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The Essence Of Creativity, Pt 2 / Openness to practice
@Stuntman_mike said:
“I have been feeling the sense of inspiration all around me more and more lately… lessons from left field. It really makes life an adventure. For every new musical nugget I gain, three more life lessons follow. The lines between my creative outlets blur more and more everyday. I find myself solving design problems with musical solutions and solving customer experience problems with design solutions and so on and so forth. Thank you again @LinearLineman for affirming the unexpected path!”
Mike made it easier for me to begin this part with his comment and observation. Simply put, openness is how one makes oneself available to the unexpected.
Creativity is not bound by rules, but life generally is. There is an overlap. In the case of music, I am sorry to say: if you want to access openness you’ve got to practice. As a musician you’ve got to put in the time on your instrument. I wish there was a way around it, but there just isn’t... unless you’re born a savant.
The good news is that practice is flexible. It can be defined in many ways. For example... when I encountered iOS music production I knew almost nothing about using a DAW (Cubasis for me) or associated third party apps. In the past three years I’ve learned a lot, but I didn’t “practice” doing it.
Instead I just made tracks. Track after track after track after track. I wasn’t “trying” to learn how to do it, I was just “doing”. Maybe I would have progressed faster with a dedicated “practice” plan, but it wasn’t”t my way and learning, for me, is not particularly fun.
So let’s talk about practicing. Firstly, one can redefine practicing as doing (as mentioned above).
I’m convinced that, for dedicated musicians, a lot of mundane practice actually becomes “music” if approached in a certain way.
For example: when I started studying jazz there was a ton of scale work involved. There is a lot more to this than the picture we have of a kid practicing a C major scale. When one plays scales there are several components...
- Breathing. This is basic and critical. It is a subject on its own, and too important to describe here.
- The position of one’s body in space.
- The physics of movement.
The underlying nature of chi energy as a motivating force and it’s concomitant non muscular approach to playing.
The shape of one’s mind at the moment.
a/ being non judgmental
b/ presenting no resistance
c/ listening
d/ feeling type 1 (proprioceptive feedback)
e/feeling type 2 (connection with the universe)Presence at every note.
- Sound creation.
- Awareness of time (time involved in playing each note, time between notes).
- The creation of muscle memory (only repetition, unfortunately, accomplishes this).
- Hearing and playing the scale as actual music (no mean feat).
Perhaps I missed something (please chime in), but, as you can see, it’s quite a lot of stuff to get out of playing a scale! And that’s just one handed with a standard classical fingering. The good news is that, when done in a comprehensive fashion, the result of practicing a scale is more than just linear... it is dimensional. In the criteria outlined above each note played is multiplied by 14 factors in terms of potential gain. Each minute “practicing” a scale potentially yields 14minutes of musical productivity!
Now the chief complaint about practice is what? It’s fucking boring! Well, that, IMO, is a manifestation of our entire educational system. I posit education primarily is designed to be boring: to inure the student to a future lifetime of job drudgery. It is the sacrifice of individuality and originality for the sake of workforce creation.
But this is music we’re talking about! As you can see, there’s plenty to focus on beyond mere rote learning. For me, the way in was to play each note of each scale repetition as tho it was actual melody. No, that’s not right... not “as tho” it was melody... play each note AS melody. I realize this seems a bit of a stretch... but I suggest trying it. Sound production, even on a piano keyboard is deep. The basic building block of music, a single note of produced sound, can be entered like a deep lake.
Presence, awareness and feeling at the single note level of creation can be very liberating. When children learn scales in an uniformed way there are only three notes... the first note, the note at the top or bottom of the scale, and the return to the first note... whew! Got through another one!
This is, indeed, unfortunate. Because playing a scale in this manner turns the player away from the critical 15th criterion of scale playing... note to note feeling. Arguably the most important factor in actually creating music.
I can best describe this vital aspect by relating my own first contact with it. A part of my study with Connie Crothers was singing with records. Not just vocalists, but jazz giants like Charley Parker, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Christian , Warne Marsh amongst others.
Parker was the sticky one. He played so damn fast! I could not keep up with his lightning like improvised lines. Connie had the answer. In the 70s you could still find record players with a 16 rpm setting. Play the solos at half speed she suggested.
Worked like a charm. But the surprise gift, as Connie pointed out, was that you could hear that Bird was totally present at every note. Not one was glossed over in the race to get somewhere. This was note to note feeling. She suggested listening to lesser but respected jazz players at 16 rpm. Often they were not present at every high speed note. And one could infer that there was something missing in every slow note as well. It was the illusion of greatness, not the reality. Deep!
So, back to our kid playing a scale. When the impatience of youth encounters the goal oriented society disaster strikes. The pith of the entire C scale is obviated when one is thinking “low C to high C, back again to low C and I’m done!” The in between notes are a blur and the opportunity to experience the ecstasy of note to note feeling is lost.
There can be no genuine spontaneous creativity, IMO, without the inculcation of note to note feeling. So go for it. Play every note in a scale like it is a symphony. The stakes are high (not to make you anxious) but it is the very foundation for a lifetime of creativity.
Well, I guess there will be a Part 3. This whole “practice” lecture was quite... unexpected.
Comments
Mike... when was the last time you practiced. Seriously. Do you drill scales any more?
I know you don't learn tunes anymore which most jazz schools are probably stressing for
"getting work". I'm not there's much of that type of work left... 3 musicians walk into a bar.
Play an evening of Real Book Tunes. They leave with $100-200 each in cash. That used to be a think for jazz musicians that played while people around them tried to talk business or meet strangers for causal sex. Now those activities are conducted in clubs, I'd assume or bars with piped in music or a DJ.
