Get Creative!
by Mark Shelton
The Creator of the universe placed creativity within mankind and God expects us to use this amazing gift. Are you exercising your creative musical skills? Do you have a growth plan? The following music creation projects are designed to challenge and sharpen your improvisation and composition prowess.
Generate
If you are new to creating personal music, you might wonder how to get the initial material that you can develop further. One method is to simply improvise. If you've allowed yourself to make up music in the moment, you are an improviser.
Take the freedom and fun of improvisation into your practice session. Experiment with different time signatures, make up melodies built on exotic scales, create a polyrhythmic pattern, play outside of metric restrictions, or you can improvise within your comfort zone. Just get your autoschediasm going!
Pay attention to your noodling and when one of your spontaneous snippets of sound strikes you favorably, STOP! Try to recreate it immediately. When the musical tidbit can be played to your liking, capture the brilliant fragment by notation or on an audio recording. As you continue to collect musical gems from your improvisations, you will accumulate a lick library with material for potential development.
Now that you're generating original musical ideas, it's time to move further with these next creative exercises.
Create A Groove
As a percussionist, you’re probably experienced with weaving your parts into the rhythmic ideas of your groove colleagues. Armed with that background, try creating a multi-part groove. If all the parts suddenly pop into your brain at the same time, that’s a blessing and a time-saver. If that doesn’t always happen, here’s an exercise to guide you:
1. Decide on the number of parts for your groove. (You can add or delete during the process.) My example contains four parts.
2. Compose or choose a main skeletal rhythm—maybe one from your lick library.
My example main skeletal rhythm is notated in Figure 1. The skeletal rhythm is split between two parts in Figure 2.
3. Experiment to add other parts to complement the skeletal rhythm. See Figure 3.
If you have access to a sequencer, you can enter the parts to hear how the rhythms interact. Keezy Drummer is a simple sequencer app that I use.
4. Once you are satisfied with how the rhythms interact, assign the parts to various timbres. Consider spreading the parts across a broad spectrum of frequencies and/or contrasting timbres. Check out Figure 4 to see my example. My groove is orchestrated for one person playing cajon, maraca, and foot tambourine.
Re-orchestrate
Continue your creative fun by re-orchestrating your groove. Reassign timbres within a single instrument or assign the parts to a completely different set of instruments.
In my first re-orchestration example, I have reassigned parts by simply flipping the cajon bass and corner slap rhythms. See Figure 5. The switch makes a big difference.
The cajon-based groove is orchestrated for drum set in Figure 6.
A Little Variety
Develop your ability to create variations on rhythmic themes. Start with a short rhythm pattern as your theme and create variations around the theme. The ideas below will get you started:
- The main rhythm of a song’s melody or a rhythm pattern from your lick library can be used as your theme.
- Merely changing dynamics can create a variation.
- Shift your theme suddenly (or subtly) to a different time signature. Using my cajon groove as my theme, I created a variation in 12/8 in Figure 7.
- If your theme contains multiple parts, consider dropping some notes to create a linear variation. See example in Figure 8.
- Spice up the theme with ornaments and stroke types such as flams, drags, and buzz strokes.
- Add ghost notes to fill in empty spaces in your theme.
- Inserting accents might transform your theme into a double-time or half-time feel.
You get the idea. Along with being a creative exercise, sharpening your ability to add variations is a powerful tool when called upon to improvise a solo or to respond to the worship leader's request to "do something to change up the groove."
Use your musical creativity to create something musical. Frequently. And have fun.
Sing skillfully to Him a new song. Play skillfully with a shout of joy. Psalms 33:3 WEB
Catch a weekly minute of percussion education from Mark's ‘Percussion Tip Tuesday’ on Instagram www.instagram.com/marksheltonperc
