(by 2 people)
Imagine... You appear on a talk show to tout your latest film, yet all you can do is recite lines from scripts. As an actor, you may be brilliant. Yet, as a "speaker" and "conversationalist," you are a miserable failure. So it is with today's "traditionally-trained" pianists.
For centuries, pianists were full-bodied musicians - fluent in "music making" - creators, capable of playing past the page with masterful aural, theoretical, and technical skills. Those days are past.
The compleat pianist is nearly extinct. Today, pianists are little more than "technicians" who engage in "expressive recitation." 9 out of 10 are bound to the note. Even our competition winners, while capable of great feats of technical virtuosity, are creative dunces, incapable of the simplest exercise in musical creation. Ask the average Tchaikovsky winner to spontaneously re-harmonize a simple nursery tune!
But this artistic deformation has joined jaded audiences to pave a path of opportunity for the creatively adept compleat pianist...
How the Compleat Pianist Mesmerizes Audiences...
Wherever He Goes!
- You're accompanying a vocalist in a concert. With one voice, the audience shouts, "Encore!" Backstage, the soloist turns to you: "Let's do 'When the Saints Go Marching in'" (with no score). You've got 7 seconds to prepare. Can you improvise it? play it in a good key for the soloist's range? with 2 exciting modulations? take a solo to build to the finish? spontaneously prep the singer with a doubly augmented finale? beam as the audience erupts in a roar?!
Compleat Pianists have done it...and more! - At a birthday party, you are asked to play "Happy Birthday." Can you rouse the guests? follow up with 10 minutes of variations on the theme (of "HB")? wow your fellow artists, including Juilliard-trained masters?
Compleat Pianists have done this...and more! - One of the acts/performers has just fallen ill. Your prepared repertoire is exhausted. Can you "come up with" something in short order? by ear? in stellar style? how much? (the compleat pianist is unlimited - 10 minutes, 10 hours, he can improvise it!)
Compleat Pianists do this every day...and more!
3 Reasons Why This Is a Path to Success for a Growing Number of Pianists
- Today, pianists struggle to carve out increasingly refined interpretations of standard repertoire, to create unique readings of the same old words.
But "new interpretations" are hard to come by. And audiences are jaded, ears stuffed with so many interpretations of the "Pathetique" that they blur. They want "fresh" music. They want to feel the exhilaration that comes from music erupting "in the moment" from the (hearts and) hands of skilled, inspired musicians. They want "music makers." - The compleat pianist is in demand. Why? He is versatile and flexible - skilled reader, analyst, and innovator - ready to play as close to the score...or as far from it...as the occasion calls for.
Since many occasions call for the musician to transcend recitation, a mere reader (however expressive) will not suffice - and will be rejected. In this age of cookie-cutter traditionalists, the compleat pianist is becoming more treasured than ever before. - Finally, being (and becoming) a creative pianist is more personally fulfilling than being a mere recitalist (more on that below). Once you feel the fire in your belly - flowing from your fingers - you'll know the freedom and power of the "compleat pianist"!
So, whatever your motive -- personal pleasure, audience applause, or career success -- this lens is here to guide you along the path of the compleat pianist...
Featured Resource on Creativity (in Music)
"Free Play: The Power of Improvisation in Life and the Arts"
(Nachmanovitch, Stephen)
"Many musicians are fabulously skilled at playing the black dots on the printed page, but mystified by how the dots got there in the first place and apprehensive of playing without dots.
"Music theory does not help here; it teaches rules of the grammar, but not what to say. When people ask me how to improvise, only a little of what I can say is about music. The real story is about spontaneous expression, and it is therefore a spiritual and a psychological story rather than a story about the technique of one art form or another."
[paragraph break and emphasis added for online readability - Barry]
(Nachmanovitch, Stephen)
"Many musicians are fabulously skilled at playing the black dots on the printed page, but mystified by how the dots got there in the first place and apprehensive of playing without dots.
"Music theory does not help here; it teaches rules of the grammar, but not what to say. When people ask me how to improvise, only a little of what I can say is about music. The real story is about spontaneous expression, and it is therefore a spiritual and a psychological story rather than a story about the technique of one art form or another."
[paragraph break and emphasis added for online readability - Barry]
10 Books toward a Successful Career as a Creative Musician!
- Free Play
- "Wow!" and (it that's not eoungh) look at the raves for this book by Keith Jarrett, Yehudi Menuhin, Norman Cousins, Robert Pirsig (of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance")....
