Vary your Interests!
31/05/13 14:11
If I could give just one piece of advice to beginning composers, it would to pursue another interest in conjunction with composition. The creative process is a tricky animal to continually pursue and capture. My own hunting is often aided from sources utterly separate from the musical spectrum. Here are a few of mine:
POETRY
I’ve been writing poetry since I was 9 years old, roughly since the same time I began composing (and by composing, I mean copying notes down in no recognizably notated form). When I feel lost, I return to a book of Whitman, Dickinson, or Frost and just perusing the words of these great wordsmiths, washing myself in them, and finding creativity in the inspiration of other artists who came before me. And it doesn’t matter that the art form is on another branch; we share the same tree.
VIDEO (TV, FILM, WEB)
Great art doesn’t need to be 100 or 1,000 years old. The film industry creates beautiful and terrible works of art just as the rest of us do. A good actor’s performance can be inspiring. Read about the preparation. The process. Watch interviews. Read articles. Many of these men and women are artists, just like you, trying to tenderly and vigorously express themselves in the genre that speaks to them just as music speaks to you.
NATURE
La Mer, The Four Seasons, The Planets - sensing a pattern here? Yes, millions of pieces of music have been written about water and wind and fire and the merging of that cute little stream by your house with the great river down the street. But there is a reason - the mathematical complexities and patterns that exist in nature can be great conductors of compositional thought. Count the petals on a particular flower. Look at the way in which they interact with each other when in full bloom. Imagine each petal is a note or an interval or a timbre.
These are just three possibilities that I enjoy, but branch out! Cook! Draw! Photograph! Particularly in the academic music world, we become entrenched in the bureaucracy, policy, and cynicism that surrounds our daily struggles. We can forget why we want to create music. Sometimes the best way to find your world is to disappear into another one.
POETRY
I’ve been writing poetry since I was 9 years old, roughly since the same time I began composing (and by composing, I mean copying notes down in no recognizably notated form). When I feel lost, I return to a book of Whitman, Dickinson, or Frost and just perusing the words of these great wordsmiths, washing myself in them, and finding creativity in the inspiration of other artists who came before me. And it doesn’t matter that the art form is on another branch; we share the same tree.
VIDEO (TV, FILM, WEB)
Great art doesn’t need to be 100 or 1,000 years old. The film industry creates beautiful and terrible works of art just as the rest of us do. A good actor’s performance can be inspiring. Read about the preparation. The process. Watch interviews. Read articles. Many of these men and women are artists, just like you, trying to tenderly and vigorously express themselves in the genre that speaks to them just as music speaks to you.
NATURE
La Mer, The Four Seasons, The Planets - sensing a pattern here? Yes, millions of pieces of music have been written about water and wind and fire and the merging of that cute little stream by your house with the great river down the street. But there is a reason - the mathematical complexities and patterns that exist in nature can be great conductors of compositional thought. Count the petals on a particular flower. Look at the way in which they interact with each other when in full bloom. Imagine each petal is a note or an interval or a timbre.
These are just three possibilities that I enjoy, but branch out! Cook! Draw! Photograph! Particularly in the academic music world, we become entrenched in the bureaucracy, policy, and cynicism that surrounds our daily struggles. We can forget why we want to create music. Sometimes the best way to find your world is to disappear into another one.
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