The Music Vault: Overflow of Creativity - Revisited

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Creativity cannot be contained or regulated since it flows to hidden recesses in the mind or soul and pools into reserves waiting to be harnessed. When too much creative energy is forced into a pool of reserves and is not allowed to flow freely into artistic production, pressure builds in the mind of the individual restraining himself.

This scenario occurs all too often in the field of the arts and the entertainment business, which is totally out of alignment with the needs of the artist and their desire for complete freedom of artistic expression. Instead, what happens, for example as in the case of Prince, is the record label decides how much and how often the musician/composer will be allowed to release their work publicly, so the artist can either wait for the label to dictate their rate of production, break the contract to move forward on their own, but risking a lawsuit, or start a new project under a different moniker, then proceed from there.

Some of the recent revelations about Prince’s music vault illustrate how much unreleased material there must be in the music vaults of most top bands and other solo artists in the music industry that’s just waiting to see the light of day, but won’t because the record labels want to control as much of the production process as they can to protect their investments in the works of their artists. It can be safely assumed that there must be as much unreleased material as there is released material in every artistic field, but for financial reasons or investment purposes labels aren’t allowing the artist the freedom to push their material out publicly.

At one point, Prince in his battle with his record label demanded that he be allowed to release albums at a much faster rate than they were allowing him to, specifically 2 albums per year, in order to keep up with his speed of production and the immensity of his creative vision. This would account for his vast unreleased music collection as well as additional materials and media.

Interestingly, no one doubts that Prince was in possession of such material and that it consists of at least 50 fully produced music videos, full-length albums, and many other kinds of media produced by the artist. In total, there are probably hundreds of hours of music ready for release in the vaults, but rumors are that the material is likely to be released slowly over the next 2 decades. It is also believed that this material includes songs that the artist once said contained some of his finest work.

When a person’s creative capacity is restrained or unnaturally regulated, from within or without, the soul of the person quietly determines that the vehicle is inadequate to serve its aims, therefore the body or restraining influence must be destroyed. Whether the artist restrains their creative capacity by withholding their artistic output or by hiding or withholding their artistic creations, the pressure of withholding becomes a kind of psychic pain, which is formed from the artist’s inability to freely offer their creative work to their audience.

Without resolving this dilemma completely, the psychic pain can morph into physical pain, which forces the artist to find ways to reduce or eliminate the pain. Too often, when artists go through this process of degradation, they self-medicate and frequently overdose. When the artist destroys their body, using one method or another, their decision is swayed by choosing the lesser of two evils. Instead of fighting the record labels in court, which could completely wipe the artist out emotionally and financially, they find other ways to escape the situation.

Prince, along with the many other artists, musicians, and composers, who are trapped by the restraining influence of music labels made his choice and for that we lost a tremendous talent whose absence became an immense void in the soul of humanity. This type of artistic departure I term “black hole creativity” because of the vacuum it leaves in the collective creative mind of all people.

Creativity needs freedom of expression to ensure the physical and psychological health of the individual in possession of an immense artistic capacity. In fact, our physical bodies are the vehicles or tools for artistic production, so when a person works in harmony with their creative capacity, their mind and body are at ease with the nature of the creativity that resides within them. The artist must be free to create as often and as quickly as they are capable and for this they should be amply rewarded and revered.

Click here to learn more and read the article “Black Hole Creativity.”

Click here to learn more and read the article "The Overflow of Creativity: Why Artists Need to Find New Areas to Conquer, New Worlds to Explore"

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Marc

http://stereothesis.com/

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Black Hole Creativity

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The immense gravity pull within a dead or dying star is so strong that it's capable of holding light. Where light would normally travel away from its source, within or near a black hole, light circles and gets pulled back into the center of the dead star.

Creativity and light possess many similar qualities in that they flow when expressed from a central source and that they illuminate objects when they surround them in their energies. In other articles, I've also discussed how creativity is also like water in that it flows, fills a space or activity, and overflows into other areas of conquest or expression.

The person who possesses creative impulses in such extreme quantities, but who fails to express them to a sufficient degree fails to live up to their potential and wastes the reserve of artistic force with they were born.

Celebrities who’ve built their careers on an immense output of artistic production, but who die during the course of that process of discovery and unfolding of their abilities to become like black holes of creativity that pull in and do not release the light from those gifted minds. The industry, fans, and collaborators with which such an individual shared their vision and work not only lose a person, but also less tangible qualities like hope, sympathy, understanding and enjoyment.

