Tag: learning

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Cue Creativity: transform to your true self in 12 steps

Manifesting Creativity cover image. Pink heart with wings on a black background.

Wellness practices are no longer niche. Fully integrated into everyday life, most people practice, or know that they ought to practice, some form of self-care such as movement, mindfulness, or self-motivation.

I have practiced and studied yoga and wellness for decades. All that time, I longed for creative fulfilment. I often felt like I was hitting a roadblock around creativity, especially around music production. Let me explain my wellness to creativity in this post. I will unpack my 12-step experience of finding a way to cue (activate) my creativity using my wellness practices.

Cue Creativity decorative image. Pink heart with wings on a black background.
Cue Creativity: transform to your true self in 12 steps 6

Creativity: The Cornerstone of Self Realisation

The deep work of yoga, meditation, and self-help is both wonderful and challenging. But, it is only a means to an end. The final purpose is: self-realisation.

The Why Behind the Wellness: find what you have inside

Why practice wellness?

People get to yoga when they are tired of suffering. This old adage is found in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, and in Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths. These traditions teach that it is the ignorance of one’s true nature (“avidya”) that is the true source of suffering. Their solution is spiritual: “vidya” (knowledge) that allows a person to unite with “Atman”, which is higher consciousness.

What’s your wellness goal?

This question is highly relevant given today’s global society and the preponderance of cultural appropriation. The conflict around embracing another culture’s spiritual traditions has antagonised me for decades. I don’t have the definitive answer. But, I am part of the cohort of yoga and meditation practitioners who do not feel the need to pray to anyone’s God, and whose only faith is the belief in the flow of the Energy. I am spiritual, but not a believer. Faith is believing in something without having proof. Spirituality is about feeling the energy of all that surrounds you and realising that it is feeling your energy, too.

If not faith, then what? Creative expression.

In the absence of faith, we have creativity. Creative endeavour is the “tao” (path) of non religious self-knowledge. It is unhindered by doctrine, and untethered from ritual. But, it is a powerful tool for the knowledge and manifestation of the Higher Self. It may appear individualistic, but creative pursuit is so hard, and so humbling, and takes so damn long, that it it connects artists to our souls via our striving and our failure. The highest form of self-realisation is creativity; the highest form of creativity is self-realisation.

The highest form of self-realisation is creativity.

The highest form of creativity is self-realisation.

creativity self realiation loop
Cue Creativity: transform to your true self in 12 steps 7

Finding your creative outlet

Childhood dreams

You were there all along, you know. All the dreams you held in your childhood heart; they never went away. Your childhood dreams may have lain hidden for decades while you ran a business, climbed the corporate ladder, and raised a family. They probably showed up in your dreams, your home decor, and your hobbies. But they were never given centre stage.

When working with clients, these childhood memories are some of the most important. Before we are schooled and moulded, we are timeless dreamers, experimenters and boundary pushers. We can become disconnected from this creative little kid during our householders years, but as we age, we can choose to reconnect with our inner artist and make manifest what we hold inside.

Glimpses and glimmers

Glimmers are little events that unexpectedly bring joy into daily life. When we engage, even lightly, in consciousness raising activities (silent meditation, deep breathing, contact with nature, emotional self-regulation), we are gifted with little glimmers. Life is constantly bestowing us with miracles, if only we remember to look-.

You may have been blessed with some moments of clarity during a yoga class, meditation, or ecstatic dance. And certainly those insights would have whispered to you from a deeper part of you. But, life didn’t leave you room for those frivolous artistic pursuits. Now, you are at the point where you want to integrate those glimmers and create something from them. Welcome!

The big reveal

And then, right on cue, and if you are lucky, you reach the age of 50. The brutal realisation that you have fewer years ahead of you than behind you shocks you awake.

That inner voice no longer accepts being silenced. It starts to talk to you in louder tones. It keeps you awake at night, it whispers that maybe there is indeed more to all this.

