Thoughtful expressive theory.....what'ya think?

[Pitar]

Originally Posted by jpd

"I have this fairly nutty theory, but I think all songs exist and you've just got to tap in there, and dial in the frequency to find it." Radiohead's Ed O'Brien

Great theory.

Arlo Guthrie once said that great songs come to him in clouds but they passed over Dylan first, or some such notion.

[Fruitloop]

Originally Posted by jpd

"I have this fairly nutty theory, but I think all songs exist and you've just got to tap in there, and dial in the frequency to find it."

That's a bit like saying that all the wisdom in the world exists out there, just have to put the words in the right order

I'm a firm believer in work and payoff when it comes to the arts. Sometimes songs do seem to fall from the sky but you need experience for that to happen. We hear tales of famous songs that seemingly came out of nowhere like a flash of genius. McCartney and 'Michelle' come to mind, which apparently came to him in a dream completed but without the lyrics. Before that could happen though he had spent thousands of hours learning the craft of writing music.

In my opinion this usually happens when the brain is being fed with new and fresh stimuli. Discovering a genre of music, falling in love with someone, starting a new job etc. We are creatures of habit and if nothing new is happening in our lives we settle down and start going by rutines, that also lessens creativity.

[D. Shelton]

Originally Posted by Fruitloop

That's a bit like saying that all the wisdom in the world exists out there, just have to put the words in the right order

I'm a firm believer in work and payoff when it comes to the arts. Sometimes songs do seem to fall from the sky but you need experience for that to happen. We hear tales of famous songs that seemingly came out of nowhere like a flash of genius. McCartney and 'Michelle' come to mind, which apparently came to him in a dream completed but without the lyrics. Before that could happen though he had spent thousands of hours learning the craft of writing music.

In my opinion this usually happens when the brain is being fed with new and fresh stimuli. Discovering a genre of music, falling in love with someone, starting a new job etc. We are creatures of habit and if nothing new is happening in our lives we settle down and start going by routines, that also lessens creativity.

I think that music can exist on the inside by connecting to a sort of collective sub-conscious, and also because it's been planted there by listening to music .
Brain is fed music, brain makes connections and music makes sense as music, brain sometimes activates appropriate pathways and music happens without external stimulus , because brain has learned what is music .
Even my formerly untrained-musically brain used to scoop up fully formed new music from somewhere. I think it had heard enough to learn create it's own , sometimes . Later, after some actual learning about music ('theory'), it
still does so sometimes, but the knowledge hasn't helped bring the mystery music down to Earth. A dream with a beautiful piece almost always keeps that piece to itself . Then, creating music for the 'real' world is about work, some knowledge of how things work, and finding what sounds right .

[Silly Moustache]

Surely songs in this respect are like poems, stories, novels, orchestral pieces, dance, visual art, sculpture.

I can't help but think that the creative arts are some of the better aspects of our mutant brains. I guess I tend to look at things in a sort of anthropological way.

We know of no other creatures who make or do something for non feeding, territorial or mating purposes (of course we may be wrong and simply not understand).

We are a small, weak hunter gatherer species that mutated our brains to compensate for our other weaknesses and to adapt to changing conditions as we wandered ever further away from our origins.

Naturally, we retain our base instincts of hunting and gathering, mating, etc., and added growing and herding our own food which gave us concepts of ownership. Concepts of ownership gave us a more sophisticated rationale for fighting and waging wars - either to protect our resources or to take that of others.

We developed "music" (or at least repetitive chanting and drum beats) to en-trance the group/tribe etc., to fight - hence music and dance.

We invented gods to "protect" us from unknowns and to explain the unexplainable and then started making symbols to represent the imaginary - probably the beginnings of visual and sculptural arts.

Then we wrote or made up stories as magical texts, which was a way to make rules and control the people, and of course that required some creative thought.

So, there we have it. Drumbeats, chants, stories - it's all there.

Anyway that's my point of view whist taking a break from making the Greek lamb stew for tonight.

Modern songs? Many are autobiographical and many are simply fiction - in the long run they are all reflections of the human condition and the grand ennui.

[mtsusean]

well, I did hear someone talking the other day about the only book they needed to take on airplanes was a dictionary because it has all the words in it

[Bikewer]

In addition to being a guitar picker and occasional songwriter and artist..... I'm also a student of the sciences and fascinated with neuroscience.

This is a sentiment we hear quite a lot from various kinds of artists......That they are tapping in to some sort of universal font of creativity and that they just happened to be lucky enough to be around when whatever idea transfered itself from that pool into their head....

All very poetic and somewhat self-deprecating, but I don't think it works that way. By dint of our comparatively massive and amazingly-interconnected brains, we humans are creative and have been so for a very long time.
The caves of Lascaux and Chauvet contain not only the marvelous paintings but also the remnants of bone flutes which when reproduced play a pentatonic scale...... Music we can relate to 10, 000 years down the pike.

Our brains do a great deal of "processing" subliminally, below the level of consciousness. This is the source of creativity.... The connections being made by our brains which eventually filter out to our consciousness..... That's the source of those "songs that just fell into my lap" moments.
I've had it happen frequently.... I rarely spend more than a few minutes on a song. And, if it doesn't "come"......It wont. I either rapidly get the whole thing, or not at all.

