Posts Related to: Creativity

One of the biggest problems that musicians face is holding on to their own musical identity and integrity. It’s often tempting to bail out on your own direction and capitulate to an agent, an audience, a label, or society in general.
Even with my experience in this business, I continue to be surprised by how a …

Imagine this: you prepare a recipe from Emeril’s cook book only to have him appear and tell you, “it’s dreadful and you should never cook again.” Or you play guitar on the beach for your friends, only to find out that someone brought Simon and he makes “a face” about the way you play and …

Bill Evans has always been my favorite jazz musician. Despite the fact that I play guitar, there has always been something about Bill Evans the man and the artist that fascinates me. His harmonic sense was legendary. His ability to swing – unparalleled. But the depth of this jazz artist and how he thought was, to …

This post first appeared in the Disc Makers blog in a longer form.
GarageBand is a music creation software application that is part of Apple’s iLife suite and ships on all new Macintosh computers. For this column, I jumped into learning how well GarageBand might work as a musical sketchpad to rough out a basic song demo. I enlisted …

Jeanne Kelly is a professional singer, conductor, and pianist who has worked for many years with major opera companies and symphonies in the Washington-Baltimore area, where she lives. In 2001, she was directing the Levine School of Music’s Arlington, Virginia, program when Dr. Gene Cohen approached her with an idea.
Dr. Cohen, who died in 2009, …

Music education has benefits beyond the obvious. It’s great to play an instrument or sing or write songs. But few people appreciate the long lasting value of studying music.
It’s beneficial at every stage of life. Youngsters benefit from the discipline, the logic, the process of learning itself. It can increase self esteem and balance out …

Progress in music is best described as an upward spiral. The initial stages are easy to trace. The beginner knows very little and can do very little, so every new technique and every bit of knowledge feels like a giant stride forward.
When these quick and easy strides end, problems typically set in. New information and new …

When I trained as a musicologist in the mid 1970s, a shift was in the air. Our professors had been scholarly pioneers shaped by WWII (and, in many cases, refugees from that war). The destruction they’d witnessed led them to focus on preserving musical and artistic treasures. 
They tirelessly unearthed, microfilmed (a new technology!), and catalogued everything of …

It’s obvious to everyone that versatility is an advantage. You’re in line for more work and more variety of work. Certainly, versatility is better than limitation. Versatility also allows you to move in and out of areas if you get tired of one. Generally, this is a good thing.
On the flip side of this, there …

Music is basically a type of self reflection, a form of communication intended to convey the uniqueness of the individual player. The uniqueness of an individual is the sum total of his or her experiences. These experiences shape the personality of the individual to a great extent, and it is this personality that is reflected through …