Things To Do When You Have A Creative Block

Here are a list of things that may help "unblock" you if you have a creative block.

1. Actually Take A Minute (or 10) To Think About Your Problem Carefully
When we're in a panic, we want solutions to come right away, and we get anxious when they don't.  We think very quickly, but only going around in circles, getting nowhere. Slow down and actually think the problem through clearly. Clearly define the problem in your head - perhaps write it down. Consider (and perhaps write down) any important details or hunches you may have. Make a list of plausible solutions. If you can't think of any plausible solutions, make a list of implausible solutions. There's always something.

2. Talk It Through With Someone Else
Beyond the fact that a different person will offer a fresh perspective, this is another way of accomplishing (1).

3. Go For A Walk, or Get Some Exercise
Bring a notepad and pen with you.

4. Let Yourself Play
Forget about whatever anxieties you have around this creative act. That's all silliness. Embrace John Cage's sixth rule: "Nothing is a mistake. There's no win and no fail, there's only make." Just make some stuff, and have fun! Have a sense of humor about it. Perhaps allow yourself a designated amount of time to play with any idea that comes to you. Even if what you're creating doesn't end up being used in your final product, it will get you in a creative mode, and it will help you explore your problem and work with the materials involved.

5. Watch This Video Of John Cleese Talking About Creativity
It's great. http://youtu.be/f9rtmxJrKwc Or this TED talk. Or, (less so, in my opinion) this TED talk. Actually, here is a list of 10 TED talks about creativity.

6. Have Some Faith In Your Unconscious Mind
When we're stressed, we want to control everything and know all the answers, but our unconscious mind can only start working on a problem when we allow ourselves to relax, and learn to tolerate the discomfort of not knowing.  Keep your mind gently around the problem, but don't push or strain. If you can, sleep on it or allow the problem to mull around in the back of your mind for several days.

7. Leave a Record
As you come up with ideas, record them in some way - perhaps by jotting them down in a notebook - even if they seem like bad or unhelpful ideas.  This helps in a lot of ways: it slows down and helps you work through your thinking process; it makes you feel like you're doing something; and it the ideas may end up being useful at some point down the road, often in unexpected ways.

8. Just Get To Work
I once asked Dave Holland how to overcome composer's block. He told me "Just get to work." If we're honest with ourselves, a creative block is often not actually about not having any ideas - it's about procrastination. If you have an idea that works, and nothing else is coming to you, go with that idea and get 'er done.

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Creativity in Music Composition (U of T Masterclass)

I just got back from doing a master class for the jazz department at U of T.  I think it went pretty well! The presentation was about creativity in music composition, and how fears and anxiety can get it the way of that. Here is a link to download the slides that I used.


Here are links to the two videos I played clips from:

• A TED Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity by externalizing inspiration.
• Louis CK speaking at a memorial for George Carlin, expressing how he was inspired by George's prolificness.

These are the posts on my blog that contributed to the presentation in some way. I'd recommend the "Wrap Up and Analysis" as a good place to start if you aren't looking for anything specific.  It includes a list of all the books that were recommended to me during the interviews.

• Composers' Process Project: Wrap Up and Analysis
• Interview with Composer Christine Bougie
• Interview with Composer Allan Gilliland
• Interview with Composer David Binney
• Interview with Composer Andrew Downing
• Interview with Composer Dave Wall
• Writer's Block and "A Song of Ice and Fire"
• An Interview With Myself About Composition
• Books About Creativity That I Love (or at least own)
• Rest and Play: Enjoying Getting Stuff Done

If anyone has any feedback or other ideas or resources about composition or creativity, I'd love to hear about it - post a comment!

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Composers' Process Project: Wrap Up and Analysis

For those of you just tuning in, the Composers' Process Project is an assignment I'm doing as part of my masters in jazz at U of T.  I've interviewed five composers (six if you count the interview with myself), transcribed the interviews, and posted them on this blog (click here to see all the related posts).  This post will formally conclude the project (and all my course work for my masters!), although I may post interviews with artists on this blog in the future. I've learned a lot - sometimes about unexpected things. For example, I learned a lot about how to conduct an interview! I really enjoyed doing this project, and I found the whole process very beneficial - even the part where I was just typing out the dialogue, which was what I spent most of my time doing, as it turned out.  Despite being time consuming, it gave me an opportunity to reflect on what had been said. It amazed me how much I missed in normal conversation - people were trying to tell me things that I totally didn't pick up on until I listened back to the recording and wrote down every word!

That was what I got out of the process... what did I actually learn from what people said?  There is a lot to summarize - the interviews together take up 51 single-spaced typed pages, and that is just the edited-down versions!   I'll start with the most concrete observations and progress to more abstract conclusions.

Word-Frequency Analysis

Here is an analysis of the frequency that various words appeared in the conversations.  I picked words that appeared in more than one interview:

112  music
 59  idea(s)
 46  jazz
 39  listen/listening
 36  sound
 32  piano
 25  chord
 17  love
 15  enjoy
 14  language
 14  voice
 12  classical
 12  mind
 10  pretty
  9  clarity
  9  weird
  8  beautiful
  7  Stravinsky
  6  Ellington
  5  Bartok
  5  Wayne
  5  Metheny

Recommended Books

Me: The Gifts of Imperfection, The Creative Habit
Dave Wall: Techniques of the Contemporary Composer, Theory of Harmony (Schoenberg), My Musical Language
Andrew Downing: The Shaping Forces In Music
Alan Gilliland: Jazz Arranging and Composition: A Linear Approach, What To Listen For In Music, The Study of Orchestration, Inside The Score, Composer to Composer, Charles Ives: A Life With Music, Gil Evans: Out of The Cool: A Life With Music, Hallelujah Junction, Bela Bartok: An Analysis of His Music
Christine Bougie: The Creative Habit, On Writing (Steven King), Songwriters on Songwriting

David Binney was the only one who didn't recommend any books, saying only "I've never studied any of it."

