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Ordering Creativity - The Open College of the Arts

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Ordering Creativity

Image by anon courtesy of http://favim.com/image/129837/
Image by anon courtesy of http://favim.com/image/129837/

Some of my recent freelance composition work has seen me writing exam pieces for a large worldwide music examination board. As a result of this, I was asked with other colleagues whether I’d contribute tips for composition and creativity to be included in their resources section for students. A rather wonderful feature of the board’s performance exams is that students can submit and play their own composition as part of the exam.
This struck me as an excellent idea, a resource to help and inspire the next generation, passing down hints and tips to guide and encourage. It also occurred to me that it would be very interesting to find out what hints and tips tutors and students from the Open College of the Arts might give out, across all disciplines of the college. I suspect that a great deal of the advice given would help students of all ages, areas and levels, with a tip from photography or textiles, perhaps inspiring or helping someone in music or visual communications. I also think it could be a thought provoking learning exercise for all in Higher Education, not just those just setting off.
So, what information would you share with people perhaps only just starting in your subject? What helps you find creativity? What might have saved a lot of time if you’d been told early on? What has been the best, or most useful, advice you’ve ever received? The list of potential questions is colossal!
To kick things off, here’s one that is specific to the music exam students example above, but is as important in HE as it is in freelance work: order your creativity. By this, I mean, list everything you need to achieve from a particular piece of work, find your parameters such as length of piece, form, required style, orchestration etc.
Whilst these things can easily be thought of as potentially constricting creativity, clear goal posts set out at the beginning means that you’ll have a plan that almost always ticks all the boxes for a successful job or piece of coursework. A rough plan and list of things to achieve leaves plenty of room for experimentation and creativity, but reduces the chance of failure, or the ubiquitous ‘going-off-on-a-tangent’. Regularly checking back on your list and framework will keep things in check when it’s all too easy to lose sight of the objective.
Over to you: what advice can you offer?


Posted by author: ChrisLawry

12 thoughts on “Ordering Creativity

  • Hi Chris,
    Chris Swaffer gave us a very good tip expanding on your suggestion – to start one’s composition with a large A4 sheet of music manuscript paper and put down all ideas and info you have in mind at the outset down on it with riffs, chords, little bits of melody, notes on possible key and tempo. I also find it helpful to draw linear shapes for the melody helps you to see development going into the piece later. As I’m a fairly early learner this has helped me to get started at least.

  • Wow, Chris, this is a subject to which I’ve given much thought on and off for some time. Seeing what you’ve written, and with my own thoughts, it does point to discipline after you’ve had an initial idea or commission.
    I can’t say that anyone has given me outright advice. I have always composed bits and pieces for many years, which is why I came to OCA to really develop this. However, I have noticed that I work in a particular way.
    I think the most useful comment came from my music teacher when I was studying for my first diploma, many, many years ago. She was a multi instrumental musician, and her brother was a Doctor of Music., who passed on the advice, analyse, analyse, analyse, then analyse again! Through noting and doing what other composers have done, you will develop your own voice.
    I have set words to music on various occasions, been inspired by beautiful scenery, a work of art, or just life events. I write music for my students, to serve a particular function, a bit like your exam work. Having also to guide GCSE students through their compositions, I completely agree with you about the “nitty gritty” of getting the notes down on paper (or Sibelius).
    The plan would consist of: What key, time signature, and length of the piece? The mood? Has the music to be for anything in particular, i.e. a player at a given standard?
    When would you introduce contrasted material/variation/development? How will it finish?
    Sketch a rough plan. Write down separately musical ideas, so they are there ready for use.
    Have you the necessary knowledge of the instrument(s) you are writing for?
    This is how I suggest my own students go about it. However, I don’t always follow my own advice, and often go where the music leads me. Or I make the plan, and then depart from it! But that is all part of the creative process as well. What is interesting, however, is that when I am planning a composition, I also start writing poetry again.

    • “Order you creativity” Music is no different from any other form for creativity. Some reactions are released by sound others by colour, some by form others by depth yet we forget the often difficult, intangible, feelings, the processes that lift us ordinary humans above the beasts we are so alike. In all this extraordinary, there has to be an element of order or else it all falls to the ground, tramped underfoot and forgotten. “Evergreens” live forever because there is something more, an element towards the extraordinary that makes them survive forever. In this world of today it is difficult to achieve the extraordinary, it has to be stretched beyond the boundaries of our imagination since every individual thought seems to be available on the net, every technique on YouTube and if you cannot find it there, there has to be a book! So what do we do us ordinary folks?. By the bye..I cannot sing or play an instrument but I have an extremely lively brain on top of a weak body!

