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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Writing original music isn’t for the faint of heart. Somehow, you have to find the vulnerable parts of yourself that allow you to bare your deep feelings and thoughts while still keeping it together enough to contain the musical execution–the structure and form of the piece.

Although many artists may take this balancing act for granted, the marriage of vulnerability and strength is not a matter of luck, talent, or character. It is a skill that can be developed and expanded upon. So how do we do it and who teaches this skill?

In my years of teaching music, I have found that songwriters, performing musicians, and recording artists can model the way that actors are trained in their approach to making music. Take Al Pacino, for example. He has the ability to simultaneously express strength of character in his body while exposing tremendous vulnerability and human frailty on his face. Have you ever felt the freedom of mastering the mechanics of a song performance while surrendering to the emotional content at the same time?

Marrying personal dignity and artistic vulnerability is more than just posturing or wearing your heart on your sleeve. Embodying these two poles of the human experience involves emotional surrender and mental focus.

Listen to this SOS podcast as the craft of musical expression and execution is explored from a fresh perspective.

 

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The concept of reverse engineering, while commonly used in fields as diverse as aeronautics, military science, business modeling, and software development, is seldom consciously applied to songwriting or music composition.

Reverse engineering is simply the process of taking something apart and then putting it back together in order to see how it is constructed. Thinking in these terms when listening to music can quickly deepen your understanding of songwriting and advance your craft.

Without being aware of it, you probably often reverse engineer already–every time you listen to a great song or recording with the focused intention of studying and learning from it.

Reverse engineering in music is the act of taking an existing song (or any other work of art, for that matter) and asking some basic questions like:

* “What do I hear?”
* “What’s going on behind what I hear?”
* “What is the method or thinking behind these details?”
* “How can I apply these methods or techniques to my own work?”

Given how many great songs and recordings already exist, reverse engineering can give you unlimited access to the brilliance and inspiration of the masters in your field and can prompt you to expand your own creative process. All you need is an open set of ears and an open and focused mind.

Listen to this SOS episode as JP explores reverse engineering as it applies to seven core parameters in songwriting: lyrics, melody, form, harmonic language, groove, point-of-view, and production quality.

 

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Crooked phrases. Deceptive cadences. Internal rhymes. Uneven meters.

Have you ever experienced a song that subverts your sense of “how it’s supposed to go” and yet simultaneously feels totally right?

Music is full of opportunities to throw off expectation and surprise, awaken, and even enlighten listeners. Despite the fact that nursery rhymes and metronomes have trained many of us to expect our music to be even and predictable, most folk traditions have always been (and continue to be) full of asymmetrical elements. Songs can defy our expectations using everything from from uneven measures to sudden shifts of tempo…from spring loaded phrasing to complete changes of groove.

Join this SOS episode as JP shares the delight of songwriting that falls outside the narrow confines of symmetrical composition and ventures into the realm where music and lyrics stay off-balance while remaining on-target.

 

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Have you ever shared your music with the wrong person at the wrong time? Can you recall the feeling of deflation that accompanied the experience? How about the surge of positive energy you may get when you share your art with someone who really understands and appreciates it?

The more aware you are of the role of positive, supportive feedback in your creative life, the more you can direct the flow of the process and attract the perfect support system. The exposure can bring you specific musical guidance, general heartfelt encouragement, or honest criticism (or some combination of all three).  Conversely, keeping your music too sheltered may inhibit its growth as much as premature criticism. No matter what the circumstances are, the act of opening up your works-in-progress to a variety of viewpoints (within a context of respect and safety) is essential in allowing your music to grow and mature.

Listen to this SOS episode as the subtleties and nuances involved in artistic incubation and conscious sharing are explored and explained. 

 

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Timing Is Everything.

As a musician, you have the advantage of applying what you already know about rhythm in music to the rest of your life. Establishing a good tempo, getting into a groove, working with meter, and aligning with your natural sense of rhythm are pieces of musical knowledge that can be translated into how you manage your career, what your daily habits and routines look like, and how much time you have to put into your creative work.

Although many great musicians have suffered in their personal or professional lives, a Whole Musician approach maintains that being a prolific artist, cultivating effective time and energy-management habits, and designing a creative and meaningful career are three interdependent aspects of living a fulfilling musical life.

Join JP as he discusses seven distinct time orientations and explores some innovative ways to make more time so that you can create more music. 

This is the third of four in the Musical Lifestyle Series of SOS podcasts.

