It all starts out with an idea...

You don't get taken with the colors of paints that you've got. You've got to narrow it down. It's great to have all the possibilities, but it all starts with an idea.

To sit there and hope something will happen is like dumping 400 gallons of paint on the floor and hoping a picture is going to emerge. It doesn't work that way.

Michael Nesmith
Wired News

Who is this visionary popular artist, some of you might be saying. Those of you who have studied American popular culture or were teenagers between 1966 and 1969 will recognise him immediately. He was the Monkee with the woolly hat. Since those early days, he has been credited with inventing MTV, spearheading the country rock genre, and writing one of the first online novels.

The genesis of this inventing spirit may become a little clearer when you learn that his mother invented Liquid Paper™. She was divorced, down to her last dime and mortgaged the house to go into production. Little Michael and his friends packed the boxes and delivered the product on their bicycles. He came from a family of innovators and people willing to risk everything on what they believe.

Daniel Barenboim, in the Reith Lectures for the BBC, claims that the musical journey is not the result of the movement from A to G. Rather it is the journey from silence to A that is the heart of the musical journey. You've heard it before in this space: great art is born of restraint. Here are two musicians from wildly different genres adding their voices to the argument.

One of my composition teachers gave the assignment to write a piece, less than three minutes, using only one note. It could be used in any octave, but only that one note. By constraining the melodic and harmonic content, we were forced to explore rhythm, repetition, variation and dynamics. This stretched our compositions into a new path. We had to "think different" to solve the problem. Whilst the pieces weren't masterworks, when we played them at the next lesson we were all amazed at the variety of compositions that appeared.

When we are using our new sequencers, whether they be Garageband, Logic, Amadeus, or whatever the newest latest tool is, we must remember that in order to learn to use the tool, we must structure the approach with appropriate restraints in order to allow invention to take place. In using today's loop based sequencers, one of the key skills is editing. How can you take the material presented and modify it to fit your needs? Add notes? Subtract notes? Transpose? The wise teacher amongst us then asks the student to explain why they made that choice. The answers may in the first instance be, "Because it sounds better." The educator in you won't let that answer stand. You'll look for a way in to see what the student is thinking.

As you follow the curve of the year keep thinking differently and looking for new creative approaches for your students. Look for the ways of getting them to own the music and the music making process. If you have the access to technology, create some "wacky" composition projects. Who knows – great beauty and a deeper understanding of music may be born from your constraints.

Not a sound on the pavement

Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?

Marcel Proust
Swann’s Way, “Overture”

No, you have not stumbled into a Theory of Knowledge class. No, I am not less sane than usual. Yes, it will be another one of “those” columns. Climb aboard the ride and pull down the safety bar .

It is sometimes the smallest things that will have the greatest effect. As music teachers we build associations to many hundreds of pieces of music through performances throughout our careers. Not only do we remember the musical details, but we remember the entire scene of the performance and in some cases events around it.

Stop and think of a piece of music that you have performed. Pick any one. Get the sound of that piece going in your mental music player. Can you see the venue where the performance took place? What were you wearing? Who else was performing with you? Can you see it from your point of view as a performer or as an outside observer? Now the catch - what emotion are you feeling? Are you remembering the emotions of that performance, the emotions that surrounded that time in your life, a mixture of both, or some strange mixture you can’t quite determine?

Brain researchers have been exploring these phenomena, amongst others. Using MRI scans and prompts requiring the subject to remember events or perform tasks they are identifying areas of activity in the brain that correspond to a variety of activities. In one study they showed a silent movie that had a variety of sounds visually depicted - here’s the description by Ian Sample writing in The Guardian:

Volunteers clambered into an MRI scanner and watched silent movie clips. Each five second video included a scene that implied a sound. There were animals in action: a howling dog, a mooing cow, a crowing cock. There were musical instruments: a violin, a bass and a piano key being struck. Three final videos showed a chainsaw cutting down a tree, coins being tossed into a glass and a vase being dropped and smashed. All played out in silence, but even typing that I could hear the buzz of the saw, the sharp clink of coins, the crash of the vase. Like the author, I presume that as you were reading the descriptions of the scenes you created the sounds in your mind’s ear.

The study then goes on to raise what may be the answer to why we became involved in music education. According to the lead scientist in the study, Kaspar Meyer, the visual stimulus would not trigger the the mind’s ear to hear the sound if we had never made those sounds or seen and heard those sounds being simultaneously made.

It is our task to create the opportunities for our students to build those aural, physical and emotional associations. We tend to call them by the mundane names of practice, rehearsals and performances. By creating for them the best environment to build that framework of emotions and sensations we recalled in our earlier exercise, we do the most to influence their development as musicians, learners and citizens of the world.

And the best part is, we benefit as well.