Admired Composers

Here is a list of the composers that people said they admire:

Matt: David Binney, John Coltrane
Dave Wall: György Ligeti, Steve Reich, Arvo Pärt, Xenakis, Alfred Schnittke, Todd Sickafoose
Andrew Downing: Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Bill Frisell, Alfred Schnittke
Dave Binney: Wayne Shorter, Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Pat Metheny, Joni Mitchell
Alan Gilliland: Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovitch, Debussy, Richard Strauss, Mauler, John Corigliano, John Adams, John Williams, Korngold, Bernard Herrmann, Art Herman, Michael Giaccino, Ellington/Strayhorn, Gershwin, Bernstein, Metheny
Christine Bougie: Joni Mitchell, Ry Cooder

As we saw earlier from the word-frequency analysis, Stravinsky is a popular composer - his name was the first word out of Andrew Downing & Alan Gilliland's mouth, and the second composer mentioned by Dave Binney. Ellington/Strayhorn, and Wayne Shorter were also spoken of with reverence. Shostakovich, Schnittke, Prokofiev, Metheny, and Joni Mitchell all got repeat mentions as well. I'm a little surprised Bartok didn't figure more prominently - I always thought he was the Mt. Everest of 20th century composition. Of course, as Dave Binney pointed out, it is a "mind-boggling" question; it is impossible to list all the composers that one's been influenced by.  For example, I know from her blog Christine Bougie is a big fan of Bill Frisell.

Routine/Compositional Phases

David Binney was the odd one out here. He didn't admit to following any routine - he said he used to write very late at night until the early morning, but now he may write at any time of the day - and he also insisted, despite me prodding him with repeated questions, that his compositional process does not follow any phases -   "I basically put my hands on the keyboard and I just start writing."

Everyone else said that phases like research, planning, brainstorming, editing, proofreading, etc. are a part of their process. Alan Gilliland had an elegant way of putting it - "The Three C's of Composition" - Creativity, Craft, and Copying.

A common thread among those whole follow a routine is that the morning is an important time for creativity. Alan Gilliland has had a habit of composing from 5-7 am for over a decade. Christine Bougie avoids checking e-mail until the afternoon so that her mind can be clear for creativity. Dave Wall says "I just get up and I start writing." I liked what Dave Wall said about not forcing himself to compose for an extended period - instead, he composes only as long as he feels like it, and strings together many sessions that might range in length from 5 minutes to 2 hours. David Binney and Christine both alluded to similar approaches.  I've tried to practice Dave Wall's technique since the interview, and it's worked well for me so far. For those of us who lack the discipline to follow a routine like Alan's - for example, me - Dave Wall's approach might a workable solution.

What do you consider the most important principle(s) of good composition?

This was a difficult question, but it was one that I ask myself a lot.  When something is good, why is it good? That's the mystery.  I really do believe that there is something similar going on with all my favorite compositions - from "Blackbird" by the Beatles to Cello Prelude #1.  Defining what that is, however, turns out to be a difficult task.

Me: Elegance
Dave Wall: Clarity
Andrew Downing: Consistency (details of a composition that makes it feel like itself)
Dave Binney: "just whether I enjoy it or not"
Alan Gilliland: Clarity

It seems somewhat remarkable that both Alan and Dave Wall chose "clarity" out of all the available words in the English language.  Does it have something to do with the fact that they are the two "classical" composers? In a broader sense, there did seem to be a theme of clearly communicating something to the audience, with Dave Binney again being the odd one out.  He insisted "I'm seriously not ever judging music other than if I like it or not."

Have you experienced composers block? How did you deal with it?

The thing that got this whole project started was my struggle to overcome composer's block, so I was pretty surprised that the general response to this question was to shrug and say "not really." However, I still got some useful advice when people explained what they felt was the reason for them not experiencing it.

Me: yes. acknowledge your fears and decide to proceed anyway
Dave Wall: no, ideas are a dime a dozen
Andrew Downing: no, even if you end up throwing things away, that's still part of the process
Dave Binney: no, it is just easy for me, it is my natural language
Alan Gilliland:  no, even if you end up throwing things away, that's still part of the process

As you can see Andrew and Alan both had similar things to say.  I think their point of view could help me avoid becoming negative during my process. Also Dave Wall's point that the important thing is how you develop your material, not what you start with, seems a good bit of perspective. Overall, I was struck by how nonchalantly everyone answered "no". It changed how I thought about the creative process. I may have felt like suffering a bit was an important part of it, but it seems more like good music comes from enjoying yourself. Dave Binney in particular - one of my favorite composers - talked about how much he enjoyed the entire process, from composition to performing to recording to listening - and how he was driven by his love and excitement for music.

What mistakes do inexperienced composers make?

This one surprised me because of how little agreement there was. I guess there are a lot of mistakes to make! However, there did seem to be a common theme that inexperienced composers do not develop themes and use repetition enough, and end up putting too much stuff in.


Me: "over-doing things"
Dave Wall: too much material, not respecting the use of repetition
Andrew Downing:  don't think about the total sound, don't think about the instrument
Alan Gilliland: don't stick with a theme/idea; lack notation skills

What do you find to be the greatest challenge of composition?