You left out intonation. Typical keyboard player! Great essay though.
But intonation—it’s the #1 thing to meditate on while playing scales. But irrelevant for keyboardists.
@McD, I haven’t practiced scales... or anything else... for around 30 yrs. in fact, I only play around ten minutes a day... twenty if I need a lead line . Just enough to get a track down. Since I’m back in the US I always just use my first improv attempt and then will it into being. It always seems to work no matter how bad it first appears. Pretty weird.But I’ve put in my time. After 64 yrs of involvement actual playing is kind of boring. That’s why I’m grateful to have iOS. Otherwise it would have been all night Bingo.
@Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr, I believe I did... 7. Sound Creation. That is even possible with hitting a piano key. More about dynamics and subtle, but doable.
I hope you come back and have to play cello.
Sound creation indeed.
Still, Note on/note off. Your music is MIDI based.
Sound on (wait) lift off.
I hope you get that Omoze keyboard and expand your need to practice again.
Really loving reading all these because each point of insight takes me back to the moments in my life where I figured my own version of that thing out. Nothing here that I disagree with whatsoever.
The fact that I also spent many of the early years of my studying obsessing over technical and theoretical accomplishments in a jazz frame probably makes this more directly relatable for me too.
Thanks for sharing your journey.
Further, it’s adding depth and perspective to my enjoyment of your own music — thanks for that too
@LinearLineman great post, great insight, and great story
Just grabbed a melodics subscription (don’t buy it through the app) to help in the process of learning how to play the piano properly instead of just ‘picking’ at the keys, and I have a whole new respect for pianists. Just playing the simpler things ‘the right way’ and unlearning bad habits has been a lot more challenging then expected. Whats funny is I’ve actually had to do some of the lessons at half speed to learn them and then gradually speed it up.
Making beats digitally for so long has made things way more about the mental than the physical playing for me, so it’s interesting how my hands have responded, now that they have to learn keep up 😂 But a good side effect is that the relationship between the keys is starting to make more sense overall also.
Creation is an act of letting go.
Performance is an act of letting go.
Practice is an act of letting go.
Focusing on the elements @LinearLineman listed above will assist you in ridding yourself of the mind chatter and clutter that bogs down our daily lives. Same skills as meditation just applied a bit differently. If you let go expectations, preconceptions, ideas about what should, would, could, etc. be then you'll be able to simply BE.
"Free your mind and your ass will follow." - G. Clinton
Thanks for commenting @OscarSouth. Glad it was it was insightful for you.
Always good to hear from you @ipadbeatmaking. Yeah, Connie always came up with the unexpected. An incomparably unique teacher.
You have some serious letting go happening in the next few months @Daveypoo. You can put that wisdom into action!
@McD, the Osmose will require building some new muscle memory, for sure.
Having returned to making music after maybe 15 years absence, initially I was frustrated by ability to articulate thoughts in my head to the keys on the keyboard. I never had formal training, just a cheap keyboard in my bedroom in the early 90’s, I never practised scales or anything like that.
In fact, I remember thinking at the time that all this practise was dull and unnecessary, why not just be free to experiment, make mistakes, discover serendipity, teach fun not repetitive learning.
Being ignorant about what you’re doing shouldn’t be a problem if it sounds good, when sequenced, who cares, it should be fun right? Then I joined a band (1993) and my inability to think on my feet really hurt me. It was at this point I realised I had two choices, have fun in my own bubble, be creative and take things at my own pace or practice like crazy and develop my real time skills to a point where I am confident enough to tackle the live environment.
I picked the former because that’s what made me happy at the time.
Today, I look back and wonder, did I make the right decision? Most of me says yeah, I’m having fun making music again. I have found the few scales I always tend towards, with unconscious practise, are starting to flow enough to run up and down the keyboard more and more fluidly.
Then a part of me thinks, wow, if only I had put the effort in back in the early days.
Openness for me is not only knowing what you are, and could be capable of, it’s just as much about realising you can easily get lost in a moment, maybe have no idea why then looking back wondering how you got there in the first place. There always room to improve in everything you do in life, at your own pace.
@timforsyth , you have summarised very well my thoughts on @LinearLineman’s lovely essays. Playing the guitar for hours as a teenager in my bedroom I never even thought about learning scales, technique etc. Had a few classical lessons later in life which opened my eyes to possibilities but then didn’t pursue them. Now , using GeoShred, I spend many a happy hour learning scales, chord changes etc and it has opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Obviously 40 years ago there was no YouTube to inspire, which I think has made a big difference. That and patience and a more rounded view of what can be achieved that possibly only comes with maturity?
@timforsyth and @GeoTony, agreed on all you both said. If I hadn’t found the right teacher I definitely would have stalled in my progress and, perhaps stuttered out. But that was me. Playing like crazy on one’s own, listening to the music you like, that has been the way for many a musician. Thanks for contributing!
@LinearLineman
Your writing and thoughts are as fascinating as your musical output. Thanks for everyone’s thoughtful input.
This whole business (there we go again - pff business!) of letting go, is something that has been on my mind a lot lately. Why am I doing this? What do I gain from this? Is there any point?
All of these constrictive thoughts lead to, or are resultant of the restrictions I place on myself when I play and write. The thing I have been trying to say to myself can be boiled down to “shut up and play!”.
I eargerly await Pt 3.
Good to hear from you @kinkujin. > @kinkujin said:
I think the same answer applies for all three questions. It satisfies an inner need and is fun. Maybe another question is “why do we make it so important that it prevents us from doing it?”