 

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Where are you right now? Are you at peace with your environment? How does your music express and reflect the places you go and where you live?

If you’re a songwriter, recording artist, or performing musician, you know what it’s like to clue in to the vibrations in your music–to feel your way into the sound. You can use the same sensitivity to find your spot, one moment at a time. As you become more aware of the subtleties of your environment, you can either fine tune yourself so that you deepen your groove with your location or adjust your location so that it gets into a more of a groove with you.

Join this episode of SOS as we explore the power spots, rooms, neighborhoods, towns, and regions that make you feel most at home with yourself and your music.

This is the first of four in the Musical Lifestyle Series of SOS podcasts.

 

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Are you inspired? If so, how did you get that way? If not, what do you imagine would inspire you? The word inspiration, like the word spirit and respiration, has its origins in the Latin word for breath. But the concept of inspiration has come to suggest much more than simply breathing.

Feeling inspired often implies some kind of altered state of consciousness in which all the clouds part and the heavens open up.Artists have used countless methods to get themselves inspired (and many have worked), but the promise of inspiration often comes with a catch. What might inspire at one point –a place, a person, an experience, a journey–might eventually lose its luster and lead to less than inspiring results. Increasing your ability to observe, on the other hand, never ceases to deliver valuable experiences. Observation, unlike inspiration, is available in every moment, regardless of mood, circumstances, or state of mind.While many artists have moments of intense inspiration, artists who sustain their creative edge usually end up relying on the power of perception to deliver new insights and material, rather than emotion or imagination.

So don’t get high, don’t get low, don’t go up and don’t get down, just be where you are and listen, look around, and let the moment bring your next song. Listen to this Soul of Songwriting episode to hear about various ways that you can use your gifts of observation to bring forth an abundant stream of good material and relinquish any unconscious expectations for finding inspiration somewhere or sometime other than “hear and now.”

 

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Are there any areas in your life where you experience an abundance of frustration? 

If not, you might want to skip this podcast. If so, go ahead, take a listen, and get ready to tap into your frustration as fertile source of good material for your next song or composition. Six distinct strategies for turning your difficult emotions into sweet musical ideas are explored and analysed. 

JP not only discusses, but also sits in on the piano to play around with some examples that range from Beethoven to Americana.

 

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Do you ever find yourself spontaneously creating something and having no idea whether it is any good? What do you do? Do you ignore the impulse? Do you follow your original thought? Do you try to transform an imperfect seed into a viable work? Do you stop the flow of ideas, waiting for something “good” to come along? 

In this unique SOS episode, the discussion about how the process of improvisation can turn into a composition takes a sudden turn when JP stops talking and starts playing…taking the closest instrument to where he is sitting (in this case, a ukulele) and exemplifying in-the-moment the very process he addresses in words. The result is both raw and revealing. 

 

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Art and self-expression, whether you are a songwriter, composer, recording artist, or performer, can be full of dark, mysterious pathways and corners. How do you know when you are headed in the right direction? How do you keep yourself “on the path.”

To start with, your destination must be clear. But unless your music is purely utilitarian, there is no map, no formula, and no single road. In fact, in some ways, you make up the road along the way.

Still, it’s good to have a compass–something that tells you when you are veering off-course and guides you to make adjustments both subtle and radical.

Listen to this podcast as JP discusses three basic paths (vision, faith, and intuition) and nine artistic tools for creating and strengthening your musical compass.

 

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Good songwriting may be based on considerations about key, tempo, harmonic progression, lyric form and structure, but somewhere along the line, you have to lay down your weapons and surrender to the unknown–the mystery of music. But does that mean it’s all up for grabs? Can you know exactly when and how to give up control and in what proportion? There are some tried and true techniques for subverting the rational mind in order to allow the pure spirit of the music to come through. Listen in as JP takes you on a brief journey into the non-rational spaces of musical creativity.

 

 SOS Episode #11: Getting Out Of Your Head: The limits Of Rationality In Songwriting and In Living (or “When To Stop Making Sense”): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Every day brings new challenges. Just getting up in the morning can require faith, fortitude, and remembering your purpose. But as an artist, you have the opportunity to start again, every morning, as a new person; to reinvent yourself as you would a new piece of music. Join in the conversation about using your artistic license to refresh your identity as you continually refresh your music.

 

 SOS #6: Inventing Your Music, Reinventing Yourself: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download