Graham English
Songwriter, Recording Artist, and Blogging Musician
Songwriter, Recording Artist, and Blogging Musician
I’ve been extremely light on the blogging front lately, but I have big plans to breathe new life into this site. I’ll be shifting gears as I reexamine my time, attention, and creative work. In the mean time, here’s a few links I’ve been meaning to share.
Rescue time is an application that has become very important to my weekly GTD review. It’s helping me put some metrics to my writing goals. Read on…
Here’s an exercise I love to do when I need inspiration for song titles. If nothing’s coming naturally, this trick can really get the creative juices flowing. Even if I end up using nothing that I come up with, I find that within a day or two, one of my ideas will trigger something completely different, usable, and inspiring.
In an attempt to hack their creativity and artistic output, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt created a deck of cards they called the Oblique Strategies. Whenever they came up against a creative dilemma–and especially while under a moment of pressure or deadline–they would pull a card and follow the directions.
I’ve used this technique constantly in [...]
One of the most common challenges I hear about songwriting is not knowing where to begin. With the lyrics? With the music? Or something completely different? It’s a rather simple challenge to find a solution to, really.
Start with a single note or single word
Play a single random note and just listen to your imagination. Does [...]
Some people have the misconception that only a select few are able to unleash a steady flow of creative thinking. That is not true at all. The fact is, intuitive creativity is very much like a muscle that needs to be exercised in order to consistently give out great results. If you don’t practice harnessing [...]
A Random Article from Wikipedia
Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies
A Random Word
A Random Sentence
A Random Paragraph
A Random Web Site
You have to put something into your mind to get something out.
Image streaming is the exact technique used by geniuses such as Einstein, Edison and Tesla. Not only will image streaming enhance your creativity, it will actually increase your IQ!
Image streaming is your doorway to the subconscious mind. This stream-of-consciousness visualization technique delivers spontaneously-generated thoughts directly from the subconscious mind as an answer or solution to [...]
Do you know of an author that has written a book in one sitting? Or how about a composer who created a masterpiece in an afternoon?
You haven’t? Me neither. And that’s why I write for the garbage can.
Johnny Mercer, the songwriter, said he used to write for the waste basket. When I first heard this, [...]
Patterns are a great way of putting scales to work. Not only do they get you out of any do-re-mi rut, they expand your musical vocabulary. They also expand your mind by forcing you to think about systems within systems—and sometimes within other systems. For example, this diminished pattern is a three note system:
within another [...]
A simple observation lies at the heart of the Exposure book: that as different areas of culture start flowing in digital networks, it becomes self-defeating for artists, publishers, labels, and also regular people to insist for control over the distribution of their own creations. Although the fact is simple, its repercussions are only starting to [...]
The diminished scale is an extremely creative tool. Due to the diminished chord’s symmetrical structure of stacked minor thirds, we have two options of diminished scales: half step-whole step and whole step-half step.
A major benefit to this scale is that you only have to learn it in three different keys since it repeats itself every [...]
Ideas are in motion. And new technology is allowing photographers, musicians, designers, filmmakers, and artistic pros everywhere to blur the lines of traditional disciplines. Visit the new Apple Pro site and experience the projects and people that are redefining creativity.
Interesting new spin on creative professionals from Apple.
Just found a new and free random word generator. It creates random sentences and paragraphs too. But the best part is random world plus. You can choose the word type and the word complexity. If you were to add syllables and stress you would have a kick-ass songwriting word generator.
As it is now, it’s perfect [...]
Lost? Get some direction. Use Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies to tell you what to do next.
Adapted from the book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci.
Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant musician. If he was alive today…
He would have an insatiably curious approach to songwriting and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning.
Songs can be like problems or puzzles that we must solve or piece together. Asking creative questions can open [...]
I was just talking about Marketing to the Millennials where I quoted John Geraci:
“New technologies rarely actually replace existing technologies. They tend to reposition them.”
Check out Mark Cuban: The future of the TV commercial is from the past:
I think the traditional commercial break will be the salvation of TV.
Crazy. How can I say that you [...]
“My future starts when I wake up every morning . . . Every day I find something creative to do with my life.”
- Miles Davis
Yesterday I posted how to get your creative juices flowing with object writing. Today I found a great site that you can use to randomly generate objects to write about. It’s more of a surprise word generator than a random word generator because you have to type a word in first. But at least it’s [...]
Give me 5 minutes and I’ll show you how to instantly find unique and interesting details to put into your lyrics.
The technique is called Object Writing and it’s so ridiculously easy that you’ll be pissed you didn’t know about it sooner. I learned it from Pat Pattison.
Here’s how it works:
First, gather your materials. You’ll need [...]
about grahamI'm a songwriter and recording artist who sings, plays keyboards, and explores the vast world of sound hoping to find some magical moments along the way. I'm also a Mac geek.
@bbluesman Good call. in reply to bbluesman 6 hrs ago
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