Of course it deepends on the person, but does one achieve a pinnacle of creativity by learning from the masters, or only looking within or both.
What is the balance needed, or is creativity one sided?
Either on writing, music, visual art etc.
I am just curious on people’s ideas here.
for example: I am a songwriter, and I believe that to study ideas of form and get more musical tools to expand your musical pallet helps to develop how you can express ideas and feelings. So, studying technique and figuring out other people’s songs that you like by ear, helps you learn how they get those color etc, but when it is time to create, you have to go almost soley from within if you want your music to be authentic and not sound synthetic.
only use the tools as ways to express waht you already feel. Not use tools to create a feeling that is not really there. Then music will come out synthetic, because it lacks the sincerity that it seems like people can sense by your choice of words, emotional language etc.
I’d love people’s thoughts on this.
Well, I would have to agree,
Too much formal education of the masters tends to lead towards copies.
Too little and you spend too much valuable creative time recreating that which has been created and so copies. You might figure out the direction you wish to take and study the masters that went that way or close to that way.
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I think often times, creativity is very dualistic.
A college friend of my mother’s had a male child who simply knew the piano, literally from birth it seemed. By five years old, without any formal training, he could play anything from Beethoven just by hearing it.
Myself, I have spent years playing guitar, love it intensely, but have to study to be proficient with the instrument.
For myself, I am not at all certain there is a dividing line, so to speak, of a proper method. Like all creativity, it may just come down to the individual involved.
The way I do it is by taking an interest in lots of different things. Liberal culture convinces artists that art is ‘an expression of something inside themselves as individuals’ so they think that they don’t need to learn a damn thing before being able to produce great art (of whatever kind). This is, to any serious artist, anathema. Almost everything in my life is subsumed under the motive to write books - even my writing so many posts here is a rehearsal for writing novels.
My advice to you is read novels, listen to music, read philosophy, go to art galleries, watch movies, follow the news… The more fuel you give to your imagination the more that you’ll get out of it.
Ditto on all points, SIATD. Well said.
I’m a songwriter myself and I’ve had these thoughts as well.
I concluded that what i needed to learn was how to express myself. The tools of the trade so to speak. but what i do not need to do is study other musicians in their entirety.
Think of it as building a house. I need to learn how to build a wall, so i study all the different ways of building a wall. I need to learn how to lay floors, so i study all the different ways of doing that and so on. But what i don’t do is watch other people build a whole house lest i become influenced by their ideas rather then become familar with the tools and techniques.
But that’s just me…
In order to bloom in creativity, it generally requires that the individual is willing and able to express ideas or emotions that are deeply meaningful to him. It can’t be a “fake†expression (for example, creativity for commercial purposes). Despair and anxiety tend to bring out the best creative impulses of artists. Too much happiness can result in “schlager art," which can be fun but isn’t likely to result from a “bloom” in creativity. passion
As a writer, I’m greatly influenced by what I rid, but not as far as copying themes or main ideas. What I try to extract from my reading are the little things, like the way an author prepares a settings, or focuses which chapter on which party after the main splits (fantasy/adventures do this alot). How a writer sets up a scene, when or when they don’t use detail, are all important, too. I also look at which parts they show detail about, which they don’t. Another important thing is how they make the dialog realistic. I tend to write like an author I’ve been reading recently; they slightly influence my voice, but I don’t cpy their ideas.
I really think that most arts are related as well.
Alot of music that I like (for example Joni Mitchell, bjork) uses plenty of imagery. When you play music, you stimulate the auditory part of your brain, when you paint you stimulate the visual part of your brain. However, mitchell and bjork stimulate actual pictures (not just emotions) when I listen to their music. It should’t suprise us to know that Mitchell also is a painter, and that bjork is married to a visual artist. It seems that various arts leak into each other often to inrich them.
Thanks for that reminder SIATD.
Most art revolves around repetition and contrast. Our brain usually likes repetition or else things seem incoherent and there is no familiarity which our brain enjoys. Also, we need contrast, so we don’t get bored. This balance is what most art is I think.
Music is related to repetition and contrast, and more specifically about building and releasing tension. If you know something about chords/notes and keys, you will see how some chords/notes are more resolved than others, and how most music builds tention is thru unstable chords/notes, (also thru dynamic build, tempo change (faster or slower) musical texture added or subtracted and a few other means) and then resolves back to a more stable chord/note.
This jumping from stable to unstable is the balance between contrast and repetition, and what makes us want to listen if we like the balance, or not if we don’t like it. (also, we must believe the musician honesty, few people want to listen to things they believe are contrived.)
I assume a writer does the same thing, builds tension to some payoff (a reason to keep reading, like a ironic statement or something) It is funny how songwriters often work with a 2-5 minute attention span, while novel writers work with day long attention spans. How a writer can hold someones attention for days is really interesting to me.
I guess studying a little bit in different arts, can overlap in having more colors and tools in your “paint box” so to speak. A novel writer learning about songform build and realease tension can write little “mini” ideas in longer piece that seems to emulate dynamic build with words etc. A music writer learning of novel ideas, may learn to hold people’s attention longer.
These are ideas that need expanding, and I find them really rewarding to think about, because I see my music evolve to more emotional, enriching levels when I contemplate them. . .
Get Stoned
Gobbo - this is a clear example of the worst kind of philosophising. It’s rubbish. Oh - The Great Single Principle in the Sky! All hail the philosopher Old_Gobbo! Gibberish.
For you to espouse marijuana to the exclusion of alcohol, cocaine, painkillers, anti-depressants, random sex, sleeping late, quitting your day job, riding a motorcycle, wearing a lot of black, and at least some attention to anomalous hair (head or body) shows a complete misunderstanding of the creative process.
Or was that code?
Faust,
I’m gonna predict that was a joke.
A funny and obvious one 
Edit: Cause I previously flipped out thinking it was not a joke. It was the ‘or was that code’ part that got me I think.
It was a joke. I guess not a very good one. Consider me lightened.
(I thought it was funny. And obvious.)
abstract assemulations
quit the fabrication
flow is the limitation
rules by your own creation
seen slowly by inspirations
developed in simulations
portrayed in violations (of science)
yet perpetrating coralation
a concept artest has logic behind the facade
tools they use appeal to all with the same type of memories or memory types
Since we communicate all day as part of being a human, we can sense when something seems synthetic+, because we have so much practice in decoding as part of everyday life.
I mean, sometimes, we just don’t understand the emotion or whatever someone is trying to communicate either b/c it is really personal or they haven’t learned how to “translate” the personal experience into something universal, but when an emotion comes out for commercial purposes, I think you can often sense that.
Look at the charts any given week, and the songs that usually are on there are love songs. B/c everyone understands that emotion, or thinks they do, and can therefor identify, and therefore likes the song.
most love songs are about breaking up, or love gone bad. And that is b/c happy love songs lack “tension.” Again tension and resolution is what music is all about.