Your Creative Mind

[Cabsy]

Too long between compositions allows the creative part of your brain to go to sleep. It can be turned on again, but not instantaneously. Sometimes the idea won't arrive until days after you started trying to come up with something.

 

I thought I'd try something new and write small compositions every morning to turn on the creative brain - and leave it on.

 

Since Dec 2007 I've composed 67 short pieces and they are flowing readily now... to keep me obliged, I emailed them everyday to a few friends. Before too long people were writing back asking to be added to the list.

 

So I've started a web player called the Daily Melodies. Every day after composing and recording the tune is uploaded, and an email is sent out to subscribers.

 

Check it out at http://dailymelodies.com

 

here are some other pieces from past dates:

http://dailymelodies.com/player/?file=2008-03-26.mp3

http://dailymelodies.com/player/?file=2008-03-05.mp3

http://dailymelodies.com/player/?file=2008-02-08.mp3

http://dailymelodies.com/player/?file=2008-02-07.mp3

 

This is a love project, so spread the word to anyone you think would be into it.

 

For the record, it really has worked and I feel my composing flows so much more freely than before and the complexity of the pieces has really flourished.

 

Cheers guys... happy composing!

[Deef]

It's been done.

 

Dial-a-Song

[blue2blue]

Well... always big props to TMBG -- but the TMBG answering machines were loaded with songs they'd already done, were working on, fake adverts, and other stuff. NOT the same as writing a song/composition every day.

 

In that, they were a little more like my own ongoing blog/podcast project -- that started out as a new daily recording of (mostly) previously written but (mostly) unrecorded tracks. (I had this big backlog of stuff that had never been recorded, even just a rough acoustic demo. That was one of the reasons I started it. After about 7 months... I just lost the will to record every day. But I keep at it, now it's more like a song or two a week...)

 

Anyhow, I think that's a pretty heroic task Cabsy's laid out for himself and I'll bet it really has helped him keep in creative shape.

 

That said, maybe you should consider setting it up as a blog or podcast and using RSS feeds to let your fans subscribe? They don't have to give you their email address (although there are email blog/podcast subscription utilities -- I use one (from third party web service, Feedblitz) for my blog for folks who can't figure to click on the Subscribe Icon. )

 

I use Feedburner (free) to robo-prepare my RSS feeds so I don't have to futz around with any of that on an ongoing basis. It's set and forget, for the most part.

[Li10]

dude I envy you!! you have skills, keep it up.

[blue2blue]

dude I envy you!! you have skills, keep it up.

 

Thanks, man, I, uh... oh wait... you meant Cabsy!

 

 

Yeah, Cabsy, I'm listening to your track from 26 March... it's pretty great sounding. I'd be tempted to say awesome... except that the word awesome sounds so un-awesome at this point in history. Let's just say I found your chops pretty damn impressive!

 

I really like the look of the super simple interface -- but coming in on the one song link, I'm on an island with no (obvious -- I didn't look for easter egg links) way to navigate back home or to other tracks. I'm sure it'll fall into place when I go back out to the home page and come in from there -- but as you can see, it's handy to be able to direct someone straight to a given piece/page -- and you have to figure folks may bookmark them or send links to their friends. So you might want, at the very least, a home link and maybe some kind of identifier to reinforce your 'brand.'

 

 

PS... Ah... I see, the site is a work in progress. I really do like the super simple look. Too bad it's so hard to keep that. But, yeah, navigation... You have the content -- and judging from the two pieces I heard, it's might fine content, as well -- now you need to make sure people can find it, navigate it, and find it again.

[Li10]

Thanks, man, I, uh... oh wait ... you meant Cabsy !

 

I envy you as well actually. You always have something useful to say, and you have finished more than 0 songs in your life lol.

 

I've decided I'm going to drink nothing but water until I finish this particular song.

[rjt]

To make a strange parallel, that's how I finished my dissertation. I wrote a bit every day...Mon-Fri, then when I had time on the weekends....did it up big. I think writing a bit daily kept it fresh and kept me involved. Even if it was one paragraph. I actually finished the darned thing in a little over a year...not that easy in the program I came from. Good idea and good luck with it! I am trying something similar in music, but writing several times a week and writing even with no "inspiration."

[blue2blue]

I envy you as well actually. You always have something useful to say, and you have finished more than 0 songs in your life lol. I've decided I'm going to drink nothing but water until I finish this particular song.

 

 

Well... keep in mind that my actual life is not nearly the mad, fun, gala swirl of clever chatter and glamorous situations it might seem from my footprint in cyberspace.

 

Also keep in mind the fact that I didn't finish my first song until I was about five years older than you are right now. I couldn't play two chords back and forth and have it sound like music.

 

I couldn't rhyme without thinking, Gawsh, I can't believe I just wrote that... it's horrible. Everything I wrote set off my moon-june alarm... I had to sit and study other people's lyrics to convince myself that their lyrics looked as stupid as my lyrics on the page.

 

And I might have kept putting off getting going, daunted by my lack of ready musical talent and the awkwardness of my first efforts. But at the point where I was just about to give up I thought about how that guitar had sat in the corner of my bedroom for 6 years after I bought it, all but unplayed, from the time I was 13 til I was almost 20, and I thought, No, damnit, I'm going to do this if it stinkin' kills me.

 

And I thought it was going to. But it didn't and now, years later, I look back and think, man, why didn't I do that with everything... I'd be a successful filmmaker, software designer, and corporate businessman. And maybe I might have even stuck with one woman long enough to have something more than a big kit bag of dramatically broken romances to draw from for my writing.

 

Ah well... it all fits together, somehow.

[Cabsy]

thanks for the input...

 

one reason for this project was to train myself to finish pieces

 

i'd written a lot of songs, but i found myself dragging them out... adjusting tones, re-writing endings, overdubbing until it hard more parts than an orchestra... things would never finish

 

and the creative part is in the writing, so the more i could dedicate to that the better...

 

now I can spit one out completely finished in about an hour and a half

[Cabsy]

 

Today's Daily Melody

 

http://dailymelodies.com/player/?file=2008-04-03.mp3

 

 

[blue2blue]

 

thanks for the input... one reason for this project was to train myself to finish pieces i'd written a lot of songs, but i found myself dragging them out... adjusting tones, re-writing endings, overdubbing until it hard more parts than an orchestra... things would never finish and the creative part is in the writing, so the more i could dedicate to that the better... now I can spit one out completely finished in about an hour and a half

 

 

I think you're on the right path!

 

I really thought the two pieces I heard sounded just great the way they are. It's possible to overburden a poor little instrumental thing. I mean, you're a pretty fine guitar player and one or two overdubs looks like all you need to make a rich and complex piece.

 

Very nice work.

[Cabsy]

thanks man, means a lot