Below is the complete version of “An Incomplete Manifesto For Growth” as mentioned in my last blog post “Some Creative Suggestions For Your Songwriting Process.”

This manifesto was conceived in 1998 by Bruce Mau, the creative director of Bruce Mau Design. The purpose of the manifesto is explained on his website in the following way:

“Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements exemplifying Bruce Mau’s beliefs, strategies and motivations. Collectively, they are how we approach every project.”

From what I have seen, Bruce Mau and his team certainly know what they’re talking about and from reading his manifesto below I can see how the creative process of design and writing songs can come from exactly the same place.

The muse is a multi-talented entity indeed…


An Incomplete Manifesto For Growth
By Bruce Mau

1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it.

The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good.

Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

28. Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget.

The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’

31. Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea – I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces – what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.”

Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference – the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect.

Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.


Wow!

Even though Bruce Mau and his team approach every new design project using these strategies and philosophies, I truly believe that the process of songwriting (indeed every creative endeavour) can be looked at in the very same way.

I don’t know about you but right now, I’m feeling truly inspired. Are you? Which points in the manifesto resonate with you? Let me know about it.

Peace,

Corey 🙂

One of my favourite songwriting websites that I visit regularly and I’m a proud member of is called TAXI.

Apart from the songwriting A&R services they provide for their members, I really like the articles and helpful tips that they provide on the site as well.

One of these articles that I recently came across was by a songwriter named Michael Anderson called “Creative Suggestions”

The article is essentially a huge list of wisdom to help expand your songwriting process and at the same time, enrich you as a songwriter which is just the very thing that I’m trying to achieve with Corey Stewart Online.

Anyways, I’ve included the article below for your enjoyment…


Creative Suggestions
By Michael Anderson

(Originally Published in TAXI – July 2008)

One of the great things I have found about teaching is how much you end up learning. The best way to learn about something is to help someone else do it.

As part of my teaching, recently I interviewed a guest, Paula McMath, who came in with amazing material prepared for the class.

I am going to share excerpts of one section here — it comes form a handout she gave the class called “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.”

I don’t know where it came from, or who wrote it — and I am editing it for focus and length here. If you are so motivated, I am sure you can find the whole thing on the Internet somewhere.

So here are some suggestions for your process in writing:

  • Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it.
  • The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
  • Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on.
  • Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.
  • Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been.
  • Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, trials, and errors.
  • Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
  • Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question.
  • Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study.
  • Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly Postpone criticism.
  • Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice – begin anywhere.
  • Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
  • Harvest ideas – edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
  • Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
  • Slow down. Desynchronise from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
  • Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
  • Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence.
  • Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with strife, friction, exhilaration, delight, and creative potential.
  • Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
  • Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.
  • Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
  • Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
  • Make your own tools. Hybridise your tools in order to build unique things.
  • Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
  • Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
  • Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.
  • Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
  • Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
  • Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
  • Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device dependent.
  • Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise.
  • Don’t borrow money. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
  • Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
  • Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic-simulated environment.
  • Make mistakes faster.
  • Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable.
  • Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did—make up something else.
  • Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

Excerpted from Michael Anderson’s Little Black Book of Songwriting available at: www.michaelanderson.com

Need a to get your Songs to Record LabelsPublishers or Major Artists? Then check out TAXI: The World’s Leading Independent A&R Company, helping bands, artists and Songwriters get signed.

Now that is what I call an amazing list of creative suggestions to think about.

Reading this article reaffirms my thoughts, feelings and theories of the importance of having a songwriting process. I’m certainly going to look up “An Incomplete Manifesto For Growth” and really get my head around what it means.

Incidentally, what points took your fancy? Let me know what you think.

Peace,

Corey 🙂

“If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no-one around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Dr. George Berkley

Creativity is an essential part of the human experience, and it is something that is often deeply personal and meaningful to the creator. However, I believe that creativity is not just a private experience – it is something that can be shared and enjoyed by others. 

This is why I feel that creativity is an experience that needs to be shared. It’s because for creations to become truly real, they need to be experienced by an audience. 

I mean…

  • What is a painting without eyes to see it
  • What is a song without ears to hear it
  • What is a book without eyes to read it
  • What is a meal without a mouth to taste it?