- Improvisation: Music from the Inside Out
- Nothing else like it. Combines eastern insight with western strengths. A seeker with real wisdom, applauded by many. Sadly, this book, along with Chase' "Just Being at the Piano," is out of print! I've bought up several copies, and I suggest you do too.
- Fundamentals of Musical Composition (Schoenberg)
- Forget "atonalism" (and Schoenberg's particular organization via 12-tone serialism). Nobody taught tonal theory like Schoenberg! (Well, maybe Hindemith, but that's another discussiion.)
- Jazz Theory
- Mark Levine is unbeatable in Jazz Pedagogy today. Yes, the Mehegan books are still standard. But, IMnsHO, Levine tops them with "Jazz Theory." Add his "Jazz Piano," and you can't do better! (And his publisher? Buy up everything by Sher Music!)
- Lateral Thinking
- The father of "lateral thinking" (which earned an entry in the Oxford English Dict.) has pioneered many metaphors & techniques for teaching, inducing, and conceiving of creativity. One of my favorite practical ones is "Six Thinking Hats" (which, imo, fed into Tom Kelley's recent "The Ten Faces of Innovation." And his later "De Bono's Thinking Course" is more thorough in its presentation of his specific techniques.
- A Whack on the Side of the Head
- Explorer. Artist. Judge. Warrior. What fun! and what truth. Also, don't miss von Oeck's "A Kick in the Seat of the Pants."
- The Art of Innovation
- This started it, but his just-released "The Ten Faces of Innovation" is poised to top it. A few years ago, I read the first and was moved...now, I own the second and hardly know how to begin. Hey! no "method" is perfect, but this one's comes as close as I've seen. Don't let it's target - the stifling of organizational creativity - distract you from using it as an individual!
- Flow: The Pychology of Optimal Experience
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has written a keen assortment of books, but "Flow" is the foundation. His more recent Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention should fascinate any student of creativity in any field.
- A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age
- Not only is this one provocative, well-supported, and encouraging to Creatives, but it could prove to be the forerunner of success for many. (I fear we're far apart politically & philosophically, but we're brothers in the fight for creative value!) Enjoy Dan's blog at http://www.danpink.com.
- The Compleat Pianist's Bookshelf
- => For the full list of 23+ Resources Guaranteed to Propel Your Creativity to the Starts, see The Compleat Pianist Bookshelf.
Top Quotes on Creativity (in Music & Otherwise)
where the greatness of the speaker is not so important as that of the quotation
- (It would be easy to assume that this quote, by Joel Spolsky, of "Joel on Software," has no relevance to music, improv, or piano... It would also be wrong.)
"Pointers and recursion require a certain ability to reason, to think in abstractions, and, most importantly, to view a problem at several levels of abstraction simultaneously. And thus, the ability to understand pointers and recursion is directly correlated with the ability to be a great programmer."
(from Joel's new article, The Perils of JavaSchools)
Keys to a Solid "Method" (or Systematic Approach) for Exploding Your Creativity
you don't have to use these to become creative, but wow! will they help!
1. Don't miss the forest for the trees. Go for "Flow" [link Michael C's book here]
2. Don't ignore the trees (of detailed, meticulous, rote practice) for the forest (and the pursuit of effortless swashbuckling freedom)!
3. Sleep on it. Osmosis DOES work -- if you use it right. Listen to good-to-great music. Fall asleep to it.
4. Merge rote and creative practice. Fight the modern tendency to compartmentalize "classical" and "creative" practice.
5. Use a powerful, efficient system to master creative musicianship THROUGH the "composer's ear & mindset" - such as my "Tortoise Approach" (book upcoming...)
2. Don't ignore the trees (of detailed, meticulous, rote practice) for the forest (and the pursuit of effortless swashbuckling freedom)!
3. Sleep on it. Osmosis DOES work -- if you use it right. Listen to good-to-great music. Fall asleep to it.
4. Merge rote and creative practice. Fight the modern tendency to compartmentalize "classical" and "creative" practice.
5. Use a powerful, efficient system to master creative musicianship THROUGH the "composer's ear & mindset" - such as my "Tortoise Approach" (book upcoming...)
