arrange • compose • conduct
Posts discussing creativity, both in and outside of music
Once upon a time, it was a fun piece of trivia to reveal that the jazz singer Mel Tormé was also a songwriter. “Did you know that ‘The Christmas Song’ was written by Mel Tormé?” These days, I can’t say that. The name Mel Tormé will elicit only blank stares […]
How you get it done doesn’t matter. You can organize your rehearsal plan with a spreadsheet, a notes app, a pen and paper. You can mark your score with eighteen colored pencils, with highlighters, or a stylus and ForScore. You can arrange or compose at a piano, a DAW, or […]
Like you, I have the unfortunate tendency to get into my own head. I’m thinking about the things on my seemingly endless to-do list; I’m thinking about goals, dreams, plans, frustrations, disappointments, fears. I’m thinking. For me, at least, the cure is to be making something. When I’m making something, […]
Do you enjoy being a part of scrappy organizations? I teach in music departments – often the scrappiest part of a school. Fighting for every dollar, getting creative to solve problems. I love vocal jazz – is one of the scrappiest contingents in the choral world – working to convince […]
Don’t sit and wait for your past inspiration to return. It very well might not. Go out and find it. You can’t find your passion, your creativity, or your drive by waiting for it to come back. No, if you’re feeling blocked, I think the thing to do is go […]
It’s short. The most consistent block I find in my creative work is my self-judgement. I have a hard time objectively assessing the work I create, because all I can see and hear are the flaws. But I come with good news. The half-life of that self-judgement is so, so […]
How do you get out of work triage? I have been in triage since August, when I got back from my week visiting with Alice Parker. Too many projects and too little time leads to spending every work moment just trying to “staunch the bleeding” of the most urgent project […]
How do you enter the world? In The West Wing’s third season, the episode title “The U.S. Poet Laureate” features Laura Dern as new poet laureate Tabitha Fortis. She says the following near the end of the episode: “You think I think that an artist’s job is to speak the […]
My primary strategy for solving my beloved Matt Gaffney’s Weekly Crossword Contest is asking the question, “What’s weird?” What’s unexpected, different, or unusual? What stands out from the background? Because very often, that’s part of the secondary puzzle I have to solve. I approach composing and arranging in much the […]
Our brains are great at filling in the gaps in our perception. There are so many optical and even auditory illusions that show the way that our brains extrapolate from what we experience, creating information inside our brains that doesn’t exist in the world. (I think that’s probably the explanation […]