I really like making music; it’s pretty much my favorite thing in the world to do. At this point, I think my songwriting skills are okay, or at least they’re way better than they were a few years ago. I mean, maybe you’re reading this and you’re like, “Well I don’t really like your music actually,” which is fair enough. But if I were to show you stuff I made in high school, you’d definitely be able to see improvement. Maybe I’ll do that at the end of this post.
One thing I’ve learned is that it’s ironically difficult to find the inspiration to write when you have an infinite amount of possibilities before you, which, these days, you pretty much do. Personally, if I don’t have an idea in my head already, and I’m put in a situation where I need to be creative, it doesn’t seem to happen.
Here’s an example: this fall/winter, I worked as a composer for a documentary (which should be airing in the next month or so. I’ll keep you posted). It being a science documentary, most of the music would fit into the electronica genre, which is huge. So after a while, it became extremely difficult to compose content that stood out against the torrent of music I had to pump out (keep in mind my job is to create an extensive sound bank under strict deadlines). A lot of my problem was due to the fact that everything was kind of rushed, but another part of it was because when I have a large amount of tools in front of me, I tend to just stick to the writing techniques I’m comfortable with. In a way, I was limited by my lack of limitations.
If you were to ask a cook to make three delicious one-piece meals out of items that can be found in a grocery store, chances are you’re going to end up with Shepard’s Pie, Beef Stew and Lasagna, which are all great meals. But what if you told the cook that the first meal could only use items from the ‘Asian Imports’ section, the second was to be vegetarian and the third must incorporate wine? My guess is that you’d finish with much more creative results.
When I make my own music, I find being limited is where some of my best ideas have come from; when I’m forced to make the most out of little resources, it ends up being a very different base that, when expanded upon, has great potential. And in this way, I don’t have a vast selection to stress out over.
An example of this would be this little toy keyboard I have called a Concertmate 380. I think I’ve owned this since I was about three years old and it’s one of the best purchases my parents have made. The sounds on it are super cheesy, but very unique. If you heard it, you could probably make a decent guess at what kind of device it was coming from without even seeing it. But this instrument has limitations: one of them is that you can only play two notes at a time on it.
I remember being at a youth retreat and I decided to take this thing along just for the fun of it. There’s a particular sound on it that, instead of playing just one tone, plays an interval of a perfect fifth. When I discovered this, I thought to myself, “If I can only hold down two keys at a time, but each key will play the interval of a perfect fifth, I could play 7th chords,” and I went on to create a chord progression based on only being able to play major and minor 7th chords. I remembered it, and when I got home from the retreat I made up a melody to go along with it. It’s one of my favorite musical drafts to date, and I really hope to record something soon that will incorporate that idea.
But it just goes to show you that, when you have little to work with, you’ll be forced to make something out of it that you like. Then you can remove your limitations and build on what you came up with. I’m a musician, so obviously I used musical examples. But I hope you visual artists and poets haven’t stopped reading, because I think the same could be true for you too. I’m not a visual artist, but I would encourage anyone who is to limit yourself in some way and see what you can come up with. Try using an oddly shaped canvas and see if you can make it look good; draw only with straight lines; paint something using only two of three primary colors. I don’t know. Like I said, I’m not a visual artist so I’m just saying things. But I’ve already tried this method with lyrics (since I suck at them) and it actually helped. That’s why I think it’s a helpful approach for any form of art.
This is why photographers will try out things like pinhole photography, and it’s the same concept that’s behind many forms of poetry (the haiku, acrostic, diamante, etc…)
For one of my projects at Recording Arts Canada, we were given access to a sample bank with which we had to compose a piece of music. We could only record one source; everything else had to be from the bank. This is what came of it:
Project
It’s not my best work, but I like it considering I didn’t have a lot of time to work on it and the sample bank we were working from was pretty small. In any case, it’s a good example of a situation where having to make due with what you’ve got produces great results.
I’m currently working on a song which was originally written on a Kalimba (or African Thumb Piano). Because the instrument is tuned to a certain key, and because of the way it is played (in other words, because of its limitations), I ended up with a sound that I never would’ve come up with if I had composed on a piano. So as I add accompaniment, melody and rhythm to the piece, the result is something very different from anything I’ve written before. So stay tuned for that.
You artists out there should tell me what you think, and if you end up using this method, let me know how it goes! In the meantime, here’s possibly some of the most insane electronica I’ve ever made, from my high school days:
Garbage