Category: NewMusicBox

Creative Productivity Challenge Day 5: Confidence

Explore all the posts from NewMusicBox’s 5-Day Creative Productivity Challenge here.

Some people think confidence is the key to success. It’s a handy rationale because we can always blame our lack of productivity on our lack of confidence. And if we believe that confidence is something we either have or don’t have—that it’s a finite trait determined at some formative age—than we don’t need to blame ourselves or take responsibility.

Let’s overturn those assumptions. Let’s explore how we get past the fear and do the work—even when we don’t feel “ready.” Because that’s what our best work demands.

We’ll cover:
3 tips for increasing your creative confidence

A. 4 C’s of Confidence: commitment, courage, capability, confidence
B. Use fear as an indicator
C. Stop hiding

And PSSST: Here’s your special BONUS to help you take your next project forward: YAY!
It may take a few moments once you sign up—have patience
CREATIVE PRODUCTIVITY CHALLENGE BONUS

Resources for Day 5

The Art of Play

Explore all the posts from NewMusicBox’s 5-Day Creative Productivity Challenge here.

“How can I make the act of creating new art feel less like work and more like PLAY?”

I’ve been asking this question a lot—with my students, with my collaborators, to myself. It’s a question that I return to when I feel stuck—creatively and productively – as an artist and a teacher. My investigations into this question have often been noisy, lopsided, awkward, occasionally flatulent, and—on the whole—a source of profound joy.

I’m excited to be able to share with you a few ways I’ve tackled this question, and I’ve offered a few (incredibly specific) questions of my own, in the hopes of learning more about how YOU use play in your life, work, and art.

Making things BY myself, FOR myself.

It took a while to come to terms with the fact that for me composing might actually be a messy, disjunct assemblage of ideas. Why not just make something you feel like making?

Back in high school, I learned how to make music in broad, crude, strokes, by recording myself playing instruments, making strange sounds, and layering them together in ways I found interesting. Over time, for whatever reason, it settled in my head that composing was supposed to be a different kind of activity—quiet, thoughtful, cerebral, methodical. It took a while to come to terms with the fact that for me composing might actually be quite different—a messy, disjunct assemblage of ideas. In rediscovering this process, I recalled the importance of simply making things that seemed interesting, whether they would be shared with people or not. These sketches could be non-musical, too—a video of funny faces, a painting of Hank Williams, a cube made out of mirrors. Why not just make something you feel like making?

What would you try doing, out of sheer curiosity, if you knew nobody needed to see/hear it?

Making things WITH people.

Sometimes, in moments of creative weakness, I get fixated on the idea that a “score” is not only a necessary means of making music, but a very specific type of means, like a blueprint. But a score can be so many other things, right? A puzzle. A Choose Your Own Adventure book. A cake recipe. An invitation to a costume party. A map without a key. A random sequence of numbers. A series of hand gestures. A water balloon fight. A matchbook. A clock. While going off in shamelessly speculative directions as to what a score could be, it occurred to me that a score is not really the interesting thing about making art, however; it’s people. So perhaps, I thought, making music directly, with people, all together, might lead my collaborators and I to creative terrain that the interface of a score couldn’t—a kind of creative space where everyone was collectively testing, discovering, and building new ideas together.

This led me to my current obsession—using games as a way to create new pieces. I’d been employing simple theater and music skill-building games in my elementary school classroom—after all, who doesn’t like to play games?—but had never tried using this strategy to create things with adults. I found that by setting up simple rules and interactions between people, my collaborators and I could develop interesting, surprising, and often quite beautiful relationships and ideas. Not only could these games be used to make works that combine media (sound, acting, movement, visuals)—they could be used to make work with just about anyone, from professional musicians to a classroom of kids. How cool is that? I’m in love with the idea that people of vastly different levels of experience could create something together through the simple act of playing a game.

How could you create a piece WITH people, as a group, without needing to write anything down?
What are some “games” that you play regularly in your work? In your process? In your life?
Could somebody else play these games with you?
Could somebody else use ideas from your “playbook” to make something of their own?

Making things FOR people.

Oh—a score can also be a gift box!

Wanting to make something with people who live far away presents a compelling challenge. I got excited about the idea of incorporating distance into the process of such collaborations by making pieces that were simply boxes filled with stuff. A box could contain anything—instructions, written music, cryptic symbols, magazine clippings, bubble wrap, knick-knacks, etc. A box could be like a little ecosystem, or a junk drawer, following any sort of logic or non-logic. A box could contain surprises, traps, secrets. The idea was that a person receiving a box could make a composition of their own from the contents within, and maybe even send me a box in return so I could do the same. (Some wonderful folks have done this.) But what if the box gets lost in the mail? What if the recipient hates everything in the box? What if the recipient chooses to ignore it, or forgets to open it? I had to accept all of these as possible outcomes, and it led me to think about the idea differently—as a gift, a gesture of love, goodwill, appreciation for someone, from me to them, in the form of art.

Clay box examples

Some sample boxes Clay has created. What would you put in yours?

If you made an art gift for someone, what would that look like?
(For a family member? For a colleague? For a stranger? For anyone and everyone?)

