Keeping track of everything that needs to be done with musical ideas is very difficult for me. I have thousands of ideas, ranging from little snippets to near complete works, but not enough skill to juggle all that needs to be done with them. I tend to abandon ideas for months or years at a time for one reason or another, then try to revisit the ideas without being able to find them. I feel a need to learn my system from scratch all over again - to go through everything step by step, as if from square one. I have to remember many things, which are often in lists scattered all over my house and computer.
To ease my pains, I'm attempting to hack apart my creative process. So far, it has offered me this insights - there seems to be three steps in order to get into the flow, or feng sui, of composition:
1. Idea Generation
The creative capacity is first discovered and developed on its own, as a free act. I call this free creativity (I also affectionately call this "free-ativity.") This type of creativity embodies the idea of one doing whatever one wants with no long-term goals in mind. It helps (in fact, it might be crucial) to be absolutely alone. Naturally, a stream of consciousness would need to be embraced for complete freedom (I play mostly guitar, but often improvise on the piano which can breakdown my pre-established patterns that I get into with the guitar.) If one needs, the boundless nature of absolute freedom can be tamed by imposing some limits/having some things in mind*: Experimentation with a theme (musical or otherwise) music theory idea (time signatures, a new chord, phrase structure, etc). Use of an unusual basis for a song, like a drum beat can get the creative juices flowing. Archive: write everything you can down (or record it) without judgement. Write down the date no matter what and time if necessary.
*One may need to plan when to have their idea-generation sessions and what limits they'd like to impose. See the next step for more.
2. Organization and Planning
Rarely does one have a finished product after the first step. It's very easy to forget an idea if you don't archive it somehow. Keeping loads of new ideas can become daunting and can get cluttered very fast. Organization of your archived material is crucial. One needs to make time to do this.
After becoming organized (sometimes, during organization), one can then plan which ideas are going to be visited again. One must listen to and study the previously generated ideas. Make lists of songs that you'd like to move to the next step. Inevitably, one must plan when to write lyrics, basslines, vocal harmonies, and all of those things that often forgotten until the bitter-end of a project. One also needs to plan which instruments need to be recorded in order to set up mics, move amps, warm up for days ahead of time, etc. I recommend setting up specific days/times in your calendar to get stuff done. This can of course be ignored if the moment takes you, but more and more I find that time needs to be allotted even for this. I find it difficult to plan more than 2-3 days in advance for creative work, but your style may be very different.
The first thing I have to tell myself is to not get frustrated by the infinitude of places that the next idea could be. If one has a long to-do list, and scattered ideas, it's very easy to get overwhelmed. Sometimes it helps me to write, as I am now, to organize my thoughts and think about my life in order to untangle the old brain.
3. Idea Refinement
Finish composition of songs (assuming that a work can ever be truly "finished"). Record them. This is not the time to choose what to do next, this is the time to focus - which has been allotted by the organizational step. There are many details of making a score look good, making sure the form and transitions flow properly, making sure one has a good take, etc. Your brand of perfectionism takes over here, and you decide what the song needs. Sometimes input from another person can be helpful here.
more to think about: Tim Hurson talks about Productive Thinking
http://scraggo.blogspot.com
Thursday, October 28, 2010
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