Even non-celebrities who chose to stay away from fame or were left undiscovered by the mainstream can also become black holes of creativity within their own spheres of influence. The friends, family, and colleagues of such individuals who benefited from their energy, inspiration, and stood in awe of their incredible talent lose something very rare and special by losing a part of themselves when an artist they know dies.

When such rare talents depart the world, life losing something of its lustre and the question remains as to how it will be possible to fill the void. It’s from the existence of this void of creative talent and artistic output that a black hole of creativity is generated by leaving a vacuum in the wake of the death of an artist.

Prince was such a person, as was Kurt Cobain, Michael Jackson, Elliot Smith, David Bowie and many others. Artists in all categories of production and at whatever level of talent belong to this classification of humanity.

Their existence in this world is necessary and very important because they add beauty and imagination to human life and in them we differentiate ourselves from other life forms. Through them we experience how it might be to live in heaven, where our thoughts can be expressed into pure forms of creative energy amongst souls irrespective of time and space.

The world as a whole mourns the death of artists, both small and large, whose creative output might range from a few songs, poems, a film, paintings or a single dance performance to a career and lifetime of such artistic productions, because no matter the volume of their output whenever an artist dies, the world loses more of the light of creativity by reducing the amount of vision, beauty, and imagination that exists on our planet.

Black hole creativity is just one way to refer to the death of the irreplaceable artist who leaves a massive vacuum in human life by their departing. In fact, the impact of such a loss is palatable and borders on the disastrous.

Even greater than flash flooding, snowstorms, tornadoes and earthquakes is the death of an artist since humanity’s collective creative mind, which makes human life possible, is damaged. The vacuum from the black hole that is left from this loss cannot easily be filled or totally replaced, but eventually humanity recovers by the emergence of new talent or the reincarnation of old talent that can provide us with a fresh infusion of beauty, hope, creativity, and imagination.

“Man does not live by bread alone,” but instead on the work of the imagination that fills us all with a certain degree of creative energy that sustains us throughout our lives. Our very souls are made up of creativity and is what provides our minds with a foundation on which to base its activities in the world. Artists give humanity its soul, so when an artist dies humanity loses a little bit of its soul, but when a massive talent like Price dies, humanity loses a huge part of its soul and the loss requires a much longer time for recovery.

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Marc

http://stereothesis.com/

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Live Music Recordings and the Element of Surprise

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“Subtle material like those which exist in recordings of jazz and other improvisational music becomes more interesting and meaningful upon relistening.”

– Brian Eno, The Studio as a Compositional Tool

"Live music recordings" are simply a music recording approach that harnesses the ease and immensity of digital recording equipment with the freedom of improvisational music. The basic idea is that you'd improvise a new composition from the beginning of the recording process, track by track, until you achieve completion. 

The purposes of recording live music or of recording improvised music are to improve the sensitivity of the musicians or composer and to exploit the element of surprise. Recordings of live concerts and classical music clearly illustrate this principle in action.
 
What's wonderful about digital recording equipment is that it allows the solo musician, composer, or unstable band to  transcend time by freezing music in a digital universe. This is extremely useful because any new musician can come in at a later time and fill in the missing parts in a piece of music. The solo artist can also perform this function by creating the illusion of multiple players by multi-tracking.
 
The way in which he would achieve this is whenever a new track is going to be added to the piece he, in effect, acts in the capacity of a new player coming into the recorded ensemble with his own perception of what the piece should sound like or with what he would like to add to it. This psychological approach will increase the chances for another layer of the element of surprise. 
 
The new player infuses an existing piece of music with his unique signature of creative energy, technical skill, and emotional expression (style). All of these factors are injected into the music he adds to and the surprises manifest as he reacts to the twists and turns of rhythm and melody. In my music, I don't worry as much about getting each part just right, rather I'm concerned with capturing an energy or solidifying an idea. That's the only thing worth recording.

Recording live music includes the idea that chance events and musical accidents might stay in the recording as a way of authenticating the actual "live-ness" of the music recording. The advent of affordable digital music recording equipment leveled the playing field in terms of sound quality. That means for good or bad all music can be recorded at more or less the same quality. On some systems and software the mixing and mastering process can be completed with the touch of a button. So what's going to determine what's good or bad about a song will only be the strength of the composition and the level of musicianship.

Another way to think of the studio is as an environment where music recording is done as opposed to a place that determines what music will be made. The difference between these two viewpoints is one of quality - freedom vs. restriction. The element of surprise must be preserved at all costs. So when producing live music recordings you have to balance spontaneous performance and rehearsals. Rehearsing should only be used as a way of determining the possibilities within a song, while the recording process should unleash the live energy of the musician that allows him to spontaneously arrange the material he discovered during the rehearsals.