Making things WITH KIDS.

Getting a job teaching elementary school music has profoundly changed how I make things. When I started teaching, I immediately asked the question: how can I make projects collaboratively with these kids and give them the tools to make new art of their own? The complex array of challenges that such a question presents, I think, is what got me thinking about play in the first place.

A class of third graders listened to nine notes by Beethoven and drew what they thought it looked like. These drawings were interpreted by a professional string quartet.

Every year, I ask my students to make their own “note”—a recorded sound with their voice and a corresponding image to represent that sound.

What could you make with a classroom of 8-year-olds as your collaborators?

Asking questions with lots of answers.

Among many things, working with children got me thinking about “the art of the art assignment” (a title I am stealing from a book that I’d highly recommend). How could a simple prompt—a question, a task, a challenge—serve as a springboard for creativity? Presenting such questions to people, and collecting answers—in the form of sound, video, words, thoughts—has always been inspiring to me, and I take tremendous joy in sandboxing with the material folks are kind enough to send my way. This culminated most recently in me mailing a sound “workbook” to volunteers from all over the country, containing twenty simple exercises that could be interpreted on any instrument. Some examples:

Exercise No. 1—Say hello. Sing hello.
Exercise No. 6—Devise a situation in which your instrument unintentionally/accidentally makes sound.
Exercise No. 9—Describe “home” in three sounds.
Exercise No. 16—Write down a secret you’ve never told anyone – match the syllables to notes on your instrument; perform. (Destroy copy; save recording.)
Exercise No. 20—“The sound of ___.”

I was overwhelmed by the creativity and beauty of the responses and am slowly (oh, so slowly) building little collages out of my colleagues’ responses to each exercise.

What are some challenges / tasks / questions that might inspire you to collect things?
If you designed an art scavenger hunt for people, what would it look like?
If people designed an art scavenger hunt for you, what might THAT look like?
What could you do with the things you collect?

Ok, enough about me. How do YOU find ways to play in your creative practice?

Leveling Up, Part 1: The Business of Sheet Music

As I am wrapping up a recent commission for high school concert band, I am reflecting on my experience composing for educational instrumental ensembles.  Writing music for these ensembles is deeply rewarding—primarily because they are eager to perform freshly composed music and are willing to try new things.

Writing music for younger players also has its challenges. Chief among them is writing within the constraints of students’ developing technique. How do you communicate your musical idea if the players have limited ranges? If the music must stay within a small set of keys? If the players are still learning to sub-divide the beat and can’t read music in asymmetrical meters?

How do you communicate your musical idea if the players have limited ranges?

But as I started writing pedagogical music the most vexing problem of all for me was leveling the music. In the world of educational instrumental music, each work receives a grade, typically on a scale of 1–6. This makes sense. It’s a simple way for a director to sort through music to find the pieces appropriate for his or her ensemble.

The rub is that there is no consistent definition of the levels! One publisher’s Grade 3 piece is another’s Grade 4, or maybe even Grade 2. Some states publish their own leveling guidelines that are different from the publishers.

Plus, it’s big business! Every year schools spend significant amounts of money to purchase sets of scores and parts. Composers who write for educational ensembles need to understand the leveling system so they can better write for younger players and promote their finished scores in a market hungry for new music.

This post will look at the business of educational instrumental publishing and why leveling matters. In subsequent posts I will examine the leveling system more carefully and provide some best practices for writing for elementary, middle, and high school bands.

The Business of Sheet Music Publishing

Educational music is big business and there are incredible opportunities for composers to impact the lives of students, create art, and generate income. To paint a picture: according to the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 24,053 secondary (middle and high school) public schools in the United States in the 2013–2014 academic year.  Not every school has a music program, but most do. Another study published by the National Center for Education Statistics in 2012 says that in the 2009–2010 academic year 94% of elementary schools and 91% of secondary schools had music programs.

Between $2.4–10 million is spent annually on purchasing new music for public high schools per year.

With a very conservative estimate that directors have $100 to spend per ensemble per year on purchasing new music for their libraries (which amounts to between one and two new pieces with score and parts, on average) that means between $2.4–10 million is spent annually on purchasing new music for public high schools per year.[1]

These numbers aren’t exaggerations.

Some schools have up to four or five ensembles that all need music. In reality, the number is probably even larger because I am not including private schools (33,619 in 2013–2014 according to NCES), elementary schools (67,034), and degree-granting institutions (4,724).

The hard truth is that educational instrumental music publishing is a $25 million industry minimum and probably has sales in excess of $100 million annually.

And there’s choral, solo instrumental and method books, chamber music, pop and rock tune arrangements, and sacred music on top of this, but it’s not the focus of this article. Just know that as an educational ensemble, choirs can spend just as much as bands and orchestras when purchasing new music every year and that nearly all students who study privately are required to purchase method books and solo literature continually.[2]

Once we add in all ensembles and instruments, the sheet music publishing industry is nearly three times larger. Some estimates peg the sheet music industry at $1 billion dollars.

