When you are an expansive musician and a curious soul, sometimes your energy can get lost in the ether.

To maintain a whole and healthy existence as an artist of any type, one has to master the art of balancing the inspired with the mundane, the sacred and the profane, the expansive nature of the soul with the containment fields of the body and individuated, ego-self.

You can think about this balance act as the art of self-containment. (This is especially for performers and extroverts).

So what are the skills and how do you practice them?

There is no ultimate way to achieve this balance, and no single set of behaviors, but here are seven creative practices for self-containment you can try:

1. Keep your own council
2. Channel your passions
3. Relax into the decisions you make by seeing the limitless opportunities available in each moment
4. Allow fear and despair to disperse before taking action
5. Work with life around you as it is (not as you think it should be)
6. Expand and specify
7. Laugh (especially at yourself)

Listen to this SOS podcast as JP takes a look back at the past four months of his life and the lessons he has mined from his adventures.

 

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Springboards. Sparks. Influences and Inspirations. What are yours? What do you model your music after?

When it’s time to create your next song, you can always benefit from others’ works by extracting out the spirit, concept, or essence of the work and translating it through your own Voice and perspective.

As artists mature, they are still influenced by the music of their predecessors and contemporaries, but rather than copying, imitating, or emulating the styles of their heroes and teachers, they engage in the modeling process.

Just as researchers have methodologies, companies have business models, professionals have career tracks, and economists have schools of thought, musical artists can decide upon the approach they take to their craft, before composing any words or music. A consciously chosen approach can be based on a number of elements, including:

• timeless topics
• successful song-formulas
• proven assumptions behind song-crafting
• time-tested strategies for creativity and productivity
• undeniable grooves, moods, or vibes
• modes of storytelling
• a compelling perspective

Songwriters can extract the spirit, structure, or conceit of a great song and use it as a springboard for their own compositions. We can Song-Model.

A song-model is different from a genre, a sound, or a tradition in that it has nothing to do with how the music sounds or what it is made up of. It’s more like a mood encoded into the music and lyrics or a borrowed approach to the songwriting structure. A model exists apart from the actual content of the song.

Join the Song-Modeling discussion and JP explores three common qualities that have been modeled in countless songs: sex/passion, romance/imagination, and compassion/love.

 

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How many hours a day do you practice your craft? How many years of your life have you devoted to developing your music? Do you ever find yourself thinking “I should practice more…?” 

It is said that practice makes perfect and that there is no gain without pain. Still, there are plenty of examples of artists who slave away and never live up to their potential and others who seem to flourish despite the lack of any conventional work ethic.  The difference lies in how much purpose is behind the practice and how much passion is behind the action. Couple these concepts with a broader definition of what constitutes effective artistic practice and you might be able to replace the “I should practice more” with conscious, creative, living practices that take you where you want to go musically, artistically, and personally. 

So don’t just do something, sit there…and listen in as The Soul of Songwriting podcast takes on a sacred cow and explores how to train without strain.

 

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