The Power of the Reboot

There are few things more underrated in our pursuit to master virtually anything than the inherent power of reframing the entire exercise, looking at it from as close to 30,000 feet as possible and, as many a meditation teacher has said over the years... begin again. In other words, when stuck... reboot!

My ability to appreciate this "starting from scratch" sort of idea is probably due to my being a trumpet player. It's in the nature of playing brass that we have to rebuild the foundations of our technique daily through practice exercises designed to work the musculature so that we are ready for whatever demands may come our way. Trumpet players probably spend more time getting ready to do the job than actually doing the job. That may seem a tad odd, but that's a big part of the way it is. What's interesting also is the teaching of it - very often various teachers describe the same physical phenomenon so differently that students and the teachers themselves frequently misunderstand one another, only to sometimes find out later that they were describing the same thing. Not only do we need to look at our problems through a variety of lenses we must remember that our teachers, by themselves, are different lenses.

My favorite way to do this kind of mental reboot is with musical composition. When going there, I like to make things as simple as possible. Part of composing, as it can be in writing or any other number of disciplines in which communication is the key, is to embrace a degree of simplicity. Beethoven's 5th is one of the great examples of this. Four notes. That's it. And everybody responds to it and is on board immediately. It's a bit paradoxical that people like me, coming out of a background in jazz that revels in the complex, have to relearn the importance of big structures and allowing them the space and the time to develop. Jazz musicians find ways to complicate everything - to constantly make things increasingly busy, and this can be an aspect of jazz composition as well, although to my ear the best vehicles for improvisation have often been simpler tunes (think Maiden Voyage or So What).

But what it we want to write outside of jazz? In fact, what if we simply want to write... without regard for genre? Talk about a reboot! Take all of that genre-specific stuff out of the equation as much as possible too. When you go in that direction the entire enterprise seems much more like classical composition than anything else, but that can be a pitfall - much of what we consider classical composition has turned into a pedantic, academic society more interested in observing a tradition than doing anything that hasn't already been done to death a million times. So, to really pull off the reboot... try not to be too influenced by that crowd either.

I took composition and arranging classes in college and feel I got a great deal out of it actually, but one of my favorite books on the subject was simply entitled "Composing Music" by William Russo.

Russo, was an extremely eclectic cat, and a free thinker - the sort of person we don't have nearly enough of these days. Russo arranged for Stan Kenton's big band, which was an openly experimental group, but also wrote in more classical settings and was also a part of the "Third Stream" movement - an attempt to fuse jazz and the classical tradition via composed works. Frankly, he was a fascinating man who did not fit neatly into any category in which the world tried to place him and clearly lived on his own terms. It's hard not to like Russo. And just as Russo was by all indications incapable of being boxed in, the same was true as to his ideas regarding his chosen path: composition.

Russo's book was designed so that even those without a background in writing music could grasp his ideas. This is achieved via a series of exercises in which the student is given very strict rules as to what they can do, and more importantly, what they can't! Whole pieces have to be constructed using only whole notes and half notes, for instance. Harmony is extremely limited as well - the idea, over and over again, is to emphasize the need for YOU to get creative, rather than rely on complex structures to give an illusion of creativity. People are at their most creative... when they have to be because resources are limited! Something that's true across the artistic spectrum.

There is a tendency for people to react poorly to this! It's reminiscent of meditation students who go on a retreat and can't stand the idea that seemingly - to them anyway - nothing is happening, when, in fact... the nothingness and your finding yourself within it, is at least, in part, the point. I remember first reading Russo's Composing Music in the early 90's and being a little of two minds about it. I understood what he was suggesting and liked it, but... there was a part of me that longed for what I thought were the rewards that came with complexity. Today... my musical world is much different and I re-read Russo fairly often and try to stick to fairly strict restrictions, especially on my current project which I want to be a series of accessible pieces that have a groove, some ambient tendencies, are subtle and yet resonate with a certain kind of listener fairly easily. Stuff like this exists and I like it and I want to dive into that pool for a time, but it only works... if you can keep yourself from allowing your ideas to take off to such a degree that you've left your listenership behind. One of the great benefits of writing this way - with fewer instruments (perhaps just an acoustic piano) is that there is nowhere to hide. You are forced with dealing with the generation of new ideas in the most fundamental of ways and this process, by itself, can lead to greater creativity.