There was little agreement on this one as well - even more so. It seems everyone finds composition challenging in a different way.


Me: overcoming my fears and anxieties
Dave W: "To never be boring. To keep it unified, but always changing."
Andrew Downing: to let go of a piece and stop revising it; to not be derivative
Alan Gilliland: keeping the business side of things going
Christine Bougie: writing from the place that I am yet not to repeat myself



Why compose?


There were a lot of answers for this one.  They included (in order of my subjective judgement of popularity): the joy of having created something uniquely your own, enjoying the act of composing, expressing something you couldn't otherwise, and curiosity about music.


How do you want to develop as a composer in the future?

Again there were a lot of different answers for this one.

Me: connecting to audience through mastering form
Dave Wall: have a tangible effect on audience
Andrew Downing: be better about thinking about forms
Dave Binney: "I don't have any goals with it, I just want to keep kind of moving forward."
Alan Gilliland: explore jazz & classical music


Themes and General Impressions


Each interview made an impression on me and left me with many things to think about.  For example, with Christine, the word I left with was "honest", which she used several times in our conversation. I'd never really thought about whether or not my compositions were honest - just whether they did what I wanted them to do!  (Dave Wall also used the word "honest".)  I think the most exciting interview for me was Dave Binney, because I'm such a big fan of his music, and I do want to emulate some of his style, and I have actually spent a lot of time wondering "How does he make this stuff? What is he thinking? What is his process?" I feel like I have a better understanding on that, although it seems like it is a bit of a mystery to Binney as well - which may be key to why his compositions are so fascinating to me, as I also find they have a sense of mystery to them.

There were also several themes that I noticed over all the conversations. One was the debate of writing for the instrument - i.e. with the instrument in mind first, coming up with something that is easy to play on that instrument - vs. writing for the sound - i.e. thinking of what sound you want first, and then thinking about how to make instrument(s) produce that sound.  Other issues that had to be considered included:

• trying to be yourself or to not overdo things vs. trying to push yourself or discover new possibilities
• imitating or emulating other composers vs. trying to be original
• writing for yourself vs. writing for the audience
• experiencing the piece moment to moment vs. experiencing the piece as a whole
• the language, values, and traditions of jazz vs. the language, values, and traditions of classical music

One thing that unified everyone was the idea of finding an original voice. Which reminds me of something I said to Alan in what seems to be, looking back, a moment of clarity for me: "I'm more interested in just getting the courage to check out those twelve notes on my own. I've been to school for ten years, I know tonnes of theory, I just need to inspire myself to find my own ways." This assignment concludes my Masters Degree in Jazz Performance. On to new adventures!
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Interview with Composer Christine Bougie

Christine Bougie is a guitarist, lap-steal player, and a composer music that defies genre categorization - blending jazz, rock, and pop into intricate, catchy and very approachable instrumental tunes.  She's made three albums of original music – Hammy's Secret Life, This is Awesome (a collaboration with Dafydd Hughes) and Aloha Supreme.  Besides the fact that I'm a big fan of her music, I was particularly interested in interviewing Christine because she is a fellow blogger, and a fellow process geek.  Like me, she frequently blogs about her creative process, and also like me, she often invents somewhat elaborate systems in relation to that – for example, she's a poster-girl for the online time-tracking website, Freckle.

This was actually the first interview I did as part of my composer's process project (the interview took place back in early April), and I was a little shy about stepping into the interviewer's role. As a result, it has a more conversational tone than the other interviews. Which I think is kind of nice in a way. You tell me.

Check out these two Southern Souls videos that just happen to be of my two favorite songs by Christine.  To learn more about her or follow her blog (highly recommended), visit www.christinebougie.com.


"Me Her" (from Aloha Supreme)


"Hammy's Secret Life" (from Hammy's Secret Life)

Christine Bougie: The Twyla Tharp book [The Creative Habit] is good – did you read the Steven King book – On Writing? It's great. It gave me a lot of ideas. At the beginning of this writing period I was re-reading both of those books and underlining.

Matt Roberts: It's cool that those are both books by people who are in different art forms than music.

CB: Totally. But I noticed a lot of similarities. Like there's a part where Tharp talks about what her process is – just in a couple of pages – and it was exactly what I do, weirdly. She says she goes in a room, and just starts dancing to nothing, and video tapes herself, and then reviews that and picks stuff to work with afterwards.

The Steven King book is really great too because he's so no-bullshit. Just blue-collar.

MR: Steven King is very prolific.

CB: Yeah, he's just constantly writing. In the book, he explains his schedule: “I wake up, I spend three hours on the current project, then the afternoon is for naps and letters, and night time is for watching T.V. and hanging out with the family.”

MR: I just got this book, The Art Spirit by Robert Henri. He was a modernist painter in the early 20^th century. The book is a collection of letters he wrote to his students. He has a kind of romantic notion of art that I find inspiring. For example, at one point he says that he went to the Paris Conservatory, and people were there who were practising copying paintings who had been there for ten years, only learning to become better copyists. But he believes a true artist seeks to have some kind of original voice that can convey some sense of truth.

CB: That's good, you have to get past that imitating phase at some point. What do you think about the Kenny Werner stuff?

MR: I first met him at [The] Banff [Jazz Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music], and I attended his week-long workshop on his “Effortless Mastery” concepts.

CB: How was it? I just read his book.

MR: I think the things he talked about are really cool, and everyone should think about them, but I question the exact methods he expounds to achieve those ideals – “the steps”, I think he calls them.

