What’s Better: Planning or Spontaneity?

One of the most exciting parts of writing is when you get to sit down with nothing and somehow create an amazing arrangement out of thin air. However this can also be one of the most daunting and overwhelming parts of the whole process. Over the years I’ve been introduced to a number of different strategies to help formulate an arrangement down to the finer details and try to avoid writer's block. The only problem is that the more you plan, the more likely you are to remove spontaneous creativity from your workflow. So is there a way to find a balance between staring at a blank piece of manuscript for hours and methodically categorizing your chart into bar by bar breakdowns?

When I started writing I had no clue what I was doing and had no care in the world about having any sort of workflow. As I had no serious deadlines and was purely creating music out of passion and enjoyment, there really wasn’t a downside to just following my heart and seeing where the music took me. However that changed as I started taking my writing more seriously and wanted to replicate certain sounds I was hearing. I would approach an arrangement wanting to emulate writers like Sammy Nestico and Quincy Jones, and with my limited skills at the time, my creativity wasn’t going to yield the results I was looking for.

That’s when I was introduced to a planning device called an event list, where you break up an arrangement into a number of sections and fill in as many details as you can think of. Other than being a great way to streamline your thoughts before actually writing a single note, the special sauce of an event list is when you use it as an analytical tool. I could now take my favorite big band recordings and plot all of the key characteristics into an event list. From there I could use that same event list as the skeleton for my own arrangement, picking up many of the major qualities of the original while also allowing for the chart to sound inherently my own. Whenever I wanted to find out exactly how a recording I liked worked, I would just analyze it with an event list and then use the parts I liked within my own writing. 

To clarify, this is not the same as plagiarizing someone else's work. Instead it’s just using the same structure, similar to how most movies these days use the same 3-act structure for their stories. Even though they are all built around the same framework, each movie feels unique. For those of you who are having issues developing your arrangements, I would highly suggest creating event lists for a number of different recordings you like. The more diverse the better and they can be made up of different styles and instrumentations. Once you’ve analyzed a few you can then compare the event lists with one another and then come up with your own unique plan which incorporates your favorite parts from each recording. If you find that each recording leads to similar event lists, I would challenge you to look to other styles and cultures for inspiration. You never know what you might find and how it will impact your arranging.

The problem with this approach though is that you lose some level of magic when you write. That sense of adventure where you don’t know exactly where you are going. On one side it allows you to be more methodical with writing, helping you have a more efficient workflow, but on the other it can also remove some of the spontaneity and perhaps steer you away from options you would’ve otherwise discovered. 

For me, I used event lists for close to a decade in my workflow, whether it be for analysis or in my own writing. Through that process I discovered hundreds of different form variations, similarities and differences between styles and cultures, and was given a plethora of ideas that had been proven to work. Only recently I’ve started to move away from planning and really try to sit in a creative space letting my intuition guide me. As a result I’ve found different approaches to writing that somehow both sound unique as well as steeped in some kind of musical tradition.

Looking back at the initial question, both planning and spontaneity have pros and cons. One doesn’t necessarily trump the other and depending on where you’re at in your writing journey, either can be helpful. If you’re just starting out or finding that you are hitting a creative wall, stop and listen to a lot of music. Analyze it, emulate it, and then create your own music inspired by it. However, once you’ve done that, give yourself the chance to break free from planning and see where your newly acquired knowledge takes you. Maybe you’ll find something completely new, or maybe you’ll go back to planning. Either way, you’ll have at least gone through the process and know where you stand.

As developing an arrangement can look so drastically different from chart to chart and person to person, I thought it would be best to enter the topic from a place which hopefully everyone can relate to. Music is music, there is no right or wrong, and you should feel comfortable writing anything which you like the sound of.

Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter entry. It’s a bit different than what I’ve done in the past but hopefully there’s something there that may be helpful to you. Looking to next week, I’m going to go into the nuts and bolts of developing an arrangement by specifically unpacking form. So many of us use the same standard AABA and blues forms in our writing when there are dozens of other interesting options out there to explore. Anyway, you’ll have to wait until next time to hear about that.

Thanks,

Toshi