Well, fear not. Those same behaviorists who tell us we’re nothing more than human drum loops also say that there are ways to avoid falling into repetitive ruts. There’s even software in development that will soon be able to monitor our work and warn us when it’s happening. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little unsettled at the prospect of some black box telling me: “Alert! When soloing in a medium-shuffle 12-bar blues in A, there is a 97.4% probability you will play a C on the downbeat of bar 5. Consider D, A, or F# instead?”

First, let’s look at the scientific interpretation of copying yourself, and why we do it in the first place. Ron Kellogg, a professor at Saint Louis University, tells us that earlier patterns in your behavior “prime” you to repeat them when solving similar problems. Natural enough, and who wants to reinvent the wheel for every simple problem calling for a quick solution? But this works against finding new or different solutions–ones that may be better than the one generated automatically.

The ability to produce a new response can be simple under some conditions. For example, if you write in drafts, you don’t need to do anything differently for your first attempts. Bang it out using placeholders, nonsense lyrics, filler melodies, licks, anything that gets you out of a jam and allows you to move forward.

But on subsequent revisions, know that your first attempts will almost certainly contain canned answers to creative problems. Therefore, you must be extra careful when revising to not only produce what is best for the situation at hand (whether a lyric, melody, or chord), but what is not something pulled intact your bag of licks. That could just mean slowing down a bit and casting a really skeptical eye on your own work. In other words, don’t just take your word for it.

On the other hand, some situations don’t allow for the “draft and revision” approach, notably improvising. In this elusive art, you don’t get a chance to revise. Your initial statement is your final one—left in perpetuity in the listener’s ear or the digital data of a recording hard disk. Becoming more creative before the musical statement even leaves your body is a much tougher nut to crack. But it can be done. Often you have to employ outside tools or coaching rather than just taking your own honest assessment.

One recent discovery I made was an approach to jazz improvising by the great saxophonist George Garzone. He came up with an improvising aid called the “Triadic Chromatic” method. Take any triad—say, C major. Play it in any inversion, like root position (C, E, G). Once you play the last note, go to any chromatic neighbor, which in this case is F# or Ab. From there, you must play another triad, but not in the inversion that came before—in this case, root position (which would exclude F# major or Ab major). So if you go to F#, your choices are D major (where F# is the 3rd) or B major (where F# is the 5th). That’s major-triad linking through chromatic connection. After you can link major triads together comfortably, you move onto minor triads, then diminished, then augmented. From there you mix qualities: major + minor + major + diminished, etc. It’s a great way to think non melodically, but it also gets you out of your own head. That’s the most important lesson. So when you go back to your regular improvising, you have increased the colors on your palette for expressing yourself.

You can find similar exercises for melody, lyrics, and harmonies. If you’re really conscientious about adding to your creative palette, you can do it. One color at a time, if necessary. Just remember to give the paintbrush to Ringo. Or give Ringo the paintbrush.

—Jon Chappell

Jon Chappell is a guitarist and the Senior Editor of Harmony Central. He has contributed numerous musical pieces to film and TV, including Northern Exposure, Walker, Texas Ranger, All My Children, and the feature film Bleeding Hearts, directed by actor-dancer Gregory Hines. He is the author of The Recording Guitarist: A Guide for Home and Studio (Hal Leonard), Essential Scales & Modes (Backbeat Books), and Build Your Own PC Recording Studio (McGraw-Hill), and has written six books in the popular For Dummies series (Wiley Publishing).

Take the whole notion of the Grammy Awards. Some people champion the idea of recognizing the year’s achievements in music with a primetime awards show. Some think it’s a big phony display of self-congratulatory pomp. Both camps still tune in to watch the proceedings anyway. And a survey of Grammy Award winners for any given year is a good check for gauging the musical tastes of the times.

But whether you’re happy with them as is or unhappy with them as is, this year the Grammy Awards introduced sweeping changes—and not the kind that will address any of the complaints of Grammy detractors. In 2012 NARAS (the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, a.k.a. the Recording Academy) has decided to reduce bloat by cutting significantly the number of Grammy Awards it gives out to artists and the projects that represent their collective work. In all, NARAS eliminated 31 categories, down to 78 from 109 in 2011. That’s more than a 28 percent reduction. Take a look at a side-by-side comparison of last year’s categories vs. this year’s here.

