Creativity is a skill

While listening to Akimbo, Seth Godin’s podcast, Seth Godin mentioned that creativity is a skill. It takes practice to be able to think of ideas and solutions to problems.

Relating this to music, I notice this a lot while teaching improvisation.

Making up melodies and lines and things to play while soloing isn’t something that people that are new to improvising are well versed in. It takes practice to think of things to play.

This can be mitigated by giving yourself some type of restriction. Use only notes from one scale; sometimes even going further and using only three notes or so. Use just guide tones and try to make something interesting. That’s only two notes per chord.

This makes it easier to think of things to play, but it still takes practice.

After you think of one solo to play using guide tones, for example, think of four more. Think of a whole bunch of different ideas that you can use.

The point isn’t to play five amazing solos. The point is to just play five solos; good or bad doesn’t matter. Just get five more solos played and practiced and improvised. Just doing that’ll help you think of more ideas for the next solo you play.

You’re not just working on learning guide tones, but also working on thinking of lines to play. You’re practicing the skill of creativity; the skill of thinking up ideas.

The more you do it, even with different restrictions, the easier it’ll become.

ISJ