Guitar composition is something that I believe anyone can (and should) do. But some think that they don’t “have it”. I’d like to address here the idea of musical creativity from different perspectives.
When we do simple things, like writing a comment on Facebook, we’re creating a string of words that perhaps never put together in that specific way.
This is a creative act and it can occur everywhere in our everyday life. It’s similar to an idea by the bassist/author Victor Wooten that when we use language to say something – we improvise.
The “Four C Model”
In the psychology literature, there’s something called the “Four C Model” which differentiates between levels of creativity. The first level is called “mini-c” and it’s about novel and personally meaningful interpretations of experiences, actions and events.
It means, for example, that when you played a few notes on the guitar as a beginner, you may have experienced a feeling you created something that is new and different to you.
According to this concept, “mini-c” inherently exists in a learning process which we can then foster and nurtured, so we can move on to the next levels of creativity.
Creativity from a biological perspective
But psychology can’t provide definitive proof for our creative nature. So perhaps we can get evidence from a biological perspective. This quote describes it nicely:
“One of the defining features of humanity is the ability to be creative. This ability is exhibited throughout human society and is a fundamental force in the development of humankind. However, the concept of creativity itself is shrouded in imprecision and subjectivity, making it difficult to address from a scientific perspective. One approach to the rational study of creativity in humans is to consider it from an evolutionary perspective, aiming to identify related behaviours in other species that can be studied without the cloud of human subjectivity that the word creativity entails.” (Wiggins, 2015; doi: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0099).
I’d add that it’s also very difficult to compare creativity levels between people. What are the parameters and who decides them?
That’s why the term creativity can be open to interpretation and tricky to measure scientifically. Although there are efforts to research specific aspects of it.
My conclusion and guitar composition
We still need more research to understand creativity. But despite its subjectivity, it seems that there’s a wide agreement that being creative is an essential part of being human, even if it’s on a very basic level.
It happens when we learn something new – and we begin our learning process as babies and even in the womb.
The cool thing? This long post is a result of a comment I got from a different post. This is a chain reaction of inspiration and creation, and you can choose to be part of it.
To be more creative is your choice, whether you believe it’s in your nature or not. How? Commenting to this post is one simple way 😉
Learning guitar for the sake of enhancing your creativity is another. And I’m trying my best to promote it through my guitar composition group where I share free resources and videos: Solo Guitar Composition Artistry Group 🙂👍🎸
I also opened a new venture called The Art of Guitar Composition Academy. This new programme will give you a holistic overview of music as an art form. We will explore all the elements of music in a practical way and experiment with compositional tools that will help you through every stage of the creative process.
To learn more about it and to see if it’s the right thing for you, schedule a guitar chat with me – https://www.udiguitar.com/contact-udiguitar/
