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Originally Posted by zappa
i would say that creativity is learned .....
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Hi Zappa,
That's an interesting idea. How do you think that people can be taught to be creative?
I could be completely wrong, but I've always felt that trying to teach people to be creative is rather like trying to teach them to be taller - in other words, a bit of a tough assigment. I think that you can develop what's there by improving your range of tools and you can probably also build up what you might call the 'creative muscles'. But I think you can only go so far with making changes to a person's basic style, and some people just aren't really innovators.
It's politically correct to say that we're all equal and potentially good at things, but the facts appear to refute this when I look around. Some people think mathematically, some spacially, some in social terms, or whatever. And some don't seem to go in for thinking much at all...
I've known people who were highly skilled at drawing or painting but who had almost no originality at all about their work. Conversely, I've known artists with extremely poor technical skills, yet bucket loads of originality. Same with musicians.
My guess is that, if they practice enough, most players will slowly assemble a little musical 'kit of effects' that they can learn to play around with and add together in different ways. Like familar Lego bricks that they can turn into a car or a castle perhaps. But they'll never actually invent Lego - or cars or castles for that matter.
Maybe that's it though. Perhaps I'm overestimating the role of creativity? Perhaps you don't really need to be all that original or creative to be able to improvise musically. As long as you equip yourself with a kit of moves, maybe you can learn to mix them up in a satisfactory way, even if you're only really treading fairly familiar and popular paths?
Whatever the process, it's sure fun to do...
Cheers,
Chris