Manipulating Inspiration

  I was feeling lazy yesterday so I didn't write a blog entry.  Also I didn't really have any inspiration to write.  Inspiration is incredibly crucial to my creative process.  It all comes from a feeling that tells me to create.  I have my good days, and my bad days when finding inspiration.  Part of being any kind of artist is learning to manipulate your inspiration to create a picture from with-in.
  My creative process never really has a method behind it.  When I'm coming up with musical ideas, it's usually all by accident.  Most of the time I will be improvising a solo melody or just a rhythmic pattern, that will turn into the actual chord progression.  Often times I will be at work, or just outside away from my bass and I will suddenly start thinking of a melody in my head, and then come back home and try to figure it out on my bass.  One thing I always usually do, is record a video/audio track so I won't forget how to play it!
  When writing you have to let the music take you to the next part of the song, using your most subtle energy to blindly search for your creation.  It is exactly like an artist painting their painting, or a writer creating a story, or a chef creating their meal.  Using your own intuition you create something totally new.  The only real preparation you have behind creating a musical piece, is the practice you have already put in prior to that point.  All of the practice you have experienced will remain in your subconscious.
  For me part of practicing is not only learning music theory and all of the scales and what not, but actually learning every song you hear.  In my earlier days of practice I would sit and with my Ipod on shuffle, learning every song that came on.  I would spend many hours doing this, which all helps me still today.  I feel like before you can really create the piece you want, you have to learn what other musicians are doing; to fully understand where you're going to go.
  In my musical lifetime i have written probably hundred's of songs, just from sheer vamping and improvising.  Though most of them don't even turn into songs because I forget how to play them haha.  The one's that turn into song's are those of real inspiration, that makes me create this song.  The song's that don't become songs, were more like the proceedings to these fully created ideas.  Sometimes I am unable to pull all of the pieces together, until years later.
  Most of my writing is focused on BearKnuckle right now.  I am giving myself a very large picture to paint.  I don't want to limit myself to something too broad.  BearKnuckle is sure to be very diverse with our music, while still having something familiar and signature about our sound.  From my writing, to the contributions from the rest of BearKnuckle, there is nothing we can't create.  We are one mind, guiding ourselves through inspiration.  Thank you for reading!  This concludes my entry on manipulating inspiration.

-BearKnuckle
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