The other day, I was driving home from a photoshoot, and an old Amy Winehouse song popped up on my playlist that I hadn't listened to in years. It reminded me of a mashup song with Linda Ronstadt and Amy Winehouse that I used to listen to in L.A. while in a band creating music. I remember I was in a bartending school with many artists and creatives enrolled, learning how to become bartenders to make extra money on the side. The lady who owned the "school" was fantastic and was into rock music etc., and she would help the creatives land jobs as bartenders during their downtime once they passed the course and would also help get musicians playing gigs all around the city, in clubs, etc. As you can imagine, there was a mix of everyone there. I ended up hitting it off best with this female musician, a bass player for a metal band, who was into all the soulful old-school rock bands I liked. What's wild is she had the looks to be a model model and was stylish, but was tough yet feminine. Think the early years of Gwen Stefani and No Doubt, but a dark hair version who played Metallica 😂.
So, anytime "class" was scheduled, she would bring these excellent mixes of songs mashed up/remixed with rock, soul, and hip hop that we would play during class when we would be practicing mixing drinks and stuff. We would eventually jam sessions outside of class on our instruments, making music just for fun. I bring this story up because it reflects how great musicians create, where the process is often built off of one note, idea, melody, lyric, song key, etc., where you try to find a connecting piece and way to create around the original spark that makes it work.
Guitarist Slash from Guns N Roses mentioned before how their biggest hit, "Sweet Child O Mine." came to fruition. He was playing a random riff on his guitar, just messing around in the living room of a house, while Axel Rose was in an upstairs bedroom and heard the melody and began to write down some personal lyrics thinking of his girlfriend. The next day when they were in the rehearsal studio, he asked Slash to play that melody again and thus began building that song piece by piece.
The point is that this style of creation doesn't have to be limited to music. It relates to everything creative and life in general. From a scientific perspective, the human brain wants to look for connections on higher levels, so don't get boxed in and lose sight of the why when things become complicated or stale. Don't allow trends and groupthink to kill the creative force within because our minds want to explore and embrace new ideas. Great artists and creators throughout history were great thinkers, being able to see connections and grasp the essence of the whole of what they were pursuing. 💯
Here is the mashup I cited above. Enjoy!
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