Everyone knows that good ideas come from the shower!

There’s something about taking a shower that seems to steam open the pores of creativity.  Actually while it isn’t the shower itself, there are a number of elements that you can recreate to get to the same outcome:

1. Easy tasks that are repetitive and require no thinking.  These tasks allow your mind to wander into more interesting areas – and that seems to help you come up with ideas.  You can do the same thing taking a walk, knitting, or practicing scales.  Set yourself up to let your mind wander – wash dishes (or your car), take that walk, or get in the shower!

2. Quiet (ok the shower isn’t really all that quiet, but it is relatively quiet).  Be quiet in quiet – turn off the radio while driving, be outdoors, or find another way to have some quiet to let your mind be quiet – the quiet seems to attract new ideas.

3. Time alone – ‘nough said.  Even the most lovely people can be a distraction (caveat – sometimes they can also be an inspiration – there are no rigidities here!)

4. No expectations – you don’t go into the shower thinking that by the end of the shower you will have developed a completed composition (or solved world hunger).  Be fanciful – in effect you can have your own brainstorming session with no idea rejected until a later phase.

So, if you need help to generate good ideas for arrangements for Christmas music, generate a virtual shower: and (this is important) capture the outcomes (so you can build on them).  If you are actually in your shower, you can use a grease pencil or water based marker to write on the tile or just keep singing a motif to yourself!

You know how I find good ideas from everywhere and just about anywhere.  The other day, I was reading the Harvard Business Review blog (because I’m a geek). Miniya Chatterji had a blog post.  I can’t remember what the overall point of that post was, but for me the takeaway was this quote,

What a great point – the trusting your own judgment part.  We often believe that there are a lot of precedents in our world and there are.  But it seems that we tend to give those precedents too much weight. 

Here are three ways to shift your focus away from judging yourself and your music and find yourself wanting:

1. Play what sounds good (don’t say “duh” – you’d be amazed how many people don’t do this!)

2. Record your ideas, review those ideas, and keep the good ones

3. Look up from your harp, see the faces of your audience and note that they are enjoying your music.

So don’t be afraid – set your own precedents, suspend your judgments and share your music!

So last week I mentioned the Perfect Piece – the post on crazyforewe.blogspot.comthat really got me thinking.  But then I didn’t tell you what it got me thinking…so this week, I’ll share that with you – Ellen included a quote from a very well-known knitting designer, Sally Melville, who said that a “perfect piece” is something that is easy, artistic, and wonderful to wear.

And isn’t that true – think about the tunes you love – what about them makes you love them?  How are they perfect?  They achieve that perfection because they have some or all of these characteristics Sally mentions.  They are usually easy (when I say easy, I mean that even if they are technically challenging, the fall into your hands).  Or they beg you to give up their artistry through the story that you hear when you listen to the tune.  And they are wonderful to wear – you can’t help but share those tunes with anyone who will listen. 

The headline says, “Get Crafty Using Recycled Items”.  Wow!  What a great idea!  You know that I am 1) intrinsically lazy and 2) always looking to increase my repertoire without actually working too hard (see number 1.).  I will do anything (climb fences, practice for hours, eat nettles) to avoid working too hard (as you see, my definition of work too hard might need some work).

Building on our earlier discussion, here are three ways to recycle your music to have even more to play:

       1. Slow it down or speed it up – there are some hauntingly beautiful melodies cleverly disguised as dance tunes.  You don’t even have to change the chord pattern just blow the block chords up into schmaltzy rolled chords or lush broken chords.  Take the tempo way down.  Add ornaments and if you’re of a mind include variations.  And don’t forget to breathe – use your breath to highlight the phrasing.  Or take an air and move it into a dance form – speed it up, block up the phrasing, block the chords to help add some heft and bulk and you’ll have a new tune! 

So, by this time you have generated your New Year’s Resolutions and maybe started using an inspiration board to develop goals for your personal growth for this year (or you are humoring me by not saying you haven’t). We’re in the afterglow of the Resolutions. All done, right?

