A Little Spark...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
Well, that was fun, but let’s move along. Places to go, things to see, songs to write.
One thing I’ve noticed about myself specifically is that I can demonstrably (“repeatable,” as we say when describing errors during the beta testing process) trigger my own creative juices by playing video games. It doesn’t work with all games, and I can point to a year-long creative black hole courtesy of the fine folks at Blizzard Entertainment as proof of that. For me, a specific type of game, the platformer w/ puzzles, is what triggers it.
I can cite two specific examples, Abe’s Oddysee and LittleBigPlanet. For some reason that I can’t explain, the little neurons in charge of thinking up interesting melodies and lyrics are kicked in to gear after an hour or two with either game. It also happens sometimes with Gran Turismo, but more reliably with the other two.
Am I unique in this regard? I doubt it. Like most musicians that have been professional for a long time, I don’t look at writing music as relaxation, but rather as a job, and I kind of have to force myself to do it. Luckily, I can just put in an hour playing LittleBigPlanet and I’m good to go for the rest of the day. I’m curious as to whether this phenomenon happens to anyone else. Or more specifically, what triggers your little Creations to do their thing?
10 comments
The Sistine Madonna by Dali. I know absolutely zero about art. And have little concept of how it should be appreciated, other than the "I know what I like" school.
However, I make trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art just to sit in front of this painting. The composition of the painting doesn't translate into specific musical ideas - but I know how I feel when I stare at that painting, and I want to feel the same way when I listen to my music. It will never happen, but I am going to keep trying.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/11/eusi/ho_1987.465.htm
Video games hit me like that all the time. Never RPGs though. Those just eat up too much time and then sleepy when I'm done playing. It's gotta be something short and sweet. Personal favorites are Katamari Damacy, Soul Caliber, Viewtiful Joe, and Okami.
But I guess a few other things trigger the work all day on music bug. Going to a great party and getting back at 6 in the morn full of energy and tons of ideas, books that will randomly feel like they have some passage that would make a perfect spoken word sample, watching Twin Peaks, shitty days at work, any music based movie, good workouts, and about 3 drinks.
listening to other people's music does it for me. usually i think "this sucks, i can do better." so i sit down to try to beat them.
i love video games but they are a creative dead end for me. but oh what fun... think i'll go play some team fortress 2 now....
Getting outside. Hiking. Cycling. Snowboarding would do it, too, but I'm always too tired and it's too late to really do much by the time I get back from it.
Winter and early spring are my favorite seasons for hiking here, cause it doesn't snow where I live, and there are shitloads of enormous, scary bugs in the woods in the summer.
I always used to laugh when the locals would tell me that randomly wandering through the woods was dangerous, because of snakes and hornets, bu then I wound up getting chased by a couple of giant hornets once, and wound up slaloming my road bike down the gravel road I had been walking it up to get away.
When the locals originally told me about them, I looked up "suzumebachi" in my dictionary and it said "hornet." So I was all like "yeah, right, dangerous, whatever. I'm not allergic to them." In fact, though, "hachi" is Japanese for "bee" and "suzume" means "sparrow," and if you put them together it's a pretty accurate description.
http://www.cracked.com/article_15816_5-most-horrifying-bugs-in-world.html
Makes me long for Oregon, where you can go hiking any time of year, and you can't just wander randomly though whatever woods you come across, like you can here, because you might get shot if you wander too close to someone's pot patch or methlab, but at least you don't have to worry about being devoured by giant man-eating insects.
Uh, space_monkey,
That was the scariest fucking link I've ever randomly clicked on.
Jesus, I'm not gonna be able to sleep tonight after watching that YouTube video. But that said, Best. Article. Ever.
-CR
A few hours on Mario Kart on the Wii normally do the trick for me to help get the creative juices flowing again. I always attributed it to have a distraction from a problem for a couple of hours, but I guess there could be more to it than that.
Steve
Damn, I'm suddenly finding a correlation between my slowly diminishing creative output and the fact that I haven't been gaming properly for years... Time to get a Wii I guess? ;)
I don't necessarily get that effect, but then, my day job is as a game developer. I still like playing games, but more often it's reading good/weird fiction that does it for me.
yeh gaming definitely makes me feel more 'creative/imaginative' - which is fortunate cos I spend a LOT of time gaming - the games that seem to help a lot are Zelda games and especially Ikaruga - also playing Tekken/SF/Soul Calibur just seems to 'wake me up' a bit. I get the same effects to a certain extent when I (very rarely these days :p) exercise...
I also find some films do this too - for me anything 'futuristic' seems to do it, but especially Bladerunner...
Comments are closed on this post.