The creator is compelled internally to create from nothing but it’s only until the creation is experienced by somebody that the creation really turns into something.

As a songwriter, I am compelled to write songs and those songs are of no use to me if there is no audience to hear them. There needs to be an audience for my songs to truly have a life of their own

This is also where I get the most joy from being a songwriter, having an audience to listen to them whether they be in a live situation or online through streaming or downloading.

This is why I do what I do. Sharing my songs, my creations with a wider audience allows me to do the following…

  • Connect with others on a more deeper level
  • Contribute to the world in a positive way
  • Grow as a human being
  • Touch, move and inspire others
  • Build a community around me and my music
  • Make a better life for myself
  • Leave my mark on the world

Anything that is created has its own intrinsic purpose for its existence so in my case, I’ll be honouring my creations by sharing them with an audience. No matter where they are in the world.

Peace,

Corey 🙂

As I’m now getting ready to play live again, I need to remind myself that I don’t ever want to fall back into the trap of just playing covers for the sake of it and at the cost of performing my own material. 

I do want to explore, however, the concept of being an interpreter of songs rather than just a replicator of other people’s music. This means that when I play other people’s songs I will be performing the songs that I want to perform, in the way that I want to perform them.

I’m not really interested in performing to audiences that only want to hear the same old tired songs that every other performing musician does. I’m ideally looking to play to audiences that want to experience something new and different. 

If anything it will definitely keep me interested and motivated at the same time.

From my experience of performing covers over the last 15 years or so, there are three main differences between an interpreter of a song and a replicator of a song.

First of all, an interpreter performs the song in the way that they wish to perform it, not by how it’s been performed in the past. 

An interpreter puts their own spin, personality and sonic point of view onto the song creating a (sometimes) different version to the point of the song becoming almost unrecognisable to the listener.

A replicator performs the song the way it’s always been played.

Secondly, an interpreter performs the song as a creative exercise rather than it just being a functional activity.

Continuing on from the first point, if you’re performing songs the way YOU want to perform them, then you’re approaching your gig as a creative exercise rather than a means to an end. 

Yes, you’re going to be paid at the end of the show (and therein lies the functional element of the gig) but your artistic integrity will remain intact at the same time.

A replicator approaches the gig as a functional transaction of service to payment and therefore the performance of the songs will reflect this attitude.

Lastly, an interpreter approaches the songs they perform the same way as a songwriter approaches performing one of their own songs.

An interpreter looks at the song as a whole and uses the performance of it to inspire and educate the listening audience through the delivery both vocally and instrumentally of the song’s form, dynamics and arrangement.

Every performance of the song is therefore a unique experience for both performer and audience.

A replicator approaches the song as if they were in control of a jukebox.

I used to think that trying to be all things to all people through playing all of the songs that they wanted to hear would give me job satisfaction through playing lots of gigs and therefore making a serviceable full-time living through live performance.

This is what I did for around 12-15 years (with FIGJAM and other cover projects) and at the end of it all, I was left a burnt out and empty shell of a man.

Not anymore.

As songwriters, musicians, artists and performers, we have the control over how much of ourselves we want to expose to an audience. Some musicians want to keep the live experience at a surface level and that’s okay.

I, on the other hand, really want to go deeper than that and the best way I think to do that is through the delivery of the music. Whether I’m performing my music or the music of another.

I’ll see you at a gig real soon.

Peace,

Corey 🙂

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a great believer in using anything that can create, inspire, stimulate and expand on my songwriting ideas and turn them into a finished song.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in our day to day lives has just exploded over the last few years and the world of songwriting has not been immune to this phenomenon. 

It seems that “AI” is the newest buzzword around and there’s a huge demand for AI to be involved with any and every part of the creative process. 

It’s easy to come to the conclusion that any human involvement in the creative process will become obsolete. I don’t think this will be the case at all.

Now I myself have used AI songwriting/musical tools to expand, embellish and enhance my own songwriting ideas and to get myself out of writer’s block. 

I do this because I’m truly fascinated by the promise of AI and what it can do for songwriters and musicians alike. The promise being a never-ending flow of randomly generated songwriting ideas.

