Category Archives: creativity - Page 15

editing

Posted by on August 11, 2009 No comments

I’m a horrible editor.

To be clear, what I mean is someone who can evaluate a creative work in progress and help it to reach a better final form than if it had been left alone. The masters of the skills that go into making a great editor are few and far between and, in my experience, aren’t generally people who produce their own creative work. There are notable exceptions to that. I have known brilliant composers who could take a piece of work by a student, find that germ of an idea that had brilliant potential, and without extinguishing it direct its creator in the polishing of the idea until its potential was fulfilled. I can count those people on one hand and the world lost one of them not too long ago. How I wish I could say that I learned enough to be a worthy replacement.

The problem seems to be zeroing in on that thing that makes a piece tick. Everyone can tell while making something whether it’s working or not, but not all can express exactly what it is that works. Without that clarity it is difficult to discuss the quality that should be maintained above all else. I find that it’s a little easier with something that someone else has made but it’s really difficult for me to do with my own work.

One of my few regrets about the greenman collection is that many of the pieces on there had something but I didn’t take the time to polish them as I should have. I know full well that the collection itself was more an exercise in completing and releasing an album but some of the works with the most potential didn’t get the detailing that they needed to go from good to great. I have a nifty list of excuses, but the fact is that my inner editor didn’t really speak up loudly enough to drown out the producer who simply wanted it out the door. And one of the many reasons that voice wasn’t heard is that I don’t really trust it.

Because I don’t trust my internal editor, when I was in school I ditched the pencil when composing for the pen. Pencils have erasers. Pens don’t. Something written in pen can be crossed out, but it’s difficult to obliterate it entirely. I found that many things that I erased or crossed out were actually pretty good the next day. Like a good soup they needed time in my mind to blend with other flavors and ripen into something wonderful or at the very least useful. I was led to the conclusion that my ability to edit while composing is suspect at best and that the task should be put off for 24 hours and preferably three days. Not much has changed since then.

I’m not very good at finding that thing that makes something cool. Especially while I’m in the process of working on it.

That was set in relief for me while I was working on a new tune. I put down a track of fingerstyle guitar and started layering on top of it. The layers were sounding better and better while the original track started to drift downward in comparative quality. By mistake I muted that track and it went from zero to really good. What I thought was the central theme turned out to be more of a scaffold than anything else. When it was pulled away the structure maintained itself and was more beautiful than before. If I were a better editor, I would have heard that sooner. Maybe. I can see my future randomly muting tracks while composing from now on just to see what needs to be there and what doesn’t.

accountability

Posted by on August 10, 2009 No comments

Accountability is a tough nut to crack. It can be a powerful tool when employed to get something done, but creating the right circumstances for it is difficult. Moreso when one is creating in a solo environment with no external pressures keeping deadlines in tact and work moving forward. It’s one of the larger pitfalls of functioning independently. It might also be one of the benefits.

What I mean is, when I want to accomplish something I need to find a mechanism for motivating myself when I’m exhausted. Having a family and a fulltime job can really take the wind out of my sails and make noodling around on the endless expanse of the internet more attractive than settling in to record something. One of the better motivators for me in recent memory was my commitment to post a new sketch, not a finished product, every Thursday. I stuck to that and it worked for quite a while. Well, until I was beaten down by a massive heat wave in June. That coupled with air conditioning failures more or less derailed most of my non-survival related activities. But my Thursday posts were something that I used to keep myself honest and they were a great idea. Yay me.

The only detractor to my weekly post was the lack of specificity. I had to post “something.” It didn’t have to be coherent or move any of my larger projects along, it simply had to exist. From a certain point of view that’s plenty good enough but if there is a larger goal in mind (like an album or collection or large scale work) I might have actually lost ground while appearing to make progress. The head games are all very tricky.

So why not simply lay out my end game and mark progress toward it? A lot of reasearch types have indicated that in some cases talking about something gives people the same charge as having done it. It’s like having the idea is enough and once we’ve communicated it the execution becomes unnecessary. I know I have allowed myself to fall into that more than once. My old journals are littered with references to projects that never went anywhere.

If telling someone about something makes me less likely to do it and doesn’t necessarily add any accountability then how does this work? Like everything else in life it comes down to personal discipline. The only person who can really hold me accountable is me. I’m really the only one who cares if I ever write another lick of music. I’m the only one who cares if it’s any good. The rest of the world would be perfectly happy to have me trot along with the other things I’m doing and could not care less about my urge to compose or record.

Accountability is about the person doing the work. It’s about me.

This stuff always sounds painfully hokey and I would ignore it if it weren’t completely true. But it is. My next trick is to come up with a way to make it work for me. Find a way to strike that balance and use the world around me to keep me moving while it’s trying to get in my way. There’s a hack in there somewhere and I will find it.

If anyone is listening, do you have any clues?

music for simulated orchestra

Posted by on August 7, 2009 No comments

There’s no small amount of personal conflict in this piece. It’s something that I have really enjoyed working on this week and plan to flesh out a bit more in the very near future. But working with an artificial orchestra has been strange. So many things are possible that would not work with an actual ensemble. In any case, I’m not sweating it.