CB: Right, you also have to work really hard. That's what I think is missing from that whole picture.

MR: Well, when I first got into it, I was in first year, and I was very eager and maybe a little naive, and I started doing his thing where you practice going into a relaxed state, playing one note, and putting down your instrument if you felt you had gone out of that state. After a few weeks of picking my bass up and putting it down, I thought “This is silly!” I think it might be better to do something like setting a timer for 5 minutes, and making it your main priority to play in a relaxed manner until the timer goes off. However, I think the book is certainly worth reading.

CB: I had the same experience with it. I was still in school. I appreciated the story of it, at the beginning – he talks about being at school and getting wrapped up in the stress of it, and the ego. But the application of it seemed off.

MR: I think the problem for me when I sit down to write something is that I become too self-critical and too worried about what people are going to think about it, and I have a really blown up idea in my head about how great I want it to be. So when I come up with an idea, I'll reject it unless it seems like it carries a seed of something incredibly great. Which is maybe not how it works, maybe the greatness comes by taking something somewhat ordinary and working with it.

CB: I notice that too. That's the struggle. I notice that the stuff that you write that comes out naturally [is best]. You want to write so much further ahead then you are. You hear an idea of something that's more complex and developed then you are actually at.

Another thing that I notice is that I'll often be writing the same song again. I'll write something and notice that I've kind of written that before. People will say “Oh so-and-so only writes three tunes.” Like to me, Tower of Power has only two or three tunes. Their ballady thing, their crazy syncopated thing, and they just write those tunes. I'll notice myself defaulting to something. I'll be at the end of the tune, and I'll do what come out naturally, and then I'll say “Oh that's kind of like the end of these three other tunes that I've written.”

MR: I find that especially if I'm are trying to produce a lot of material, like writing a tune a week. That's the danger with trying to force yourself to produce more - that you'll just recycle.

CB: But I find that's good, just to get them all out. If I write twelve tunes in a few weeks I might use five or six of them.

MR: Yeah, you still come up with some new things each time.

CB: Exactly.

MR: I noticed that the third movement of The Little Prince Suite is sort of like the sixth movement of The Buddha Suite. But I kind of like that.

CB: Because it's your sound.

MR: Yeah, it's my signature.

CB: And you're just discovering that. It's cool to listen to stuff you came up with years ago, and you can hear, even though it is less developed, that there is something there that is kind of “you”. I hear all the stuff around it that is pretentious – trying to be something – but I also hear what is me in it. The influences are in there from the beginning.

Sometimes I'll hear something I like that is inspiring to me by somebody else, and then that will make me want to write something like that, but it never turns out like that at all. With a lot of my tunes – the ones that turned out well – I can hear where the idea came from, and I can remember that it was inspired by something else but it just became something completely different in the end.

MR: I've had that experience as well – it's nice!

CB: It's great, because you can just steal things from things you like, and there's no danger that you're copying because it just won't turn out like that.

MR: Robert Henri said something like “Don't worry about being unique, because you can't help but be unique.”

CB: I was writing something the other day which came out really quick. I played it for Ali and she said “This sounds like something...” It turned out it was “For Once In My Life” by Stevie Wonder. It was a bit different – it was slower, and there were a few changes, but basically that was it.

MR: Yeah, the fourth movement of the Little Prince Suite starts with a melody that is exactly Blue in Green. Same key and everything. I'm a little uncomfortable with that! [laughs]

CB: Just change one thing. I'm going to go back to that tune and change a couple things.

So do you write everyday?

MR: Well, yes, I have this calendar on my wall which I put a mark on each day if I composed that day, and I try to have a mark on each day. But it hasn't been very hard lately, because I've sort of entered a crisis phase with The Little Prince Suite – we're going to perform it in two weeks. The amount of writing I've produced has increased exponentially over the last two years as the deadline approaches. Which is interesting, because for the most part I still like what I'm coming up with almost as much. Although the recent stuff is tending to be less intricate and complicated.

I went to the Dave Holland Clinic at Humber just this past week, and asked him what he did when he had writers block. He said “Just get on with it - at a certain point fear takes over.” If you come up with an idea at the start of the process, you think “I'll have a better idea later.” But as the deadline approaches that becomes “I have an idea – good enough, let's go with this!”

CB: I read an interview with Paul Simon once, and his view was that writer's block comes from trying to write beyond where you are. I think it was in that “Songwriters on Songwriting” book – have you seen that? It's a great, fat book of mostly singer-songwriter people, and the interviewer is really good - he does a lot of research for each person, and their writing process.

MR: That sounds great, I'll get that book for sure! I just read this book called The Jazz Composers Companion. The last chapter is all interviews with composers. They all have very different things to say about composition – for example Chick Corea talks about “spiritual games”, while Pat Metheny is more technical, he talks about writing things so he can enjoy improvising over them.

CB: I think for me making a physical space to sit down and write is very important. I didn't have a room to write in. We had instruments scattered in different rooms. Once I managed to set up a space and decided “This is what I'm going to do everyday – I'm going to practise in this chair, this room, with this stuff, here is my loop station, my music stand...” Then the habit part of it became much easier. Also not going online until a certain time of the day.

MR: Right – you don't go online until 1 o'clock or noon, because you'll get sucked into it?

CB: If I wake up at 10 and I'm checking my email at 10:15, and like yesterday there was e-mails with some mixes of some songs I did on somebody's album, and I have to listen to them and make notes, and then there is a gig coming up on Friday, and how am I going to get there...

