Entry 1 – The Creative Process

The class focus and ensuing discussion on the creative process caused me to consider my own creative process and how I formulated my music. I looked at the earlier drafts of some of my songs and reflected on how they had been constructed – I often started with a chord progression, and then developed lyrical ideas to go along with it, before finally adding a melody that fit the lyrics I had written over the top of the chords. It’s helpful to be aware of this moving forward, but even more important from my perspective was the concept of being able to write even when there’s no creative mood or inspiration that Robyn covered in her lecture¹. To me, that felt important to be conscious of going forward, as it is not a viable business practice to simply write whenever I feel like it (which I had definitely been doing) but rather have a methodical and direct approach to songwriting. The video² Robyn showed us on that topic codified that idea nicely by showing a practical example of Sia writing music using that methodology:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59nwMeoYCkQ       

1 Habel, Robyn. “Creative Process”. Lecture presented at the course Song Writing and Performance 1A, University of Adelaide, March 4, 2019.

2 Romero, Alexis. “How Sia and Her Songwriter Come up with New Single.” YouTube, YouTube, 3 Aug. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=59nwMeoYCkQ.