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Walt Disney talked about his creative process when making films and the importance of ensuring that the creative process didn’t have premature editing. Too much editing or definition too soon in the process often stopped the creative flow really taking place. Many other artists have noticed that often many of the best creative ideas come from just trying stuff out whether this is musically or lyrically. 

The Brian Eno influence

My good friend Tim Booth who is the longstanding singer with the band James, often talked about how the band would jam for hours and see what emerged. Both he and Brian Eno often used this approach in creating music when there was a deliberate absence of definition/editing in the first part of the creative process. They used this extensively on creating the Laid album which their first collaboration with Eno. The improvised sessions that created the laid tracks also produced a second album Wah Wah.

Brian also liked to throw curveballs when producing and created a set of cards called Oblique Strategies. Each card would randomly give a suggestion of what to do in the session. Each card contains a phrase or cryptic remark which can be used to break a deadlock or dilemma situation. Some are specific to music composition; others are more general.

Examples include:

• Use an old idea.
• State the problem in words as clearly as possible.
• Only one element of each kind.
• What would your closest friend do?
• What to increase? What to reduce?
• Are there sections? Consider transitions.
• Try faking it!
• Honour thy error as a hidden intention.
• Work at a different speed.

 

The Provocative Change Works cards – provoke creative change

Interestingly in my own work when working with clients I developed a set of cards in my own provocative changes work. Each card will provoke a new response which takes the session from becoming too “digital, logical, sequential” and cerebral. 

In my own musical projects there’s a fascinating overlap in my coaching and musical work. I’m fully convinced that adding this random element “provokes” and/or stimulates all manner of new possibilities that make for a far more creative and accelerated outcome.

When definition is essential

In producing creative work and in general life, there’s an absolute need for definition unless you are lucky enough to have a very wealthy benefactor! There’s an old joke in the music industry

Q   ‘How do you make a million pounds in the music industry?”

A   ‘Start off with two million!”

 

In strategic thinking its important to be able to prioritize and plan time to best effect. One of the ways of doing this is to consider the following

• What do I need to do?
• What do I want to do?
• What would I like to do?

Each of these questions produces the hierarchy of importance in the situation. “Needs’ usually non-negotiable, wants and likes usually are negotiable. For a guitarist in order to play, they need a guitar. They may want or like the idea of a 1959 Les Paul, but they don’t need one of those in order to play music

In situations where there seem to be too many options, the following question is usually very helpful

 

What is the SINGLE SMALLEST STEP that is most useful to take in the situation?

I just received a mix of “When the pain begins” with the violin part from Laurent who is based in France. His sound has become a key part of this album and sits perfectly with the vocals and other instruments. This is proving to be a very different album in many ways and a lot of the material is very stripped back to just piano and vocals and/or ukulele vocals and violin. Carl Rosamond producing this material and is doing a superb job as usual. I’m playing a variety of instruments including a Pete Howlett Tenor ukulele and my old go to uke, the Shimo Comet 3 that features on so many recordings.

We are back in the studio later this month to record a new track “The Other Me” and then back with Laurent flying in from France and other guest musicians for mid April to record more tracks including an instrumental. My plan is to release this alongside the announcement of the big musical project, which will be back end of 2018 or early 2019. Its an absolute joy to be writing and recording original material with such superb musicians.

GET YOUR TICKET HERE  

Remember this is a “Pay as you feel” event, so affordable for everyone

All food tastes catered for and full bar for the evening

Tickets going fast, so we advise booking asap

 

 

 

In the lest two months having completed The Small Change Diaries 2nd album, I have started working on a solo project “Dark Tales” This is a very different style to The Small Change Diaries material to date. The instrumentation is also different and the first recorded and mastered track has mysef on vocals. Alice Higgins on piano, Adrian Knowles on double bass and Laurent Zeller on violin. For once I’m not playing anything, just focussing on vocals.

The material is lyrically pretty dark and also different to the SCD material. We are recording with Carl Rosamond who did all the SCD material and its sounding great. There’s not a ukulele in sight and I suspect a few folks will be surprised at how different this material is to what I have written and released previously. I’ll be back in the studio before the end of the year as I have two more tracks ready to go and several others waiting to be finished. 

The plan is for a 2018 release and some live gigs to showcase the new material.

Such sad news to Hear Bill Collings passed. He was a true genius and will be greatly missed. I met him a few years back and did a great interview with him http://originalukulelesongs.com/article-2/

I own 4 of his ukes,  tenor guitar and an I35, all of which are amazing

In my other life for the last decade I have been teaching communication and performance skills across the globe in the USA, Europe and Asia. In fact I was doing this long before I started playing live gigs. The most common anxiety on planet earth is fear of public presentations, which often starts at an early age. Over the years I have also had many well known professional singers and musicians as private clients. 

Even the most seasoned performers can get stage nerves or in extreme situations have melt downs on stage. Its therefore highly useful to develop  set of skills that allows people to mitigate against this. Many clients I see 1 – 1 and by skype have previously sought help for these issues without success. Often they have talked about the issue for hours on end and may have had “general relaxation” but crucially not found a way to change their feeling state when on stage. I created a model called “Provocative Change Works” or PCW that is now publised internationally in a number of books including “Innovations in NLP” and “Transforming Negative Self Talk” by Steve Andreas. I have also have articles published in numeous magazines as well as UK newspapers on this subject.

