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.