While browsing on the Record Union A&R forum, as we often do, we came across and interesting post by Dr.Sounds called “Music Wining”. Dr.Sounds is an A&R but also an artist who creates some rather avant garde minimalist new age instrumental music - great for relaxation and quite the mind trip. However, he raised in this post an interesting point about creativity and the art of composition and we would like to share it here.

He said, using an apt metaphor, that musical projects, like wine, can mature with age. What he means by this is that when you work with a musical project too long and you might find yourself “distracted” by your own composition. He means that if you grow tired of a composition and after a time think its hopeless - don’t through it away. Dr.Sounds himself often returns to a project after some time, and with his initial misgivings cast aside he approaches it with fresh enthusiasm.

There is actually a type of syndrome, he points out. You cannot work on a song for an unlimited time, because before too long your mind learns the logic of the song and refuses to let you to “hear” it again. If you take a break for a while and let the brain forget this logic, you can hear the song again and approach it afresh.

One can even take the metaphor further. Not all wine actually matures well, some do better than others - but you wont know until you have let it stand a while and then opened a new bottle from the cask.

To summarise: never throw away something you have done, because when you forget the learned logic of a song, you can rediscover your own work anew.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 10:56 am and is filed under Inspiring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.