arrange • compose • conduct
Posts discussing creativity, both in and outside of music
Get art as close as possible to its final form to hone the last 10%. I’m looking at a printed draft of our tour program for next month. After several hours over a couple of weeks cleaning it up in InDesign, I realized that I needed it on paper. There […]
We’re celebrating Bobby McFerrin this weekend! As I’ve written before, the best Bobby McFerrin album is whatever one you’re listening to, and his live concerts are always revelatory. I can literally put myself in my seat at every Bobby concert I’ve ever attended and remember the process of trying to […]
How do you know it’s your passion? I have written music at every hour of the day and night. I have the times I gravitate towards in 2023, but 2013 me used different parts of the day, and 2003 me was frantically writing a thesis and arrangements for class – […]
You can’t be a professional if you’re waiting for the creative mood to strike. You have to plan for it. Indeed, you have to plan a lot, because opportunities to do creative work are often time-limited. There are days of the week I know I won’t have the opportunity to […]
Just stay the right amount ahead. I like to stay ahead in preparing for things. But if you get too far ahead in your preparations, there are several hazards that can pop up. First, your advanced preparations can be unusable, because situations evolve over time. If I’m prepared twelve weeks […]
Your creation doesn’t need to have everything. Just make what’s necessary, and then stop. I finished a vocal jazz arrangement today that fits on two pages. Not an a cappella ballad, either! In this case, I was casting around, trying to see what kind of soli, shout chorus, vocalese, or […]
It’s important to say thank you. Even to yourself. Every time I get a jar of last summer’s strawberry jam from my pantry and start spreading it on sandwich bread, I take a second to thank past me. June 2022 Jed worked very hard on that jam in the summer […]
It’s poetry time. Let the prose wait for a week. A celebrate quote from former New York governor Mario Cuomo states, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” I don’t know about the work of politics, but I do think that prose and poetry do have seasons. The week […]
Alice Parker is one of the wisest, most settled musicians I’ve ever spent time with. She knows what works for her, knows what her opinions are, and knows how to express what she hears in her mind. That’s what has made it all the more inspiring, in my time with […]
There are three reasons you think a subject matter is boring. You’re not in the right headspace to absorb it. Tired, stressed, distracted. It isn’t in a realm of knowledge/insight that is attractive to you. We all have subjects that interest us more, especially as time goes on and we […]