Not by half – now the real work begins. Here in the afterglow we are close enough to forming our goals to forget that within a few weeks we will be in the hustle and bustle of daily living and will have all but forgotten them. We will have forgotten all our resolutions, not just the ones we developed for our harp life. By this time of January, most of us have already stopped going to the gym, begun buying our lunch instead of packing again, and not getting enough sleep, still.

So there are some strategies to help keep ourselves on track. Here are a few to try if they work for you:

Set an appointment with yourself. Once a week (or once a month depending on how dedicated and motivated you are), set an appointment with yourself to check your progress against your goals and see how you’re coming. This shouldn’t be a punitive time. If your goals are too aggressive – modify them. If you’re way ahead and your goals weren’t aggressive enough, modify those too!

Record yourself. Most of us set goals that are related to our performance – either learning, memorizing, improvising, performing, arranging, composing or some other facet of our playing. Record your work so you can hear it better. No matter how well you play or how well you have learned something (including what you’ve written) you will be better able to review it if you listen to a recording than if you listen while you’re playing.

Don’t be afraid to change things – including your goals. This is not the same as abandoning your goals as soon as things get tough. However, if you realize that you have set an inappropriate goal (a piece you have selected has only been arranged for pedal harp which you don’t have and has a zillion accidentals) – change it.  You should consider modifying a goal that just is not working. If you achieve a goal with relatively no effort (although you have passed your grade eight exam, you decided to work on learning Twinkle Twinkle) that goal may not have been as challenging as you had hoped and you could add a new one.

None of these is focused on punishing you into meeting your goals. The point of the exercise is to keep an eye on your goals and an eye on your progress to assure that you continue to be moving forward. Be positive and friendly with yourself – and you’ll make it!

You just have to start.

I spend a lot of time on this blog exhorting you to set goals, make plans, and do other things to help you become a better musician. But sometimes, it can be challenging to get motivated to do these things. Especially because they are hard work! Or you might just be stuck. Maybe it seems like a big undoable task. Maybe you don’t know where or how to begin. Or maybe your goals are lofty and you’re not sure how you’re going to get there. Maybe a tool would help you to focus on what you’re trying to do and to find a path to get there.

One way to get going is to start by building an Inspiration Board. This is a tool to help creative people be more creative. And it is just as good to help busy people be creative, or to help people who don’t think they are creative to be creative. It is a way to collect the things that inspire you in one place so you can be reminded what your goals are and possibly see linkages between ideas you have. I stole this idea from the home decorating shows on television (yes, all that good information and all I learned was inspiration boards can be very helpful!)

If you check on line there are plenty of ways to make this complicated.  But I would suggest something simple. First, use a means that works for you. Many people make a collage from photos that represent things they want to achieve. I have a three ring binder that I filled with sheet protectors (the kind you use to put music into binders) and with both lined paper and manuscript paper.  I collect articles, photos, bits of TAB or musical notation, quotes, and other stuff I have found.  I just stick them in the binder. You can actually set up a bulletin board or make an on-line collage, or put things into a box. The form is irrelevant – it’s the function that is important. Collect things that give you ideas and put them somewhere that you actually look at them – so you can gain inspiration – and generate more ideas!

Your inspiration board is for you. You can share it (as many online sights push) if you like, but you don’t have to – you can keep it where only you can see it. It’s your board, and your inspiration – you can do as you wish with it. Its also important to remember that the board is a tool – just like a tuning key. It can be helpful but it is just there to help, not to become a new vocation. So put as much (or as little) into it as you need to identify what inspires you – and build your goals for the coming year from that inspiration. Use the collection, not only to identify your goals, but also to document them so you can refer to them in later months (when the January clarity has dimmed). And enjoy looking at your goals and inspirations in a new way!

Last week I ended by saying that if you practice being you’ll find your creativity. And you probably thought, “ugh, there she goes again – she’s always talking about practice…as if practicing my harp isn’t enough work, now she wants me to practice being quiet!”

And many of us don’t want to practice something new. What if we’re not good at it? What if it’s hard to do? What if we fail? What if everyone else thinks we’re being silly? All valid questions, and all questions you probably asked yourself before you started playing the harp. But you didn’t let those questions stop you then – and you shouldn’t let them stop you now.

