Many players do not want to pursue a formal education on their instruments because they feel it will rob them of their creativity and unique identity. They feel that by learning the “rules” of music their creativity will be restrained. Not only did I once feel this hypothesis was true, but I experienced it myself.
When I first started learning how to play bass, I was self-taught, and I was a song writing machine. It is not an exaggeration to say that I was writing songs and creating new bass techniques daily. After a few years of playing bass, I was given the opportunity to attend Musicians Institute’s BIT program and finally take formal lessons and classes.
Upon the completion of the BIT program, I reflected on how much I had learned about the bass and music. I had studied sight reading, music theory, ear training, countless genres and techniques, and studied with some of the greatest bass players on the planet.
As a BIT graduate I was ready to make my mark on the music industry. I joined a band that wanted to write and perform original songs and I sat down to start composing the next great rock album...
...and nothing came out.
The creativity that was such a major part of my early musical life seemed to have been kidnapped, tied up, and locked in a prison cell somewhere within me. I was devastated, to say the least.
After a 3-day Pity Party, I decided I needed to do something proactive to free my imprisoned creative self. I bought every book on creativity I could find and sought out some of the most creative people I could find and asked them for help. That is when I learned that what I was going through was a common experience that many people in the arts who pursued a formal education had gone through. Luckily for me, many of them gave me the key I needed to release my creativity, which I want to share with you now.
Creativity is a muscle, and the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. So obviously, if you do not work out your creative muscle it will weaken. During the one-year BIT course that I took I did not write any music at all. My complete focus was on taking in information, which was important for that stage in my musical career, but I stopped creating music with what I was learning. I was in several improvisation classes that gave me the opportunity to play spontaneous bass lines or solos over changes, but at that point in my development I was thinking more about the music theory and less about saying anything unique or emotive.
So, my first suggestion to help you keep your creativity strong while studying music is to take every piece of information that you are learning and make it your own. For example, if you learn a new scale or arpeggio make sure that you end every practice session by creating something with it. Let’s say you are learning the Blues Scale. After learning how to play it all over your bass, forward and backwards, write a groove or bassline with it. This will not only help you remember the scale or arpeggio, but it will also internalize it and give it an identity way beyond just memorizing the fingerings.
Likewise, if you are learning a new style of music, like reggae or jazz, consider writing your own songs in that style. This will give you a deeper understanding and appreciation of these new genres, but also keep your creativity strong and healthy.
If you are thinking “the heck with that mess. I just won’t take lessons”, let me share with you the rest of my story. In my endeavor to find out where my creativity had gone, I pulled out my old cassette tapes of the songs I had written during my “prolific era” and listened to them intently. What I heard was a catalog of songs that all had the same five chords, predictable arrangements and no unique identities. Yes, I could write songs at the drop of a hat, but they ended up all being variations of the first song I ever wrote. I did not even change the key!
Once I learned how to free and feed my creativity, I was a much better songwriter than I was before my studies. I was now a painter with a limitless palette of colors and brushes! Best of all, the new information I had learned at BIT allowed me to better express myself and musically “speak” in a more interesting way.
And if you are one of those musicians who refuses to take lessons or go to a music school because you are afraid of losing your identity and “sounding like everyone else”, I can honestly tell you that by learning more about music you will have a better chance of discovering who you are as a musician. Your identity will be more nuanced and expansive and, ultimately, uniquely yours.
To paraphrase one of my favorite MI instructors: If you want to be a sightreading musician, read music every day. If you want to be a jazz musician, play jazz every day. And if you want to be a creative musician, create every day!
Story by Dale Titus
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Dale has been a professional bassist for 40 years and during that time was an instructor/counselor at the Bass Institute of Technology, a freelance writer for Bass Player magazine as well as the Editor of Bass Frontiers magazine. He also released The Ultimate Beginner Series for Bass videos and book for Alfred Publishing, as well as the Everything Bass YouTube channel.