The field for digital distribution and marketing of music has also leveled a barrier that stood between the composer / musician and the consumer. Now the lines of communication are direct and open to all. With this barrier gone too, the quality of the composition and musicianship must be stressed on any recording that gets made. Average songs and mediocre musicianship can become popular, but they don't last and are easily replaced by other average songs and mediocre musicians.  A vicious artistic cycle.

Live music recordings can bring the living energy of an artist through the music to the consumer. The little imperfections, outtakes, and minor variances all give a digital recording a "live" feel. And when they are permitted to remain in a studio recording, all those little things a composer didn’t intend to be in a recording take on an added significance when listened to over and over again. No consumer listens to music they like only once. Instead, they listen to it many times over a period of years, so the music grows more meaningful as they change from their experience of living. As they grow, the music they listen to also changes and takes on deeper significances.

Now if you do decide to edit or erase little imperfections or musical accidents be very selective and only remove those that interfere with sound quality and not those that reduce technical skill or emotional expression. Sometimes it’s the chance events and musical accidents that become the reason why an audience falls in love with a recording. Good music is always used as an essential part of life to highlight meaningful events and important moments in a person's life.

  

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Marc
http://stereothesis.com/

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Relaxation as Part of the Creative Process

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The creative process is a series of flows going and coming from different directions. Some flows come from sources of inspiration, go into the artists mind and flow out from the artist and into the audience. Other flows encircle two fellow artists, while others come from fans to the artist in the form of support, admiration, or income.

But as far as the act of creation is concerned the flows that go through the artist sometimes become problematic and cause difficulties. The artist takes elements they perceive in the environment and fuses those elements together in unique ways with emotional aspects of their psychology derived from their philosophy of life. They combine these factors with the work of their hands using earthly materials to create aesthetic products.

The flows and the process of creation form a system and like other systems they can get damaged or break down. The reasons vary greatly from one artist to another as to why damage or corruption causes the system to slow or fail altogether. Failing altogether isn’t as common as slowing or burning out, which is typically caused by the system running or flowing in one direction for too long.

The body and mind are an interface that works well in harmony to control the flows from the environment and the mind as they move through the body. Interestingly, the environment and the mind are constantly emitting impulses or providing stimuli to the body via the nervous system, which consists of the electrical circuits that run throughout the body. The mind is constantly providing orders to various body parts to get them to do its bidding while the environment is a gigantic theater of sensory input without end.

This makes the body a conduit for the flows going in to the mind from the environment and back out to the environment and from the environment coming in to the mind and back out from the mind to the environment. The mind can also provide its own stimuli in the form of inspiration, memories, dreams, and ideas—realms of creativity—which also flow through the body, out to the environment, and back in again.

All of this flowing and non-stop sensory input keeps the body in a state of enervation, which causes damage, slowing, overloading, and burn out. Enervation is simply when the body feels drained of energy or experiences exhaustion from too much stimulation (overloaded circuits).

Physical Relaxation

For artists, relaxation is the only method of reversing the effects of enervation and is therefore a vital practice to achieve creative longevity. The use of drugs (illegal or prescription) or hypnotism is no substitute for relaxation. In fact, they are in themselves additional forms of stimulation and sensory input that would further agitate the body in a state of enervation. Avoid them if possible when relaxation is required.

Exchanging one form of stimulation for another doesn’t constitute relaxation. Like the alcoholic who exchanges one drug with another by replacing alcohol with nicotine or caffeine, they are merely switching one addiction for another. Such compromises bring about new problems and the individual remains an addict for the whole of their lives without really living drug free.

True relaxation means refraining from artificial forms of stimulation and sensory input to experience one’s self and one’s environment in a natural state. When the alcoholic switches to nicotine or caffeine, they are actually mitigating the effects of withdrawal by forming new addictions.

For the drug addict, going through withdrawals is actually gateway to living drug free. Withdrawals are actually the body’s method of removing drug toxins from its systems so that they can be expelled as waste products. This along with other therapeutic techniques is what finally allows a person to eventually arrive at a drug free existence.

Similarly, the artist can recuperate from the artificial forms of stimulation and sensory input derived from the creative process by going through a kind of withdrawal. Because each form of artistic labor will have its own particular challenges to achieve a state of relaxation, each type of creative work will have its own form of withdrawal and will require the invention of strategies to remove the unique stresses that are specific to that art form.  