Don’t be quick to dismiss leveled music for degree-granting institutions, either. Outside of large music programs, most small, regional, and liberal arts college and university bands and orchestras consist of non-majors who have a passion for music. When I was conducting a string ensemble at a highly selective East Coast liberal arts college, most of the members of my group were pre-med and science majors. The literature we played was in the grade 3–4 range. It was the same for the concert band. It’s also the same for thousands of degree-granting institutions across the country. But it’s worth noting that, for better or worse, all band music (and even most orchestral music) has been leveled by this point.

To be clear: ALL band music and most orchestral music is leveled, and it is a big business.

Show Me The Music 

Leveling of music plays a critical role in both the business of sheet music publishing and in classroom pedagogy. For the music publishers, independent self-publishers or the major publishing houses alike, leveling the music makes it easier to sell. For the ensemble director, leveling provides a quick way to sort through the many hundreds of options and track skill development and artistic growth of an ensemble over time.

Leveling the music makes it easier to sell.

The leveling system was created by publishers who desired to promote music differentiated by skill and difficulty, and by state band programs to create a handicapping system for competitions, festivals, and juried performances. It is a system that works well, despite the nebulous nature of defining the grading scale.

At this point, composers writing for educational groups know that they are working within the leveling system and often, in collaboration with the commissioning ensemble, aim for a specific grade level based on a set of parameters. The next article in this series will examine the grade levels and what they mean more closely.

Composers who write for educational ensembles have the unique opportunity to take this information and use it their advantage. If you can find the most appropriate level for your composition, you can then more easily get it in front of the people who would be the most likely to purchase it and perform it. While doing that, you can describe how the piece works specific skills and which outcomes the director can expect to see with their ensembles.

Imagine the following scene: a 75,000 square foot showroom floor where the largest booths are those of publishing houses and music distribution companies. As a band director shopping for scores, how do you quickly sort through thousands of pieces to find the ones appropriate for your band? Your first step might be to begin with bins marked at the level your band typically plays.

Likewise, unless one is searching for a specific piece or composer, the easiest and most expedient way to sort through music online is by sorting by the grade level. Give it a try yourself sometime.

The Grades Aren’t Everything

As any composer with extensive experience writing for younger players will tell you, the levels aren’t everything. In fact, sometimes they get in the way.

Music is an art form and defies boxes and labels.

One reason for that is because music is an art form and defies boxes and labels. Another reason is one I listed above: the defining of levels is a challenge and although there is a lot of overlap, each publisher (and even some states) classify the music differently. In the next article we’ll begin to look more closely at how leveling works and how you can write music within that system.

NOTES:

[1] The $100/ensemble number was derived from an informal survey of my band directing contacts on Facebook that live across the U.S. and serve diverse communities. Depending on the district, school, and community this number could, in reality, be lower (some directors have a budget of $0) or much higher.

[2] The music publishing world is still battling the problem of private instructors photocopying repertoire and ensemble directors copying parts. Both activities are nearly always illegal. At most county and state solo and ensemble competitions, the student and director are required to have original parts and multiple original copies of the score. This is not true for NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing) state, regional, and national competitions. The illegal copying of art songs (primarily for the accompanist and also to avoid the student having to purchase a large volume for the sake of one aria) is rampant.

Creative Productivity Challenge Day 4: Process

Explore all the posts from NewMusicBox’s 5-Day Creative Productivity Challenge here.

High standards and a pursuit of the ideal are the hallmarks of any creative practice, but perfectionism can prevent us from appreciating or even achieving extraordinary results. How do we allow for the playful, exploratory, and experimental part of the process as well as for the critical, and analytical part?

What’s your process like and how do expectations factor in?

What tools or approaches help you to “ship” the work—to complete your work and get it out in the world?

We’ll cover:
4 principles for perfectionists

A. Shitty first draft
B. Recognize the process
C. Expectations: who/what are you measuring your work yourself against?
D. String of pearls

Resources for Day 4

Burnout is a b****. Let’s avoid it.

Explore all the posts from NewMusicBox’s 5-Day Creative Productivity Challenge here.

I would wake up, and it was there. I went about my day, and it was there. I would let my head hit the pillow in exhaustion at the end of the day, and it was still accompanying me. This low-level, ominous feeling had been following me around for months — contaminating every loud and quiet corner of my life. I even avoided counting the number of months that I consciously knew it was there. It started out as just feeling a little “off” or a little more worn out and wearied after each day of normal life-in-music tasks. Then, that dark cloud began to make its grim presence more known. I couldn’t shut it out because it was tied to everything that I loved. That feeling whispered to me in the darkness, “You’re not enough. Nothing you do matters. But don’t tell anybody that you feel this way because they won’t trust you with their projects.” I tried to do everything I knew to recharge: I cut out drinking, worked out more often, ate tons of vegetables, actively practiced self-care, and – most importantly – doubled-down on my work. My heritage is so full of that Midwestern, Protestant work ethic that it seeps from every pore. That tradition taught me, “If you’re feeling dull or distressed, just work harder.”

I started to get nervous. It wasn’t working. That dark cloud was getting darker. The fog was creeping into my practice and performance. It was creeping into my teaching. It was making it difficult to write and to record podcasts. I went to conferences and felt elated only to come home and feel even more defeated. I had to admit it: I was in total burnout.

