Wouldn’t it be great if every idea that we had turned out to be a winner or every piece of software we bought was amazing or every customer we ever got was a dream to work with? Wouldn’t it be great if life was perfect?
Neh. Life would be boring if it was perfect. We need some conflict to keep the juices going and start that five alarm musical fire. What exactly is a five alarm musical fire? Glad you asked. I’m going to explain what it is and why it’s important to our creativity.
Let me start by saying this. The five alarm musical fire gets harder and harder to come by the older you get. The reason isn’t any more complicated than the fact that the older you get, the fewer things there are that you haven’t done. If nothing else, that song you wrote yesterday, you can’t write it again. It’s done. And when you’ve written thousands of songs like I have, trust me, that pilot light gets harder and harder to get going.
If you haven’t quite figured it out yet, that five alarm musical fire is what happens when you get the inspiration to do something that is really special. And you’ll know it when you hit it. I can probably list all my five alarm fires on two hands. That’s not a lot when you take into consideration that I’ve been writing since the late 70s.
The most recent was probably when I came out with my first Modern Classics CD. It was the first group of songs that I ever wrote with notation software. Up until that point in time, everything I had done was just sitting down at the keyboard or guitar and playing. I don’t think I ever wrote a lick of music until last summer, mostly out of laziness. Notation software changed all that. My first piece, “The Great Days Of Old”, was really something special. It was the first rhapsody I had ever written and was rather lengthy, relatively speaking.
It’s things like that you remember. Yeah, a lot of the daily creativity get lost in the soup because not everything can be a five alarm fire. And some things are just downright awful. That’s why you remember the special moments, because they are special.
You’re probably thinking that this kind of inspiration can’t be forced, that it has to come naturally. Well, to an extent, you’re right. You can’t force inspiration. But you can do things to help it along.
For example, I picked up a copy of Finale 2012 and started to compose real music. In fact, to this day, I am regularly writing music for the church choir, something that would have never happened had I not turned to notation software. In fact, I’d go a far as to say that buying Finale 2012 changed my life more than anything else I’ve bought in the last 35 years.
Why?
Look at these chain of events.
I bought the software and started “fooling around” with it. That lead to me writing a song for the church choir. That in turn lead me to writing more songs, which got me to thinking that maybe it’s time to do something with my music since my old business was falling apart. That lead me to putting up this site. That lead to me coming up with other ideas for my music including the major project I’m working on now.
When you get a chance, watch “It’s A Wonderful Life.” It’s really true. Every life touches another life and can greatly affect what happens to that other life. In the early 70s, I almost drowned but was saved by my friend. Had he not been there, who knows what would have happened.
If you want an ever better one than that, try this one on for size.
In the mid 70s my mom took in cats that another friend of mine brought to her house, though I asked him not to. This lead to us getting evicted and having to move to another town. In that town, I met the mailman who asked me if I wanted to bowl in his league. From there I enjoyed it so much that I ended up joining another league on another night. That league is where I met my wife to be.
All because my friend brought some cats to out apartment.
Music is no different. Everything we do affects how and what we compose. My next inspiration could very well come from this very article that I’m writing. There is just no way to know.
So if you want some inspiration, get out of your comfort zone. If you’ve been writing all your music on a keyboard, toss it aside for a moment and get a hold of some notation software. Force yourself to learn it. You might find that you actually enjoy composing this way.
If you’re the opposite and do all your composing with notation software, put it away. Pick up a guitar or sit in front of a keyboard. Heck, if you play keyboard put that aside and pick up a guitar. Do something that you’re not comfortable doing.
What’s going to happen, at least every once in a while, is that you’ll move to something foreign and that in itself will be what triggers the new idea. At that moment, if you want, you can then go back to your regular method of composing and use it to create your inspirational piece. “The Great Days Of Old” could not have been written on a keyboard. Not a piece that was scored for a full orchestra.
So yes, you’re going to have those times when you’re locked into your new composition tool of choice. And that’s fine. True inspiration will fight its way through it and come out the other side with flying colors.
I truly believe that everybody has that five alarm musical fire inside of them. All they have to do is loosen up and throw caution to the wind.
Hey, it works for me and I ain’t no Beethoven.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim