Reply To: Improv, creativity, and a podcast that helped me understand the process better

[Mel Newton]

Kate – I’m just now seeing your reply. Your scaffold analogy is exactly the what my brain needs too. And I was JUST talking to someone else in real life about cooking and how improv is similar….you have to learn the basics of flavor, how salt and acid work together, what substitutions work and which don’t…and it’s so similar to music!!!!! It’s just amazing to me how much cross over there is between different areas of life that as a younger person I thought lived in completely different bubbles.

I think that being more creative in one area (such as cooking) can definitely help my confidence to be creative and improvise in other areas too. It gets my brain used to the exercise of going off script…but in a way that works and follows certain “guidelines”. It’s not that smoked paprika can’t go into chocolate chip cookies, it’s just that other things may need to be adjusted and the flavor supported and set up by your other ingredients. It’s not that some weird note or progression can’t work in a song….it’s just that you need to support and set up that transition if that’s what you really want to do with the song. Otherwise stick with something that follows the rules a little more and maybe add the equivalent of almond extract instead of vanilla to that song!

OK. Maybe I’m hungry since I can’t stop thinking about food now. LOL.