’s no drive to finish it because the cat is out of the bag and the story is told. I don’t want that to happen to me (again). But that feedback was immediate and felt really good. There was a great post about this desire to work in plain sight at Mildly Creative and you can read it here: Creating With The Door Open. I really get what he’s saying and since I just gave you a link, I don’t really need to go on about it here. Let’s just say that I will be posting something in the form of audio every week like I was doing with my sketches before summer hit to fill this gap for myself.

no worries

I have also been spending a lot of time analyzing how I do my creative work in the midst of my fulltime job and other assorted responsibilities. When thinking about living a dual existence, I often go back to Charles Ives. He’s certainly a hero of mine compositionally but he also gives me an idea of what one can do creatively while living a 9 to 5 (or 9 to 9) life. Another one to add to that list is T.S. Eliot. I’m a fan of his writing but I never really knew anything about the man. There was a post at Lateral Action about Eliot and how he managed to be as successful as he was while being a banker during the day and a poet at night. His wasn’t a lifestyle I would emulate, but he’s an inspirational character to be sure. Check out the article here: The T.S. Eliot Guide to Success.

A lot of this thinking comes from a brief discussion I had with my brother last week about something that my mom said a few months back. She made a comment about the fact that when she had only two hours to sit and write she would simply not do it because that wasn’t enough time to really dig in. Only. Two. Hours. One might imagine how that went over with the father of a 2 year old who might get one hour a day to devote to creative work. Let us say that I was not sympathetic to her situation. Apples to oranges? Maybe. But that apple sure has a lot of time on her hands from where this orange is sitting. It started me down the path of looking at what it means to work within the constraints of any given moment. Like I said the other day, breaking the rules is easier when you know them but I would add that having no rules at all or breaking them all the time doesn’t provide enough structure for good work to be done. A nifty post at Abundance Blog covers some of this nicely. Read it here: The Key to Success: Resourcefulness (Creativity + Determination). What I take from that and the things that have been bouncing around in my head is that we need a bedrock of boundaries to build on. Without some kind of block to whittle down the possibilities there are no limits and without limits there really is no imperative for action. Seriously, if mountains were easy to climb would anyone do it? Probably. But there wouldn’t be cool IMAX movies about it now would there?

That’s a lot of links. I don’t usually do that, but everything seems so related to where I am right now that it would be foolish to ignore.

being who i am

Posted by on August 20, 2009 No comments

I have a vision of the composer that I want to be: the one who walks through his day hearing pieces dictated to him by the breeze.  The hours spent pouring over paper scores, adjusting phrasing, and reworking small passages for maximum effect.  I think that there would be nothing cooler than a bag full of notebooks and pens filled with my ideas.  I want that vision of Beethoven that the lesser history books share of a man walking through the woods trapping inspiration with a giant butterfly net.

But that’s not me.

I don’t plan.  There might be an idea that simmers for a few months, but I never write it down.  My notebooks read like the chicken scratches of someone in a desperate hurry to get nowhere.  Random bits of poetry, names of software packages, links, phone numbers, book titles.  Nothing that adds value to the time I spend actually composing.  Nothing that even leaves my bag when I’m in the studio.

nevermind

What really happens probably looks a lot more like what I would fantasize about than it actually is.  I find myself sitting in front of my laptop at the keyboard or some MIDI controllers or with a guitar wondering where I will begin.  I hit record and go.  Most of the time, something cool comes out (eventually).  Some nights are frustrating and nothing works.  But each night the process is the same: enter the studio, sit down, start.

On paper this sounds pretty good.  It would appear that it’s like mowing the lawn.  Do it and it gets done.  I acknowledge that the fact that I create anything I value is pretty impressive, but I don’t do it with flair.  No accessories or wild systems.  You know, the cool stuff that you get to talk about with other people who do creative work.  There’s nothing here to write a book about.  And that’s the catch, maybe.

When I was in school I often dreamed of creating a system for composition.  Some algorithm or process that I could follow to the hidden pot of golden compositions.  As I delved deeper in to serial music and, at the other end of the spectrum, the music of John Cage, I felt that a composer needed a process.  There had to be something to wrap up the product.  A protective blanket that explained or justified the outcome.  To some extent, that’s still there.  I would like to hear a passage in my work that is awkward and be able to point at it and say, “well, that’s just how the numbers turned out.”  And perhaps that’s what I’m reacting to now.

I’ve mentioned that if you don’t know the rules you can’t really break them with authority.  The huge disappointment that hit me with the music of Cage when I was in graduate school was that anything goes.  4’33” and pieces like it justified putting a start and end point to any sound and calling it music.  But that feels like something that is far too conceptual for the person I am today.  Almost foreign.  What I really want as a composer is to point to a piece of music and say “I did that.”  For better or worse, every sound that is made and when it is made and how it is made falls on me.  I want the responsibility for what I make.

Being responsible for something implies a level of care and that takes me back to the beginning.  There is an overwhelming desire to prepare for my studio time.  When I sit down, I want to know what I’m going to do.  Instead, I simply start and hope for the best.  Something always follows, for good or ill, but it isn’t necessarily intended. Someday I’ll know why that’s so important or how it relates to my thesis that art is all about intent.