Creativity Gurus (& their Sites)
- Edward de Bono
- The author of "Lateral Thinking" (term added to the Oxford English Dictionary), creator of "Six Thinking Hats" and so many other influential "thinking techniques" and helpful metaphors for "thinking about thinking," Edward de Bono may be the original "scholar of thinking."
- Roger von Oech (Of "A Whack on the Side of the Head")
- Von Oeck balances out De Bono's more academic approach -- though both are quite readable. His metaphors for the roles needed to fertilize, cultivate & sell ideas are priceless (if not entirely original): Explorer. Artist. Judge. Warrior.
- IDEO's "Ten Faces of Innovation"
- The site that matches Tom Kelley's "The Ten Faces of Innovation." Matchless.
- Michael Gelb
- Gelb teaches "How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day." He's an expert in "creative thinking," "accelerated learning," and "maximizing human potential."
- Michael Michalko
- Michael Michalko is the author of "Thinkertoys" and "Cracking Creativity." A plethora of ideas & techniques for idea generation. Good stuff.
- "Orbiting the Giant Hairball" -- Gordon MacKenzie
- Oh, my! Oh, my! Oh, my!
I wept for hours after reading this. Thanks, Richard Tait!
Composing & Theory Myth of the Day
not knowing the "reasons why" combined with "rules masked at laws" causes alot of musicians unnecessary grief
MYTH: "The great composers of the 'common practice period' despised and decried parallel perfect 5ths: Mozart and (certainly) Bach never used them!"
[Corrective coming SOON...]
[Corrective coming SOON...]
7 Myths about Creativity
1. "I'm either creative or not" (nobody can develop creativity!)
2. Taking "traditional lessons" will help me to become more creative (and self-expressive)
3. Practicing "by rote" will kill your natural creativity.
4. The most creative musicians are the most successful
5. With modern music/instrument technology, who needs creativity any more?
6. Creativity will have little or no bearing on my "rote performances"
7. The best way to stretch my creativity is to study Jazz
8. [BONUS:]It's all a metaphor...and "the One and the Many" problem is the solution.
2. Taking "traditional lessons" will help me to become more creative (and self-expressive)
3. Practicing "by rote" will kill your natural creativity.
4. The most creative musicians are the most successful
5. With modern music/instrument technology, who needs creativity any more?
6. Creativity will have little or no bearing on my "rote performances"
7. The best way to stretch my creativity is to study Jazz
8. [BONUS:]It's all a metaphor...and "the One and the Many" problem is the solution.
Off-topic, Good-to-Great Resource
- Sacred Rhetoric
- This southern presbyterian knew his stuff. And he proved it in his theological, dogmatic and historical works.
Love him or hate him, his arguments, or their conclusions - here was a master of delivery, and that of well-formed arguments! (BTW, the book is from a man, theological tradition, and era in which "rhetoric" implied neither "deceit" nor negative assessment.)
Elements of Creative Craft
What do you need to master to implement your creativity holistically?
Stages of Creative Complexity: Improvising vs. Composing vs. Arranging vs. Altering/Amending/Embellishing
Harmony
Counterpoint
Form
Mental Discipline AND Flexibility
[Isolate "Modulation"]
[Stress that the craft of melody and rhythm is not systematically well-taught?]
[Instrumental Mastery]
Harmony
Counterpoint
Form
Mental Discipline AND Flexibility
[Isolate "Modulation"]
[Stress that the craft of melody and rhythm is not systematically well-taught?]
[Instrumental Mastery]
Exemplars of (Musical) Creativity
old standards and new discoveries -- my very personal picks from a Who's Who of Creative Musicians
Jane Monheit
John Bayless
The Real Group
Miles Davis ("Kind of Blue")
Trinovox
Shaman
[Honorable Mention - Roger Williams, Peter Nero, Richard Glazier, etc.]
[my list is biased toward classical and jazz genres]
John Bayless
The Real Group
Miles Davis ("Kind of Blue")
Trinovox
Shaman
[Honorable Mention - Roger Williams, Peter Nero, Richard Glazier, etc.]
[my list is biased toward classical and jazz genres]
The Creative Mind
What It Is, What It Means, How to Develop It
"7 Sins of Memory"
de Bono
Steven Pinker
Douglas Hofstadter
Jeff Hawkins
Kurtzweil
"Music, Mind and Brain"
Jackendoff
de Bono
Steven Pinker
Douglas Hofstadter
Jeff Hawkins
Kurtzweil
"Music, Mind and Brain"
Jackendoff
