 Welcome to another article composing daily vlog. I'm John Brantingham and this is episode number five so today I am actually going to be talking about something that connects to an article that I'm about to publish. The article should come out tomorrow morning and what it's really about is how do you define your creative problems. So I have been working now, I've finished up three episodes on this new soap opera that I'm scoring and it's been really good for me in terms of pushing me to write everyday quite a bit of music. I'm having to do about ten to twelve minutes of music every week which is, it's more than I've been doing for a while. Prior to getting the soap opera I would get maybe a little commercial here or get a short film over there but ultimately I wasn't really getting consistent daily work in which I had to turn in a score with a deadline. So finally having a good weekly deadline like this I'm finding that I'm pushing myself in different ways that I was unable to do just composing by myself at home in my free time let's say or trying to do a project that's not necessarily connected with work or getting paid. So one of the ways that this is pushing me is that by having to write a lot of music I'm coming up to these areas where I feel like if I just repeat what I did it will work. I can keep a texture going for a certain amount of time and then maybe I'll repeat it and just change the key or something like that. But I also when I do that I feel like maybe I'm copying out a little bit and maybe there's a way that I can write a new texture or change this current texture enough that it feels really new you know a lot of the composers that I look up to they will write what seems like new kinds of ideas and textures all the time and in particular you know one of my the composers I looked up to a lot is John Williams and he does it a lot he changes his textures frequently and so what it made me realize though is that in order for me to improve on this I need to really clarify what the question is that I'm searching for and that's what I call defining your creative problems. So I can I can kind of sit back at this point and say I know there's something there that I want to work on but for me it seems like it's important to trace the line and where this idea is going it may be that you you can really clarify for your subconscious mind what the things are that need to be bounced around and worked on when you're not thinking about music. I find that a lot of the answers to cues where I don't know where they're going a lot of the answers that come you know the next day after taking a rest or you know sleeping on it or whatever and so you have to define these creative problems in order for your subconscious mind to work on them and for you to get the right answers or at least an answer that you can test out. So for something like this where I'm asking you know is this too much repetition that's not really a very useful way to phrase that question. I would say probably something more useful is saying what is a good amount of repetition that I can use to where I know that if I don't surpass this it's not the idea itself is not going to feel stale and then how can I recreate very specific textures that I'm doing. Let's say for instance and something I bring up in the article is reaching for spiccato strings and doing a rhythm like right it it's very easy to do right. Spiccato strings always sound really good. It's very effective if you want to add a little bit of tempo to a scene you know if you're doing sustained strings and all of a sudden you go... things pick up the tempo of the scene the actual the acting feels like it's it's happening faster and the cuts feel like they're happening faster. So it's not a bad thing in and of itself but the question is maybe I need to ask myself how can I get that same effect using completely different instrumentation. So does it feel the same if I were to use brass or is the brass too heavy? Does the brass feel like they're too serious maybe? Is it the same as the woodwinds or do the woodwinds feel too I don't know like light-hearted or romantic or soft or maybe they don't have the kind of drive that you get from the really rosiny sounding spiccato strings. You can see actually the thought process going on in my mind right now and why it's so important to clarify your questions and define your creative problems. So I would highly recommend going on the on the website artofcomposing.com slash blog is where you'll find them and read the article that's posting tomorrow 6 a.m. Pacific Standard Time and let me know what you think let me know what are your creative problems that you're trying to define because I think we can all learn as composers from the problems that other composers face and and I found in particular my friends who are composers people that I went through the film scoring program with at UCLA I'll be chatting about something I'm doing and some problem I have they'll have the exact same problem and they will have thought about it in a completely different way or maybe they will have phrased the problem in a completely different way and just being able to ask the question different will lead you to new and different and better answers so so yeah check out the article and leave comments on this YouTube or are on this video or leave comments on the blog on the article and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow and one last thing if you are interested in learning to compose I have two really kind of in-depth fundamental courses that cover core subjects that any composer needs to know so you know we talk about melody harmony form accompaniment texture how to develop your pieces so how to take something like eight measures and turn that into a really fully fledged four or five minute piece so go to articomposing.com read the blog check out the courses and I will see you tomorrow