Obstacles & Collaboratng (5 of 5)

Obstacles and Collaborating  (5 of 5)

Is there anything that you personally find an obstacle to your creativity? And how do you overcome them?(Launa is quoted in blue, Bill in red.)

The biggest obstacle to creativity is the thought that you have to create something that is good. It’s a very hard trap to resist. Instead of focusing on your creativity and coming up with an interesting groove, lyric, etc., you end up focusing on “I need to create a really great song that we can learn, put on an album and perform.” That doesn’t work. It’s important to make good decisions about which songs should advance and become full arrangements for a recording, but that’s the tail end of the process. In my case, I need to write a lot of bad songs to get some that will develop into what I hope will be good songs. 

I think that’s true no matter what you’re creating. When I was illustrating, I would do lots of little sketches called “thumbnails” before choosing which one to “flesh out” in a completed piece. This helps get rid of the obvious solutions and encourages originality.

Have you ever experienced “writers block”, feeling “uninspired”? Got any ideas on getting past it?

Yes. Get a copy of The Artist’s Way, and follow it. It’s basically a perfect method. 

How long have you been working together to write music?

Our first few songs we wrote separately. However, we quickly found that Bill’s songs benefited when I helped to write the lyrics, and my songs got more interesting when Bill contributed to writing bass lines and grooves. Bill often points out something that is wrong with a song in his opinion, and he’ll contribute something that I don’t immediately love to replace it. Once I listen to his suggestion again and again, I usually see why it’s so brilliant.

It must be difficult to handle divergent visions for a piece of music…

We often argue over them for a long time. For example, in Launa’s song, “The Miracle,” which is on our album, Pandora’s Regrets, we disagreed about the chorus for months. The band and I thought the chorus’ chord structure was too simple and repetitive and too much like the verse. As the songwriter, Launa was adamant that we should keep the song simple and anthemic.

We don’t have a particularly great way of working out our differences. To be honest, sometimes it’s really unpleasant! Finally, we were arguing in front of our friend from Miles of Music who has a lot of experience working as a musician in bands. He suggested putting the more complicated chord structure in on just the second to last repeat of the chorus. It gives listeners a brief break from the main chord structure of the song. 

It worked. Miles of Music to the rescue!

At one point, I remember you sharing that when you were challenged as a couple with a disagreement about the direction of your music, it helped to realize that it wasn't an either/or situation but a combining of your perspectives. 

In the case you mentioned, it clearly helped that you were both open to another person's input. Just goes to show that when we hold fast to something that’s not working, there's no progress. 

Working on anything you’d like to share with us?

New Yeller is working on material for a new album, but nothing is good enough to share yet.  Stay tuned!

To see a video Launa and Bill made at Miles of Music camp, check this out:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwChSPTCSPRwctShvmxdGNHmfdG?projector=1