Recasting Music for Creative Purposes and also STANKFACE

The other day I was talking about a technique I use sometimes to jumpstart my creative process from time to time, and a few folks expressed interest in hearing a little more about it. Specifically, this involves listening to music and building a world out based on what I am hearing.

Before I really get into this I should say that I don’t listen to music when I am writing, or really when I am doing any other activity (except driving). I have a hard time with the idea of “background music,” the same way I have a hard time with the idea of a “background book.” For me, it’s a totality, something that totally absorbs me. I actually find it distracting to have music on when I want to accomplish something else – inevitably I get pulled into the sound, and cease paying attention to whatever it was I may have been doing. I don’t know why driving is different, but it is. There’s probably a whole neuroscience paper in there somewhere. I also want to acknowledge this post by Dave McGrogan over at Monsters & Manuals, which is a very similarly inspired exercise in creativity. And if he ever actually does it, I vow I will do a dungeon based entirely on the Inner Mounting Flame by the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

At any rate, I’m not sure if I just watched Fantasia one too many times growing up or if I have a mild form of synesthesia or what, but sounds often equate to images for me, sometimes very specific images. Obviously, music is diverse and to some extent subjective, so I don’t think that other people would necessarily experience the same images I do when I listen to music, but I do know from talking about music to others that my descriptions dovetail with their experiences pretty well. As long as the cultural language is the same, I think there will be a sort of universal overlap in the kinds of images imagined given a particular piece of music.

At one point in an earlier post about nonsense poetry I talked a little about how my creative process often involves meaningless vocalization and how this can kind of relieve tension for me in an odd way. I think that the way I use music to help me create is probably related, though it seems to me that it is also much more accessible. At least I hope to present the basics of it here in a way that is accessible enough to other people that they could use it.

What I do is seek out words that describe the sonic experience for me and then recast those words to a world or item or character. I have a few examples below. I’ve been listening to Justin Broadrick’s stuff from Jesu and Godflesh almost nonstop recently, so I’ll start with one of those, but I also wanted to try a few things that people are more apt to have heard themselves, or that might be easier to digest at least. One thing to keep in mind is that the same sonic experience can be used more than once, and that sometimes listening to a piece at a different time will give different impressions, so it can be worth “mining” a musical piece this way more than once. Also, it can be useful to do this with full albums to build out a world the way Dave talks about doing with Romantic Warrior in his post, or to take whatever it is you have come up with and extrapolate from there for more material. If it is place, who or what dwells there? If it is a person, what is their environment like? Etc.  And last, of course you can do this with other forms of art if you like - an image or sculpture, for example.  For me music hits the sweet spot between abstract and concrete where there is a lot of space for my imagination so that is what I use, but I'm certain others might be inspired by different things.

NOW THEN. I want to talk about STANKFACE. On an almost completely unrelated note, I found out not long ago that the stankface is universal among musicians. This is something I have done with peers, and seen peers do though we never knew what it was called. Musicians I have met for the very first time have made this face at me, and I them, and it was interpreted correctly. It’s a facial expression a musician wears when he hears something another musician has done that is just dirty. Wrong, funky, nasty, disgusting, demented… however you want to say it, it’s a reaction to hearing someone do something incredibly impressive that goes beyond mere technical skill and it is the same look someone gets on their face when they have smelled something STANK, a look that says “What is that GODAWFUL SMELL?” I never noticed how universal it was, but it seems to be something pretty much anyone who ever played a lick of rock, jazz, funk, or blues does instinctively. It's the expression you make the first time you hear something like Maggot Brain if you are a guitarist ("Play it like someone just told you your momma died.") or maybe something like Soothsayer (Buckethead).  I am sometimes exceptionally slow on the uptake, so this might come as old news to some of you but it was hysterically funny to me to stumble on this and I felt it absolutely necessary to share it.

 

STANKFACE

OK, so endeth the portion of the post on STANKFACE.  On to some examples.  I'm not embedding the tunes here, as I gather embeds to YT don't work on mobile through blogger, but I will leave YT links for anyone curious.