It's the same with writing. I 've started dozens of stories that went for a few chapters and just petered out. The ones I've finished just "kept coming".

[mc1]

another way to look at this is to think bout how we often put up mental barriers or distractions which interfere with our natural ability to continue a musical idea. in other words, we mess up the easy flow of creativity or continuity.

[seannx]

I think a huge amount of information processing, along with creativity, goes on in our brains without us necessarily being aware of it, or needing to actively labor to have it come together. That's one reason why a song can seem to magically come together in minutes. It could be something that the brain was already working on, and triggered into existence by a what appears to be a random thought or comment. Another is a testament to the sheer power and ability of our brains to quickly make connections between feelings, ideas, our musical knowledge and abilities, songs and progressions deep within our personal databanks, etc.

A small example of this is when you try to remember someone's name, or maybe where you put something. Rack your brain and think, and you get nowhere. But then later that day, or maybe the next, the information you were struggling to recall comes instantly as a clear thought. It's like the processing was going on in the background. If I'm having trouble recalling something, I often rely on this happening as a strategy. Sometimes it can take weeks, but the background processing technique almost always works.

[jpd]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

I'm not very tidy! I write stuff and it lies around in my office or in a cupboard in our conservatory.

Last week we had new carpets laid so I had to empty the cupboard in preparation and tok the opportunity to tidy up. Reams of stuff - versions of other people's songs, for one of my three bands or solo stuff.

Some stuff - no credit - (I always write the songwriter's name on my cheat sheets - the only ones without names are mine. I found some GOOD stuff completed - but I have no memory of writing them.

I googled the titles lines, hooks etc., - nothing - so ... are they mine? They look like mine - in my style etc ... but are they?

You ever have that?

I have come to find old material that's been forgotten, but nothing that might be from a published writer or player with my name on it. It is a neat moment when you discover a piece you wrote, or co-wrote that is 10.
/15 years in the past...and must be re-learned!

[mc1]

Originally Posted by seannx

I think a huge amount of information processing, along with creativity, goes on in our brains without us necessarily being aware of it, or needing to actively labor to have it come together. That's one reason why a song can seem to magically come together in minutes. It could be something that the brain was already working on, and triggered into existence by a what appears to be a random thought or comment. Another is a testament to the sheer power and ability of our brains to quickly make connections between feelings, ideas, our musical knowledge and abilities, songs and progressions deep within our personal databanks, etc.

A small example of this is when you try to remember someone's name, or maybe where you put something. Rack your brain and think, and you get nowhere. But then later that day, or maybe the next, the information you were struggling to recall comes instantly as a clear thought. It's like the processing was going on in the background. If I'm having trouble recalling something, I often rely on this happening as a strategy. Sometimes it can take weeks, but the background processing technique almost always works.

hmmm. i know what you are saying, but when trying to remember a name, it's sometime like there is a mental blockage. the question, however, is still floating around in the back of your brain, so once the blockage clears up, voila!

memory is very fascinating. like how you can remember it's a short name, or an uncommon name, or starts with "S", or something like that.

[seannx]

Originally Posted by mc1

hmmm. i know what you are saying, but when trying to remember a name, it's sometime like there is a mental blockage. the question, however, is still floating around in the back of your brain, so once the blockage clears up, voila!

memory is very fascinating. like how you can remember it's a short name, or an uncommon name, or starts with "S", or something like that.

Yes. There is a strong semantic component to memory. It makes sense considering how important and useful categories of attributes are, as well as how that spills over to some threads here.

[duff beer]

Originally Posted by catdaddy

I've been writing songs now for almost fifty years. I have had the experience of having a nearly complete song seemingly fall out of the sky into my lap. The few times that it's happened the entire process has taken about 15 or 20 minutes, just long enough to put the lyric to paper. I'll admit that it certainly feels as if it has very little to do with writing and much more to do with receiving, much like descriptions I've read of psychic "mediums" doing automatic writing.

Does a 15 minute song really just take 15 minutes to write? Or, did it take the previous 10 or 20 years of listening, learning, and playing to write that song?

[Bluepoet]

It's all about the muse, and your relationship with the creative process. I have never written a single song, but I have written lots of words, and sometimes have experienced that flash of inspiration, that comes from seemingly nowhere. I love those moments, but have no real explanation for them.

I think, mainly, that it comes down to whether you're driving yourself to create, or if your drive to create comes from "outside" forces...

I suspect that a certain combination of the two, is not only most probable, but essential, to the process.

I just asked my muse, for an opinion, but she just laughed, in a very condescending fashion...she's a right moody twit, sometimes...

Meantime, anyone need an editor? How about a proofreader? I don't charge much...!

[DVGuy]

Doesn't it also seem like the music is somehow deeply connected to the instrument, almost like it's inside and when your hand touches it, that act brings something out of it?

I was saying this to my wife the other day, in an attempt to explain why so many guitarists have multiple guitars, because I think each one has a character of its own that makes a different thing happen when you interact with them on a musical level.

[jpd]

Originally Posted by DVGuy

Doesn't it also seem like the music is somehow deeply connected to the instrument, I think each one has a character of its own that makes a different thing happen when you interact with them on a musical level.

I like that!