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I don’t know why that is, but it’s hard to find artistic people who are very disciplined about building creative routines.

I am guilty as charged as well.

I have no idea if I’m typical or not, but I am very feeling-oriented and my productivity goes way up and way down…. if I’m feeling inspired, I get lots done, I feel like being productive.  Other times, I go through periods without getting anything done.

Like posting frequencies on this blog, for example.  I built myself a good habit of Tweeting, and from there built up a good routine of writing blog entries…. and puff!  I hit a wall.  My inspiration runs dry, I have nothing to say.

Now, on one hand, I firmly believe it’s fine to say nothing if you have nothing to say.

On the other hand, I also know that being creative is a habit.  Many successful artists — Diane Warren comes to mind — carve their craft out of regular, highly-routined attempts at being creative.  Inspirations be damned — just like people who jog everyday, you just have a go at it, whether you feel like it or not, and out of the machinegun approach emerge some real jewels.  You get better at doing things by doing them, anyway.  If your batting average is low starting out, just swing many times.   If your average is 10% of what a competent professional should hit, you start out by swinging 10x more to keep up.  In time your craft, your effectiveness will improve, and you won’t have to swing quite so maniacally.  (That’s how true masters make it look easy.  But don’t think for a second that they didn’t pay their dues.)

Building a habit of being creative is actually no different from either creating any new habit or quitting any bad ones.  It’s like building grooves on the ground where your wheels will travel frequently.  It takes some effort to get it going, but once the grooves start taking shape, it gets easier and easier.

Personal Development guru Steve Pavlina has a great article on this that has become a standard among personal development bloggers: 30 Days to Success.  I, for example, had undertaken 30-day challenge to work on songwriting everyday.  And I must say, I was indeed productive!

I also wrote an article on my old personal growth blog that has some relevant points:  The 7 Keys to Breaking Bad Habits

Now, when you’re choosing a new habit to build (or a bad habit to break) it’s a good idea to just focus on one at a time — don’t try to change your life radically, because that’s harder to pull off and failure undermines your self confidence.  If you want to build a habit of being creative, I think a reasonable place to start is to just build a routine/build in a time to have a go at it on a regular basis.  Whether you produce anything worthwhile is beside the point.  The point is to get in the habit of giving it a shot on a regular basis.  After a while, you may surprise yourself at how efficiently you can get creative.  I, as a guitar-based songwriter, have gotten good enough to a point where on most days, I can just mentally turn the switch “on” and write new riffs or guitar parts.

I myself have lots of good habits I hope to build…I will share some of my own 30-day challenges to undertake in the near future.

Anyway, it is very possible for you to change yourself so that you get creative often instead of being stuck in a stop/go routine.  The only thing that’s holding you and me back are ourselves.

So let’s make it a point to build a routine of being creative, shall we?

Today is a day to celebrate.  We finally launched the film web site I’ve been working on for the last 6 month.

Ladies and gentlemen, drum roll please…. LostInSunshine.com!

It’s a brainchild of the writer/director Jentri Chancey and producer Lorie Marsh.  And kudos also go to the web designer Shad Chancey, who did the graphic design for the site.

I am very grateful to be involved in this project for many reasons.  I think what the filmmakers are trying to do with this web site is very forward-thinking — I mean, grassroots DIY thing has been done among bloggers, authors and musicians.  Filmmakers have done it, too — but most of the cases so far have been unintentional successes.  They didn’t set out to market and sell their films that way.  But with LIS, they are totally going at it on their own, with the intention to create an online community around the film by using net-based tools.

I learned a ton from this project myself — I would never been motivated enough to really sit down and master Drupal (content management system) if I didn’t have to, but now that I’m neck deep into it, I’m amazed by Drupal’s sheer power and flexibility.

Launching a web site is always a proud moment, but I’m particularly proud of this one.

All that being said — I was thinking tonight about how proud I feel of my latest web creation, but I also imagined how I’d feel if I was releasing a new CD, and if it was selling…..

I’d be way up on cloud nine then.

You see, I love making web sites, and I love the fact that I am in demand, my peers respect me and I get paid handsomely for it.  It’s hard not to like something you’re good at.

But it’s even better, if you become good at something you love.

That’s the ideal, that’s what we should all aspire to do.  You make yourself learn and grow, because you love it.

And that’s what I want to do.  I’m not yet as developed as a musician as I am a web developer.  But I still am more musician than web developer.

And that’s OK.  I’m making what I love grow, too.  It’s just taking a bit longer, because it’s bigger.