For the chef, try a period of eating only pure flavors to help you relax your palate. Eat only raw fruits, slightly cooked vegetables, and meats or starches with little or no seasonings at all. Periodic short or prolonged fasts might have the most benefit in the long term to keep your palate sharp and your digestive system strong.

For musicians, go with a period of quiet. Because we exclusively use our ears to find, test, and combine new sounds, it’s our ears that suffer the most stress during the creative process. The height of tall buildings and mountains will help you rise above the sounds of cities and human life, while the distance and expanse of wide open spaces in the desert, grasslands, and bodies of water will bring you peace through extreme noise reduction.

In contrast, relaxation for the athlete and dancer might consist of either active or passive processes such as resting or stretching depending on the movements they are normally performing.

For the illustrator and painter relaxation might actually pertain to several practices to resolve several issues. Stretching might work to help relax the effects of restricted and repetitive movement, while meditation (sitting with eyes closed or in a pitch black room) will work to de-stimulate the eyes.

Notice how relaxation actually constitutes sensory deprivation of one or more of the senses. The reason is because what we’re trying to resolve is enervation (chronic nervous stimulation), which can only be alleviated with its opposite: sensory de-stimulation or deprivation. Other approaches for achieving sensory de-stimulation will include noise cancelling headphones, a sound-proof chamber, meditation, dim lighting, a walk in the forest, travel to a secluded out-of-the-way location, and extended time in an empty house or hotel room.

The purpose of all these approaches is to greatly reduce the amount of stress and stimulation our brains and bodies undergo during the creative process because the focused effort of the act of creation almost always comes at the expense of our body and its needs. But much more important than the purpose is the effect we are trying to achieve which is resetting or refreshing our senses, so as to return to our work with “new eyes.”

Mental Relaxation

Resolving enervation is one component to achieving complete relaxation, while altering mental function will be the other. Sensory deprivation will help alleviate the accumulated stress collected in the nerves of the body, but what about the accumulated stresses in the mind. Just as the creative energy of the body can slow or burn out by flowing in one direction for too long, so can the function of the mind in the creative process.

The focused intensity of the act of creation usually comes at the expense of our minds, especially when our attention acts in a single capacity for too long. Ironically, sensory deprivation will not assist the mind in its ability to refresh itself, because the senses are not its only channels of stimulation. Dreams, creativity, and imagination are unique aspects to the function of the mind and require a different approach when trying to achieve mental relaxation. However, the same principle still applies when dealing with the issue of relaxation.

Just as the flows of the body can be slowed or burn out by excessive or prolonged sensory input, similarly the activity of the mind can be slowed or burn out by functioning too long in a single capacity. If we say that focused intensity and “free thought” are opposite forms of mental activity, then they can be used to counteract one another. In other words, structured or guided forms of thinking can be relaxed into more fluid or “free” forms of thought and vice versa.

Within each artistic discipline these forms of mental activity express themselves as extremes such as the difference between the novelist and the poet in writing, the realistic painter and the abstract painter in painting, the ballet dancer and the modern dance performer in dance, as well as tonal and atonal or microtonal music in composing.

Sometimes stretching oneself as an artist can be a form of relaxation if you explore the opposite artistic extreme than what you’re commonly used to. So if you tend to write in more structured forms relax by trying your hand at a bit of poetry and vice versa. This stretching can also be a great benefit because it allows you to find new material to bring into your normal creative mental function.

Improvisation and accidental art approaches are also interesting areas to explore because they combine what we know or have learned with expression without the need to necessarily create something with structure. In other words, approaching our craft with the skills we’ve acquired but without the goal of creating structure relax the creative process by getting us to act more spontaneously. The openness of mind required with this approach slackens the desire for creative outcomes to turn artistic effort into a relaxing activity.

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Marc

http://stereothesis.com/

 

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Art and The Emotional Rollercoaster

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GET “SONIC WEAPONS: The Official Stereo Thesis Music Sampler” FOR FREE. 

To get your FREE full-length album…click here. 

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This is how music, movies, or a book should make you feel. Especially on the highs and lows of the action and drama.

Artists and musicians alike really need to focus on providing  an intense emotional rollercoaster in every product they manufacture.

Never waste an opportunity to give your audience a jolt of surprise on every page, every song, every scene, or every painting.

The growth of your audience depends on their undivided attention and their undivided attention depends on you and how you capture, maintain, and command their attention with artistic magic.

Every piece should encapsulate at least one unique elements that adds an effective aesthetic thrill for the readers or audience on the order of magnitude of what you'll see in this video.

 

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Marc

http://stereothesis.com/

Remember to join our mailing list.

To support Stereo Thesis with a financial donation securely through PayPal, click here.