A question to my fellow piano composers/improvisers.

[Derek]

Does your music come from occassional inspiration, or do you believe that creativity has much more to do with hard work and craftsmanship? (i.e. learning the tricks of the trade as it were). I personally believe it is mainly the latter, though certainly we do all experience days of such elation through creativity it feels like inspiration. 

However I find I've created some of my best stuff on days when I was feeling quite the opposite of inspired...it seems to be a skill you build rather than a direct consequence of a positive or negative state of mind.

[rob47]

My improvi/composing comes from two simple concepts.

1.) Ignore theory when writing/improvising
2.) Copy Liszt

[m1469]

Well, I am not religious about my composition nor my improvisations.  I do those when I feel like it, so I might say that I only do them when I feel inspired.  It is a goal for me, however, to make a point of doing both everyday, for a certain amount of time.  I have found that when I sit down to compose, I enjoy using form models and may treat it as an exercise to try my hand at a certain form. 

What has happened a few times along the way, I will become completely overtaken by my involvement with it to the point where I cannot sleep until it is done.  So, many times, if I will actually finish something it happens within 24 hrs of its "beginning".  When I get like this, beyond the inspiration to sit and compose in the first place, I feel almost as though I am simply channelling something through me.  Everything is just flowing through me and it is almost unstoppable.  I would also call this inspiration, perhaps, for lack of a better word.

I have noticed, however, that this very thing happens with other forms of expression for me as well; poetry, drawing, beading, writing, etc..   I am sometimes inclined to think it is good to wait for that wind which picks up my motivation toward activity, but I am realizing it may be preferable to form habits.  I am quite addicted to inspiration, however, and would not wish for a mundane attitude to destroy those possible moments of channelled delights.  Perhaps my overall understanding is in dire need of maturation.

m1469

[ted]

These days I prefer to couch this frequently discussed issue in terms of the conscious and the unconscious. It seems to me that the feeling m1469 aptly describes as "channelling" occurs when when we become intensely aware of ideas emanating from our unconscious. Usually this does not happen (except in dreams and induced states) because the conscious mind is very much in control and wants to stay there. I think it is more a case of learning to balance the two to produce creative states of mind. Pure unconscious wouldn't be terribly effective without memory and some conscious means of realising thought - improvising or writing out. Purely conscious, day by day musical creation, working everything out with tweezers, so to speak, is too cold for my taste, although many writers seem to work happily in this way.

For me then, it is not so much a case of either one thing or the other, but a continual task of developing both in tandem so they form the feedback loop critical to interesting results. For me also, this happy balance is much more readily achieved in improvisation than in composition, simply because of the colossal speed difference between the two processes.

The creative states in question are very eloquently discussed by J.B. Priestley in his "Over the Long High Wall". He calls them "time one", "time two" and "time three" - meaning conscious, unconscious and the optimal state of awareness of the unconscious.

 

[quantum]

My improvisations tend more towards inspiration than the meticulous working out with tweezers.  I feed off any idea I may have at the moment, simple or complex - I may wish to convey "washing the dishes" in music.  I take a lot of my ideas from ordinary daily life and thus do not wait for a flash of intense inspiration to improvise. 
 
I also try to integrate elements of composition into my improvisations mainly to give a sense of coherence or structure.  It has supprised me many times wen people that have heard an improv of mine say it sounded like a pre-written composition (I guess I somehow have built in compositional structure into my improvisations).

Then again, sometimes my improvisations are totally wild and free.  Breaking common conceptions of how one should "play the piano."  In this respect I often try to extend the piano's sound and pianistic technique to it's extreemes - playing the piano in a way it is rarely intended to be. 

[daral]

Since I have virtually no musical training whatsoever, my composition tends strongly towards the inspirational.  I tend to just invent whatever theme I can think of and develop it through even more improvising until it sounds right.

[Torp]

Most of my best "ideas" come from what would commonly be called mistakes.  I have learned that mistakes are nothing more than the randomness of the universe taking control.  I've learned to be open those things when they happen.  Then I explore them more from that point.  The key for me is to just play often and long enough for the randomness to happen.

Well, after reading that paragraph again, maybe I should take the doctors advice and get back on the meds...

Jef

[Derek]

Most of my best "ideas" come from what would commonly be called mistakes. I have learned that mistakes are nothing more than the randomness of the universe taking control. I've learned to be open those things when they happen. Then I explore them more from that point. The key for me is to just play often and long enough for the randomness to happen.

Well, after reading that paragraph again, maybe I should take the doctors advice and get back on the meds...

Jef

A mistake may produce a different sound that you had not heard before, but it is your intelligence and musical judgement that allows you to pick it out as something worthwhile and musical. My point is that chaos only has choices among possible orders, and those orders are created by your mind (in the case of making music). I personally don't believe my mind is random, if that were the case I don't think I'd be able to grasp mathematics at all. (for example)

[pokeythepenguin]

Most of my stuff is Formalated Music (look it up) or follows 12-tone matrices so it doesn't really matter what state of mind I'm in because it is pretty mathematical, though when writing in a more standard form I'd say your own mood can really effect the way the piece comes out.