I felt so sure. Now I don’t know…

“I can’t be burned-out,” I cried to myself. “My identity is built around being productive. I am a person who gets shit done.” Nevertheless, I had to admit to myself that I wasn’t getting stuff done. I was not being productive. I needed to find that part of myself again. I needed to find the part of myself that created more energy by practicing, teaching, and writing. How do you create that energy? How do you reconnect with the ambition that drives you with greater productivity? Was it lost for good? Was this the moment that I begin to slip away slowly from my lifelong passion?

Getting mired in small tasks without a big vision kept me incessantly “busy” but accomplishing very little.

“I don’t know what singing even looks like in my thirties,” I confided to a friend. “I felt really sure about what it looked like in my twenties. It looked like taking every job and getting lots of experience. It looked like a perpetually full calendar.” She asked, “Well, what do you want it to look like?” I whispered, “I don’t know.” I should have realized then that this would be the key to reconnecting with my productivity. Clarity. Clarity is the key. I had stopped dreaming up my audacious goals and had gotten stuck in the minutiae of “getting things done.” Getting mired in small tasks without a big vision kept me incessantly “busy” but accomplishing very little.

Planning for a remarkable life

In an early 2017 episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, Ferriss interviewed Debbie Millman, the incredible designer and founder/host of Design Matters, who described an exercise she calls “Your Ten-Year Plan for a Remarkable Life.” Millman recalled this exercise that she completed in a very early class session with Milton Glaser and that she now teaches her own students. He asked his students to write a detailed description that lists what their life would look like ten years from now. Then, he instructed them to read their essay every year. Millman also reminisced about finding her own essay from that class many years after she wrote it while moving house. She realized just how many goals she had planned for herself in that exercise that came to fruition.

You may be thinking, “A goal-setting exercise, Megan? Really? How mind-blowing…” But, stick with me. Remember that dark ominous cloud from earlier in this post? It wasn’t the vegetables, bubble baths, or motivational Pinterest quotes that helped me escape its path and rediscover my productivity mojo. It was this.

Working backwards from your major milestones

I started teaching a goal-setting exercise in my “Make It Rain” music business workshops before I stumbled across the Debbie Millman episode. However, this exercise shares some very similar points. The most important takeaway is to, “imagine yourself in the future.” For my goal-setting exercise, we start 20 years in the future. It is, at the time of this writing, the end of 2017, and 2018 is just around the corner. Let’s imagine you’re using this goal-setting exercise as a stand-in for your run-of-the-mill New Year’s resolutions. I like to plot this out on a timeline, an example of which you can see below. But you should pick the visual representation you like best.

career milestone timeline

First, look twenty years into the future. In 2038, who do you want to be? It is time to dream big. Think about where you will be in your life and career. What are the seemingly impossible goals that you would like to have accomplished? Then, the ten-year point on the timeline is a mixture of seemingly impossible and “highlights of a career” goals. This is the part in which you think about “what kind of legacy do I want to leave in my field or for my family?” Before we get to this goal-setting exercise in my workshops, I teach participants about what I consider the four levels of a career: generalist, specialist, expert, authority. We discuss how to strategically level-up from each one of those categories. The difference between your ten-year goals and your goals twenty years in the future is the difference between your goals as an expert in your field and your goals as an authority. An expert has a solid track record in handling complex, higher risk/higher profile projects and usually works with industry-leading clients. Let this help you brainstorm goals that have to do with complex projects and industry-leading collaborators. An authority receives honors and awards by professional peers for contribution to thought leadership. This could help you brainstorm goals that would fundamentally change your industry. Experts author seminal books on industry-related topics, perform (or speak) at leading national and international festivals/conferences, and influence a large fan/supporter base. An expert is also able to pick and choose work and enjoys “celeb status.” The easiest way I find to explain this is that an expert is someone who a reporter “inside the field” turns to for their opinion. An authority is someone who a reporter “outside the field” asks to comment on their general domain. You can hear it now, “Hmmm, I want to write a piece about opera. I’ll ask Renée Fleming…”

I had begun to believe that those big goals weren’t available to me anymore.

As a personal note, when I returned to this exercise feeling utterly defeated by burn-out, this was the most difficult part of the exercise to do. I had pages of notes for things that needed to happen in the next few months. But thinking about my twenty-year goals? I was left with a big blank. I had lost sight of my biggest vision. I had lost sight of who I wanted to be in the farther future for the sake of the dopamine high of crossing off a to-do list in the now. In fact, I had begun to believe that those big goals weren’t available to me anymore. If you haven’t been in that place, I hope you never have to experience it. If you have, please take even more time to dream up the most unbelievable, extraordinary, and astounding goals for your life. I want you to skip past the step in which others would say, “Who do you think you are?!” and march right on through to the point at which they might just faint in astonishment.