Godflesh – Godhead - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvWIgLlHdgY

lurching, slow, majestic, cold, bleak, frozen, desaturated, white, monolithic, churning, fire, beauty in the midst of ruin, tolling, clarion call, defensive, drawing in, towering, shadowed, old, ocean, mountain, timeless, unique, crushing, falling,

PLACE:

A huge and ancient bronze bell floats high in the remains of a great and alien fortress, a single tower standing amongst the fallen basalt monoliths. Shadow and night render it a carbonized silhouette. A sharp shard of starlight slices a slim line through the darkness and reveals lurching runes hammered into its lip and encrusted with a patina shaded like the churning sea. It tolls once, resounding over the bleak snows, the long reverberations haunting both the white dells and the icebound mountaintops where the secret fires burn. The harmonics dwindle and finally fade away, leaving silence to stalk the ruin.


Ramones – 53rd and 3rd - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsWzB1u1njQ

Energetic, leather, primitive, straightforward, strong, speed, brawny, direct, criminal, razor, urban, prostitution, androgyny,

PERSON:

Emil stands six foot two. His normal costume is a pair of blue jeans, motorcycle boots, and an open, spiked leather jacket with no shirt. Years of sniffing glue have left him with vicious mood swings. These have undermined his ability to function in society or hold anything vaguely resembling a steady job, but he’s found a way to get by as a rent boy. He’s smooth-muscled and slightly androgynous with gimlet eyes; johns find his appearance attractive but ever-so-slightly sinister for reasons they cannot articulate, and he’s usually the last of the rent-boys to get a buddy. The last time this happened the guy gave him a hard time about the money, and Emil, desperate, dopesick, and out of patience, got so fucking pissed off that he just lost it, stabbed the guy in the throat over and over, and took his wallet.

He's pretty sure no one saw anything.


Miles Davis, Bitches Brew - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwcmT_85Gbs

Loose, relaxed, green, sly, skilled, dynamic, bird on the wing, mysterious, snakes, murky, dark, deep, sinister, wooden, swamp, secretive, androgynous, soupy, mist, fog, rain, rivers, slow, sliding, oozing, skin, rot, sensuality, sex, sweat, heat, steam, flowers, undertow, feminine, sorcery, lurking danger

PLACE:

A sluggish black river slithers slowly through the twilit rainforest, the setting sun staining the flora orange. Everything alive and moving. Brightly colored birds flap about in the dark canopy, their wings double-chopping as they flit from one ancient tree to another. The heat makes the rain evaporate into a steaming mist that hangs almost as heavy in the atmosphere as the stench of decomposing flesh. The trees and bushes are slick with moisture, the massive, glossy leaves dripping as if they sweat. The air is thick with pollen and humidity, redolent of death but with a floral undercurrent that is almost sensual, an almost feminine musk. The currents of the dark water flow around the swollen roots of cypresses, slopping against the smooth bark of pylons made from rhizomes. The river is thick and murky with dirt that hides fish and turtles who wear the ghastly and patient countenance of things that live their entire lives under water, while the banks are brown with dense, leaden slime and mucosal mud.


It's almost too easy to do this with classical pieces. I thought about doing Prokofiev’s Knight’s Dance or Ravel’s Bolero or something. Then there are pieces like Half Wolf Dances Mad in Moonlight which sounds exactly like the title, a crazed and whirling thing, with animal instincts for violence and humankind’s appreciation for beauty. I’ll do something else from the same album, the title piece, Winter was Hard.


Kronos Quartet, Winter Was Hard - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHYVDKGknMk

Sorrow, grey, old churches, graveyards, fields, early spring, snow and grass, crows, smoke, wreckage, rain

PLACE:

It is early spring; the green is just beginning to return to the tan grass that stretches away on the plain. A battle was fought here, and not long ago. The dead and the wreckage of war covers the field; carrion, carrion, mors vincit omnia. Crows sit atop the abattoir, pecking at eyes and tearing bits of lip and cheek from skulls. There are no fires anymore, only smoke that colors the air as grey as the lowering sky. Why is April the cruelest month? It is in the lilies of the valley and the crocuses that bloom among the corpses that you will find an answer.


So: there are a few examples! I hope this was useful! I would love to hear from anyone who tries this method out and see what you come up with.