Knowledge... like folk tune repertoire... isn't inherently perfect

I feel that knowledge is not fixed or static but flowing, evolving, changing, new parts and old parts drifting into focus or becoming fuzzy again. Forgetting, moving on, becomes just as important and absorbing new material. In fact you cannot absorb new material without having a relatively clear head - so there is a need to leave the old behind whether tunes, ideas, music or phrases. You can go through phases of things though: I obsess over a problem, solve it, move on. That's one of the points of this blog. In recording the information, the problems, I can review them then move forward.

Just like folk tunes are popularised or forgotten or changed in the fallible process of aural learning and transmission, so ideas recur or vanish or change. Some become more permanent through changes adopted in our institutions, our structures. For instance: we need lots of 2 part jigs and reels for dances that are currently popular so there are more of those tunes well known. Or we've decided that a certain kinds of intelligence are important so our higher level learning institutions only support people with those kinds of ability. The ideas may still change and flow the but the human organised traditions lock us into certain kinds of paths.

While I was growing up our modern world felt so fixed, so completed, there was nothing more to add. It seemed as if those who had gone before had some almost God-like quality - their work (musical or academic) seemed so perfect and complete in conception. I feel the world is presented to us this way as well: it should always be safe, always be complete, if it's not safe then it's the fault of someone else and you can sue them, a Nanny state.

I'm realising: a, there's no real sense of life or in life without the acknowledgement of risk; b, no information is ever complete or fixed so don't worry about it, just get a good enough method for examining and review (your own and peer review as well).

Most of my thoughts are not directly about music, but about wanting to understand the world, for myself now. I want to read much more about he great thinkers who have directly shaped the world before us: the older I get the more I see the world as shaped by people. Once upon a time I saw it all as almost divinely mathematical: you should be able to calculate almost everything, all knowledge was at our fingertips, there was nothing we couldn't know.

Bizarrely, this made me feel like there was no reason to chance anything - nothing new to learn, if you know all the information and the world is still shit why bother? Gradually I have come to realise that it's just a succession of theories - I'm not even sure we could say that the ones we have now are better than the ones that went before. With respect to our lifestyles in the West yes we can say that we live longer, we have a more comfortable existence, we can devote more of our energies to non-essential activities. Maybe this is progress but I feel something has been lost.

What is there in our viewpoint of the world that renders it so hard to live with? Now should be easy, easy yet we have more and more people especially in the Western world succumbing to mental illness, we have obesity and violence and boredom and disengagement on a massive scale. That can't be right.

What makes music attractive?

One of the defining features of folk is that everyone is a soloist. Your own stamp, your own touch is one of the most important parts of this music. It's inherent in a music where phrasing, rhythm and gesture are the defining feature - your personal touch and connection through that is of prime importance.

Of course new rhythm and gesture and phrasing types can be learnt - but still the emphasis is hugely on personal interpretation. Just like a potter, you hands help shape your music and each persons' hands are individual. Everybody can bring their own touch. When well developed it's the most beautiful thing in the world and you don't need more than that. If you do, there's generally a very specific reason.

I feel there is a parallel with this in general life - we find someone just being themselves is attractive, that being well-coordinated, being 'in' your body is attractive. Often we also find that relaxed people are attractive - that sense of ease and flow. I think music is just the same.

Attitudes to composition...

I love composition. I don't do very much of it but I am always exploring a little bit more here and a little bit more there. I have a little voice recorder to catch ideas on. It's like... there is this whole world of music to explore, some that exists already and some that you can find and make for yourself.

I was such a music nerd when I was at school, I completely absorbed the idea of the classical canon. The canon is the "approved" pieces of classical music - those which are deemed memorable by the great and good of whatever musical society you live in at the time. I dreamt of adding something to this but gradually disabused myself of the notion. What I could make didn't seem to fit with those sounds, I felt I was not a good enough musician.

Then I got to university and met the modern approach to classical composition - all experimental and strange - and that didn't seem to fit either. I didn't get the point - this didn't seem fun or creating something I felt was worthwhile. It felt like all the fire I had was put into a box and shut off.

There is such a disconnect between the act of making a piece of music and the event of it being added to any "canon" - one is all about exploration and the creative process, the other about it being "approved" by the right people.

That said, the love of "composition", of creating music never died. The desire to do it my own way has also never dwindled, but the motivation, the thought that it was worth exploring did. I still find the prospect of getting responses from other people to my music fairly terrifying, but the importance of getting such feedback is not going away but getting stronger.