The halfway point

The five-to-six-year point of the goal timeline is where we identify the halfway point to those larger goals. When I have workshop participants complete this part of the exercise, we try to pinpoint the halfway milestones to big goals. For example, I will have some students suggest that they want to win a Grammy Award in ten to twenty years. We will often discuss that it is more likely to be considered for a Grammy when you have had a decent amount of recording experience in your history. But just recording regularly doesn’t make you magically ready to take home some hardware from the ceremony. Some of the things we also discuss include: writing/playing works about which you are deeply passionate, increasing your technical skills to be recording ready, finding a recording engineer you trust, working with a label, becoming a voting member or getting sponsored by two voting members, programming with a strong vision that still falls within the guidelines, and much more.

If you aren’t clear on the reasons you want to accomplish your seemingly impossible goals, then the work on the path to reaching that goal is going to feel burdensome.

What are the halfway points to your seemingly impossible goals? Can you achieve even more clarity on the most desired aspects of those goals? What I mean here is, is it important to you to win a Grammy because you love recording music? Or, do you want to win for different reasons? If you aren’t clear on the reasons you want to accomplish your seemingly impossible goals, then the work on the path to reaching that goal is going to feel burdensome.

Two-year goal actualization

You can take as many “business of music” courses as your heart desires, but nothing will be useful to you unless you know the trajectory you want to take. That is why we start at the farther end of the goal timeline. It’s the big goals that help us plan the course along the way. Now, our two-year goals are where the “rubber meets the road,” so to speak. Your five-to-six-year goals hopefully began to look a little more realistic or timely to you. That’s a good sign.

If you’re like me, the two-year goals are where motivation starts to kick back in after I’ve scared the beejezus out of myself with the wildly ambitious goals. These begin to look like actual SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timebound. I had a student reveal to me that one of her big, audacious goals was to be an EGOT winner. (EGOT is an acronym for “Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony” in reference to persons who have won all four awards.) We talked about how her two-year goal actualization would be full of auditioning and gaining experience in all four of those areas. It’s a rare honor to receive all four of those awards. To do so, you need to be undeniable in all of those arenas. You can’t avoid learning about how television gets made and focus all of your energy on stage acting if your big goal is to be an EGOT winner. Take a moment, now, to outline your two-year goals in alignment with your overarching “Who do you think you are?” career-spanning goals.

Quarterly goals with metrics

Finally, we’re getting closer to the here and now. Take your journal, or piece of paper, and sketch out the quarters between this moment and your two-year goals. In each one of those quadrants, give yourself a handful of assignments that you know will help you achieve the two-year goal(s) you wrote down. Remember our students who wanted to win Grammy awards? Maybe their quarterly goals include:

  • Make a repertoire plan that will progressively work toward the type of repertoire to be recorded.
  • Do an internship in a recording studio to learn more about the process.
  • Make a professional studio recording of a specific upcoming performance/recital.
  • Network (make sure to identify a specific place, specific event, or specific people) with audio/video recording professionals to learn more about who to have on my recording team in the future.
  • Record every practice session or performance to get used to listening to myself on recordings.
  • Listen to those recordings on the first weekend of every month.
  • Make a plan to post new recordings after the listening session.
  • Sit in on an editing session with specific friends or mentors to learn the process.
  • Ask specific friends or mentors for advice on working with labels, producers, and engineers.

None of these quarterly goals seem particularly difficult or challenging when we write them out like that. But, surely, you can think back to a time when you were dragging your feet because you just didn’t know where to start on a big project or a specific action didn’t make it onto your calendar. You had the big end goal in mind, but you didn’t know how to strategically plan out the micro-actions to get yourself there.

Busyness is no longer my currency

I scroll through social media and can see that I was never alone in these challenges. I find that many of my colleagues are suffering burnout. Their dark clouds are stifling all of the positive feelings they initially brought to their music careers. The signs are jumping out at me through the screen. There are many Type-A, workaholic, checklist-or-die types in our field. We wear our “busyness” as a badge of honor. We lament our low wages, lack of sleep, and wearing of seventeen hats even as we glorify this martyrdom in ourselves and others. Achievement for the sake of achievement is a chimera. Instead of slowly drifting away from the field, I found a way to recommit to my larger vision and passion again. I hope that you’ll do this exercise many times. I hope that you’ll do this exercise to keep you clear and sane. Finally, I hope you’ll do this exercise well before you desperately need it.

Creative Productivity Challenge Day 3: Purpose

Explore all the posts from NewMusicBox’s 5-Day Creative Productivity Challenge here.

Flow: it’s that magical place when we are “in the zone” and operating at peak creativity—we’re focused, our mind is quiet, we’re working with marvelous ease and time seems to disappear.

How can we set ourselves up to get to the flow state more consistently?

What if the flow state were more accessible than we realized?

We’ll cover:
3 ways to boost your motivation, creativity, and access to flow.

A. Know your WHY
B. Know your Hero’s Journey
C. Know your FLOW

Resources for Day 3

On Starting

Explore all the posts from NewMusicBox’s 5-Day Creative Productivity Challenge here.

Starting is difficult.
Do I start at the beginning?
Do I start in the middle?
Do I start at the end?


