4. Creativity

Musical creation happens in many ways. Through our upbringing and musical lives we tend to accumulate stereotyped images like:

• the obsessed composer, locked up in a drafty room, scratching away at a score with a feather quill and Indian ink,
• the jazz saxophonist, improvising exquisite embellishments on a slow ballad,
• the classical violinist, striving to express every nuance of the score,
• the rock band, creating original songs together with energetic camaraderie,
• the heavy-metal lead guitarist, viciously shredding up and down the neck,
• the “bar band”, who can play covers of just about anything at the drop of a hat…

Which of these, if any, do you relate to?

We tend to divide musicians into *creators—*those who improvise or compose new music—and *performers—*those who only play and perform music that other people wrote.

But perhaps these two worlds aren’t quite as far apart as they may seem…

As humans, we love to create. So why is it that we take so much pleasure in playing other people’s music? Why is it that we will listen to the same recording, over and over again, and still want to go hear the same band play the same songs? Why do we learn a piece of music and then play it again and again?

We all have music that we love, which each time we listen to, play or sing it, makes us feel deeply connected with our inner emotions. Often, as we do so, we find ourselves making new discoveries about songs that we thought we knew inside and out.

If the emotions and how we experience and express them is shifting or deepening each time we hear or play the music… is it really the same music each time?

The emotions we feel can be different in different contexts. And as musicians—even if we’re playing the same music—we have the potential to play it a little differently, to feel it a little differently each time.

In other words, we can bring our own creativity to music even when playing it “as written”. The pioneering music educator Forrest Kinney classed this act of “interpretation” as a musical art, right alongside improvising, arranging and composing.

Let’s explore these two forms of creativity in Expression: Improvisation * Just a reminder that we use improvising as a lightweight and versatile way to develop our creativity, even if our end goal is writing or composing music. and Interpretation.

Improvisation and Interpretation

When we create music spontaneously, we term this the musical art of “improvisation”. This is generally taken to mean that we are choosing all the notes and rhythms ourselves, on-the-fly in the moment. As with all music, Improvisation can include varying levels and means of emotional expressivity.

In music that we are interpreting, we may not have as much choice over the actual notes but (as we learned in the first part of this chapter) we do still have plenty of choices in Timbre, Dynamics, Pitch, and Rhythm. For each note, across each phrase, and even for the piece as a whole.

In essence, we can “compose” the emotional dimension of our expressive performance, and even improvise in the moment, through our musical language of emotion. This means that interpretation is also a creative musical art, which is why we as naturally creative humans take such pleasure in it.

If you love interpretation, then it can be very helpful to shift your mindset into being a “co-creator” with the composer. For example, next time you play your favorite Beethoven Sonata, or you cover The Clash’s “London Calling”, consider that when you access and express your own inner feelings through this music, you are—in a very real sense!—entering into a profound collaboration with Beethoven or The Clash.

When you shift your mindset in this way, you’re more likely to recognise and honour the importance of your own musical expression and your own creativity.

Mars Gelfo, creator of the popular Modacity practice app, once told me about his “emotions practice”. He would first choose pieces from his repertoire. Then, like an actor, he would conjure up emotional states inside himself and play that particular piece of music while feeling that emotion. He was careful to introduce both positive and negative emotions, ranging from joy to shame, and thus build great resilience as a performer on a very challenging and exacting instrument, the symphonic horn.

Improvisation adds to this the opportunity to fully change the note pitches and rhythms creatively and expressively. And, depending on the genre, style, or the musician’s choices, there are plenty of areas in which interpretation can be even more improvisational.

In the following exercises we’ll experiment with making expressive choices in both interpretation and improvisation.