Creativity is an elusive subject. It’s hard to quantify when and what is creative. Then take it a step further and try to get in a creative mode is even harder to comprehend, well with the logical mind that is.
The other day I watched this amazing talk by the legendary John Cleese from Monty Python. He has had an astoundingly creative career. In this video he shares some interesting research and ideas around what he called the creative mode.
John Cleese brings up a point that really hit home for me.
The most creative professionals always played with the problem much longer before they tried to resolve it. Because they were willing to tolerate that slight discomfort and anxiety when you haven;t solved the problem.
This brings up a really interesting and powerful point. When you sit down to write music you might hash out an idea in the first hour. You might want to just jump on it and finish it up to feel like you did something creative. If you follow the easy route of what comes first, you might be holding back your true potential of what comes next.
The greatest song ideas can come if you are willing to push yourself just a little bit more. In practice, I do this by writing many sketches of songs. This way I can bust out a bunch of different ideas. I have endless amounts of useless sketches at this point. Sometimes I will make my first sketch and it is amazing. Then I make the next 3 and they are no where near as good as the first. Then other times I make a sketch I think is amazing and want to work on it, but the 3rd sketch of the day ends up being the most powerful track I have ever made.
The point is to push your boundaries, play with the problem / idea longer than you might need to. This will help new original ideas surface. Once you have multiple ideas, though, you can go through and pick the best then fully commit to it.
This idea has been really true about my unreleased album, Tides of Twilight. I got the basic work on this album done in April / May. Basically the album was 70% done. Now normally I would just push it out in a month or so. I get this feeling that if I am not making new music and getting it out then I am losing steam. For this album I decided to take a different approach. This time I decided to truly take my time.
Now 3 months ago I thought the album was almost done. Since then I have just worked on the album lightly when I have time to get creative. Something amazing happened during the process. Since there was no need or rush lots of little improvements happened. I found other musicians to collaborate on a few of the tracks and write new melodies. It feels as if it lets the music really round it’s self out in an organic fashion instead of being forced.
Now the album goes out for mastering in a few days and I feel it is a much better piece of work than if I stressed to get it out instantly. Sticking with that slight discomfort has lead to a much more original and high quality work.
Take your time and enjoy the process.
