Geoffrey Thomas

If you want your results to be creative, it stands to reason that the process of getting there should be creative. Put another way, uncreative practice will yield uncreative results.A recent conversation with composer Charles Young led me to a more creative practice method. The conversation was not in fact about practicing, it was about composing. Charles stated that his starting point was to generate gestures based on the emotional, physical, mental and attitudinal affects he was after. I am very kinesthetic, so the idea of gestures was very appealing. When I write gesture, I mean that quite literally. I mean moving hands, arms, feet, whatever to find shape and character. As a composer the gesture will suggest musical ideas. As an interpretive performer you reverse engineer; you attempt to find the gesture underlying a musical idea.If you introduce improvisation into the mix, the process becomes much more dynamic. Instead of focusing on notes and parroting back a musical text, you can become consumed with the underlying gestural dynamics. This is fun, it’s creative and it will move you forward much more quickly. 

Twyla Tharp, the choreograph, has a brilliant book called The Creative Habit. Can’t recommend it enough. The book includes a number of exercises, one of which was to list the fundamental skills in your art form.  Here is my list:

Skills List   

Accompanying Affects   Analysis   Arranging   Articulation   Arpeggios   Chord recognition   Chord voicing  Clefs   Composing   Conducting   Copying scores   Concentration Counterpoint   Dancing   Dichords   Dictation   Ensemble playing   Ethnomusicology  Figured bass  Form recognition   Formal analysis   Harmonizing   Heptachord shift in real time Imitation   Improvising   Interpretation   Listening   Memorizing   Notating    Pitch vowels   Polyrhythms   Orchestration   Octaves   Repertoire   Satztechnik   Scales Score reading   Separating all parts Sight-reading  Sight singing   Singing   Solfège  Style recognition   Rhythm skills   Touch   Thinking multiple parts   Transcribing   Transposing   Tuning   Variations   Vocal coaching