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Inspiration. It’s a rather intimidating word, isn’t it? It could be just a matter of perspective, but to someone who makes a living from writing and performing music it’s a very scary word indeed. Or maybe it’s just me.
I used to take inspiration from major life-changing events. I shouldn’t say “used to”; composing is still my primary coping mechanism. But you can’t build a career out of pain without doing significant harm to yourself, and I’ve been making a conscious effort to turn away from that temptation.
So where do I find my inspiration these days? All over the place, to be honest. One recent tune was inspired by the bass line of a Michael Jackson song (many of which were pretty much inescapable this summer), and I’m polishing up the arrangement of a melody that came to me in a dream last month. But, to be honest, if I were titling my songs to their inspiration (the way “Performer’s Mask”, “Goodbye”, “Labyrinth”, “Lezioni”, and “Tiburtino” were, in particular) most of my latest music would be called “Bored on a Train”.
There are some variations, to be sure. There would be “Bored on a Train: Wanting to Impress the Cute Girl Sitting Next to Me” and “Bored on a Train: Sitting Near a Businessman Doing Excel Spreadsheets and Feeling Guilty for Not Working”, but you get the general idea. It helps that I do a lot of my composing on computer now, only taking a piece to the dulcimer once it’s mostly finished and arranged. This has allowed me to write significantly more complex music than when I had to remember a piece measure by measure, essentially memorizing it as I wrote, but it also requires a much more extensive rehearsal process to get things up to speed for performance.
It’s tempting to toss in Thomas Edison’s “genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”, but composition isn’t a particularly sweaty business and I can lay no claims to genius. I have reached a point, however, where the mental work involved in writing is a lot more significant than the spark that sets things off. There’s still a lot of room for the muse, but she has a much larger support staff these days.
I used to take inspiration from major life-changing events. I shouldn’t say “used to”; composing is still my primary coping mechanism. But you can’t build a career out of pain without doing significant harm to yourself, and I’ve been making a conscious effort to turn away from that temptation.
So where do I find my inspiration these days? All over the place, to be honest. One recent tune was inspired by the bass line of a Michael Jackson song (many of which were pretty much inescapable this summer), and I’m polishing up the arrangement of a melody that came to me in a dream last month. But, to be honest, if I were titling my songs to their inspiration (the way “Performer’s Mask”, “Goodbye”, “Labyrinth”, “Lezioni”, and “Tiburtino” were, in particular) most of my latest music would be called “Bored on a Train”.
There are some variations, to be sure. There would be “Bored on a Train: Wanting to Impress the Cute Girl Sitting Next to Me” and “Bored on a Train: Sitting Near a Businessman Doing Excel Spreadsheets and Feeling Guilty for Not Working”, but you get the general idea. It helps that I do a lot of my composing on computer now, only taking a piece to the dulcimer once it’s mostly finished and arranged. This has allowed me to write significantly more complex music than when I had to remember a piece measure by measure, essentially memorizing it as I wrote, but it also requires a much more extensive rehearsal process to get things up to speed for performance.
It’s tempting to toss in Thomas Edison’s “genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”, but composition isn’t a particularly sweaty business and I can lay no claims to genius. I have reached a point, however, where the mental work involved in writing is a lot more significant than the spark that sets things off. There’s still a lot of room for the muse, but she has a much larger support staff these days.