I used to think composition was almost some divine process - that it was only worth doing if you created something truely extraordinary, something worthy of being part of "the canon". Now I don't. What I do think is that you reach the extraordinary through a series of small tiny steps, that to do so you need time and energy. Maybe you'll reach something you think is extraordinary - maybe you won't. Maybe someone else will think it's amazing while you're still bored and maybe exactly the opposite. Only time and a bizarre kind of popularity test will determine what happens to your music.

I am really cross with my composition teachers - especially at university - especially when it comes to judging me - mostly about not being given feedback. Why?! What do you see in one that you don't see in another? Peer review is perhaps the most important feedback you get - while it might show you up it also gives you routes to see where you might want to be. But blind peer review where someone sits in judgement and you get nothing except a number back - rubbish.

At the same time I can see how deeply difficult it is to teach composition. It's so intensely personal that any criticism is incredibly difficult to give. You have to acknowledge that you are being judged subjectively, to someone else's rules. The question is maybe why would you want to be? Certainly within the community music movement, you're taught that the only person who can truely judge how well a creation has been executed is the creator.

More and more I feel that the act of creating anything is about gathering some tools together and knowing where to go for more if you need it, then letting your instinct about the thing you are making take over. As a teacher, you can present new material and methods, suggest people devise and research their own as well, but you cannot teach the instinct. I do feel I was presented with some material but I don't feel like that the connection about the process was made at all. The bit I feel gets particularly missed is how to connect with your instinct, that your instinct is important, and that all the tools are there just to help you explore that.


I read a quote recently -

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

Scott Adams - author of the Dilbert cartoons

I like this - it includes both the idea of researching / exploration (finding your tool kit) and then exerting some kind of judgement / instinct over what to use.

Dictionary.com definition of creativity:
–noun

1.	the state or quality of being creative.

2.	the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination: the need for creativity in modern industry; creativity in the performing arts.

3.	the process by which one utilizes creative ability: Extensive reading stimulated his creativity.

I feel that "creativity" is one of those woolly terms. People can "create" something and you can think it very dull, not interesting at all. But they *have* been creative.

I also feel like something created has to have a point - it has to be written for something, for someone. It has to be fun. For me, music is like pure will - there is no reason to make other that you want to. Also, if you don't get something from it, whether interest or understanding or depth or enjoyment or whatever, there seems no reason to choose to experience it.

It can be so frustrating wanting to get to a particular place with something and not being able to find the tools to get you there. Right now I'm looking for how to get myself to a new place. I suspect I always will.

Creative process...?

My guts say this is the creative process:

inspiration - method - review

Something inspires you.

You start to figure out how to make what you want, get a bit of a method.

You review it - experience it - to see if it is as you want it to be. You are always working to the limits of your perceptions. It's hard to tell when to move on, so it's good if there is a point to this creation - so you can say - yeah, that's good enough. That will do what I want it to.

Instrument obscenities

I've just been to see Stevie Wishart at the Barbican. She does unspeakable things to a hurdy gurdy - putting her fingers inside the instrument, making slides glisses scrapes rattles - amazing sounds totally appropriate to her piece ("Transients"). A friend called her the "Hendrix of the hurdy world". Somehow though it just seems rude to put your fingers inside an instrument - far too intimate to watch!

Motivation within a group, improvisation and social music

I went on a community music "Group dynamics" course run by Music Leader a couple of years ago. One of the main things that stuck were ideas on what motivates people within a group, i.e.

belonging - competence - autonomy

So feeling motivated within a group is easiest when:

• you feel like you belong, there is a place for you
• you feel that you have something to give, that your skills are valued
• you feel that you have some choice over what to give, you're in charge of you

I feel that folk sessions fit this exactly. At a session, where you met voluntarily in the pub, if you turn up with an instrument you can become part of the session - belonging. Part of the way folk music works is you can subtly alter the music with ornamentation. This means that many people can play the same tune while all playing at different skill levels and all having responsibility over their own part - competence and autonomy.

I feel that all improvised music allows this balance - that you are playing with what you have, not what you don't. For me, this is a defining feature of social music - that it welcomes all without constraining any.

Planning a musical career

The most exciting but also most scary bit about being a musician is the immense freedom of how your career can work (or not!!). Most people I know have a portfolio of work, that is a mixture: a balance of performance, function work, teaching, workshops, funded projects... also merchandising sales: publications, cds, digital sales, merchandising itself (if they have a brand), licensing of music for film and tv.... Just figuring out how to make an income from music is extremely difficult and requires you to think creatively itself!

Anyway right now I'm just beginning to think about this. A friend sent me this link which I shall read with interest.

http://www.zoekeating.com/blog/2009/09/deep-thoughts-on-my-music-career.html