I’ve written music in one fashion or another for a very long time. My first real piece was a very short piano etude that I wrote in second grade (although my piano teacher was less than thrilled because it was much more like John Cage than Frederic Chopin). It’s the first time I remember understanding that most music is created by someone rather than just appearing from nowhere. I guess as a second grader, folks like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart are really just a bunch of dead guys that couldn’t possibly have written music. Heck, they didn’t even have TV!

Most of my music is written for others to perform, not because I don’t like performing my own stuff but because I typically have so little time to really do justice to my own work. As a result, I haven’t posted much of my music simply because it really isn’t solely mine once another artist puts their stamp on it. And that’s okay. But I digress…

The other day I was talking with some friends about the creative process in general and music composition specifically. These particular friends are more from the “background music” school (ambient stuff used for commercials, industrial video, documentaries, etc. Not really film scoring in the traditional sense but certainly more “write on demand” than I am. They get paid to create for specific projects.

The talk turned, as it often does with these guys, to some nuts and bolts topics of creating. One of the more interesting discussions was the workflow process and the arranging aspects of taking a song from the back of a napkin to a full-blown recordable (or performable) piece of music. Again, because these guys are more used to the non-vocal composing style, it was interesting to hear their points of view. Lots of differences in our approaches.

But what was consistent among all of us was the need to have the right environment in order to feel (and therefore be) creative. That’s not to say that I haven’t written songs in line at the supermarket, in the car, standing in the airport, etc. But the reality is that most of those songs end up being grist for a finer mill that only really gets employed in the comfort of my own studio (or in someone else’s studio that is similar to mine). And I started to come to the realization that I’ve been having some difficulty on the creative side because my environment (i.e. my studio) has become a utilitarian mess rather than the creative space it once was.

So, I’ve resolved that over the next few weeks, as I’m revamping Sacred Loops, I’m going to revamp my creative space as well. I’ll do my best to document the process (at least in discussion and perhaps in pictures if I get highly motivated). I’ve seen many of the spaces that you folks work in, and some are breathtaking in their beauty and, as important, simplicity. I’m hoping to get inspired by some of that work, and I’ve also started scouring the Internet, books, magazines, and other materials for ideas and concepts to get me started.

More to come…

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 11:56 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.