Why YOU Shouldn’t TRY to be Creative?

When we’re conversing with someone we love, we’re not reading or reciting our part of the conversation, and we’re not trying to be ‘creative’ and we’re not trying to wow them with impressive words.

We are communicating.

This doesn’t mean that the conversation won’t get dramatic or fanciful or elegant or exquisite – but it is a conversation, an exploration.

To have that conversation you need to learn how to put together sentences so they can express your ideas.

But you don’t need perfect grammar or big words – you just need to know how to express your ideas so that you can CONNECT with other people – and with your own self-expression.

That’s what we learn in Hip Harp Academy. But we’re learning to speak with music.

That’s why the Academy’s Motto is “Connection … not Perfection”

• If that speaks to you, come join me! The Academy is $400 off now during open enrollment. Classes have started! Discount ends TUE. Oct. 29
• To learn more, here’s the Academy Info Page.
• To watch all the videos from our Kickstart week, here are the Kickstart Week Replays.

The first class of the quarter in HipHarp Academy’s “Structure is Freedom” program is just about to begin! If you register now, you’ll get $400 off and you can jump in and join us for the first day of class – or watch by replay later.

Here’s what I have to say to you today:

Don’t try to be creative. And here’s why…

You ARE creative – we are ALL creative. By nature. What chokes our creativity are all the ideas from from outside the music – and inside our heads: when we think we need to be impressive, or interesting, or just ‘better’ than we are, or we need to come up with ‘new’ ways to do things, or do things ‘right’ – or look good or sound right or be more complex in order to be creative …

None of that is creativity.

YOU are creativity itself. The way you play with things is creative.

What you need in order to play with freedom is the structure to SUPPORT that innate creativity: simple structure, simple tools and skills to give you a solid ground from which your natural creativity can bloom.

You need a guide to lead you on the journey – not to demand you take every single step a certain way and do it perfectly – but to show the way, show you the pitfalls, answer your questions.

And you need creative allies – so you are not on the journey all alone.

These are what Hip Harp Academy is all about.

In the “Structure is Freedom” Quarter in Hip Harp Academy, the first thing you learn is a universal Creative Framework I call the “Five Part Improv Arrangement Formula.” (Actually, I call it many different things … but that’s one of them) – and you can see a version of it at the top of this email.

It’s a creative framework that composers and improvising musicians have been using for centuries – but if you don’t know the framework is inside the music, you don’t realize they’re following it.

Because it’s not about doing the framework perfectly – it’s about what the framework lets you do.

Composers like Mozart generated both simple and complex music from it – but you’ll learn that simplicity is just as beautiful as complexity – often more beautiful.

And that’s what you learn to do the ‘Structure is Freedom” quarter – not just to learn one perfect, complex arrangement you have to get right every time – but to create an entire repertoire of tunes that you play differently every time – because you’re generating them from this framework every time you play them, not crafting them note by note.

We often call the “Structure is Freedom” Quarter the Repertoire-Builder quarter, because, once you learn this formula, you can apply it to any simple tune to create spontaneous arrangements on the spot – which is exactly what improvising musicians do.

And that’s what you will become: an improvising musician.

Once you learn to generate music from this framework, you’ll be able to use this formula and the tools and skills for the rest of your life. As your technical skills change, so do your arrangements. It’s living, breathing music that you generate in the moment. Your hands and harp set it free.

And when they do .. YOU experience that freedom.

Join me now: