{"id":805,"date":"2015-07-08T06:42:06","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T10:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=805"},"modified":"2015-07-08T06:42:06","modified_gmt":"2015-07-08T10:42:06","slug":"three-stages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2015\/07\/three-stages.html","title":{"rendered":"Three Stages"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"family8X10\"<\/a>I experience three distinct stages to the process of creating each composition, which I think of as head, body, tail:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Head \u2013 initial ideas, which may consist of pitch material, structure, extra-musical impetus, rhythms, instrumentation, or any combination of those and other elements. In this initial stage, I have to have an open, accepting mindset, uncritical, willing to try anything.<\/li>\n
  2. Body \u2013 working out the flow and pacing of the composition. At this point, I have made a commitment to specific ideas, and I become deeply invested in seeing how they will play out.<\/li>\n
  3. Tail \u2013 finishing touches. This is the detail stage: looking at every instant in the piece, making sure every nuance is exactly what I want it to be, and ensuring that I have communicated my intentions as accurately as possible to the performer. The mindset here is the opposite of the initial stage: highly critical, both deeply engaged and \u2013 paradoxically \u2013 distanced, not letting anything stay unless I feel fully committed to it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    These three stages call for three very different creative tasks. Taken one after another, they often cause an emotional arc that leaves me completely incapable of starting a new piece once the previous piece is completed. The reason for this reaction should be obvious: starting a new piece requires going directly from hypercritical thinking to uncritical thinking. When you aren\u2019t conscious of that shift as you begin a new composition, you end up with a lot of false starts, pieces that can\u2019t seem to get off the ground.<\/p>\n

    About 20 years ago, I hit on a solution to this problem. Or maybe not a solution, but a process that alleviates some of the rockiness in the road. I deliberately got into the habit of writing three pieces at once: a piece I was just starting, a piece I was in the middle of and a piece I was putting the finishing touches on. I wasn\u2019t able to stay with that combination all the time \u2013 life does have its way of intervening \u2013 but I stuck with it pretty faithfully for many years. There were two results: first, I never hit the emotional lows that had paralyzed me previously, because I always had another composition to turn to that was well on its way whenever any piece was completed. And second (and this was even more useful, I believe), I was able to avoid creative blocks, because I was never batting my head against a single problem day after day. Instead, I could begin each compositional session by taking my psychic temperature. Did I feel like generating new material? Or was I anxious to nail down some details? Or did I want to dive deeply into some waters I had encountered the day before? Whichever one suited my temperament at that moment, I had a composition waiting to satisfy my need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I experience three distinct stages to the process of creating each composition, which I think of as head, body, tail: Head \u2013 initial ideas, which may consist of pitch material, structure, extra-musical impetus, rhythms, instrumentation, or any combination of those and other elements. In this initial stage, I have to have an open, accepting mindset, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":807,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions\/807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}