When I'm composing, I find meaning in the act of challenging myself, and/or to make some kind of a puzzle for myself that I have to solve in the music. Oftentimes, I make up rules for myself that I have to follow, like for example when I'm using the knitting pattern for Thordis' fichu as a basis for my compositions (I'll post one of those compositions in the comments - the Finnish Sähkökitarakvartetti playing Hyrnan IV). As you could imagine, this does not make my work simple or easy, or maybe I'm just not clever enough to be able to do this easily in a way that I would be happy with, so - hard mode it is!

When I'm composing with the knitting pattern, I do a lot of experiments and sketches, and then I choose the bits and pieces I like most, and try to make something out of those. It can be really complicated to put the sketches together in a way that makes sense for me. Therefore, while I'm working on the composition, I have to get used to everything sounding terrible before it starts to sound better, and keep chiselling away at the heap of awfulness until something I'm happy with starts emerging.

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For as long as I remember I’ve been fascinated with “endlessness” in art, and in life for that matter. Sometimes things appear to be going somewhere but in reality they are not, or maybe they are but there is no start or end to them. In music, we have things like “Shepard tone” and the “Risset rhythm”. I have played around with ideas that have the potential to be “endless”, for example in my composition “Hikk!” for flute, clarinet and bassoon (see comments for link). There I used a kind of a walking bass melody that walked endlessly, switching between walking up a major third and minor second, jumping up and down octaves where practical. The whole piece is derived from this small idea.

I wonder how you can play with similar ideas in poetry, photography, visual art, dance or other art forms. Feel free to try, and let me know in the comments what you come up with.

One more thing - I would love to get prompts and ideas from you, dear creative people of the internet. Tell me about ideas, interesting books or pieces you think I might enjoy.

#CreativePrompts #jazz #improvisation #improvisedmusic #contemporarymusic #composition #composing #icelandicmusic #icelandicjazz #guitar #bigband #compositionalstudies #jazzguitar #compositionstudies #creativity #flute #clarinet #bassoon #woodwindtrio