I’ve said this before and I’m sure this won’t be the last time, but I can’t believe how many people don’t really use their public libraries.

It’s free, people!  Your tax dollars are actually doing something good for you.

As a person who listens more than he reads, I love to browse through the CD section of the library.  Some days I don’t find much I’m interested in, but today I found a good load.  They are:

• The Derek Trucks Band: Already Free
• Chicago Blues Reunion: Buried Alive in the Blues
• The Rolling Stones: Hot rocks 1964-1971
• Bruce Springsteen: Magic
• Staind: 14 Shades of Grey
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live at Monterey
• SlipKnot: All Hope Is Gone
• Sleater-Kinney: The Woods
• Sonny Landreth: From the Reach
• Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Son House
• Gary Moore: Bad for You Baby

So they include a health doze of blues.  Being primarily a modern rock guy, I tend not to discover any blues records I like, unless I can check them out and live with them for a while, and the library is the perfect place for that.  I discovered some albums there that I would have never encountered otherwise.

Plus, I just put a hold on Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod.  It’s book that my hero Derek Sivers is enthralled in right now.

So, what are you waiting for?  Go hit your local library, see what you can dig up!

Playing the guitar (or any instrument) is like learning to speak a language.  At first, you only know a few words or phrases.

But the only way to get better? Say What You Can.

I had a downer feeling yesterday about my guitar playing.  Although I didn’t have much time today, I wanted to play a bit to see if I can feel better about it.

Glad I tried.

The problem is that I have a great mind (if I say so myself ).  I can play some amazing guitar in my head.

You see, that’s really not a problem.  The only problem here is that my imagination is unlimited by my playing ability.  Or rather, I’m still not disciplined enough to confine my imagination to what I can play.

But just like knowing what you want to say but not knowing the words to say them, you have to start out by picking out words that are close enough in your head.  If you remain silent, then you’re most certainly not communicating, nor are you getting better at it.

So today I focused on simplifying — be creative with note choices and expressions and phrasing.

It wasn’t mistake-free, but it was much better.

A lot of guitarists play licks instead of musical ideas.  I am guilty of that, too.  Just play what my fingers have a habit of playing.  Not really hearing my phrases in my head before playing.

So I am trying to get out of that — but I’m still not that good at it.  I feel clumsy and my range seems so limited.

But I have to say what I can say.  That’s the only way I’ll get better at this.

And I will.

My fellow Twin Cities musician blogger Steve Goold posted a well-written thought piece on artistic success.  His post inspired this, which is my response — an expansion on what he started.

I won’t repeat what he wrote, so go read his piece.

I’m not saying this is what Steve said this, but his four levels CAN be taken as “the more people get it, the better.”

Which is not necessarily true, though it can be.

Another factor involved here is not in how may people get it, but how deeply it moves the people who get it.

There are artists out there, some who are considered highly successful, who solicit a strong love/hate reaction from people.  Tori Amos comes to mind, for example.

Not everybody gets Tori, not even close.  But people who get her, she tends to really touch them at a deeper, more fundamental level.

While she may not be Steve’s level 4, that still constitutes a very high degree of artistic EFFECTIVENESS.  Or perhaps it could be called artistic maturity.

Of course, the very ideal is to reach many people AND move a great portion of the listeners.

But more often than not, artists are regarded highly even if they don’t appeal to the mass — especially those with elementary level of appreciation for the craft.  There are deeper realm of the craft that can only be appreciated by those who are more experienced in the realm.

So, here are my four levels of artistic maturity:

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Level 1: Reach Yourself

What you created are satisfying and fulfilling to you, the artist.  You feel good enough about it that you start to share with other people.  This is the foundation of artistic success — of course, perfection is seldom attained, but we must be good enough so that we ourselves think our output is satisfactory.

Level 2: Reach Others

When other people like what you like, then you have created an effective piece of art.  It communicates something.  Now, what is being communicated is in the eye of the beholder — ultimately, it is a self-conversation that is sparked by the art inside the receiver’s head.  But the more people get it, the better, at this level.

Level 3: Reach Experts

Elementary art is easier to understand, but it takes a certain level of mastery to reach others who are experienced/masters in the art.  Now, these “experts” don’t necessarily mean other artists — they can include critics, fanatics, and other enthusiasts.  When you start to reach these people, you begin to be regarded as a mature artist.  But many artists who reach this level, unfortunately, lose touch with the foundation and cease to create art that can also be appreciated by the mass/uninitiated.

Level 4: Reach Everyone Where They Are At

This is the ultimate, and only precious few artists attain this level.  The Beatles, Beethoven, Bach…. they were able to create art that the uninitiateds and enthusiasts alike marvel at, for different reasons.  It has layers that appeal to more people, wherever they are at.

–

Most artists do progress from level 1 to 4 in order, though some simply just “have it” and start at level 3 or even 4.  (Mozart comes to mind)  But seeing some masters like Picasso or Miles Davis, you can see the progression through these stages.  I’m not into jazz at all, yet Kind of Blue appeals to me.  And I know it appeals to jazzheads, too, for reasons that may be different from mine.

Now, I realize that the above four levels still don’t address the profoundness of how the art impacts the receiver.  If a songwriter is at level 2 but the people who get it really are profoundly moved, that’s still have to be considered a high degree of artistic success — even if it doesn’t appeal to experts.

So in the end, reality is much more complex than what Steve or I can summarize in these tiered definitions.  Multi-dimentional, really.

The other fascinating and challenging thing about being a songwriter is that a song must be performed in order to be realized.  But the performance can greatly affect the delivery.  An amazing song performed lousily is still lousy, while a mundane song performed superbly can reach a good number of people.   Even for those who are pure songwriters and not performers, they have the daunting task of assembling a demo with more accomplished performers, so that they full might of their songs can be properly delivered.

Musicmaking is a deep, deep art — I do feel fortunate to have discovered something so deep, that I can easily spend my life time pursuing it knowing that I’ll never scale the full depth of it.

Well, there are many advices out there for us musicians — do this, do that, sort of thing.  They all focus on the techniques, the little tricks you can do to sell more CDs or bring more people to the show or build your fanbase.

And they can be useful. I’ve read them and I tried some of them, sure.

But these last couple of years, I started realizing how much of the foundation I was missing.  I was looking for tips on roofing, when I hadn’t dug the proper foundation.

Let me explain.  As a guitar player who started playing in the late 80s, I was initially influenced by very technical playing of that era.  To be a good rock/metal guitarist meant that I was supposed to be able to pull off flashy techniques.

So I spent a lot of time trying to play fast.  Because if fast wasn’t there, I wasn’t a good guitarist.  I scoured and tried practice tips that supposedly helped me get faster, fast.

15 years later, I am a guitarist who can’t play very fast and who can’t play very slow — well, all right, I’m not bad — but I am nowhere near where I thought I could be.

In my pursuit of speed, I failed to realize how important it is to build a solid house.  There were some licks I learned to play fast, but I couldn’t modify them or apply them — they were just habits of my hand.

This last year or so, I finally realized that if I want to really play fast, then I better be able to play softly well first.  Like learning how to hold down the strings with the very tip of my fingers (it gives me the most expressive control), instead of pushing the strings down carelessly, letting my fingers fall wherever they do.

The same thing happened with my singing.  I was trying to sing high, and I sounded terrible.  My high range expanded, once I stopped trying to reach out there and focused more on notes within my range.

Ironic, isn’t it?

There’s a Japanese saying “if you want to go fast, go around.”  Don’t look for shortcuts, but take the long way.

That’s the lesson I’m having to learn.  The long way actually is the fast way. Because shortcuts either fail to help you get there or even if you do, you won’t stay there.

So, as a musician, I am digging deep to identify and isolate my core.   Instead of employing every technique that supposedly produce success, I’m going to figure out who I am and what I have to offer, first.

After all, what good is a haphazardly put-together roof without any foundation?

I don’t hear this discussed in most musician circles — but in my opinion, a public library is a great resource for musicians.

First, the most obvious: they have CDs. You can check them out and live with them for FREE. I know there are many places on the net that streams music for free, but to me, the best way to gauge if a particular artist is for me is to live with the music for a while, listening to them in the background as I do household chores or commute.

Secondly, they have music books. Libraries I know of have books on music business, songwriting, guitar playing, and online promotion. Most books out there are not worth owning — you just read it once, pull out useful information, and then return the book. Efficient, and FREE. Some places even have beginner instruction books on guitars, bass, piano, etc. It’s a great place to get started on broadening your horizon or to see if a particular instruction material is up your alley.

Yeah, you do have to return the books and keep track of when they are due. But even if you miss some deadlines, fees are typically inexpensive.

Even if you’re not short on financial resources, a library is still a great place to get exposed to new music or acquire valuable information. So, what are you waiting for?