Mark C. Samples | Musicologist
“…ear-opening and
wide-ranging…”
—John Covach, Director, University of Rochester Institute for Popular Music, Professor of Theory, Eastman School of Music
Solie Award-Winner
For Outstanding Collection of Essays, awarded by the American Musicological Society.
About Mark
Dr. Mark Samples is a musicologist who studies how practices of promotion (branding, marketing, advertising) influence the cultural history of music in the United States. He also teaches entrepreneurship strategies to professional musicians across the country. He is an Associate Professor of Music at Central Washington University.
When you are trying to develop a creative skill, small improvements every day beat sporadic epic bursts. Every time.
Imagine two creatives, Oliver and Amelia. Both are music producers at the beginning of their careers. Both have visions of really making it—working with interesting artists, producing music they can be proud of, and supporting themselves through their creative work.
In order to have the careers they want, they both know that they need to continuously improve their skills. They need to learn new production techniques, become better songwriters, improve their mixing skills.
The list of improvements seems endless. They feel a deep skill deficit. Like a chasm that stands between them and the career that they want.
Oliver sets out to improve his skills. He works in bursts, but sporadically. Marathon sessions on weekends and late at night. After a session, he feels burnt out, and then it takes days or even a week before he can muster up the energy for another session.
In creative pursuits, quality will come as a result of quantity. Get intelligent reps in your field and share your work before you think you’re ready.
Writer Ryan Holiday said in an interview that he doesn’t put much stock in the "quality over quantity" excuse when creating.
You know the one. You say you want to line everything up first. To get everything ready so that it’s just right before releasing it to the world.
You say you want to painstakingly get everything right before you release your masterpiece.
Whenever you meet someone interesting, think to yourself—who do I know that this person should be connected to?
Write an email introducing your two friends. Say something about why you think they should be connected. Something like:
“Hey Rob, meet Jessica. Jessica fronts a rad Seattle band called Deep Sea Diver. They just released a new music video. Jessica, this is Rob. Rob has played the violin on probably some of your favorite records, from Sufjan Stevens to Bon Iver and even Taylor Swift. He just played with Sara Bareilles at the Kennedy center in a series of concerts celebrating her career and songbook. Y’all are both awesome, and I thought you should know each other!”
When you have a creative idea that is a ten out of ten, get it out into the world as fast as humanly possible—because you can bet that someone else in the world just had the same idea as you.
As creatives, we get dozens of ideas. Most are fleeting, average, just okay. We work our creative process knowing that most of our ideas aren’t worth pursuing.
But we pursue these okay ideas anyway because we know that they are the path to the really special ideas.
The ten out of tens.
The ideas that give you a special feeling, like the heavens have either opened up before you or come crashing upon you—or both.
Creativity is by definition non-obvious. It thrives on counterintuitive ideas and unexpected connections. Here are six counterintuitive creative principles to remind yourself of this week as you carve out time to be creative.
Routine breeds creativity. Instead of stifling creativity, developing a creative habit can establish a stable environment for you to do your best work. Establish a daily routine where you can reliably do creative deep work.
Enforcing limits is freeing. If you have every tool at your disposal, every option available to you, there is no need to be creative. Instead of keeping all of your options open, impose artificial limits on your work. Produce a song using only three musical lines. Write a complete story in 500 words. Create a design using only three colors. Having every tool at your disposal absolves you of the need to be creative.
Always seek to give credit, but never to take it.
Charlie Puth is has written mega pop hits, with multiple billion-streamers. He's worked with superstars of the music industry, and is known as a musician’s musician. He’s a self-proclaimed music nerd. He can sing, he can play, he has perfect pitch. He can write. He can perform.
He’s got every reason to toot his own horn, tout his own skills.
In fact, it was these skills that led Studio.com to create a popular online class on pop production featuring Puth.
But in the course, where Puth is supposed to be the main attraction, the Master, he instead repeatedly gives credit away to others. He names all of the great musicians and producers who taught him.
As a young actor, Tom Hanks received the best acting advice he’s ever gotten.
It came in the form of a director who blew up at his cast.
While rehearsing for a stage production of The Taming of the Shrew, the actors were not having a good day. They were lethargic. Phoning it in. Asking for lines. Waiting for direction.
It was just about the worst kind of rehearsal a director can have: mediocre.
And it set the director off.
In the world of creativity, there's something called the Creative Wind Tunnel. Ryan Tedder, the songwriter behind hits for artists like Beyoncé, Adele, and his band OneRepublic, uses this term to describe the phenomenon when creators get tunnel vision and start thinking their work is perfect, losing touch with reality.
When you're in the Creative Wind Tunnel, you can’t see your work’s flaws because you’re too caught up in it. This can stop you from making something truly great.
There has never been a better time in history to learn. YouTube videos, Skillshare courses (I've even made a couple of these myself), Masterclass.com, Studio.com, podcasts—you have access to knowledge and lessons from the world’s greatest creative minds.
Learning new skills and techniques from external sources is undoubtedly valuable. It expands our horizons, keeps us curious, and helps us grow.
But there’s a hidden trap in this constant quest for new knowledge: the belief that we need to keep learning from others before we start creating. This can become a comfortable crutch, an excuse to postpone doing the actual work.
More from Mark
Be alert for creativity to strike in the midst of the mundane. Even an unexpected blank page can hold the beginning of your next masterpiece.
You don’t have to be working in a cabin in the woods to have creative insights. You don’t have to be a hermit, or to wake up before sunrise and meditate.
You don’t even have to be doing something creative.
In fact, creative insights sometimes strike in the midst.
In the midst of cleaning your kitchen. In the midst of driving to work. In the midst of formatting TPS reports.
JRR Tolkien tells a cool story about how he started writing The Hobbit. Tolkien wrote some of the most beloved fantasy novels of the twentieth century. But, like me, in his day job he was a university professor.
In a BBC interview in 1968, he recalls how the first line of his book The Hobbit came to him.