  • Hmm I’ve thought about this for a long time. Having been a teacher and educator for most of my career the advice I’d give would differ depending on the circumstances. Your structured approach sounds like that I’ve given many thousands of times to students preparing to pass a course or working to a brief. And I believe it serves them well.
    But that’s not the whole story I think. It’s not how we got to be creative in the first place – that does involve going off exploring and tangents are far from blind alleys to artists. In fact this is true too for scientist. The scientific method sits alongside something else which takes the search on a technical as well as a creative journey.
    So my advice is to make time and space to think, believe it will always take longer than you think, don’t dispose of ideas that don’t work ( they don’t work yet) and be prepared to work hard at your skills. Creativity needs skills to enable your ideas to be realised. In some disciplines, like textiles and mixed media I would also say trust the materials. They will be an inspiration in themselves.

  • Correction to my post above – of course I meant A3 not A4 paper – ie the bigger the better.

  • I am just on my journey to becoming a full time watercolour and mixed media artist and one great pice of advice given to me was to write down what you like about your work and then work at developing this. So as said before analyse, order and develop you ideas. It’s a very scientific method but then scientists and artists are quite alike.

  • I’m a visual artists – but I think creativity works in similar ways across any discipline (and even beyond the arts and into the world of invention generally).
    I like the point you made about being clear on the brief and the boundaries – its good if creativity has a focus, and sometimes tight boundaries force us to think laterally and more creatively in order to meet the brief.
    For me there are a few other things that always seem to be true:
    – do some brainstorming (get down lots of ideas – maybe even via a mind map – so that I force myself to push beyond the first thing that pops into my head). Sometimes setting a brainstorm target is helpful (e.g. don’t stop until there are 100 things on the mind map)
    – do a bit of ‘research’: picking a few ideas from the mind map, explore what they might mean to other people (look at other artists, talk to friends and family, read loosely around the subject) – and see how what I learn enhances the ideas
    – make a prototype (I used to work in product development and this was always a very important phase) – get my sleeves rolled up and actually make things (sketches, models, trying out how materials work). When you know that this is just a prototype you can have more fun with it…it allows for plenty of trial and error – and that often leads to brilliant new discoveries – or ways to polish raw ideas.
    Overall I suppose this is all about diverging (a lot) before converging on a final idea or execution. If I’m spending a month on a project I would probably spend three and a half weeks diverging, exploring and ‘prototyping’, and the last few days making the finished piece.
    That would be my advice on creativity 🙂

  • For me, the biggest issue around creativity doesn’t hinge on processes or inspiration but on ‘world enough and time’. For those of us whose creative space is also their work space, that is carers, housekeepers, workers from home (in fact those to whom distance learning is particularly attractive), creating that mental space for creativity is really challenging.
    Two steps have empowered me in this respect. Firstly, signing up for a degree course. Now, when someone demands a clean T shirt, ‘you’re only painting’ doesn’t cut ice. I can say, with force, ‘I have course work which needs to be done’.
    Secondly, I only do housework on one day a week. OK, some things have to be done everyday like cooking and cleaning around the kitchen, but everything else is done on one day or not at all. Far from complaining about this, the family tell me I am a much more relaxed, less grouchy person. So that must feed into the creativity too.

    • Oh thankyou Starrybird. My circumstance is different – old age, i’m eighty one.I have trouble in convincing friends and family that I really want to and need to do this. A good friend, yes, a really good friend said, ” Why are you bothering with this? Perhaps they’ll tuck that bit of paper in your coffin?” O.K. Perhaps I should take up kick boxing?
      Any way, my very best wishes to you Starrybird and stay strong, love your family, you do not
      owe them your share of life.

      • I am a firm believer in life-long learning and in learing for its own sake. I am convinced that learning keeps you younger. Maybe you should take up kick boxing too 🙂 More power to your elbow!

  • Love reading the ideas here and what a great topic to share experience and thoughts about! I recently spent some real quality time giving thought to what creativity is when I decided to take this topic as the subject for my entry in The Sketchbook Project…( if you haven’t come across this great initiative, just check it out).
    I can see the need for order in the preparation stages so that all the tools are at hand when you begin working but my experience has made me struggle to throw out anything which smacks of ‘control’. In fact many times I spend many hours trying to eliminate this before the ideas start to flow. I read somewhere, “The creative process is a process of SURRENDER not CONTROL.” It is this concept of surrending to the ideas, allowing the inspiration to lead the process and not any personal sense of what ‘I’ want to happen. It seems sometimes that you have to go to another level of consciousness! Not easy to let go of self! But when it happened it is magic, isn’t it!!!

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