Let’s start: on July 1, 2007, I launched a podcast project called 60×365 for which I composed and posted a new one-minute composition every day for a year. In an interview with NewMusicBox at the conclusion of the project, I shared some early reflections about its impact on my creative practice:

One thing that excited me right away was knowing that this project would force me to compose a lot more. Making a new piece every day is a huge commitment. Like many of my colleagues, I was having trouble finding time everyday to sit down to compose at all. I had hit a mental block on a couple of projects and felt like I was stuck in a rut. 60×365 presented a way to try out some new ideas while developing some discipline and routine in my creative life.

Now, ten years later, my practice has further evolved. The experience gained from 60×365 continues to guide my work.


Imagine a blank sheet or a blank screen or the silence waiting for sounds.
Now imagine a composition that is nearly done, needing just one more idea.
Which is more difficult?


I think about productivity quite a lot, looking for ways to be more organized, more efficient, more motivated. I’ve read about and experimented with different systems (Getting Things Done, Personal Kanban). I’ve tried different apps (Remember the Milk, Trello, Habitica). Sometimes the systems and strategies work for me, and sometimes they don’t. Often they work for a while, then gradually fall away and the search for a new tool, a new hack, a new methodology begins. It’s easy to get lost in this search, using it as an excuse to put off the actual work. One must be careful with this search. It’s easy to get lost in the maze of contradictions and caveats:

Over time I have assembled a mashup of tools and systems that help me to stay organized and keep track of various projects and deadlines. Knowing what work needs to be done does not automatically motivate me to start working, however. A tidy to-do list does not help me confront the reality that the music I imagine composing is very different from the music I sketch at the start of a session.

So I keep searching and I begin to understand that what I’m really searching for doesn’t exist. I want to discover the magic combination of planning actions and productivity apps that result in an effortless efficiency in the face of creative projects. While certain combinations do make it easier to organize and track projects, no combination changes the reality that good music takes hard work.


Do I compose better first thing in the morning?
Do I compose better late at night?
Do I compose better when I have one long session?
Do I compose better when I split it up into multiple shorter sessions?
The unhelpful answer to all of these questions is “sometimes.”


There are two principles that I’ve developed to guide my practice. The60×365 project helped me identify these, and hard work since then has cemented them as foundational elements of my working routine. They are not focused on motivation or inspiration. They are not organizing principles subject to the whims of a given day. They are:

1) Start with anything and work from there.
2) Throw out anything that isn’t working, without prejudice.

The first principle emphasizes composing over thinking about composing. Thinking about the work is not the same as engaging with the work. The decision about how to start can get in the way. Starting with anything is better than not starting. I know how to work, and am not afraid to do the work once I’m in it.

The second principle supports the first. Being ready to throw out something that doesn’t work means that there is no wrong place to start. Every moment spent composing is a chance to learn more about composing. The more we learn, the better we become.

Allow me to illustrate with two anecdotes.


We face the challenges of starting all the time. We face it in all parts of our lives. Even something as trivial as doing the laundry has the challenge of a start.
A pile of clothes in the basket waits to be washed.
A pile of clothes in the dryer waits to be folded.
An idea waits for your sounds.
Half-finished sounds wait for one more idea.


The biggest challenge of 60×365 was finding an idea for each day. Without an idea I was unsure how to start composing. Many days I had to use the basic constraints of the project (a one-minute electronic composition, due today) as enough to get started, and trust the skills developed over years of practice to create the finished composition. October 1, 2007 was one of those days.

There are many different ways to start. That day I started by going to the Freesound Project and downloading their “random sound of the day.” It was a hi-hat loop by John Scott. With no real plan, I loaded it into my DAW and poked at it in different ways until an idea began to emerge. After a number of experiments, I could see what the music wanted to be. At that point, I took a break to make an evening cup of tea. (This is part of my process, letting the subconscious mind take over for a little while.) When I returned, I knew what to do and worked to pull the whole piece together.

I’ve found this to be true again and again: get past the difficulty of starting by simply starting. How to do that looks different every time, so there’s no secret trick to it. Sometimes starting looks like the situation I just described: make a random choice and develop the music from there. Sometimes it looks like starting with something easy, or with something challenging. Different projects, different moments, require different solutions. The only consistency is that starting is the transition from merely thinking about composing to actually composing.


There’s no time to wait for inspiration.
There’s no such thing as a problem that solves itself.
There’s no substitute for putting in the work.


Morneau graphic

Image by David Morneau

A little context is required for this next anecdote. In early 2016, I began to collaborate with composer Melissa Grey. We quickly discovered that we work very well together, in part because we approach the craft and discipline of composing in very similar ways, which includes our separate discovery and embrace of these principles. Our collaborative working method takes many forms, from improvising to drawing large maps by hand to composing side-by-side at one computer. This particular story of working with Melissa is about the creative freedom that comes from a willingness to discard ideas that aren’t working.

Recently, we were preparing for a major performance that would combine some of our existing music with new compositions. We had created a map and structural plan for the show and were working to fill in the details. On this particular day we had tasked ourselves with composing a short remix. We knew the constraints of the task: use the tracks of the source composition, sketch it in a single day to remain on schedule. There had been a brief conversation the day before about one possible idea. Because it was my turn to drive the laptop, I setup a new session and made a quick loop of a recorded voice as an approximation of our idea.

