arrange • compose • conduct
Posts discussing creativity, both in and outside of music
If you listen to Bobby McFerrin’s collected recordings in chronological order, you will find an artist who reinvented his musical approach with each album. Here are his albums just from the 1990’s: 1990: Medicine Music. a cappella group vocals with original songs, in collaboration with his Voicestra. 1992: Play. Live […]
My son made custom Valentines for his classmates – assigning them to a Greek God and sketching a symbol for each. I sat and helped him with inking the drawings – tracing his sketches and then erasing the original pencil. It’s so satisfying to remove all of those rough sketch […]
I’m seeing Bobby McFerrin tonight in concert for the sixth time, and that prompted me to do a quick retrospective on the roughly quarter century of my hearing him perform. Each one was unique and has remained with me, as the best live performances do. April, 1996 My first time […]
I’m pretty rotten at drawing hands. As a doodler, that’s not a huge deal. In fact, I’ve just started drawing my people with arms that just end abruptly at the wrist. Since I’m drawing mostly for my kids, no big deal. But it’s a great way to define the difference […]
Some singers never learn the joy of getting beyond the notes and rhythms. It’s obvious when they aren’t in a hurry to get past learning of the notes. If they knew the joy that awaited, they’d want to hurry up and get there! Alice Parker says that she can only […]
I’m a good proofreader – I fairly reliably can open a program and book and find the one error that the publication process missed. And yet, I am unreliable at catching typos or errors in my own writing – both words and music. I think it’s the old problem of […]
I used to think linearly in my writing–work on one project until it’s done, and then start the next one. More recently, I’ve found two big benefits from having multiple current projects at once. First, it enables me to stay more consistently creative. Knowing that I have several things to […]
Keep going. That’s my 2020 resolution. Keep learning, of course. Keep dreaming, definitely. Keep connecting, keep teaching, keep growing, keep questioning, keep improving. But most of all: keep going.
In my experience, every piece you write makes you feel like a new composer again. That’s because every aspect of writing a piece comes with limitations and guides you in specific directions. They all make demands on your writing that require you to become a new composer. The text makes […]
Art can feel rare and elusive sometimes – especially for artists, who pour all of their energy into their creation. But I really think that making art is the default. And I was reminded that most forcefully tonight as I watched a dozen performers create a truly remarkable 2 1/2-hour […]