Also of note, I’m tired of not posting new tunes. I have three tracks that are pretty darned good but I promised myself they’d be released as a unit with the nine that are left to follow. This means I’ll have to work double time to get something put up on the site. Why? Because I like to share and it feels dumb to post my updates to 1,000 social networking sites with no music attached. So something will show up next week. Stay tuned.

pushing paint

Posted by on August 18, 2009 1 comment

It’s very important for each person to have one thing in life that doesn’t have to be done well to be enjoyable. For someone like me who has trouble enjoying things at which I do not excel, it is doubly so. A few years back, I picked up oil painting because it was the most interesting looking evening class being offered by the community college. It was hard not to get hooked on it right away. Make no mistake, I have no talent for it but the relaxing effect of playing with the color and the seemingly endless possibilities offered by the medium forced me to drop any pretense of ability and enjoy it.

Since my move to the expanse that is The Republic, I haven’t done much with it. It’s hard enough to squeeze in time for my musical work and having a little boy who is into everything all the time galavanting from room to room at mach 4 isn’t conducive to quiet reflection or, quite frankly, open tubes of paint. But I had an idea while I was playing with a piece of software called Scribbles. The idea seemed pretty good and I thought it might be nice to use some colors that would work in the living room. I pitched the idea to my wife and she was totally into it (she loves purely decorative paintings). Off I went to ye olde art shoppe.

don't sweat it

The project came to a close last night. It was so much fun. I turned on some music and just pushed the paint around the canvas. The scratching of the brush is a wonderful sound. The finished work (which I am loathe to call it) isn’t half bad. In fact, if I had any amount invested in the craft of painting, I would say that it’s some sort of minimal primitivism (or um…something like that…). But to feel good about that, I would have to be able to paint a still life that actually looked like its subject. These were the thoughts going through my head last night as I cleaned up my supplies. How much craft should one have to have mastered before being able to critique and classify one’s own work?

It’s my opinion that art and craft are two different things that are not entirely interrelated. I think one can have craft without art though it is difficult to go the other way around. During my schooling I was (and still am) always highly suspicious of composers who wrote aleatoric music or took on free jazz without being able to write a four voice chorale in the style of Bach or explain the basics of harmony and counterpoint. Something in my gut told me that it wasn’t acceptable to simply break the rules when there wasn’t a solid understanding of them. One can’t effectively go against the grain without knowing the grain intimately. After all, how can one create an effective reaction without having a precipitating action?

This all reeks of academic silliness best discussed with espresso and berets, but I think there’s something to this. Having a blog doesn’t make one a writer any more than my trip to the Artarama (not a joke! Great store!) makes me a painter. What does it take to cross that line? I believe that it’s craft. Knowing the medium. Appreciating it. Loving it. And time. So much time. A great deal in music that comes down to woodshedding. Those hours spent learning patterns and scales. The days of working on tone and intonation. There’s a reason it’s called a discipline.

Looking back on my painting classes and the time I spent with the canvas after them, it’s small wonder that I painted the same salt shaker time and time again. Something in me must have realized that the real work of learning a craft is in the etudes, not the masterpieces. The more time one spends with the etudes, the shorter the gap to the masterpiece. That is what separates the Professional, to borrow a term from The War of Art (yes, I’m still fully in love with this book) from everyone else. A Professional knows that there must be an investment in craft to achieve art. We can’t have art without it. Or at least we can’t sustain art without it. There are always outliers but they have that name for a reason. Who really wants to be a one hit wonder?

But I didn’t pick up the brush to make art. I did it to have fun and make something that would match the living room. The process of creating it was purely recreational and allowed me a space that did not have the demands that I place upon myself in my musical work. It is successful, but I don’t think it is art.

current work

Posted by on August 13, 2009 4 comments

New tunes are being crafted this week. I have 80-90% of a leading track and it’s pleasing. There are some things that need to be filled in, but I need some distance from it. I’ll be starting on a new track tonight. The collection is aiming for something that I’ve wanted to do for some time but never got around to starting. It’s more ambient with lots of electric guitar so beaten and abused that it barely sounds like a stringed instrument much less a guitar. Frippertronics gone horribly, horribly wrong. Or right.

The trick I’m using this time is to start with titles for songs and work backward. I’ve always left titling pieces for the end because I hate tacking a name to musical units. Movements, songs, pieces, whatever. Op. 44 would be fine with me to be perfectly honest. But by starting with the titles, I have almost a theme with which to start each session and that provides a certain kind of motivation.

this should not make sense

I took a hint from a site I used to read and can’t recall now that mentioned looking to the titles of books, chapters or poems for song ideas. On a lark, I dove into my database of books (yeah, I database my personal library) and dug out some fragments of titles. It’s an ecclectic mix of names and topics but there’s a flow there that I have divined for myself and there is some small excitement in an experiement like this.

So I’m making an album that I have wanted to make and using a technique that is yet another in a long series of new to me mindhacks. That should be enough to see me through.

Unlike previous endeavors I am going to release this as a unit so I won’t be putting up sketches of material for this collection. I want it to be a larger piece with interrelated movements. There’s this sense that once I have shared something it’s done and I don’t want that. It could seriously get in the way of the overall form and I’m just not cool with that. That doens’t mean I won’t be posting music! I still have things that I’m working out that might never make it to the full on production stage. It’s absolutely necessary for anyone to have feedback so there will still be stuff here. And soon!