MR: That takes a lot of energy.

CB: Yeah, if I would wake up in the morning and put that in my brain, I wouldn't be able to concentrate on writing music. Your brain needs to be a little bit empty for that. Also with practising. I was never very good at daily practising, but I've been doing that for the last couple months. I've been enjoying it, and find that it has to be the first thing I do in a day for me to get into it. I think it is a little like meditation – because even though it is different in the sense that you're very busy trying to do something, it is similar in that you notice when your thoughts are interrupting you. I've been going through the second Berkley guitar book [A Modern Method for Guitar] where it is just a couple pages of scales – like a C major scale in five positions, ascending and descending, it takes like eight minutes to read through a few pages straight. If I screw up something simple, I find it is because I'm thinking about something else – say an e-mail I have to send. The later in the day I leave that work until, the worse it gets.

MR: I'm studying classical music right now. I find it more therapeutic to practise classical music, because is more technical.

CB: Yes, I'm just doing scales – for 15 minutes or something, and I love it, because it is kind of brainless in a way.

MR: I have trouble keeping track of time. Recently my girlfriend was sitting on my bed while I was composing, and she said to me afterwards “You spend about half your time on Facebook and YouTube. It finally makes sense to me how much trouble you have composing.”

CB: Yeah, I usually have to turn the computer off. Or, if I'm doing something on the computer, I have a timer program. I usually set things for either 45 minutes or 15 minutes. 15 minutes if it is something that I've really been procrastinating on – 15 minutes at least gets me started. I learned that from Rob McBride – he's my practising roll model. He does 45 minute chunks with 15 minute breaks – real breaks – he says he goes and waters his plants, or if it is nice he'll go outside. Because the 15 minute Facebook break – I do that too, but I noticed that it's not a real break. But it is hard to do that, if you are doing something in Sibelius that is hard, tedious work, and all the entertainment is one click away.

MR: I find I have this base-level of anxiety when I'm composing, and if I anything causes a spike in that I'm like “I'm going to see what's on Facebook...”

You know, I used to be very strict with scheduling. I had a Palm Pilot and I used to set alarms - 10am: practice scales. 10:45 take a break. 11 am: practice arpeggios. But right now I'm thinking of it in a more personal/emotional way – what is it that is causing me stress about this? I'm not sure how well it is working for me though...

CB: Yeah, I've given up on the idea of practising for a huge amount of time – you hear stories of people practising 8 hours a day. But I don't think that is really possible, if you're eating and doing all the things you have to do in a day. As a society we think of people working 8 hours a day – like “nine to five” – but when I've had real jobs, I've found you're not actually working for 8 solid hours. So when you're on your own being creative, you realize 3 hours is probably what you're really doing in an 8 hour work day.

MR: If I can get a consistent hour of practise in everyday, I feel really good about that. I can get a lot done in an hour. I think I can be a bass player worth listening to with an hour of practise each day.

CB: It is weird to put a time on writing too. I do kind of start a clock when I'm writing, but more than any other activity, writing is something that I don't religiously measure the time of. Because I find that sometimes I may be doing something else, like practising scales, and I'll just get into writing. Or I might be watching a movie and I'll just grab the guitar and play something I was working on. I can't really say: “I'll write from 10 to 11. That's it.” You're always kind of writing if you're in the middle of something.

MR: Yeah, one of my interview questions was going to be “Where do your ideas come from?” But I asked myself that, and I thought - “Well, I guess from every moment of my life...”

CB: Did you ever answer the questionnaire in the Twyla Tharp book? It like that. It's about your creative autobiography or something. Like on question was “What was the first creative idea you remember having?” I remember writing a story in grade 1, and I remember how my teacher liked it, and the feeling I got from people noticing that and saying that I was creative. That's a big deal – getting a reward for something that is easy or natural. Or “What's the best idea you've had?” or “What's the worst idea you've had?”

MR: Yeah it is interesting how writing about something can help clarify your thoughts on it. I feel that way about my blog.

CB: For sure. I've started blogging less lately – I was writing three times a week and I went down to once a week because I'm doing so much other stuff. It's good to take a break from telling the world what you're doing so often. But it did help me focus, and it made projects out of just rough ideas. If I had ideas and I started writing about it, it became like a real thing. It helped me get my last album together. Especially with the fundraising thing, because then other people's money was involved, so I thought “Now I've got to get it done!”

MR: What do you find to be the greatest challenge of composition?

CB: Writing from the place that I am.

MR: Because that causes a block, or because that causes bad compositions?

CB: Both I guess, because it will end up causing a block, but in the short term you start grasping at things that you're not there yet. For me, it could be harmonically maybe – I might want to write something that's more dense than I can actually hear, because I appreciate that when I listen to other writers. But it's not natural for me to do that. If I hear something that's in my head and I play it on the instrument and I realize that it is just a plain “G” chord, I shouldn't try to make it weird by adding this and that. It's strange, because you have to push yourself at the same time.

Also, like we were talking about, not writing the same tune over and over. I feel like I can default to certain structures.

MR: I found Twyla Tharp's thing where she makes people come up with 50 different ways to do a particular motion is very helpful with that. If you force yourself to come up with many ways of doing something simple, the first few are going to be your usual way of thinking, but then you are going to have to become inventive.

CB: Yeah, and they come out of your head too, right? I guess it is a challenge not to grasp beyond where you are, but then it is also a challenge not to repeat yourself. You've got to find some middle ground.

