It is essential in music to have a goal. Even if your goal is to “see” what happens when you just freestyle through improvisation. This is vital because in music it is very common to be “painting” one picture with more artists then just yourself. So you don’t want one of your co-artists painting a sad picture when your goal is to paint a happy one. So establish your goal at the start. Then you can begin to map out the type of canvas (instruments) you want to create on, the types and combinations of colors (notes, chords, song key, genre-jazz, rock, classical, folk, etc.), the mood and atmosphere of the “painting” (the tempo and intensity of the musical piece), and the direction and details made by the paint brush (the words/lyrics/main melody).
By having your goal already in mind, you can make sure that all the key elements needed to “paint” your piece will come together to create that which you set out to accomplish. With music, as with any other art, the tools we use – the instruments, the notes, the tempo, the lyrics, etc. – are important and necessary, however, the foundation of every art is the artist.
It all begins inside of you, and experience has taught me that the deeper we go inside ourselves, the more true our inspirations become; and consequently our art becomes a better depiction of that which we are trying to communicate.
