Woke up this morning to find this in a recently left comment:

Both you and Carl are musically talented, and you both state that programming is kind of being creative! Is it possible to coax being musically creative out of someone who isn't sure they have it? I'm sometimes quite creative when coding, but wouldn't know how to go about starting to write a song. How do *you* do it?

Well.

If I’m going to have any readers at all, then it might as well be the ones who ask for the secrets of the universe before lunchtime on Monday :)

I thought a lot about this. It actually ties in very closely to a little project I just started working on. Although the subject matter is different, some of the ideas are the same: How in the hell do you be creative? And, in this case, musically?

Fortunately, I have answers (provided we’re defining answer as “discombobulating mass of early-morning pre-coffee bull!@#$ conjecture that has not been validated by an objective third-party, or even a grossly partial first-party, but rather just spewed out in a lovely font over the RSS readers of the world without a care as to the validity of the whole stinking mess”).

To get you the answers, I’m going to respond to some of the details in the above comment…

Both you and Carl are musically talented, and you both state that programming is kind of being creative!

You bet your curly braces I think programming is creative.

Look at what you have to do to code:

– Learn a whole other language, meant for doing nothing but communicating with a computer

– Take someone else’s (or your own) totally abstract idea and then use that language to make it real

– Deal with the fact that coding is still a relatively young craft, and we’ve barely begun to work the kinks out – think of all the times you’ve had to think beyond the documentation and guidebooks to come up with your own unique solution to a problem – in my experience, this happens pretty much everyday in the coding world

You need to be able to understand something holistically, but also from the level of the nitty-gritty details. You have to be able to make sense of this stuff, and to be able to add to it.

Coding is intensely creative.

And think about that feeling you get after completing a project or a particularly difficult component – it’s a very prideful sort of elation. You want to tell everybody you know how good you feel, and how proud you are of having finally managed to build this bastard.

Writing a song leaves you with the same feeling.

Interesting, no?

Is it possible to coax being musically creative out of someone who isn't sure they have it?

Unlike a lot of people in these times of Political Correctness and the idea of an egalitarian world where everybody is a limitless dynamo of possibilities, I think there are limits.

However, I also think that most people can be somewhat good at something provided they want it badly enough.

My sister, who’s been deaf since some of her earliest days on this planet, learned how to play a few tunes on the piano when she was a kid - she even learned to do a bit of ballet (of course, she’s a bloody genius, and bringing her into this conversation isn’t fair for the rest of us, but I’ll continue). She eventually went on to graduate from one of the toughest colleges in the nation, which has made me look like the asshole of the family each holiday season as we gather ‘round the table to discuss Maya, the deaf college graduate, and Rory, the high-school/college dropout with no excuse.

When she was a kid, there were a lot of people pushing to move her into a sort of cultural isolation where she would go to school with only deaf kids, have deaf friends, and do… well, deaf things, I guess. Instead, she went right through the standard systems put in place for the rest of us, and kicked ass along the way.

People can accomplish a lot when they put in the effort.

So, I’d be surprised to learn that:

1) You don’t “have it” – you might think you don’t, but if you can enjoy music, then you can make the crap

2) Something couldn’t be “coaxed” out of you – it might take a lot of work, but you can eventually get it

Attitude is going to have a lot to do with it. Read this bit that Chris wrote for a good lesson on attitude.

So, let’s just assume that you can do it. You will probably never be a world-renown musical sensation, but you can make yourself happy playing some tunes with friends, which, believe me, is all you need.

I'm sometimes quite creative when coding, but wouldn't know how to go about starting to write a song. How do *you* do it?

I love this question. I’ve been working lately to improve my writing, and one of the things I’ve been wondering about has been “How did [Author X] do it?”

So, the answer here isn’t simple for the simple reason that there simply isn’t one kind of song.

When I write, it happens a little differently each time, but I’ve done it enough to be able to narrow it down to a handful of methods that work for me:

Getting the song for free

This is the best method, but I think you need a lot of time and luck for this one to work.

Take the Chris Sells Burning Man song for example (it’s funny – when I wrote it, I never dreamt how useful it would become later).

I was sitting in a hotel room, reading a post by Chris about his experiences at Burning Man. While I was reading, I saw a picture of Chris dancing around a fire in his kilt with his wife, Melissa. The dancing obviously needed music, and the song just popped into my head. There wasn’t a period of writing – there was nothing, and then there was something.

That can work for a song like the Burning Man song. It’s simple, and my internal censor was shut-off because I didn’t take the song seriously. Not caring is a great way to be creative.

But, for more complicated songs, this method doesn’t work that well. Just like it’s easy to write a “Hello, World!” program without thinking, it’s easy to produce a small song without thinking. Once you want to make your application a little more sophisticated, though, it’s typically a good thing to do a little Thinking and Planning.

Getting part of the song for free

For the slightly more complicated songs I’ve worked on, part of the song typically shows up on my doorstep looking wet and scruffy and in need of a little bit of help to get back on its feet.