I was talking to my friend Mike Holt – he's a songwriter. He is very pure about how he writes his tunes. He never sounds like he is grasping for something that's not natural to him, yet the harmony's interesting, and it isn't over-simplified or anything. He says he only writes in his head first, before he goes to any instrument. He says he dreams his songs a lot of the time, and he'll wake up and hum them in his head for a while before he gets to the keyboard. So that way you're only playing the things that you're actually hearing. On the guitar, my fingers can do things that my brain is not really hearing. Which is cool because it can break you out of your usual thinking. But you're not actually hearing that, honestly.

So in my last chunk of writing tunes I sat at a keyboard – because that's a little bit less familiar to me. I had a wurlitzer in my house for a while. Usually what I do is as soon as I have something I like, I turn on the loop station and record that. Rather then that, I spent a week on the wurlitzer, trying to play what I was hearing, and not recording anything or writing it down, and then the next day I would try to play what I played the day before. So only what would stay in my brain is worth sticking to.

MR: Yes, I've done that to – I have all my ideas written down in a book, but often I will start out by trying to remember what is in the book without opening it. And I realized that I naturally remember only what had the most emotional connection for me.

CB: It's a way of finding the real honest stuff in it, and taking away the “trying to be clever” stuff.

So I did that for a week, and I came up with a tune at the end of it, and then I recorded it. That was good, but it was a harder process. Now I'm using the guitar again. But I might try that again, like for a week. Just to do something different.

MR: Have you seen those song-a-day blogs?

CB: Yeah, I researched that before I started doing this song-a-week thing, which was near the beginning of the year, coinciding with blogging less. I had the urge to make a blog thing about it. But I decided that I didn't want to show what I was doing during doing it, for the same reason I didn't want to show Ali my ideas before they were done to me. Even though that way you can get feedback.

MR: What composers or compositions do you admire?

CB: I've been listening a lot again to Joni Mitchell. I started listening to Joni when I was 15 or something, getting into the 70's stuff. And I've just been getting into her earlier stuff – the super folk-y stuff, I was more into the jazz period. I've been into Blue and going backwards. I recently learned a bunch of her tunes for a Joni Mitchell tribute show. I'd always kept her music a mystery to me, because of the weird tunings. When I learned the tunes I realized that the song structures weren't that weird, it was just the voicings of the chords, because she had all weird tunings.

MR: I find her compositions are so unique, but not in a showy way – it always seems to serve the meaning and the effect of the song.

CB: I'm not writing lyrics or anything, and there's not much melody to a lot of her songs – but the music always fits the mood of what she's talking about so well. That gets me the most.

I kind of got into Ry Cooder's latest album to the point where it is an album that I would put on everyday. But for what reason I don't know. It's bluesy, and it's songwriting. It's weird – I don't listen to music that reminds me of the kind of music that I write. I used to listen to a lot more guitar players – Metheny and Scofield – and now I can't really listen to them.

MR: One last question: Why compose?

CB: As opposed to just recording other people's stuff? I did record a Beach Boy's cover on my last album. I feel like composing is the best way to leave your mark. I have a desire to actually make something tangible that will last. Making an album is a work of art. It's the work I want to do as a musician - I want to have a body of work. I used to focus more on improvising. That was what excited me about music. But composing is improvising – when you compose something you're making it up, you just spend a bit more time crafting it.

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Writer's Block and "A Song of Ice and Fire"

Apparently George R. R. Martin experienced some difficulties while attempting to finish the next book in his series "A Song of Ice and Fire".  (The series is the basis of a new HBO program that just premiered, A Game of Thrones - which looks like it is going to be pretty good!)


It took Martin over six years to complete his latest book, despite promising his fans to have it done within a year.  Here are some excerpts from a recent New Yorker article about the series and his challenges in completing it.

“Maybe I’m rewriting too much,” he suggested, after a fretful silence. “Maybe I have perfectionist’s disease, or whatever.” 

Martin explained that he’s been tinkering with some parts of “A Dance with Dragons” for ten years. He has a “real love-hate relationship” with a chapter that focusses on Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf: “I ripped it out and put it back in, I ripped it out and put it back in. Then I put it in as a dream sequence, and then I ripped it out again. This is the stuff I’ve been doing.” 

Such indecision, Martin suspects, may be fuelled by the mounting expectations for “A Song of Ice and Fire.” The reviews for the series have been “orders of magnitude better” than he’s received for anything else. After the fourth volume came out, Time anointed him “the American Tolkien.” Many readers have told Martin that his tale is the greatest fantasy story of all time. With the HBO show and his online critics breathing down his neck, the pressure has become even more intense. 

“I don’t want to come across as a whiner or a complainer,” Martin said, as tinted light from the afternoon sun filtered through the stained-glass windows. “No! I’m living the dream here. I have all of these readers who are waiting on the book. I want to give them something terrific.” There was a pause. “What if I fuck it up at the end? What if I do a ‘Lost’? Then they’ll come after me with pitchforks and torches.”

Obviously my situation is very different than Martin's: I don't have millions of fans, or the challenge of being consistent with a fantasy world that has thousands of characters.  My compositions aren't on the scale of fantasy novels many hundreds of pages long. But I still felt like I could relate to his anxieties, although on a smaller scale.  Every time I undertake a project, I want it to exceed expectations and be better than anything I've done before, and that leads to similar re-writing where I spend hours writing a note, changing it, changing it back... Thankfully so far I've always managed to eventually overcome that and just enjoying composing and let go of needing to be in complete control of the result.

