The creative process in Songwriting Magazine Autumn 2017
In an extract from his guide ‘The Artwork Of Songwriting’, musician Ed Bell explores what it means to be creative
Here’s one thing enjoyable to learn about how creativity works: we don’t actually know the way creativity works. How thrilling is that? How inspiring is that? Your mind can provide you with issues which have by no means existed earlier than and no person can fully clarify the way it does it. By some means, it simply does. By some means, it may well absorb all the things it’s ever learnt or skilled and switch all of that into one thing new.
Creating one thing unique is all the time going to take you someplace surprising. By definition. In order that additionally signifies that the process that’s going to take you there’s going to be unpredictable, and that’s completely the purpose.
However in the event you can’t all the time plan the place your creative mind will take you, you’ll be able to study to tweak and streamline your process to assist your mind work at its greatest. That’s what this text is about.
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Don’t take this personally, however your subsequent tune isn’t nearly you. You could be the one that creates it, places their title on it and says cool and intriguing issues about it in a Rolling Stone interview. However decelerate, punk, that is about your tune too. Infrequently your tune goes to inform you what it desires and desires. It’s your job to close up and pay attention out for that.
The factor is, a murals is its personal form of residing organism. And like all residing, respiration, functioning factor, the components all should be of their correct locations for the entire thing to work correctly. You might go all Dr Frankenstein and swap an individual’s mind and kidneys round, and as fascinating an experiment because it could be, you’d rapidly realise {that a} human physique doesn’t actually work in the event you try this.
Songwriting works the identical means. Certain, it’s a creative act. However a creative act can be an act of discovery. You resolve to jot down an uplifting ballad, in order that impacts the tempo or title you select. You resolve to make the primary chord C main, in order that impacts what you select for the second chord. You’re making some decisions and making an attempt to find what different decisions go nicely with them. That’s why there aren’t any proper and unsuitable creative decisions – solely decisions that work nicely collectively.
Some folks describe this process as pulling a tune out of the air or out of the ether. It’s as if the tune already exists, you’re simply making an attempt to uncover it. It’s as if the statue is already within the block of marble, you simply should dig it out.
The large resolution – the half the place you’re 100% holding the reigns – is once you resolve what your tune is or isn’t about. What you would possibly name the large imaginative and prescient. After that, you’re making an attempt to determine the clearest or most fascinating or most private means of realising that imaginative and prescient. And that’s a process of trial and error, a process of discovery.
Sure, this would possibly sound scary. It’d sound such as you’re letting go of management precisely when you have to be doing the alternative. However when you embrace this, you could be shocked by how liberating it’s. Significantly, strive it someday. You’ll develop into a medium or channel as an alternative of a dictator. You’ll cease making an attempt to micro-manage each a part of what you create and also you’ll let what you’re creating lead you on a loopy journey. Belief me, it’s much more enjoyable that means.
DRAFTING
An enormous a part of the process of discovery is discovering issues that don’t work. As a result of discovering issues that don’t work is likely one of the greatest methods to find the issues that do.
That’s simply how it’s. In life and artwork, it’s important to make plenty of unsuitable turns earlier than you can begin making the correct ones. In songwriting, you normally have to jot down the half-assed model of one thing earlier than you’ll be able to write the fully-assed model. Typically it takes 5, ten or twenty barely totally different however nonetheless half-assed variations of a line or melody earlier than you provide you with one you actually like. Typically it takes much more.
As they are saying: nice songs aren’t written, they’re rewritten.
Each artist desires to create one thing new…However nobody goes to reinvent their artwork type in a single day. You need to be influenced.
Actually, the extra a murals appears to be like prefer it got here out completely fashioned in some big explosion of excellent inspiration, normally the extra blood, sweat and tears that went into making it look that means. Loads of nice artworks weren’t that nice in some unspecified time in the future of their creation – google ‘dodgy early demos of traditional songs’ and also you’ll see what I imply.
Certain, it’s simple and tempting to imagine that nice artists are simply higher at arising with nice concepts than everybody else, however it’s simply not true.
As any nice artist will inform you, they provide you with loads of horrible concepts too. The solely distinction is that nice artists have realized to be pickier. They don’t accept OK. They provide you with as many concepts as they will and solely roll with one of the best ones, or they simply maintain refining and bettering the OK concepts till they develop into one of the best ones.
NO IDEAS ARE NEW
Your mind churns out new concepts, and also you flip these new concepts into songs. However have you ever ever questioned the place these concepts come from?
It seems the reply is basically easy and actually fascinating: new concepts are fabricated from outdated concepts. New concepts are simply outdated concepts dressed up otherwise or combined up in new methods.
Meaning, in a way, there aren’t any new concepts. It means, in a way, all artwork is made by stealing concepts from different artwork. As T. S. Eliot mentioned, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; dangerous poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into one thing higher, or no less than one thing totally different.”
That is thrilling as a result of it doesn’t simply provide you with permission to steal liberally from the artwork and artists you’re keen on, it means stealing from the artwork and artists you’re keen on is the one method to create one thing new. It means it’s important to drown within the ocean of affect earlier than you’ll be able to come as much as the floor with one thing new and thrilling.
However let’s be clear, creativity isn’t plagiarism. Creative theft doesn’t imply copying another person phrase for phrase or observe for observe. Certain, you’ll be able to steal no matter you want, however it’s important to give as a lot as you’re taking. You need to do one thing new with the stuff you steal. You need to take components of some random factor you’re keen on and blend them along with components of different random stuff you love. And that’s referred to as being unique. That’s referred to as making one thing new.
Each artist desires to create one thing new. There’s not a lot level in being an artist in the event you don’t. However nobody goes to reinvent their artwork type in a single day. You need to be influenced. You need to take different folks’s concepts and do different issues with them. You need to work with what’s already on the market and nudge it someplace simply new sufficient that it turns into unique.
A technique or one other, all the things you write is a love letter to the artwork you admire. And that’s the way it needs to be.
Ed Bell is a songwriter and educator who writes primarily for theatre and movie. He created The Music Foundry, an internet useful resource website for songwriters, in 2014. The Artwork of Songwriting is out there in paperback and on Kindle. For extra data go to edbell.com
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