How can a musician be truly "innovative" or "creative"?

One of the common critique I've gotten a lot is that my music generally isn't that creative or doesn't stand out. Adding to that, I always hear about people talking about how music should be innovative and stuff. So I guess my question here is, how DO you make music truly innovative and creative? How do you make your music sound different than the typical stuff that everyone's heard before?

Do something that's new in some way. It's that simple. Actually doing it is complicated, but the concept is that simple.

You don't have to be innovative if you don't want to.

Write what you want to write and screw the rest.

It's all been done and invented; innovation is a nonsense buzzword. Ignore it.

You don't have to be innovative if you don't want to.

Write what you want to write and screw the rest.

It's all been done and invented; innovation is a nonsense buzzword. Ignore it.

Bingo!

Innovation merely for its own sake is silly. Say something new if you have something new to say. If you don't, it doesn't make you a bad composer. Far from it. We look back to composers who were great innovators and say that it was their innovations that made them great, so we should all strive to innovate as well. That was a natural thing to do when there were whole worlds of music left to be explored. As SSC said, it's all been done and invented by now; nearly all of us are just rehashing things today.

I think it's more important to do something the way YOU feel it, whether it sounds "new" or not. I'm still not even convinced that music needs to sound "relevant" to our times, particularly since I don't see anything particularly inspiring or beautiful about the sterile, mechanical times we live in...but that's just me, and a whole other argument.

Write what you want to write and screw the rest.

It's all been done and invented; innovation is a nonsense buzzword. Ignore it.

hmm... i'll create something totally new!

The 'H' key on the piano.. some note that's never been heard!

yes!

Then all those "master" musicians will have to learn 6 more keys:

H

H#

Hb

H Minor

H# Minor

Hb Minor

(or if you want to get technical, also the Melodic and Harmonic of all those minors! That's like, 15 keys!)

Actually, in German, H is B-natural... so that's not new either. ;)

If you strive to imitate another composer, one natural reaction to your music will be that it doesn't feel like you are being original.

If instead, you strive to express something in a way that is unique to you, then honest critics will rcognize the uniqueness.

Being "unique" and expressing something in a way that is unique to you does not mean inventing anything new. It means looking at whatever tools you are using and using them in a way that reflects you, rather than a pale imitation of someone else.

No matter how great the music of, for example, your favourite composer might be, if you are constantly trying to SOUND like that composer, you are not spending any time trying to sound like YOU.

Too many critics confuse this "uniqueness" with "invention". There is no need for you to reinvent the wheel to create something that is individual.

Great post, QCC!!

If you strive to imitate another composer, one natural reaction to your music will be that it doesn't feel like you are being original.

If instead, you strive to express something in a way that is unique to you, then honest critics will rcognize the uniqueness.

Being "unique" and expressing something in a way that is unique to you does not mean inventing anything new. It means looking at whatever tools you are using and using them in a way that reflects you, rather than a pale imitation of someone else.

No matter how great the music of, for example, your favourite composer might be, if you are constantly trying to SOUND like that composer, you are not spending any time trying to sound like YOU.

Too many critics confuse this "uniqueness" with "invention". There is no need for you to reinvent the wheel to create something that is individual.

I'd actually argue that the problem with writing "like another composer" isn't so much that other people perceive it as unoriginal, but that they actually fail to see how everything, even a 1:1 attempt of recreation (and even indeed a xerox, for the sake of argument) contains a trace of individual creativity. However, the distinction may be more in the piece as art itself (the "This Xerox of this Bach piece is original and unique to me because it expresses my view and is a piece of art I've created" argument) rather than in what actually is heard in the music itself objectively.

I've said this in another thread, but the prime problem of young people talking about originality and "individuality" is that these things don't exist in the way that a lot of people think they do. It depends on the approach you take.

If we were to talk about originality in a sense of creation, any new piece of art, REGARDLESS of how similar or, indeed, exactly alike an old piece of art, is original in its creation as a piece of art (the Xerox example.)

If we talk about originality in the sense of "nobody has tried this before" we would require knowing, first, what is that EVERYONE ELSE has done so as to talk about what hasn't been done. And that's the real problem, just like Bach probably didn't have the tools to allow him to imagine or even think of Cage's experiments or things like Pierre Henry's electronic music, you can't approach innovation by simply knowing what has been done as it is realistically impossible to know EVERYTHING that has been done.

And even if the knowledge of everything can be attained, it still doesn't guarantee that just having that knowledge will produce innovation as consequence.

What QCC says about "sounding like you" is fundamentally important in concept, you have to be aware of where you stand in relation to other music, aesthetics, opinions, and so on. But, I'd say that it is IMPOSSIBLE to "Not sound like you" REGARDLESS of what you write (as the Xerox example shows.)

So the encouragement to "sound like yourself" shouldn't be interpreted as "finding your own voice" or such other buzzwords/etc that rarely mean something concrete, but it should be interpreted as an encouragement to change your ATTITUDE about your own music and indeed art and the creation thereof.

It should mean "Hey, listen to yourself, get to know yourself, but don't worry about being original since that's not a real concern. Don't worry about innovation, since nobody like you exists, and only you know what the sounds in your head sound like. Go and put them in the real world, for others to hear!"

As for the wheel reinvention example, I know it's a bad example, but I employ it only when strictly talking about techniques or composition systems. Trying to emulate a particular style only by ear is considerably harder than having guidelines and everything explained out to you. This is what I mean.

It's a bad example because re-inventing the wheel implies coming up with the idea of the wheel on your own, without actually having a wheel to use as basis for your re-invention. It's not the case with music, obviously, as we all hear the music we like in one form or another and we're influenced by it. It'd be more accurate to say "build the wheel with a plan and diagrams, or build it by just by looking at it enough."