I always tell students that once you have seen your first 5000 clients as a coach or therapist, you start to notice that its all about the process of thinking – feeling – final behaviour. Any feeling state has to be created by some form of thinking and this splits down into four main catagories which are

1. What you see externally 
2. What you hear externally
3. What you picture internally
4. What you say or think to yourself internally

In sort every feeling state is created by a way of thinking and the common factor in performance issues is that the person’s brain is running too fast which means they are in a right old state rather than the right state for the performance.

One of the most common themes is that a person can play with absolute confidence to friends or a small group and have no unhelpful self talk going on, but when on stage they start to think very differently. Often the internal self talk starts to crank in an unhelpful manner and they arev literally talking themselves into an anxious state. No amount of reassurance or analysis usually helps change the anxiety, instead the key is to change the speed of thinking through specific exercises which then means the person feels more at ease. Usually the negative self talk splits into two forms

1. A self diagnostic with the person giving commentary on their own state
2. A commentary on how they imagine others are thinking ablout their own performance

Examples of number one include

“Don’t feel anxious!” (thought in an anxious voice) or “Don’t fuck it up!” (thought in an anxious voice)

Examples of number two include

“They are not enjoying it” (thought in an anxious voice” and “We are losing them” (thought in an anxious voice)

This internal messages creating an unhelpful feeling of being way too self conscious which then triggers the feeling of anxiety.

The anxious feeling usually locates in one or more of the following places

1. Head
2. Chest
3. Stomach

The key is to teach the person to slow down the feeling, so they them find a greater sense of ease in the previously problematic situation. 

These state control skills can usually be taught comprehensively in a couple of hours and I’m pleased to have helped many performers over the years. I teach some of this material in the UK and New York workshops I run with my co trainer Doug O Brien. We are also currently writing a book on this subject which focusses on developing creative writing skills as well as developing excellent state control. Some of these groups I teach are pretty big and this work allows me to fund all my musical explorations and to sponsor stage opportunities for other creative artists.

The previous two blog posts were about folks who I considered as artists to be great entertainers. These were entirely at random and the posting was purely on the subject of ENTERTAINMENT and nothing else, despite what some may imagine or insist!

Here are some more great examples of folks who I personally think are great entertainers. These are some of my personal favorites and of course each person will have their own as this is 100% subjective.

As well as finalizing The Small Change Diaries second album “Lullabies for Cynics” due for release November 3rd, as Nick Cody, I’m starting to put in place a number of side projects. These will unfold in 2018 and 2019 with a focus on expanding sonic horizons. Some of these will be with “SCD fractions” and I’m keen to use “the King Crimson model” where alongside the full band there are smaller band units that work up material. The reason for this is to maintain creative momentum and also to explore other musical dimensions.

My plan is to release a series of EPs that showcase different musical explorations and these will be quite diverse and probably a bit of a surprise to some people.

The Small Change Diaries is a long term project and “The Small Change Diaries universe” is not just about the music, it incorporates other mediums like movie shorts. In 2017 ts obvious to me that there is a danger of artists becoming pigeonholed into very niche mediums and of course in the ukulele world this is not uncommon. SCD is not in my view a stereotypical ukulele band a point noted by both Phil Doleman and Ben Rouse in reviewing the “Adam Blames Eve” album. Martin Simpson also commented “You don’t sound like anyone else” which I take as the highest comment. SCD is not “The Nick Cody band” but rather four distinct musicians that create the whole. 

The move to greater sonic exploration also includes incorporating new instruments and artists. This adds a very different sonic dimension to the mix, both literally and metaphorically. One of these instruments is a Gibson A50 wide body mandolin from 1937 which I recently acquired. This was previously owned by Martin Carthy and is very different to anything else I have played to date. My good friend Doug O’Brien commented “But you don’t like mandolins!” This is not strictly true, a more accurate version is that to date I have never warmed to them despite many attempts. The Gibson changed this view and I already have the basis for a track around this wonderful instrument.

I have never considered myself to be “a ukulele player” rather someone who plays (and loves) the ukulele, alongside many other instruments including mandola, walking bass dulcimer, electric and acoustic guitar, national reso uke and dobro. I don’t claim to be a virtuoso on any of these, they simply support my musical intentions as a songwriter. The OUS project will continue, but I’m going to change aspects of that in 2017/2018 so it remains creatively interesting and more diverse. In recent times I have become more aware of ensuring the best use of time and energy and this has given me great pause for considering which projects and who I want to be most associated with in the musical realm. I think such reviews are healthy and I’m excited about the new changes ahead.

Expanding sonic horizons makes playing and recording far more interesting to me personally. The exploration is for the love of music and inevitably some will like what results and some definitely won’t. All such sonic explorations will involved creating more original music and certainly a lot (but not all) of it will be lyric based. I plan to start recording over the next few months, but the EPs won’t appear until 2018. I’ll  be trialing some of the new solo material in Japan this July to gauge audience response.