Creativity

Johnathon Haidt's book "The Happiness Hypothesis" is bold. Haidt takes a complex idea of cultivating happiness and derives theories of action, based upon research from diverse fields (psycology, social psycology, economics, and many more), that can lead to a sustainable happiness.

One of the theories was based off of the concept of "Flow." For anyone who has performed guitar in front of an audience and everything went completely right, that's what flow is. The following is a great excerpt from Haidt's book that explains flow better than I ever could.

"It is the state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one's abilities. It is what people sometimes call 'being in the zone.' Csikszentmihalyi [a psycologist who has studied and researched the idea of flow] called it 'flow' because it often feels like effortless movement. Flow happens, and you go with it. Flow often occurs during physical movement-skiing, driving fast on a curvy country road, or playing team sports. Flow is aided by music or by the action of other people, both of which provide a temporal structure for one's own behavior (for example, singing in a choir, dancing, or just having an intense coversation with a friend). And flow can happen during solitary creative activities, such as painting, writing, or photography." [emphasis added]

When I read this, of course I immediately thought about guitar, both in education and performance. In both situations, unless you are an autodidact and learn in a bubble, the idea is that flow is very possible to occur in a group setting where music is being made. In his case, it could be in a choir or dancing. In our case, it could be with an 59 Les Paul hooked up to a Marshall stack, cranked.

The point is that Flow, as Johnathon Haidt described it, is a great thing to aspire to when playing guitar. This book was a fantastic read. To buy the book, just click on the image!

I have been doing some spring cleaning on my computer, and I found the following design. This was the rig that I used for playing in a band I used to play in. I was so loud that sound guys hated me. It was awesome. Plus, nothing but the Fender Blues Jr belonged to me. It was the non-attachment based guitar rig.

As Seth Godin pointed out in his book, "The Dip," there are people out there who find tons of different projects to keep them busy so they might be able to avoid responsibility. Perhaps you know people like this. These are the people who are constantly finding one thing after another to keep their attention on, but no project ever gets finished. I think this is because of beginner's luck. When I start something new, I feel a surge of energy because it's so easy. It's fun to start something new. Sooner or later though, the project/skill/whatever gets harder.

Strumming faster rhythms can be a difficult thing to master in guitar, especially if you have some sort of tension in your shoulders, arms, or wrist. When practicing faster strumming, you can harvest beginner's luck to make it work for you eventually. Here's how:

1. Strum the pattern that you are having trouble with, and up to the tempo you want.
2. Whenever you get to the point of too much tension, STOP.
3. Shake out the arm, wrist, anything, and do not start until the tension is GONE.
4. Repeat steps 1-3.

Doing this sort of thing helps you quit what is not working (tension) and have beginner's luck every time you start up again.

I remember reading a quote about six years ago from a major label executive:

"Did you know that vanilla is the most popular ice cream flavor? It sells more than any other variety. What I do as a major label rep is find the very best vanilla."

I hope you don't feel the same way. I consider vanilla to be pretty boring.

What's the alternative? Well, maybe first admitting that being different is scary. Maybe also admitting that being different may also bring the most rewards eventually. Nobody can say so for sure, but nobody will say that being different is boring.

The moment a person says, "I hate the status quo. I just want to be myself," is the moment I start paying attention to them. It's also the moment that they become far more interesting.

Promise me you won't be like vanilla. Vanilla is pretty boring.

There was this one Milonga I went to where I saw people dancing to the Scorpions. I never thought I'd be the one to say it, but there is something a bit weird about dancing to "Hurricane." This doesn't mean that we ought to stay away from seeing how tango fits or translates to other music.

That said, my jaw dropped last Saturday night when dance partners Carlos Cañedo and Anais Haven danced to a waltzy Black Heart Procession song. Wow! Really? Seriously? I couldn't believe that Tango dancers even knew about that band!

Carlos and Anais danced the hell out of that song. In addition, it's really refreshing to me when Tango dancers are nice, down-to-earth, and approachable. I feel like I would make a fool out of myself if I went up and talked to dancers as good as they are (maybe because I enjoy dancing and am not terribly good at it). However, I gathered up my nerve, and went up to them later on to pester them about their song choices. They were quite awesome about it. I'm going to take a private tango lesson with them the next time they come to Austin.

Here is a YouTube video of them dancing to a freaking Fugazi song. That's right: FUGAZI. Carlos and Anais, I have a request: Can you dance to Radiohead's "Morning Bell," the version off of Amnesiac? I'll take whatever I can get though. Carlos Cañedo's tango website address is at the bottom of this post.

http://www.thetangocompany.com

These thoughts came to me recently:

#1

Could it be that the amount of progress a student makes is directly in proportion to how they handle their pissed-off-ed-ness if they can't play it?

#2

Could it be that the best way to inspire the best attitude towards this frustration is to play a song with the student, and ignore them?

The following are three recent examples of this:

Mark Elf is a jazz guitarist in NYC. When I was an undergrad, I cornered him and fired a bunch of questions at him about the music business. The following was one of his memorable quotes:

"Imagine this room to represent the entire amount of money in the music industry. You see those three bread crumbs on the floor in the corner? Those represent Jazz."

Ouch. Was it any better for classical guitar I wondered? Eh, no matter. I got accepted into a really good school, I should be fine, right?

I believe it was either (or both) Seth Godin or Hugh Macleod who said that youth tends to underestimate the competition, and speaking of which there is quite a lot of it in classical guitar. There are lots and lots of people doing the same thing, beating down the same doors. It's pretty hilarious. "Gotta get into Juilliard, gotta practice 50 hours a day. Sacrafice seeing the sun! COFFEE!"

The only way that I personally found to make money playing classical guitar that I could handle was to get a doctorate and get a job teaching at a university, and play shows on the side. Sounds pretty sweet right? I could be a professor, I could have my own library, tweed jackets with patches on the elbows, smoke pipe tobacco and say things like, "I disagree." It's not all roses, especially when considering the student debt. Eastman wasn't a cheap place to go to. Worth it, but not cheap.

But what about touring? The Ying String Quartet started by playing very small community centers, building their base of fans slowly. Eventually, they became a very highly regarded string quartet. They even ended up as the quartet in residence at the Eastman School of Music. Not bad. I like their story, because they really put themselves out there, which brings me to my final point: How many classical guitarists are really putting themselves out there? Are they too afraid of making a mistake?

The ones who are putting themselves out there recognize the trouble they are asking for, and they accept it. They accept the fact that they will not make an assured amount of money until later, when they have notoriety. They will make many mistakes. They will be burned quite a few times. They realize that they have a lot of work to do in their careers that equals or exceeds the amount of work it took them to have gotten where they wanted to be musically. But they do it anyways because they love it. Dan Lippel is one of these guitarists.

Dan and I were in a bar in NYC when we were talking about motivation. Dan said this:

"If during your darkest period of life, where everything is going to total s**t, you still feel as if you can't live without your guitar, then it's obvious what you must do.

I agree.

If you are a classical guitarist, and you want to be up there with the best classical guitarists at least as far as notoriety is concerned, do it. Don't mess around, just do it. Get out there, tour, and expect that people will call you crazy. It will not make sense, it will seem like you are hitting your head against a wall. But if you fight for it, it will come.

I remember friends in college comparing Mozart and Beethoven. At this point in my life, 9 years later, I don't think there is a comparison! Both are just so distinct and well regarded that it wouldn't feel right to put them on a teeter-totter.

According to one friend, Mozart had the melody, and Beethoven had the chords. Um, What about the 5th symphony? What about "Ode to Joy?" I think both of them had it. Anyhow, I wonder how those guys approached writing melody. Mozart seemed to just bubble to the top with melody. His work is populated with them. However, he didn't really challenge the harmonic status-quo until much later in his life, towards the end actually. It seemed that Beethoven challenged the norms of harmonic structure his entire life. This doesn't mean he just ignored melody though. How can a person not get "Ode to Joy" totally stuck in their head?

With luck I won't make a value judgment, but I think there is something to creating melodies that are hummable. Don't get me wrong. Any melody that comes from the heart (cheesy but true) is a good melody. But the hummable ones? Maybe that's what get's me.

Hey look at that- I just compared Beethoven and Mozart. Oops.

Yesterday I brought up the point that melody can come from just playing a chord. When a person creates a melody from an already existing chord, they are able to use whatever part of the scale they would like over it, as long as it sounds good with their ears of course. I think there is yet another way that is just becoming clearer to me, and that is to come up with the melody first.

If you are like everyone, there has been times when you just can't get a melody out of your head. It could be "Like a Virgin" by Madonna. It could be "Wonderwall" by Oasis [this is a great song to sing if you have a different song in your head!]. The point is that the melody is so memorable that you could sing it in the car at the drop-of-a-hat. I have a huge gut feeling that these very singable melodies came first, before there were any chords created for the song.

Try this out:

Take the phrase, "I want to be a lover, I want to be discovered," and hum it in your mind. Randomly put pitches to them. Randomly give one word emphasis over another. After you are singing the same thing over and over, then see if you can put some chords to it.

If you do this, comment back and tell me about your experience!!!

The question I should have asked yesterday is what order do they come from. Do they come before the music, or after?

If the music comes before, could it be that the person creating the melody only hears the possibilities that chord presents? I was wondering this, because when I hear a chord, I think of all the possible permutations of notes that can be sung with it. Like for example, I could choose any tone from a major scale to sing over a major chord, but I can also choose a Lydian mode, as it fits the chord as well. After all, a major chord is only three notes, and I would be adding a #11.

The natural extension of this is to take a chord progression, and make it work. Many chord progressions work with one parent scale too. Anyhow, the point is that this can be one way to create a melody. Chords first, melody second. This is very cool and worth messing around with, but what if the melody came first?

More on this tomorrow...