Being quiet doesn’t necessarily mean becoming a spiritualist – a wise monk once told me that many of us miss the point – the being quiet is not for the sake of being quiet. The point is to get to the quiet so you can pay attention. To see what is at this moment in time. You don’t have to become a yogi or a sufi or a sage…you just have to pay attention to right now. Sometimes this is called being present. You can be present in a lot of ways. You can sit in lotus and chant. You can go for a walk. You can knit a scarf. You can pray. The point is to do something that allows you to focus…and once you’re focused you can grow.

And that growth is what you’re trying to get to – so you can grow your creativity! So practice making nothing (remember that silence is the sound of nothing)…and with enough practice you’ll be able to create – in other words, you’ll make Something out of Nothing.

Last week we talked about silence as necessary to build creativity. For those of you who know me personally, you might be surprised to hear me say that (since you’re so used to hearing me say something – I do talk a lot). But truly – finding quiet is essential to being creative – it is the only way to hear what’s possible inside your head, or your heart, or your hernia for that matter. And whether it’s you brain, your emotions, or your gut, there’s good stuff in there for you to work with to create.

Quiet can be found, but you have to seek it and make it happen around you. Spend a little time with no distractions (even if you have to hide in the bathroom to do it). Enjoy the silence – and what you hear in it. We’re not talking about the kind of mental stillness that monks pursue (we could be, but I’m not that ambitious about this). This can be the kind of quiet that comes from a walk alone, a brief sit in the sun, or quiet contemplation. Don’t make it too hard – just a minute or two to start…you might be surprised how refreshing it is. And if you practice being quiet, you’ll find that you’re more creative than you had heard!

You might recall that music is made up of sounds and silence. Silence is a very useful thing – grabbing attention of the listener, helping to focus on the upcoming phrase or giving the listener time to reflect on the phrase that has just recently past.

Unfortunately, in our daily lives we have precious little silence – we sing in the shower, turn on the television when we awake, get in the car and put on the radio, and walk around with our phone or music player firmly ensconced in our ears. One might think we are afraid of silence – we do go to great lengths to avoid it.

But silence is more important than being space in our music – it provides a consistent background against which to think. It gives your brain a chance to catch its metaphorical breath. And then, you can create. Whether you’re composing, arranging, interpreting or conjoining music in new ways, you need that space to create – you need that silence.

Of course, finding silence can be a challenge. Even if you have decided to create a quiet place in your world, the others in that world may make it difficult to get there. In addition, even if you get the world around you quiet, it may be difficult to get the world within you quiet. But you do need that quiet – in the quiet you can generate creative new things, or just be, it’s your choice.

How do you find silence in which to be creative?  Let me know – and I’ll share some of my paths with you soon.
Let the silence sometimes be your choice – and enjoy the silence.

Last week I posted about a Fortune Cookie I had gotten about being a friend to have friends.  That really spoke to me about sharing our music with everyone.

And then I got to thinking more about the fortune cookie itself – it had absolutely NOTHING to do with playing the harp.  In fact, if you read that post you might have thought that I was daft.

But the reality is, that everything has to do with playing the harp.  And playing the harp has to do with everything else in our worlds. For some of us playing the harp takes over our worlds and we reorient our days and our lives to incorporate the harp ever more into our lives.  Of course for some of us, playing the harp has changed our lives by increasing the number of knick-knacks we have to dust.  (But, lest you scoff – even that dusting means that the harp has had some impact on your life!)

As musicians and artists, we have to be open to the possibilities in everything around us.  Whether it is something you read, see on TV, a billboard, a song coming from the next car over, the color of a dress – there are inspiration launch points everywhere. 

If something points itself out to you – whatever it is, from whence it might arise – pay attention!  Figure out what’s in there for you to take away and make into something else.  This is creativity at play – let it have its head – see where it leads you.  You might be inspired to generate a new arrangement, or compose a new tune, or just let yourself stop being afraid of what you might do next!