This article in The New Yorker seems to further support my theory that writer's block is what happens when anxiety about creating becomes greater then the joy of creating.


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Rest and Play: Enjoying Getting Stuff Done

It's been a while since my last post! It's too bad because there were actually a lot of things that I wanted to write about, but I got busy with other things, and now they aren't as fresh in my mind.  I'm going to try think about doing more frequent, shorter posts in the future.

Even though my last post was over a month ago, I'm still thinking about the ideas of Brene Brown.  I wrote my last post after watching her TED talk.  I have since read her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, and found it interesting, inspiring, and liberating.  In particular, I want to write a bit on my reaction to the chapter "Cultivating Play and Rest - Letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self worth."

In the chapter Dr. Brown proposes that "making the choice to rest and play is, at best, counterculture." Our society generally has been pushing to become more and more busy for many decades now. Speaking from my personal experience as a musician, I can relate to this twisted idea of "exhaustion as a status symbol" (although I think it is common to many professions). It seems that often when one musician asks another what they've been up to lately, the reply is laden with anxiety about being perceived as busy.  The anxiety seems to be that if a musician isn't extremely busy, they're boring, uninspired, disconnected from the music scene, and clearly not a person that other musicians would want to collaborate with.  Sometimes the question is simply stated as "Are you busy?" which is jazz-slang for "Do you have any gigs?" which is, in turn, jazz-slang for "Is your life worth living right now?" I recall one Facebook status update that a friend of mine made which boasted of an almost inhuman amount of music-related work that they were doing in a given amount of time.  I read the status with envy, but looking back on it now, I wonder if that is really something that is right for me to envy. Wouldn't that be incredibly stressful? Would they really be able to do their personal best at every one of those things? Sometimes when we try to do too much, this can lead to botching things up, and in the end it may have been better if we had not attempted any of it.  Speaking for myself, if the only time I feel adequate is when I'm extremely busy, then my choices are to either feel inadequate because I'm not busy enough, or to feel really stressed out - and probably inadequate as well anyway because I don't have time to do the things I'm doing properly.  My only reasonable avenue is to try to let go of this idea that I can't simultaneously have time for rest while being an inspired and talented musician. The reality is that being relaxed and rested no doubt encourages inspiration.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the tricky phenomena of identity and the snags it can lead to.  For example, when I first started playing bass (at the innocent age of 16), I spent many hours a week practicing and jamming, all relatively free from worries about how good I was or how I compared to others.  Then in 2000 I started studying music full time, and I rapidly developed some intense anxieties around these subjects. I think some of this came from a shift in my identity - I started to think of myself not just as "someone who played music", but as a "real" musician.  The attitude was "This is my profession. I have to be good at this. I can't just fool around anymore." Now, ten years later, I've experienced a similar shift in thinking of myself as a "real" composer. The problem is that "just fooling around" - i.e. playing - is essential to the creative process. Dr. Brown quotes another researcher, Dr. Stuart Brown, in her chapter:

"'The opposite of play is not work - the opposite of play is depression.' He explains, 'Respecting our biologically programmed need for play can transform work. It can bring back excitement and newness to our job. Play helps us deal with difficulties, provides a sense of expansiveness, promotes mastery of our craft, and is an essential part of the creative process. Most important, true play that comes from our own inner needs and desires is the only path to finding lasting joy and satisfaction in our work. In the long run, work does not work without play.'"

Not every idea I think of when I'm trying to compose is going to seem like solid gold right away. But I've noticed that if I just allow myself to fool around with ideas, then often ideas I thought were bad will lead to good ones - although often in ways I didn't expect at first. If I insist that every idea that comes out of me holds up to my idea of a "professional composer", then I have a sure-fire recipe for writers block.

I now have a sticky-note on my computer monitor that says "PLAY" in large friendly letters, with a happy face underneath it. I think it is helping a bit!

Have you experienced anxieties related to your identity? How did that effect you? How did you deal with that? Can you think of other ways that rest and play can (paradoxically?) help us do more and better "work"? How do you balance your need for rest with your ambitions?

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On Walking and Creativity

Sketches of Beethoven strolling in
the streets of Vienna

In her book The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp describes the roll of walks in Beethoven's creative process: "Although he was not physically fit, Beethoven would start each day with the same ritual: a morning walk during which he would scribble into a pocket sketchbook the first rough notes of whatever musical idea inevitably entered his head."

Recently I've discovered walking myself. I mean, I've always walked, but usually only when it was completely unavoidable. Now I'm walking to stimulate my creativity. When I'm stuck for an idea, I'll grab my coat, a pen, and a large notepad, and go for a walk - so far I have always returned with the a few sheets covered in scribbled ideas. Recently I've been composing longer, through-composed works, so composing has become a bit more about planning and conceptualizing, which is work I can do without necessarily having an instrument nearby. However, I think walking could help with any creative endeavor. Rather than sitting in my room for hours while the walls slowly close in on me, walking helps change the scenery and stimulate my mind. Going for walks has come to seem so crucial to my creative process that the fear that I'll accidentally chop my fingers off and be unable to play bass has almost been supplanted by a new fear that I'll somehow destroy my legs and be unable to walk.

As proof of the effectiveness of walks in stimulating creativity, the following is a list in high praise of the virtues of walks, all gleamed from notes jotted down whilst meandering around myneighborhood on foot.