Eventually, you listen. And then, you start to create. You create FROM you, FOR you, and BECAUSE of you. You create to leave a trace. You create to leave a legacy. You create because it is just what you do. If you don’t create, you consume, and overconsumption leads us down a very different path, one that I won’t even talk about here.

The Late Bloomer

Capitalism tells us “time is money.” This is an outright lie. Time is not money. Time is life.

Rigidly believing in milestones and linear timelines can rob us of the time that we need to bloom as creatives. If we think that we are too old, or that we missed our one and only chance way back when we were seventeen, then we will never achieve our creativity peak.

Late bloomers are myriad in the arts and elsewhere. Late blooming women, freed from fertility, are almost duty-bound to create. The womb that is no longer preparing for procreation becomes a fertile guide and voice for wise women.

It took me 12 years to learn to produce music using Ableton Live. But I got there in the end!

As if on cue, you find you

The brutality of the midlife crisis is an energy that can be harnessed in order to live your best life. You either sink or swim. If you have been doing the deep work already, dive deeper. Put order to your story and connect the dots. As Bob Marley sang in Buffalo Soldier “If you know your history, then you will know where you are coming from, then you would not have to ask me, who the hell do I think I am.”

Creativity Coaching – the program I am working on – is my method to help you work out who the hell you think you are, using creativity. Stay tuned and sign up to my newsletter if you are curious to know more about Creativity Coaching.

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My 12 steps

Each person will have their version of the events, decisions, and twists of fate that get them from where they were to where they are now. My twelve steps were:

  • Living through a series of hard to process life events which left me with powerful feelings that were hard to express, and yet which sabotaged me at unexpected and unwelcome moments.
  • A need to put order to my intrusive thoughts and feelings so that I could feel calmer and have the world make sense. Finding yoga. Finding mind-body wellness work
  • Words and music flooded through me, at random times, unbidden. It could not be turned off even if I wanted to.  I consistently wrote poetry, prose, and songs.
  • Feeling more frustration at NOT making music than making music, but without recognition or recompense. Keep going even if my music got no applause and no pay. Resilience.
  • Through the deep work of yoga, slowly overcoming shyness, self criticism, and self-doubt.
  • Shaking, breathing, and humming trauma out of my body.
  • Learning to set healthy boundaries.
  • Valuing my time and focusing my efforts in order to improve all areas of my life, including my art.
  • “Music maker, any way” – recognising that many paths lead to the same goal.  If the singer-songwriter thing wasn’t going to fly, then DJing could.  Climbing down from preconceived ideas about what music to make and how.
  • Furthering my formal education in order to give myself a sense of sturdiness and knowledgeability.  Overcoming imposter syndrome. Studying music theory. Studying Neuromusic.
  • Finally having a breakthrough by consistently dedicating time to music production, asking for (and paying for) help with mixing and mastering, investing in the distribution platforms and subscriptions necessary to market my craft.
  • Recognising that I have, effectively, achieved the goal that I set out to conquer, so many years ago, and feeling so elated that I want to share it with anyone else who is longing for creative expression and not sure how to get there.

Your 12 steps

Your journey may be 12 steps long, or it may be 20. It is totally personal and completely unique. Believe in yourself, in your pursuit of purpose, and the power of your creative vision. If my words resonate with you, and you feel like connecting, drop me a line or give me a follow. If you think that you might like some help defining your purpose, of getting clarity about your journey, let me know. Take care, Rachel

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Ethnomusicologists: of the 20th Century: Badass Béla Bartók & beyond.

Ethnomusicologists: of the 20th Century: Badass Béla Bartók & beyond.
Ethnomusicologists: of the 20th Century: Badass Béla Bartók & beyond. 11

Ethnomusicologists – what do they study, and why?

Ethnomusicologists study the anthropology of music. They study how music develops and evolves in non-Western cultures in order to better understand the culture of the people.

I talked about the general aspects of the discipline in my previous post on the anthropology of music, titled “Ethnomusicology: the mysterious evolution of language, music, and the human brain.”

