Tag: Perfect Sound Forever

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Habits and rituals, and getting through a creative funk

In Perfect Sound Forever, J. Vognsen asks musicians and composers (including me) how we “maintain an on-going passion for music”:

Album after album, concert after concert, how do you avoid routine suffocating the joy of it? As your list of musical experiences gets longer, how do you make sure each new one remains special?

I read with interest the reponses from Nina Garcia, Angelica Sanchez and others. Charles Hayward’s statement, in particular, (“I like aspects of the routine thing, setting up my drums builds the vibe towards the gig, it’s a joyful thing to clamp the pedal to the kick drum”) resonanted with me. As for me:

For me, I’m not sure ‘habit’ was ever a bad thing for my creative work. I feel like habit, in the context of creative practices, lives next door to ritual….

Habit and ritual are things I hold to during, and get me through, moments of creative funk. The ritual of getting up and making myself do creative work (or making myself ‘go through the motions’ of doing creative work) keeps my creative muscles working and not completely seizing-up from lack of use. From taking the guitar out of the case, switching the amp on, sitting down, stretching and warming-up (doing the guitarist’s equivalent of long-tones or drum rudiments), to grabbing my notebook and sketching, sketching, sketching until a shape emerges. [Read the rest…]

If you enjoyed Vognsen’s piece, please also check out ‘Creative Dead Ends in Music,’ his previous piece in Perfect Sound Forever to which I also contributed a response.

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Beauty into dread-inducing dreamscapes and the detritus of a creative life

A new galaxy in Park’s universe? David Lynch vs. Andrei Tarkovsky? And what’s hidden that will be unearthed? Lee Rice Epstein reviews Of Life, Recombinant (NEWJAiM9) in Free Jazz:

Of Life, Recombinant tells multiple stories at once, opening up a wide aperture and displaying stunningly drawn vistas. The four-song suite makes for a fantastic headphone album, as small details invite your attention ever more deeply throughout…. The fugue-like state is but one-layer of Park’s suite. As they progress, ‘Game: Mutation,’ ‘Naught Opportune,’ ‘Are Variant,’ and the 30-minute ‘Of Life, Recombinant’ continually pitch one direction, pivot on multiple axes, and branch out in new directions. That’s true as much for the sonics—with pre-recorded material mixed and matched over itself—as it is for the emotional throughlines, in some cases leading listeners down long corridors of chilly anticipation, in others playing up the subtle intimacy of quiet tones…. And unmistakably, Park’s guitar is itself a treasure chest of delights—long, thrilling sections of beauty fold into chilly, dread-inducing dreamscapes, each of which will enchant and delight in equal measure. [Read the rest…]

[About this album…] [Get the CD/download from NEWJAiM (Bandcamp)…] [All reviews…]

Creative Dead Ends in Music

Elsewhere, J. Vognsen, writing in Perfect Sound Forever, asked composers and performers (including myself) for our thoughts on failure in the context of creative work: “Why does some music end up not in the ears of listeners but in the dustbin, or perhaps never leaving the mind of the creator in the first place?”

Every piece I do leaves behind detritus of a creative life: abandoned exercises, studies, mockups, etcetera. A lot of my time and energy as a performer, specifically as an improviser, is spent in preparation; off-stage, in practice and in study. Testing things out, sometimes speculatively, sometimes with a particular goal in mind, sometimes creating studies to more clearly define a problem or problematic; these exercises and studies can help me hone in on a particular technique or strategy, they can help me discover better ways of getting from A-to-B….

But sometimes the creative detritus can be unplanned and have a greater impact—a greater impact on energy expended, on time and effort. [Read the rest…]

The piece is very much worth reading. In particular, I enjoyed reading, and really related to, Carla Kihlstedt’s take (“my creative failures… fall into three basic categories: The Hollow, The Half-baked and The Missed Marks”), and Nick Didkovsky’s telling of The CHORD Origin Story is a total blast.

If you enjoyed that piece, please also check out some of my recent written work including ‘Broken Families: Collectivism, Violence, Imagined Utopias and Improvisation,’ and my reflections on working through times of uncertainty, anxiety, and of doubt.