Both approaches work and both I think are important. Observation is a very important thing, as is being able to put theory to practice. A good education generally combines analysis (ear training, analysis, recreations by intuition) and actual applied theory (rules, exercises, etc.)

So, yeah.

Some excellent points mentioned in this thread.

[EDIT: At this point I babbled at great length about the term "innovation", history, and loads of other stuff. Tedious and pretty random. Good I deleted it.]

I'd like to comment on some things:

It has already been said that (at least in our current situation) "innovating music" is not a musical necessity, nor is it a very realistic prospect in the pluralistic art-world we live in today. (It was different in the times of Monteverdi, Beethoven, Sch

When you more experienced people compose, do you have separate characters between your pieces? Because when I come up with pieces, they each seem to have a different character with them. And that effects the style in which I write it in. I think putting a character to your music is more important than using a specific technique, since the character decides how you write the song. It think that may help for "originality's" sake too. Just a thought.

seems i will be the lone wolf, pure and simple, thinking that innovative and creative are if not the sole, then very close to being so, purposes of artist. moreover, i would argue that there's no art, if there is nothing new under the sun. that is - 'new' being the essentialy distinct moment of art as such. it comes to be and fades in the light of a new born star. no matter its size and place.

as such i think art is marked with these kind of ruptures into the history of the world. there is no linear development of art. any development is that of accommodating new creations, new works, new ideas in the world of culture - that is economics and communication. as such, the development, is just matter of many many conjectures, but not of any work/s of art having a property to determine anything out of it (in a sense of a compositional techniques, styles and schools) - the fact that schools happens is an indication of artists sharing the ideas, and of human condition in the first place and only then the music. i would say that new music, in its period of creation and coming to be, is very very unfriendly towards any communication or socialization. and it's a matter of faithfulness (commitment) and hard non-musical work to make some place for new music.

of course, it is due to the double character of a new work of art - it is here, in this world, in this situation, so it has a body, but, it has a soul, if you want, a spirit, which is at odds with any given set of preexisting rules, works and whatever. so the ultimate dilemma is how something new is inscribed in the preexisting situation and what changes and transformations it is responsible for. that the good art work is new and as such really gets into the heads of situation accountants (critics, other composers) is well documented in the way new art works are met with - that is, usually, declaring it not music and noise. even in the cases of such classics as beethoven.

to summ: art works are new or tend to be new, it is their cause and goal. situation in which the appear has its own laws, rules and socialized connections. unless it'd be open (incomplete), no new works of art would ever been produced that we would know of. so situation is double - it is open and at the same time it tries to be/get closed. that's why new in art is not met with love. at best - with amazement and envy.

Beethoven copied some of Mozart's themes.

Composing music is difficult enough without forcing unnecessary restrictions on yourself.

For a while i was dissuaded from composing, believing that I was incapable of writing anything original. Well, I still believe that. However, it is the experiences one has musically that ball up deep in your subconcious--and if you let those ideas loose, they will blend together (along with your associations) into a sound you can call your own.

At least I think :)

Gardener - "Why are you doing this should always at the back of your head" probably one of the best pieces of advice you have offered. Yet the reason need not be too complicated - I mean we eat to live, so it is fine to write for your own and others' enjoyment.

As for innovation, most "innovations" really are:

a) taking something that exists and placing in a new context (eg the high degree of motivic repetition and unity in such works as Beethoven's Appassionata's sonata, 1st movement or his 5th symphony and then say, hey why not do this with opera and have a motif for each character and/or concept? Viola, we have Wagnerian opera and the leitmotif; take the rules of traditional counterpoint and reverse them, viola we have dissonant counterpoint used by Bartok, Hindemith and others in a few of their works)

b) conjoining two things which no one in RECENT memory had thought of doing (Hadyn - Variation - Rondo form, Schoenberg - his individualized sprechtstimme, Varese - electronics and orchestra, Berio and his wife - employing speech sounds not considered appropriate to "music" as perfectly valid musical choices or THE set of choices, the Berio in particular is an excellent example of the "RECENT memory clause" as you will hear omniopotea and specialized vocal effects in 14th and 15th century Frech popular works (eg Janequin) that can be a little odd)

c) decrease or increase the degree of one of the characteristics that usually describes an object so that the object is transformed (Beethoven - the telegraphic size of his motives, Bach the high degree of complexity and density in much of his counterpoint, Reich et al - the reduction of the number and degree of characteristics to "develop" in a work of music)

d) Luck - either one or a combination of a), b) or c) is "successful"

Reading this, I find that b) is easiest method to find examples of innovation.

Your innovation relies on your ability to improvise. BUT not only just to improvise, but to bring the "improvisation" spirit into your interpretation of music, including your own. By improvisation spirit, I would refer to interpretation, the way Paganini or Liszt would have done it. Original, yet demanding with an improvisational spirit.

Thenceforth, use this demanding interpretation to create your own original works of art. Original and very new. Break away from I - IV - V...

One MUST have a vision when composing or playing a piece. When composing, the question should be asked, what is your vision for the piece?

When you more experienced people compose, do you have separate characters between your pieces? Because when I come up with pieces, they each seem to have a different character with them. And that effects the style in which I write it in. I think putting a character to your music is more important than using a specific technique, since the character decides how you write the song. It think that may help for "originality's" sake too. Just a thought.

I'm not very experienced, but there's definitely a certain quality shared between my pieces, mostly in the harmony, but somewhat in the rhythm and construction. Pieter is right when he says that ability to improvise is extremely important - you develop your own musical voice through it, because that's all that's in your head when you're improvising.