I hope you enjoy it. Drop me a comment if you have a feeling either way.

broken for orchestra [sketch]

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broken for orchestra [sketch] by j.c. wilson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at othertime.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://othertime.com.

a little looking back

Posted by on August 6, 2009 No comments

I started writing something about a new composition. My focus when things got rolling was on whether or not one would compose differently for a live orchestra as opposed to a virtual one. What got me going was a particularly delicate harp passage that sounded lovely in the virtual world of Logic but that would never work in a live setting without amplification and other technilogical assistance. The path got a little blurry after a while because it became apparent that I didn’t really care if I was writing for the computer or for people, what I was really doing was trying to talk myself out of composing for the orchestra altogether.

That feeling goes back a long way. About 15 years or so. For me, that’s quite a while. There was nothing I loved more than composing for the orchestra. There is somethiing about taking on an ensemble of such magnitude. The are so many possibilities. It’s a playground and if one is particularly inventive there are so few real limitations. There is also a side to it that is like a puzzle. Some ideas are better suited to certain implementations. What solutions can be divined that bring out a given sonority or melody is engaging and addictive. It’s fun.

When I think back on it, I clearly see myself in a practice room well after midnight on a Saturday. The conservatory building was officially closed but those few of us who worked on the custodial staff during the summer knew some things. I sat there in front of a freshly tuned baby grand piano with my notebooks and pens (never pencils! Erasers are for the weak and kill ideas!) with only the vile yellow sodium lights pouring in from the streets to light the room. The sound of the room. The stench of the steam heat. And the absolute focus I was able to summon. There was nothing else in the world. Only those tones coming from the piano and the scratching of pen on paper. My responsibilities were limited to that page and passage. The importance assigned to each stroke of the pen was incredible. It’s horribly naive and pretentious in hindsight, yet the attraction is so obvious to me even today.

Why did I stop? Why did I move on? Was it the fact that after my time as a big fish in a small pond I couldn’t face the reality that I would likely never have a work performed again? Did it have to do with the misguided notion that the orchestra is a creature of the past, a museum for the culture that was? Or was it simple creative wanderlust? That desire to try something new and forge ahead in search of uncharted ground.

In truth, it’s probably a little of each. As I sit and listen to the pristine but mechanical performance of my latest piece as rendered by sampled instruments, I’m struck that I can still imagine how it would sound live. Alive. It moves me to find that after so many years I still feel an affiliation with that art form. The ideas trickle out and they aren’t bad. They stink of unedited inspiration because that’s what they are. And that is how they shall stay.

Maybe I will copy out the score in long hand. An homage to a discipline I have not practiced in some time. An act of love for something that I never really left behind. A gift from that stubborn and pretentious young man in the halflight of a winter evening.

The War of Art

Posted by on August 3, 2009 No comments

I’ve said before that I really don’t like books about creativity that are supposed to help me unleash my inner genius and demolish writer’s block and all that jazz. The last time I mentioned one here my take on it was less than favorable. That said, I came across a reference to The War of Art by Steven Pressfield on Get Rich Slowly (enough links there?) I was motivated to at least look at it. I’m really glad that I did.

My take on doing creative work has always been “shut up and do it.” That is to say, talk less and do more. For every moment spent talking about an idea a moment that could have been used executing it is lost forever. I’ve known (and been) so many who love to talk about being an artist but have no interest in buckling down to do the work. There is a passion for talking about art yet actually sitting down and producing something seems to somehow get lost in the shuffle and discussion of the creative process and all of the wonderful ideas that one has floating around in the ether.

Generally, I find these tomes on creative production counterproductive because they give the reader an excuse not to start the work right now. “I can do it after I devour the inspiration that is bound to be in these pages!” Or, as often as not, the reader can pick up another book that may hold the same promise. This doesn’t serve the truly creative person who might really have a problem or be stuck and instead panders to the wannabes. Those people who will never actually follow through.

So how is The War of Art different? Well, first of all, the book is divided into three sections. The chapters in each section are about a page long. It’s all very concise. I could pick it up and put it down quickly. I can see myself opening it in a panic for a quick slap to the face without having to lose more time to it than is absolutely necessary. A shot in the arm should be quick and painful. The War of Art provides just that.

The text itself is not flowery. Pressfield gets to the point. It’s as though he knows that he only has a few moments to get something across to the reader and push her out the door and onto the next phase of her creative existence. I greatly appreciate this. I don’t need a history of something and a dozen case studies of artists I have never heard of. I want someone to talk to me about me and what I’m experiencing to get the process moving again. My time is valuable and the author understands.

Finally, my favorite thing about this book is the simple fact that everything in there is something that I already knew but that Pressfield took the time to put down on paper for me. I know that the only way to get something done is to do it. I know that fame and fortune are the worst motivation to take on any creative endeavor. I know that resistance lurks around every corner and that it is so much easier to make an excuse than it is to do something. I know all of this! But sitting down and reading it in the chunks he has broken these simple facts down into makes it infinitely more potent and pulls all of my attention to the real problem at hand.

I’m a person who has a seasonal creative block. I would like to think that the occasional innoculation from this book will keep that away or at least minimize the damage. If you’re the kind of person who needs kid gloves and coddling, this book is not for you. If you think you’re the kind of person who needs that coddling, you’re probably not. Life’s tough, wear a helmet. And read this book.

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