Of course these ideas are not going to be perfect but that is the beauty of working with AI songwriting tools. These AI generated songwriting ideas will still need (and will probably always need) the discernment filter of a human brain that’s been trained by years of experience to steer those song ideas to completion.

Are songwriting ideas generated by an AI tool less relevant than if they were 100% generated by a human? 

As far as I’m concerned, no way because at the end of the day an AI songwriting tool is just that… A TOOL

It’s a means to an end and when you think about it, any tool that can generate a songwriting idea is a good tool in my book.

Recently, I updated my most popular blog post The BIG List Of Songwriting Prompts And Lyric Generators to now include a list of AI powered songwriting and lyric writing tools because whether we like it or not, THIS is going to be a big part of the future of songwriting.

Whether they’re created by a computer program or, through machine learning, these songwriting ideas and prompts are just there to help stimulate creativity within the human mind.

They exist to merely take your creativity to places you’d never go. For me, it’s like a mate giving you a tip on a great fishing spot but there are some advocates against AI in songwriting who talk about how using these tools is tantamount to cheating. 

Yes, I suppose you can technically “cheat” if you really want to, but having AI write a song for you and then claiming it as your own work is a hollow victory (if you can just watch the film Yesterday and you’ll know exactly what I mean). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry9honCV3qc

Just letting AI do all the heavy lifting would simply take all the fun out of creating and besides, is a guitarist who uses a capo a cheat? No, not at all.

I personally want to be on the forefront of these developments rather than be lagging behind to play catch up. I’ll continue to use AI songwriting/lyric writing tools in my songwriting process and if there’s anything that I can share with you all in the future I will.

So, in conclusion… As long as we control the technology within the process rather than the other way around, I think songwriting as a craft is not going to diminish in its humanity.

What do YOU think about the role of AI in the songwriting process?

The role of AI in songwriting has already launched some robust discussion and will continue to be an interesting conversation topic now and into the future so let me know what you think because I’m always up for a good chat.

Peace,

Corey 🙂

Personally, I love learning covers in my own unique way almost as much as writing, recording and playing my own music.

The main reason for this is that by me learning and deconstructing/reconstructing songs that I really connect with or, have proven to be popular with the public and have charted in some way, I learn how to write my own songs better through the experience.

Here are some ways I reckon that learning covers has helped my own songwriting process:

  • I learn different song formats, song structures and chord patterns.
  • I expose myself to singing different melodies, and lyrical ideas.
  • I spice up my guitar practice regimen.
  • I maintain my musical theory knowledge by learning a song by ear.
  • I get to know my favourite songwriters more by learning their songs.

For every song I learn, many other unique songwriting ideas will naturally bubble up to the surface for my own material later on.

I reckon the trick with playing covers is that you never do them like the original as much as you possibly can.

I know that if I’m in the audience and I hear someone do a cover in their own style, I get hooked into their version every single time (and I also get hooked into them too).

Now, some performing songwriters I know feel that playing covers is just selling out but, I respectfully don’t agree. I mean who is going to say that Jeff Buckley’s version of ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen was a sell out on his part?

It’s one of the most beautiful performances of any song I have ever heard. It makes me cry every time I hear it.

Of course, your goal as a performing songwriter is to play your own songs as much as you can because there’s nothing more satisfying than people actually being touched, moved and inspired by what you are playing and singing that has come from inside you however, an amazing thing happens when you add the occasional cover song into your repertoire.

The audience becomes much closer to you.

I can’t tell you how many times a quiet gig became a much greater gig after I play a well chosen cover (in my own style of course). Every other song I play afterwards becomes music to their ears.

For me, the term “selling out” is generally used by people who wish they were in the same position as the other musicians they were commenting on. Jealousy rears up its ugly head in the music industry all the time.

If you keep focused on writing your own music and at the same time learn a few covers (at the very least for research purposes) to break up your songwriting process from time to time, you will have better gigs, become a more well rounded instrumentalist and (most importantly) you will be a real hit around the odd campfire or two 😉

At the end of the day, I believe playing covers affects your ability to write your own songs only if you allow it to.

Peace,

Corey 🙂