After listening, to it Melissa remarked that it sounded mediocre and derivative, which it did. We began to revise and adjust, looking for the way forward. Before frustration could take hold, Melissa looked at the clock and said, “Let’s give it another hour, then we’ll start fresh with a different approach.” That was a freeing moment for us. The pressure of dealing with this particular loop was taken away by the decision to set a time limit and then discard if it still didn’t work.

An hour later, we realized that we had eliminated the original loop almost entirely. The music before us was very different from the original idea. Several hours later, we had shaped and refined and polished the sketch into its unexpected and charming form. The willingness to discard the original idea freed us to follow the music as it developed.

In this case, there was no need to explicitly discard anything. The absolute willingness to start over allowed us to explore and experiment. There was no pressure to get the idea right at the beginning. We gave ourselves the luxury of discovering the right idea as we worked. This was a powerful moment.

Morneau graphic

Image by David Morneau


In economics, sunk cost is a cost already incurred that cannot be recovered. “So far, I’ve spent eight hours composing from the initial concept.”
The sunk cost fallacy is making a decision that too heavily weights the sunk cost against future benefit. “Even though the initial concept is not working the way I’d imagined, I can’t start over without losing those eight hours.”
Instead, consider: “I’ve gained eight hours of experience composing, and I can start over right now with the benefits of this experience to aid me.”


Here at the end, the goal is to compose, which is very different from thinking about composing or planning to compose or making a to-do list of all the bits that need to be composed. Start from anywhere, so long as you start. Be ready to throw everything away and start again. How you practice these principles will depend on who you are, and it will vary from day to day and from project to project.

60×365 helped me discover and articulate these principles. Collaborating allows me to continue refining them. Working well teaches me to work well. There is no shortcut around that reality. Embrace it: work hard and good work will follow.

Creative Productivity Challenge Day 2: Self-Messaging

Explore all the posts from NewMusicBox’s 5-Day Creative Productivity Challenge here.

From negative self-talk to self-compassion.

What’s your negative self-talk like—the craziest stuff on loop in your mind?

If you’re like me, you have a nasty voice in one ear making outrageous statements about your efforts, your capabilities, your projects (not to mention your looks, manners, weight, etc.). How do you deal with this?

Doing our best work demands that we get past the voices of our fears, self-limiting beliefs, and self-defeating assumptions.

What has helped you?

We’ll cover:
3 counter-intuitive approaches to taming our nasty internal gremlins

A. Identify your negative self-talk messages
B. Turn Pro
C. Grateful Flow

Resources for Day 2

When Everything Utterly Sucks

Explore all the posts from NewMusicBox’s 5-Day Creative Productivity Challenge here.

Somewhere in the homestretch of writing a new composition, I inevitably become convinced that the entire piece is garbage. By now, when I start a new piece, I know that this Day of Utter Suckitude is coming; it happens no matter how much I’m loving the piece, or how smoothly the writing has gone thus far. I become convinced—temporarily, falsely—that not only is there nothing redeemable about this awful piece, but that composing itself is meaningless, I’ve committed myself to a worthless career, and I’m a bad composer. I become briefly convinced that perhaps I should seek out another job, one where at least I’d be getting free health insurance.

I know exactly how ridiculous this all sounds written out, but that doesn’t help me reason it away in the moment. This feeling usually lasts 24 hours, or at most a couple of days. Each time, it feels like I’ll never escape

The Day of Utter Suckitude is different from the small, nagging instinct that a section of music would be better if I re-wrote it. That voice can be trusted. You can recognize the Day of Utter Suckitude because it encompasses an entire piece, finds nothing good about any of your work, and sends you into an anxious tailspin. Sometimes the Day of Utter Suckitude manifests so suddenly it gives you composing whiplash; you’ll wonder how a piece that seemed brilliant a week ago has become something you’re now certain you should destroy as quickly as possible.

“I’m pretty sure this piece is my last commission ever, because who would ask me to write anything else after hearing this garbage?”

During the Day(s) of Utter Suckitude, someone you know will ask how your writing is going. Because you have chosen this career—you got yourself into this mess—you may not respond truthfully. You’ll want to say: “Terribly! It’s going terribly. The piece sucks, and I’m pretty sure that everything I do is devoid of meaning.” You’ll want to say: “I’m pretty sure this piece is my last commission ever, because who would ask me to write anything else after hearing this garbage?” You’ll wonder if this is the curse that comes with having your dream career: that for a few days during the creation of each new piece, you’ll loathe everything about your work. You don’t feel as if you can confess any of this to another person, however, unless you’re talking to another composer who is also a very good friend, so you grit your teeth in response. You say something like, “It’s… going. It’s fine.”

Even writing this essay, I can feel it coming; tomorrow, when I re-read the current draft, I will decide that it, too, is the worst thing I’ve ever written. I know that later, by draft four, I’ll have moved past that feeling; I’ll have revised a great deal, and it’ll feel like it belongs to me again. This particular brand of panic always passes, and the piece pulls through every time. When I’m done, it may not be my favorite thing I’ve ever written, but I’ll have fallen back in love with it.