In those cases, I might just have a few bars of a tune in my head. No instruments have been chosen. There aren’t any words. Just something up in my noggin going “tee-tum-tum tee-tum — tee-tum-tum tum-tum-tum tee-tum,” and so on. From that initial melody, I work out how to add things that seem to “feel right.”

The last song that I posted was created in this way. I had the first couple guitar parts up in my head as a pretty melody. Figured out how to play them, and then worked with Felix to build the rest of the song from there, adding lyrics, and just making them up on the spot where I hadn’t already thought them up (the vocals in the first half were planned - the vocals in the second half just happened – what you’re hearing is the first take, after which Felix said, “Good enough!”).

This is a fairly typical way of writing for us. There’s a small, base melody, and the rest of the song is built around it.

But, how do you come up with these melodies if they don’t naturally arrive at your doorstep looking wet and scruffy and in need of a little bit of help to get back on their feet?

Read on, mes amis…

Getting nothing for free

Some of my favorite songs that I’ve worked on have been the product of a mood and an instrument.

I’ll tell you right now: I don’t know how to play anything properly. I get by with the guitar, but if you told me we were going to work on a song in the key of C with a diminished, right-handed Salsusian harmony, I’d stare back at you as though you hadn’t said anything at all. This is my brain’s defense mechanism coming online, discarding anything that sounds “hard”. I’m a lazy musician.

If your goal is to play well in a live band, then knowing how to play your instrument is a Very Good Thing. However, if what you want to do is write songs on your own time and your own terms, it’s really a boon to the process to be just one level above Musical Instrument Ignoramus.

People who have been “trained” to play an instrument are exposed to a lot of cliches along the way – standard ways of doing things that fit in with certain disciplines, etc. Understandably, their music can come out sounding cliched, standard, and formulaic.

When you don’t know much about the instrument, though, you’re sort of like a kid who’s doing something for the first time.

When I work out piano parts, I hit the keys the same way a monkey might react for the first time upon seeing its reflection in a mirror. I’m very, very gentle and cautious.

I start out with a note. I plunk the key down a few times. Those plunkings turn into a rhythm, and that rhythm turns into a melody. I play the melody until it’s burned into my brain, and then I start playing with the melody. I plunk a few other keys, a little less timidly, and find interesting things to add to what I’ve already got.

It might sound tedious, but it’s a very pleasant way to write, and I’m often pleased with the results.

With this method, you just start out with a note, and then you add other things to it. It’s like putting one foot in front of the other. Very easy.

Getting it for free by kneecapping your heroes and stealing their work

This is the preferred method of artists everywhere.

Originality is:

1) Overrated

2) Nonexistent

The written history of the guitar dates back to at least the 14th century. There isn’t a note on the bugger that hasn’t been played. There isn’t a chord frettable by human beings that hasn’t been fretted.

People have kicked them to make their music, punched them, tossed them, caught them on fire, and probably used them in new and creative ways to advance the interests of the adult entertainment industry.

If you think you’re going to find something to do on the guitar that nobody else has done, then you’re probably deluding yourself and wasting your time. If you want to get into new, uncharted territory, then you need to build your own instruments (but understand that your instruments will just be strange derivations of those already existing).

Ecclesiastes sums up well what I’m trying to say here.

The way you can put this to your advantage is simple: Piggyback on what’s already there. This is what the best artists do in everything from writing to painting.

T. S. Eliot, easily one of the universe’s Super-Poets, used to regularly steal lines and even entire stanzas from other works, just stopping along the way to translate them into English (he was a clever thief – stealing from sources most of his readers would never encounter).

In music, this kind of theft isn’t only easy, but you can even do it in a way that will allow you to live with yourself and your conscience, should you be the type of person who gets all ruffled about things like this.

Here’s what you do:

– Develop some technical ability on an instrument

– Put on your favorite CD

– Advance to your favorite song

– Start playing over the top

– Plunk around until you’re playing something in key with the song you’re listening to (you need to develop your ear a bit, but that will come with time and practice) – keep it simple!

– Do this until you have something that fits comfortably over the top of what you’re listening to

– Play it over and over again so that you can learn it

– Shut off the CD player

– Play the melody you wrote – all on its own

– Enjoy the melody you’ve just created – use it to build the rest of your song

Learning how to play the instrument – how to hit the keys or fret the guitar – isn’t a huge challenge. If you have enough hand-eye coordination to play video games, or baseball, or whatever, then you have everything you need to play an instrument.

Once you’ve gotten started with that, the rest is just finding a method that works for you.

How was that?

I hope this helps you out a bit getting started.

If you’ve never played a musical instrument, then expect some frustrations along the way, but also understand that your brain will learn to deal with the physical challenges. You’ll eventually be able to move your fingers over the keys how you’d like.

Provided you can get past the frustration, you can move on to the fun bit, which is creating something.

Also, expect a lot of yourself, but keep it realistic. If your goal is to just write one simple song before you die, then you’ve got a realistic goal. If you decide instead that you’re going to be Mozart, then quit now – if you don’t, then you’ll just quit later when you feel like a failure because you haven’t written a symphony.

If you have any questions, I’ll be here all week.