Okay, perhaps you can understand merging Best Regional Mexican and Best Tejano Album into a single category. But the complete erasure of Latin Jazz, Contemporary Jazz, Hawaiian, Zydeco/Cajun, and Native American? These are important and distinct forms, whose specialization was warranted by a divergent artist and listener base. At least two involve an indigenous people’s music that America absorbed on its way to establishing its musical identity and success. We sure have a funny way of remembering our roots and showing our gratitude. And consider that one of our country’s best-known forms, blues, saw a category reduction by the combining of Traditional Blues with Contemporary Blues, forcing Joe Bonamassa to compete with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. I’d like to think that as diverse as those artists are—and their interpretations of the blues—that an American music awards show would have room for both. Just like they do for rock.

And since when is the number of Grammys a zero-sum game? In other words, how does eliminating or combining some categories serve to strengthen others, as if this were a closed system where the attentions of Native American Music will now directly transfer and benefit Americana? Americana carries a completely different connotation, one that includes the likes of Rosanne Cash, Ry Cooder, and Levon Helm. It makes absolutely no sense that voting NARAS members now have to choose between Native American music and Wilco when it comes time to hand out one award.

In a final irony, the Recording Academy announced that their 2012 Inductees into the Grammy Hall of Fame would include recordings by Big Bill Broonzy and Sergio Mendes. These two artists—a traditional country-ragtime blues guitar player and a progressive Latin jazz bandleader, respectively—would have been ineligible this year because their categories had just been cut.

 Don’t we have enough problems with a wounded economy and our arts education programs under siege without having organizations—allegedly on our own side—piling on to squeeze out the available award berths for artists? Let’s hope the Recording Academy will reconsider its decision. Billboard magazine reports that 23,00 signatures have been delivered to NARAS headquarters in protest of their action. If you too can make your voice heard, you’ll be in good company. Along with tens of thousands of petition signers, the list of supporters includes Paul Simon, Bonnie Raitt, Eddie Palmieri, Bobby Sanabria, and Carlos Santana. Please join them in showing solidarity for the diverse categories that provide avenues of recognition for artists who otherwise wouldn’t “make the cut.” —Jon Chappell

Richard Holbrooke (former U.N. ambassador) reviews of “Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam” by Gordon M. Goldstein:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/books/review/Holbrooke-t.html?scp=2&sq=holbrooke&st=cse

My favorite passage in this piece has nothing to do with the book; it’s a personal anecdote offered by the reviewer toward the end of the piece:

As it happens, I was part of a small group that dined with Bundy the night before Pleiku at the home of Deputy Ambassador William J. Porter, for whom I then worked. Bundy quizzed us in his quick, detached style for several hours, not once betraying emotion. I do not remember the details of that evening — how I wish I had kept a diary! — but by then I no longer regarded Bundy as a role model for public service. There was no question he was brilliant, but his detachment from the realities of Vietnam disturbed me. In Ambassador Porter’s dining room that night were people far less intelligent than Bundy, but they lived in Vietnam, and they knew things he did not. Yet if they could not present their views in quick and clever ways, Bundy either cut them off or ignored them. A decade later, after I had left the government, I wrote a short essay for Harper’s Magazine titled “The Smartest Man in the Room Is Not Always Right.” I had Bundy — and that evening — in mind.

__

Frank Rich parallels the “Best and Brightest” of the Vietnam War with Obama’s new “Best and Brightest” economic team here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/opinion/07rich.html?ex=1244523600&en=60c233e406f0fdd9&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-1210-L4

Choice excerpt:

In his 20th-anniversary reflections, Halberstam wrote that his favorite passage in his book was the one where Johnson, after his first Kennedy cabinet meeting, raved to his mentor, the speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, about all the president’s brilliant men. “You may be right, and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say,” Rayburn responded, “but I’d feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.”