Sometimes when I’m stuck in the worst part of my composing process, I think about the start of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride. You enter a dark room and a door slides shut behind you. As the room lowers—it’s secretly an elevator—a narrator explains that the room has no windows or doors, which “offers you this chilling challenge: to find a way out!” Of course, he says, “there’s always my way.” You look up to discover that the ghostly narrator has hanged himself from the ceiling rafters—dark for a children’s ride, no?—but then a hidden side door opens, and you’re free to move onto the actual ride itself.

Give yourself a moment and then search for a solution, and that door you couldn’t see at first, a way back into the piece, a way to move forward, appears every time.

This is the goal when we’re stuck: to find a way out. Even if I’ve convinced myself that I write bad music and no matter how much I temporarily loathe whatever I’m working on, that hidden door always opens. You don’t need extreme measures, either. You give yourself a moment and then search for a solution, and that door you couldn’t see at first, a way back into the piece, a way to move forward, appears every time.

Each Day of Utter Suckitude is like anxiety: it mimics the feelings of actual physical pain and actual disaster, but it isn’t any of these. It can’t be solved, at least not immediately, by pushing yourself harder. Like anxiety, it may not have a permanent antidote and there may be no quick-fix solution. The only way out is, usually, to acknowledge the feeling, to greet it like an old acquaintance you don’t particularly like—“Hello, good to see you, but now I have to excuse myself”—and then to step away.

Step away from the desk

Step away from the desk
Photo by Taduuda

Right now, I’m in the thick of this with a piece I’m writing. I have the sensation that what I’m working on is not very good, is in fact maybe the worst thing I’ve ever written. I know that after I’ve fleshed it out and revised the orchestration, after I’ve edited it multiple times, I’ll have changed my mind. The first rehearsal I attend will be like greeting an old friend I actually like: I’ll see all of its flaws, sure, but I’ll also love it in a way that can’t be erased.

But here, right now, I hate this piece with all of my being, and as usual, that makes me wonder if perhaps I’m very bad at writing music. I have to remind myself that this is the process. In my non-composing life, too, I experience anxiety, but I’ve learned to remind myself that I am in anxiety when it happens. It is temporary; it will pass. Here, writing this piece, I am not the process; I am in the process, I am passing through it, and it is passing through me.

I am not the process; I am in the process, I am passing through it, and it is passing through me.

Instead of letting “bad” days derail the composing process altogether, I’m learning to recognize when to push through and when to be gentle with myself and let the piece rest. Whether I push myself to keep composing or decide to take a break, my process is not disrupted. One bad day won’t derail the process; it is the process, and a single bad day or even a bad week of composing doesn’t ultimately have any bearing on how good a finished piece will be.

Embracing a routine where you hate your own work seems a little ridiculous. You may want a book on getting rid of the doubt entirely, a list of “10 Ways to Be Productive” that leaves no room for days where you loathe what you’re writing. You may reason that if you just optimize your time, determine an ideal morning schedule, and make a really effective to-do list, you should be able to skip over the stage where it feels like everything you write is wrong.

But composing, or any artistic pursuit, is a practice. In this kind of practice, as any musician knows, there is a stage where you’re confronted with your own inadequacy, followed by a stage where you meet your own faults without resistance. That’s the sweet spot, and that’s where you begin to improve. In the practice of composing, that brief, late-game feeling that everything we’ve written is garbage might have a purpose after all. It can lead us to finish the piece strong, to shore up its weak spots and make our way confidently to the double bar.

So much of our instinct when we’re stuck is to want to push through, to work through the doubt as fast as possible, to try to outrun it. But once you’ve learned your process, you’ll know what’s coming. You’ll know when to push through and when to give a piece 12 to 24 hours to marinate on its own before you return to it. I can’t drag you out of the really bad days with good advice. I can only tell you to trust your process, even—especially—when the process feels like doubt, like failure. This, too, is part of the process, but you know what comes next. You know what follows feels like falling back in love. You know that if you wait here just a moment longer, you’ll always find a way out.

Creative Productivity Challenge Day 1: Creativity Habits

Explore all the posts from NewMusicBox’s 5-Day Creative Productivity Challenge here.

Let’s get past the Procrastination and get to the Productivity!

Whether it’s a new piece we’re writing, a work we’re learning, an ensemble we’re launching, or a fundraising campaign we’re spearheading, let’s look at what helps us to bring our best and get the work done.

In today’s session we’ll cover: 5 creative habits for getting work done.

A. Time blocking
B. Work distraction free (so social media, unplug and don’t use your cell phone as an alarm clock)
C. Divide & conquer
D. Pomodoro technique
E. Backwards planning

When, where, and how do you do your best work?

What factors contribute or detract from you doing your best work?

Consider a priority creative project you’re working on (or procrastinating with) now—what are the obstacles you face and what could help you overcome them?

There’s no magic bullet and no one-size-fits-all solution. But the more ideas and approaches we share as a community, the better it is for all! No need to struggle in isolation—join the conversation. Please ask questions and contribute your perspective, and any approaches or resources that have worked for you!

Let’s prepare to make 2018 our best year yet!

Resources for Day 1: