Recipes are the right way to start cooking. There’s a better place to end.
I love the approach to cooking that says, here are the general ideas – ratios, ingredient pairings, cooking methods – and then encourages you to explore within the framework. But it’s not how I started. I started cooking by carefully following well-written recipes. Recipes helped me cook the specific think I wanted to eat, but it took a lot of recipe cooking to get to a general sense of myself as a home cook.
The same is true for all sorts of creative pursuits. It’s best to start with the recipe version – clear, specific instructions for a clear, specific outcome. Over time, you can slowly start to build up the confidence to vary more widely within established frameworks. Call those anti-recipes.
It’s true for music-making, particularly improvisatory genres such as jazz where there is an educational model around learning established patterns and songs before taking on more freedom. It’s also true for sound engineering – as I trained a new sound board operator the last few weeks, I had to give him vary limited, clear parameters for how to approach sound – a recipe. Over time, and a lot of practice, I have developed the ability to have a more open approach to mixing and running a console, whether live or in the recording studio.
It’s true for teaching: young teachers more consistently follow a recipe, while more seasoned teachers are able to improvise within the framework of the curriculum.
Composing, writing, organizing, driving, even dating! All benefit from starting with recipes and growing into anti-recipes over time.
I think that for almost everyone, it’s better to start with a recipe and grow into an anti-recipe.