Monthly Archives: November 2021

16/33 Noa Kageyama’s Blog

Sabine Kühlich recommended a very good blog to me some time ago: Noa Kageyama’s The Bulletproof Musician. I discovered a post that talks about SMART goals. We talked about it in Your Art As A Business Module lesson and here the method is revisited, but in a slightly critical context. It highlights a study that evaluated, that setting open goals can have far more motivating and productive effects, if we are at a stage where we first plug in a framework for the things we set out to do. Instead of setting myself the goal of having 5 paintings done by the end of the year, perhaps it would be more purposeful to ask myself, how many paintings do I think I will get done by the end of the year? Maybe I will create more, maybe less but more impressive works that will inspire me to improvise? Maybe by then I’ll get to know new music that influences and inspires me…?

Not for all of us the SMART method is the right choice at all times.

Noa Kageyama addresses many interesting topics in his blog about practicing, resilience, confidence, focus, performance anxiety, etc. and talks with other musicians and experts. Maybe there are some interesting posts for you?

Follow this link to his site: https://bulletproofmusician.com/blog/

SMART goals vs. open goals: https://bulletproofmusician.com/specific-times-when-smart-goals-can-be-counterproductive-and-what-strategy-to-use-instead/

15/33 Gotta Be Another Way

Take a listen to the big band arrangement:

In the course of the painting process, I soon had to admit to myself that it is impossible to capture a piece of music from beginning to end in suitable colors, patterns and other fantasy shapes. I have now drawn the course of the melody of the chorus in a double line, which moves from the left edge of the picture to beyond the upper edge of the picture. The double line illustrates the repetition of the main motif. The white lines in the lower left quarter depict the movement of the melody of the bridge.

Trying to give my images something „readable“ and have my improvisations happen in our writing from left to right is basically a very logical approach. In the implementation, however, I quickly notice how arbitrarily I move across the picture in the process. I could assign the interval of a fourth to any line segment, or an Eb minor scale to the violet hue. If I try to read the picture less arbitrarily and stick exactly to given lines, I feel constricted.

Whenever too many possibilities open up to approach a thing, it is advisable to create anchor points. So I decide to go back to my approach on „Heaven in Pennies“ and give myself a simple, clear task. I took a closer look at the melodic concept of „Gotta Be Another Way“ and noticed that the sequence of notes in the chorus melody repeats itself raised a semitone, as well as the sequence of notes in the bridge recurs shifted down a whole tone. The piece is in itself strongly influenced by the element of modulation, so I set out to develop a melody line that remains the same in its interval sequence, but transposes upward. 

Below you can listen to the original improvisation as well as the further development of this idea.

I would like to make a general comment about the improvisations. Since some of the improvisations last several minutes, and may not be intended for public ears in their entirety, I have limited myself within this blog to isolating only the motif on which the subsequent song idea is based. The complete improvisations are available on request.

The following associations have arisen with this work:

• Nebula 
• Vastness of the universe
• Diversity
• Incompatibility 
• Repel from each other 
• Be contrary
• Layers 
• Disturbance 
• Brightness in the dark 
• Contrariness 
• Jagged
• Inside turns outside and vice versa
• Mediocrity
• Border
• Rebellion
• Shield
• Whirling
• Parallelism
• Be encroaching
• Pushing boundaries
• Getting closer to the unknown
• Whirlpool

The following idea for a hook emerged from the above associations:

Live your mistakes awesomely

There’s no need for apologies

You don’t have to go down in history

Cheers on your mediocrity

14/33 Fixing My System

Ok. Animating is out. As well as my first approach to apply my method of transforming to different visualizations.

The process of visualizing existing music and use its outcome as a base for the creation of new music, still maintains to be the core of my work. While my previous attempt has been a rather intuitive and schematic approach, my very current thoughts deal with the question of repeatability within the first of the creative steps. The relation between the original song, the visualization and my composition must become visible and comprehensible. There must be at least a rudimentary relationship here.

Due to time constraints and the time consuming implementation, I decided to limit my analysis of selected songs to „paintings“. As before, I will work digitally with the Apple iPad including Apple pencil with the software Procreate.

I intend to establish a fixed visual scheme or pattern for the 4 basic elements of harmony, melody, rhythm and lyrics. The harmonies are represented as colored areas. From a subjective point of view I would assign bright and/or warm colors to the major tonalities, dark and cool colors rather to the minor spectrum. Changes in the color gradient refer to harmonic changes or modulations. The melody is made visible as a white (salient) line that stands out clearly from the color background. The rhythmic element seems to challenge me quite a bit – how do you emphasize movement in a motionless image without a notated language? For now I decide to interpret patterns that arise during the painting process as rhythmic information. The development of the lyrical element is already established by a three-minute „association session“ following the completion of the painting.

Now the third step of the method follows – improvisation. I do not want to limit myself here on an artistic level and do not commit myself to purely vocal improvisation. I plan to implement other improvisations in a later stage by adding piano and doing a rough pre-production.

Based on my learnings so far, I would reformulate my scientific question as follows:

Composing based on visual arts. How creativity is gained from a process of transformation. (A self-experiment)

An overview of the songs I chose for my experiment until now:

The song I chose for video visualization is:

1. Heaven in Pennies (Esperanza Spalding) 

For song visualization in form of a painting, I chose the following:

2. I heard you singing (Jacob Collier and Becca Stevens) -> completed

3.  Gotta be another way (KNOWER with wdr Big Band)

4.  Sing To the Moon (Laura Mvula with Snarky Puppy)

5.  In my Bones (Jacob Collier (feat. Kimbra + Tank and The Bangas)

6.  In The Stone (Earth Wind & Fire)

…. more to come!