This category lists the blog posts that tell more about creativity, how to keep in flow, what’s blocking artists in their creativity and how to unblock.
My nice, she’s a student now, told me recently very proud that she has a part time job in a destruction company, and how she loves to demolish old furniture. It’s exciting to play with danger, with destruction. It brings diversity in our predictable lives and it creates space for new creations. As a musician, you usually don’t have to worry, you life is not predictable. Still, many musicians flirt with destruction. The audience expects it, it’s what sells. Though […]
Narratives are very powerful. They give meaning to our actions, they lead us. In the music business, we have a lot of powerful narratives that work in a destructive way for artists. One of them is, that artists have to suffer in order to be creative. Here it’s pretty obvious why it’s destructive, because it glorifies suffering. Artists are stimulated to endure suffering and to refuse help. Looking for help is associated with losing your creativity. Another destructive narrative is, […]
Narratives are very powerful. They give meaning to our actions, they lead us. A very powerful narrative is the Christmas narrative. It has all aspects of a great film: a couple are looking for shelter, they are migrants. She is pregnant, but not from him. Where ever they knock on the door, they are turned away, until one guy offers them to join his animals in their shed. The child is born in that shed at night, a big star […]
An essential part of Spille’s Toolbox For A Healthy Mind In The Music Business is the Network Tree. it is a great basis for everything that has to do with your network. I will use it as basis later on for other tools from Spille’s Toolbox. A Network Tree is actually a combination of a (reversed) Family Tree and of the Mind Map technology, applied to your social network. Even though there are various apps to map your social media […]
A female association asked me to write a review of ‘Creative Quest‘, written by Questlove. Yes, Questlove, founder and drummer of The Roots, the house band of various talk shows with Jimmy Fallon. I was very curious to read about his view on creativity. The Roots is a hiphop band from the 80’s with many albums. In 2009 they became famous as the house band of the TV talk show ‘Late night with Jimmy Fallon (since 2016 ‘The Tonight Show […]
None of us was prepared for something like Covid-19. The essence of the live music business is to bring people together to enjoy music. Now we can’t bring people together anymore, the heart of the business is hit. First out, last in. No wonder that I see people around me becoming very impatient. We all want to be able to enjoy live shows again, hug each other, sing along with the band. Impatience is a huge force, a huge power. […]
This trilogy is about the live music business and corona. In part I you can read about 6 reasons why people in the live music business have been hit extra hard by all corona measurements. Part II was about how to get through the crisis. Part III will be about how to prepare for after-lock-down. Here again I make a difference between business in general, your own finances, and your mental condition. Business will be different than we are used […]
In my previous post I mentioned 6 reasons why people in the live music business have been hit extra hard by all corona measurements. Now I tell how to get through this crisis. The next post will be about how to prepare for after the crisis. The 6 reasons can be categorized in three categories: business, finances and mental condition. BusinessWith first in last out and by no alternative (see previous post), all concerts have been cancelled and there is […]
Last weekend I was invited to the birthday of a friend. Lots of people were there. He invited all of us to visit the dance performance “Pink Cast” by Introdans, by bringing the performance to the party location. What a great surprise! Since I quit to work in theater lighting 25 years ago, I usually don’t visit theater or dance performances anymore. Surprises always have something disruptive. They catapult you out of your routine, into something new. It makes you […]
The most exciting part of being an artist, is to create. It starts to get really good, when you get in a flow once you start creating. The act of creating always results in something new, something that wasn’t there before. You might have an idea upfront where you want to go, though in the end you are often surprise yourself with the result. For everything new you create, you break the borders of what is known so far. This […]
For several years already, I’m writing about the mental challenges that musicians have to face. When I started 6 years ago, no one else was talking about it. But musicians are not the only ones in the music business who suffer, it seems. Ticket outlet Skiddle did research with 520 promoters, venue operators and event organizers, 82 percent of people working in this business are suffering with continuous levels of stress. 65% said they frequently felt an ‘intense and unmanageable’ […]
Last month I did a ‘Career Clinic’ about passion and burnout for students of the pop department of Conservatory of Amsterdam, earlier this month I did a masterclass about this subject for students at the Herman Brood Academy in Utrecht. Passion gives you a positive vibe that can protect you against burnout. And the same passion can make you go too far, so you are more likely to burn out. In Amsterdam I talked to a small group of students. […]
In the Netherlands we’ve had a controversy this week about a Dutch rapper who was stuck with his car. Some young women picked him up, on their way to a party. He filmed himself, using offensive language against the women, and put it online. Would we have this commotion, if the rapper would have been white, or if the women would have been colored? The rapper is confirming the stereotype of misogynist colored rappers. But the whole issue is as […]
Music is a shortcut to your emotions. That’s why I feel privileged to work with music and with musicians. You get a smile on your face when you hear a certain rhythm, melody, timbre, text. Three years ago, many people had this experience with the song “Happy” by Pharrell Williams. Other songs make us sad and we cry. Billboard published in February a list of 50 songs that we can dance to while they make us cry. Songs can also […]
Do you dare to take care of yourself? I mean, really take good care of yourself as a musician? It’s not as easy as it might think. If you want to take care of yourself as a musician, you first need to know what your needs are and what is good for yourself. Your needs can start with the cup of coffee you need now and continue with the good rehearsal room. It gets more difficult with knowing what is […]
