The Creative Process as I See It

We have another great issue for you starting with our cover interview with the dynamic Doug Wimbish by Steven Gregory; we have the latest from this “Sound-system” of bass! And don’t miss the interview with Korn’s Fieldy by Tim Risser.

Looking ahead, the energy of Winter NAMM 2014 is starting to appear. As always, Bass Musician Magazine will be on the floor to bring you the highlights of this major event.

We always appreciate the massive amounts of CD’s that we get from our readers worldwide. The downside of such volume is that it takes a lot of time to give each one a fair listen… and we do go through every track . That said, we also have to be selective about what we can write reviews about, as there are only so many hours in the day. So, we pick the CD’s that speak to us and stand out in our minds above the rest. This doesn’t mean that if your CD doesn’t get reviewed, it isn’t good. It means that we have to make a cut somewhere.

I will take a moment to comment on the creative process as I see it. As I am so fortunate to hear music from around the world, I am always amazed at how composers can produce original music  after so much music had been “invented”. Often, the cultural influences give their music a unique flavor, other times it has to do with their own genius. I am not sure how they do it but they do!

Now, even through I understand the inherent difficulty of this whole process, in other instances, I hear many songs that sound so much like another recognizable melodies, that I have to check to see if it isn’t some kind of interpretation of someone else’s work.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is the other extreme of rather random,. disjointed tunes that could happen if you threw a bucket of magnetic musical notes at a metal pentagram. I am reminded of  some pieces of “Modern Art” where some one has spilled paint on a canvas or picked up a bag of trash and glued it to a piece of wood and come up with a catchy title. I am sorry, but I don’t get it! Where are the elements of Music?

I invite you, our readership, to weigh in on this situation and share your thoughts here.

Anyway, that is all for now.

Keep grooving!