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Looper's Delight
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I heard of a study years ago that I quote to my students all the time. I heard about this study 2nd or 3rd hand and never actually read about it and it occurs to me that my telling of it changes slightly each time I tell it and it might be good to go back and read about the original study so I can be more accurate in my quoting. This may be woefully different than the original (and all apologies to academics that I might offend with my rather primal and unsophisticated oral history approach that I use telling it but it is at least illustrative in it's 'big yarn' version. I'd love it if someone could direct me to the original study!!!! . I've googled it without a lot of success. (oh Richard Zvonar, where are you my researching genius brother) For what it's worth, it goes something like this: Some Art professors at Stanford University did a study where they took a large number of visual artists (I think 150 but I"m not sure) and for one year they separated them equally into to distinct camps. The 75 artists from Camp number ONE were told that they could create purely from inspiration...............not fearing a bad grade if they didn't have a large output....................'just follow your heart' they were enjoined and only create when you are inpsired. The 75 artists from Camp number TWO were told that they had to turn in a finished piece of work on a weekly basis, whether they were inspired or not. Whatever it was it had to be finished and it had to be a constant weekly output. At the end of one year, they took all the artwork together and randomized it; giving it to several prominent art critics to critique and rate the art. Amazingly and consistently, the artwork from Camp TWO (constant output with our without inspiration) was judged to be 'better art' than the artwork of Camp ONE (inspiration without necessary constant output). ******************* In the year 2000, I decided, after hearing about this study, that I was going to attempt a full legnth CD a year for the rest of my life. I was successful for the first four years of the decade and my output has fallen off considerably since then (though I have 6 completely different CD projects in various forms of completion because I also gave my self permission not to worry about style in my creativity but to constantly make music and finish individual pieces. Before that, I had made 3 really perfectionistic released recordings in my life over the previous 20 years..............I was very proud of all of those recordings. But in returning to those CDs, as much as I think I did the best I could, artistically, I realize looking back that they were just who I was at the time: works in progress, as it were. In retrospect, I look back on the first eight years of this decade with that production output philosphy behind me that I have grown at a vastly more rapid pace in my abilities and in my sohpistication as a musician because I started to join the Camp TWO approach. Ironically, I've also discovered that the instances of very creative 'inspirational' output has gone up significantly using this approach so I think I"m getting the best of both worlds. The only drawback I can see using this approach is that it makes it more difficult to market oneself to the world at large because this approach encourages a lot of stylistic diversity which makes it tough for people to categorize your recordings in record stores and online. I think , though, that I"ve reconciled myself to that anyway.