Question about creativity

[annode]

Good ideas come rolling in, good song titles or lyrics, solutions to issues you’ve been worrying about for a quite while, how to deal with particular situations and other valuable insights will appear. It will come when there is room and silence in your head.

Once those ideas pop up one after the other I open my eyes for a brief moment. I make notes of all the ideas, solutions and answers with a pencil on a little piece of paper and then I quickly close my eyes again and go back to my meditation, back to my breathing, emptying my mind and making room for peace and quiet.

Only if you are able to empty your mind, making room in your mind then there will be room for new ideas and inspiration. The longer you hang in there, the better the ideas. You can try to cheat and think of ideas consciously, but the real inspiration, the brilliant ideas and solutions to life come out of nothing. Out of thin air.

It’s all in meditation.

http://www.guitarhabits.com/how-musicia ... editation/
Use a single mantra word to get your mind free of thought. The word 'eyeem' works well for me.
Do not recite a whole phrase or paragraph like the author of this article recommends...I took the TM coarse in the `70s...it`s a single word to get you started. After a time you don`t need the word to focus yourself.
- Many successful creative ppl meditate. If your looking for one thing creativity goes hand in hand, it`s meditation. ( I used to meditate yrs ago. I`m now trying to stop using excuses not to.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronald-al ... 60931.html
...meditation allows you to flow into a state of open mind to access your creativity but as soon as the ego takes over, and tells you you're special or the best meditator in the world, it all disappears! You need to surrender and let go in order to hold the space but once you start grasping at it you lose the feeling of peak oneness.

http://www.amazon.com/Creators-Creating ... 0874778549

[PatchAdamz]

I start with chords too; the melodies come right before finishing the track

Same here most of the time but not always.

I generally put down the chord structure and the melody comes fast based on that.
But sometimes my mind doesn't hear chords, instead the melody will come first and I will put that down.

I have found that some times, the chorus or bridge will come first and the verse will come later.
Thats the great thing about creativity, it come from the part of the brain that is not always linear.

I think its important to allow that and not follow the same approach every time.
Other wise, the music suffers from sounding redundant.

[Googly Smythe]

Acoustic guitar is good - it's portable. Sounds great in the bathroom, seriously!

[foosnark]

I've meditated in the past, but don't do it much anymore and don't find it actually helps me with creative pursuits.

Two things work for me: improvisation and experiment. Two sides of the same coin really.

I have thousands of hours (I have no idea how many) under my belt just playing. My grandma's piano when I was a kid, and everything I could get my hands on since then. It never seemed like "practice." I am really comfortable improvising -- in fact when I was in a semi-pro taiko group, I was at my most comfortable when soloing, as opposed to performing memorized, choreographed parts. That was the opposite of most people in the group.

For me, composition is usually just frozen improvisation. And improvisation is about 90% instinctual and 10% academic music theory.

I am a mediocre less-than-half-trained keyboardist, so-so percussionist, poor bass player, and a terrible beginner at some other instruments. Almost 30 years ago I was a competent beginner on violin, but I lost the muscle memory and hate my intonation and tone so much I don't bother with it anymore. But I can improvise.

[TimeToProduce]

Being able to really play a musical instrument is of great help. I don't mean you should become a virtuoso player, but if you are spending some time every day playing a piano/keyboard or guitar, even in self-taught manner, your sence of melody progresses naturally.

But it's also a good thing to get to know the technical side of music theory right?

[chaosWyrM]

of course theres a middle ground. i wasnt suggesting that one should work that way...i was only saying that one could work that way. i was saying that the idea that improvisation is unoriginal and that one can not make creative things that way was simply not true.

Clearly you weren't suggesting that. In fact I was responding to KBSoundSmith who stated that improvisation was mere regurgitation of remembered music and the cure for it is what I called a spreadsheet approach. I assumed we both think "simply bits from your memory mish-mashing without direction, purpose, or intent of any kind" is nonsense.

So, KB would rather work it out via a spreadsheet of arbitrary-looking decisions than play a melody. (Who cares, really. Stravinsky liked to say he needed to touch the notes so he wrote with the piano.) For me, improvisation is IT. And I've spent days inspired and heard full pieces in dreams. I had the actual idea I could become a composer via hearing music rather full formed in my head at times. I started writing in earnest after woodshedding at my instrument for some 10 yrs. Producer is the new composer and everybody and their cat is rearin' ta go with little-to-no prep today.

I was steeped in purposeful improvisation with the end in mind of 'this is a keeper, as is', real-time composition for quite some time. Of course the results varied but I absolutely do create well-formed melodies on the spot. There is a kind of energy and flow, and an organic nature of music created in the moment that I would not wish to lose. It's because I have this that I invested in tech, not the opposite (which will ultimately tell on you).

ah...apologies for misinterpreting your meaning. the perils of reading conversations and all. it seems you and i do have a similar viewpoint on working through improvisation.

although i did say that the "spread sheet" (as you call it...which is a good term) approach looks crushingly dull and uninspired to me, i can imagine how it might be a good way to work for someone who needs to set up rules to work within...even if those rules are entirely arbitrary to begin with.

[recursive one]

Being able to really play a musical instrument is of great help. I don't mean you should become a virtuoso player, but if you are spending some time every day playing a piano/keyboard or guitar, even in self-taught manner, your sence of melody progresses naturally.

But it's also a good thing to get to know the technical side of music theory right?

Music theory is a way to describe things, that sound natural and pleasant to human ear, mathematically. When you trying to improvise without any knowledge of scales, chord progressions etc, you most probably hear in your head what note should come next but you don't know where to find it on the keyboard. So you do both - you learn theory and train your psychomotor skills by playing. Don't fogret using metronome or drum machine/plugin, good rhytmic skills are also very important for catchy melodies.

[AsPeeXXXVIII]

Usually how it goes for me is that I either mess around with a pre-existing melody (sometimes even an entire song) and accidentally make a new one out of it or I randomly come up with a melody while playing an instrument or composing a song.

[chaosWyrM]

after re-reading the explanation of my approach...i see that i wasnt very clear.

ill try to make it more succinct...i work in a bottom up kind of fashion. and when i build each part i do it by listening to what i already have...and hearing the rest in my head. then i put what i hear in my head into the track.

sometimes while im doing that...what actually makes it into the track is a variation of what i heard in my head that i came across while adding it.

other times...(far less often) i dont hear something specific in my head, but i have a feeling of what comes next...in those cases ill improvise...or more likely...use one of my randomization methods (of which i have many)...to get me close...and then fine tune it from there. kind of like how painters dont make all their colors from scratch. if they want a kind of blue...well they start with a pre-made kind of blue...and then add other colors to it.

there are some things where randomizing is the easiest way for me to work. say im making a powernoise track...well for those i use d&b drums, speed them up, and then destroy them with distortion/saturation. for those...the individual hits arent really that important (they arent going to sound anything like they do when im done)....so i can take a couple of loops, slice 'em up...and hit the randomizer in my drum sequencer until i like it.

that saves me hours and hours of meticulous work, and the results are just as good. no reason to reinvent the wheel there.

[annode]

)....so i can take a couple of loops, slice 'em up...and hit the randomizer in my drum sequencer until i like it.

that saves me hours and hours of meticulous work, and the results are just as good. no reason to reinvent the wheel there.

...and I was considering Berkley School Music...thanks man!

[chaosWyrM]

)....so i can take a couple of loops, slice 'em up...and hit the randomizer in my drum sequencer until i like it.

that saves me hours and hours of meticulous work, and the results are just as good. no reason to reinvent the wheel there.

...and I was considering Berkley School Music...thanks man!

no problem.

facetiousness aside, i dont claim that that approach is suitable for everything...or everyone...just saying a method that works for me...in that scenario.

i mean really...d&b loops...getting sliced and utterly destroyed by effects...does it really matter? i could do it by hand...i could make the sounds from scratch in microtonic...i could do both those things, and i have...but in reality...that takes hours and the results arent appreciably better. again...no reason to reinvent the wheel for something im going to mangle beyond recognition anyway.