Creative Pause

For the last six months, I have been writing a lot of music. I wrote a Bassoon Concerto scored for bassoon and piano that incorporated pre-existing music from A Light in the Attic Suite and the The Day After Halloween Suite with some originally composed material (hopefully to be scored for chamber orchestra later). I updated and edited my Bella Suite that I wrote in 2009 so it would be performance ready. And finally, I completed my Sanguine Symphony, a work that took well over a year to compose. With all of this music flying around in my head, I remembered that every once in while, I need a creative pause.

For me, a creative pause is a break from writing and specifically, writing music. I need to do this because if I keep on writing and transition from one music project to the next, each work will sound too similar to the previous one. This is not always bad. Every composer has a specific style; different harmonies favored, chord progressions commonly used, favorite melodic shapes, et cetera. The problem that I encounter my own writing is that without a creative pause, each subsequent work is a little less original than the previous and my confidence in my own originality falters.

So I pause. My most recent creative pause was when I participated in NaNoWriMo. During the month of November I did not compose a note and I focused on the written word. For me, writing words is extremely difficult. I have been writing music for around 26 years and am comfortable expressing myself through sound. But words are different. A story is just a collection words that everyone can read, but to be able to communicate clearly and creatively with those words is extremely difficult. I have writing all my life, but only recently do I feel I have a basic grasp of how to communicate using words.

Looking over the next few months I plan on having another creative pause as I record my Inspired by Silliness Suite, A Tiny Symphony, and rerecord A Light in the Attic Suite. The act of performing music is completely different than composing music or writing words. Performing music requires a great deal of practice, concentration, physical memory, and precision. The only way to become a better performer is to practice for weeks and months on end and to truly get a grasp of your instrument, for years! Then, when you are decent at your chosen instrument, which can include singing, you have to somehow add your own musicality and originality to a performance which is the real challenge of performance.

At the end of the day, you need to do what works for your creativity and your ability to rest and recharge your mind. For me, a creative pause allows my mind to focus on something else other than just music. For others, a creative pause might be reading instead of writing, it might be training for a marathon, writing a journal article, or purusing some other hobby. We all strive to be creative but every once in awhile, we must also let our creativity rest.