• Walking reduces the pressure to come up with an idea right away - if you don't have an idea, just enjoy the walk! In fact, even if I didn't come up with a single idea, I think I would be much less upset than if I accomplished the same while sitting in front of a computer. At least while walking I gain fresh air, exercise, enjoyment, and knowledge of my neighbourhood.
• By the same token, walking encourages one to think critically about the ideas you come up with, and to come up with multiple ideas. I have felt like I had come up with a good enough idea during a walk, only to come up with an even better idea while returning home. Often the first ideas we come up with are not the most creative; it is with the second, tenth, or fiftieth idea that we really begin to explore possibilities. When you're sitting in front of your computer or manuscript paper, there can be a strong temptation to charge ahead with the first idea you come up with.
• Walking gets the heart and lungs working, which stimulates the flow of oxygen to the brain. I'm starting to feel it is very important to get the body moving if one wants to get ideas flowing.
• Walking helps me to be present, which I think is vital to creativity. In order to walk safely, I have to take notice of my surroundings and what is happening in present moment. Often in my room I can become burdened with worries and anxieties. Walking is soothing.
• While walking, you can get inspiration from the things you encounter. Messiaen transcribed bird calls, and Beethoven apparently once took inspiration for a melody from the sound of a stream. Here in Toronto the setting is a bit more urban, but there are still plenty of interesting things.
• In a way, a walk is itself a metaphor for the creative process - each step is a creative decision, which then leads to the next descision, and so on, until you've created a walk. I already mentioned this quote in a comment on my previous post on composer's block: "improvisation is the courage to put one note in front of the other". When I'm walking, I try to make my walk a creative act - I walk different directions each time, and I try to make adventurous decisions - walking down alleys or down any paths that might look inviting.

In conclusion: huzzah for walks!

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On Consistency, Winning Races, Zen, and Seinfeld Calendars

It's a cliche for teachers to emphasize it to their students: practice a bit every day. Fifteen minutes a day is better than two hours once a week. Slow and steady wins the race.  Consistency. 


Despite this, it wasn't until I started keeping track of and analyzing my own practice habits that this idea really hit home for me.  Of course I had already fully accepted the idea that if I wanted to get better, I'd have to spend lots of time practising.  (Perhaps you've heard of the 10 000 hour rule?) In order to motivate myself to practice more, I started keeping a spreadsheet of how many minutes I practiced each day.  This was a useful exercise, both motivationally, and in helping me understand my own habits.  The most glaring thing was that if I completely missed a day, it was very likely that this would start a streak - I would miss several days, in one case an entire month!  If you add to that the advantage of allowing your mind to absorb information gradually over several days, rather than in one intense session, it became obvious that focusing on practising at least little bit everyday was the best use of my energy.  Consistency was the key to increasing both my total practice time and effectiveness.


Soon afterwards, I became a cliche myself and started emphasizing consistent practice with my own students.  My new strategy for getting them to practice was to ask them to just take their instrument out of its case and play one note, everyday. If they wanted to do more, they were welcome to, but that was all that was required. I hoped that if I could instill in them this simple habit, they would begin to actually practice on their own.  I even went so far as to read a passage from "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind", one of my favourite books, to one thirteen-year-old student:

If you lose the spirit of repetition it will become quite difficult, but it is not difficult if you are full of strength and vitality.

Several months later, I heard about  what has come to be called the "Seinfeld Calendar".  According to legend, the key to Seinfeld's success is that he has a giant wall calendar, and if he spends some time working on material, he marks an X on that day with a big red marker.  The idea is to get a chain going, and then "Don't break the chain."


I was smitten.  I enthusiastically set up not one, but four "Seinfeld calendars" - for practising bass, for composing, for exercising, and for meditating.  There are even more things I would love to have calendars for - practicing guitar, ear training, listening to music with full attention, promotion, reading a novel, etc.  However, I rightly guessed that just these four things would already be a lot for me.

My Seinfeld Calendars worked smashingly; for about two months I hardly missed a day on any of the four things.  Composing was a tricky one - it was hard to be creative when I felt I wasn't in the mood.  But I still found it encouraging, because at least I was dealing with "Oh my God, why can't I write anything?" rather than "Oh my God, I haven't even sat down to compose in weeks!"  I feel that with thoughtful, consistent effort, I'm working through the issues that come up; without my calendars, I might not even be getting to the issues. I set the bar pretty low - if I did even a little bit, I got my X. Eventually I decided to make the system more complicated - a black X if I did even a little bit, a blue X if I did a certain amount - for example, 45 minutes of practising or 20 minutes of meditation.  And a unicorn sticker if I got blue X's in all four things.  I was very into getting my X's.


Then one day, trouble came to my productivity paradise.  I was feeling very stressed - despite working hard everyday, it seemed my to-do list had been growing all week.  I was up late trying to get my "X" for composing, and not getting anywhere.  Finally I decided to give myself a break.  Forget about the "X" for a day.  I immediately felt so much better that I knew it was the right decision.  I took the next day off too.


I felt better, but unfortunately it also meant the start of a streak of not composing/exercising/ practising/meditating! And I chose those things because doing them keeps my life working the way I want it to work.  So, now I've realized the pros (increased productivity) and the cons (increaseed pressure) of the whole Seinfeld Calendar thing, and I've made an informed decision to get back on it. I'm loving it all over again. Also, in writing this blog entry, I've realized how self-obsessed the whole thing is. What a journey. I need to get out more.  Maybe I should make a calendar for that too?


P.S. If you want to try a Seinfeld Calendar of your own, but are low on wall space, this guy made a PDF that fits a whole year on one 8.5x11 sheet.


P.P.S. What is your trick for being productive? Would you give the Seinfeld Calendar a try? Leave a comment!

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