The term “Ethnomusicology”

In 1950, Dutch musicologist Jaap Kunst coined the term “ethnomusicology,” combining two disciplines: musicology (the study of music) and ethnology (the comparative study of different cultures).

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-ethnomusicology-4588480

Kunst published a paper in 1955 titled “Ethno-musicology: A study of its nature, problems, method, and notable figures, with a Bibliography.” However, in 1951, Alan Merriam had already used the term “Ethnomusicological” in the title of his doctoral thesis.

Whoever came first, prior to 1950, ethnomusicology was known as “comparative musicology”. Comparative musicology originated from early musicology studies. Guido Adler, of Austria, presented an essay in 1885 which laid out a basis for musicology.

Where is ethnomusicology studied?

Ethnomusicology is by nature a field study. This means that the researcher(s) must travel to the place whose music they are studying, in order to see it performed in situ.

However, there are a number of distinguished centers of higher learning where the scholarly study of ethnomusicology takes place. For the sake of simplicity, I will just leave a few links here. A more exhaustive list of centers of ethnomusicology can be found on the SEM website.

Ethnomusicology Centers

Who are the most famous ethnomusicologists?

(This is far from an exhaustive list…)

Béla Bartók

Béla Bartók: The Father of Ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicologists: of the 20th Century: Badass Béla Bartók & beyond. 12

Béla Bartók is considered by many to be the father of ethnomusicology. Béla Bartók was born in Hungary, and grew up during the final years of the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922). He was not only a skilled classical pianist, but also a passionate explorer of his homeland, embarking on challenging journeys to gather and preserve the rich tapestry of Hungarian folk songs.

As far as I am concerned, traipsing around Bohemia, Transylvania, and the Carpathian Mountains collecting folk songs is pretty badass. Go Béla!

Béla Bartók birthed the field of ethnomusicology as an academic discipline through his tireless pursuits of folk music, his exposition of the sound of the rural people, and his incorporation of folk-style into his own personal compositions. His work revealed to the world that folk music exists, is important, and stands as an independent academic discipline.

David Taylor Nelson :”Béla Bartók, the Father of Ethnomusicology” https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/musicalofferings/vol3/iss2/2

Jaap Kunst

Kunst has a typically interesting “ethnomusicologist” biography. He studied the violin as a youngster. After finishing Law School in the Netherlands, he grabbed his instrument and joined a string trio and set off for Java. As you do, when you’re a badass. He stayed there for about fifteen years. Upon his return to the Netherlands, he was recognized as an expert in his field. In 1950, he coined the term “ethnomusicology”.

Alan Merriam

Alan Merriam was an American ethnomusicologist. His 1964 book, “The Anthropology of Music”, is credited with uniting the academic study of anthropology with that of music.

Alan Merriam published his Doctoral Thesis (Anthropology) in 1951. Songs of the Afro-Bahian Cults: An Ethnomusicological Analysis. Here are some of the field recordings made by him and his wife Barbara Merriam. They traveled around central Belgian Congo (later Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic of Congo) with an early “portable” reel-to-reel magnetophone . If that is not badass, then I don’t know what is!

Barbara Merriam – the forgotten ethnomusicologist

Women are almost always often erased from history. Alan Merriam was accompanied by his wife, Barbara, on his travels in Africa. I have spent some time searching the Internet for any biographical information on Barbara, or even a photo. So far, I have not had any luck, but I am sure that she was one badass researcher. Watch this space.

Bruno Nettl

Bruno Nettl was a former President of the SEM. He studied Native American music, and established the musicology program at the University of Illinois. Nettl conducted fieldwork in both Iran (in 1966, and I bet that it was both groovy and badass) and southern India.

The Language WithoutMusic

Before I leave you, I shall share with you an interesting documentary, “The Language With No Word For Music”. I found it on Reddit.

Summing up

The more I read and research Ethnomusicology and ethnomusicologists, the more my ind boggles. It is truly an expansive and enormous field. I will keep on writing. If you like what you read, please let me know. A little encouragement goes a long way!

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Build Wireframes and Low-Fidelity Prototypes

After a short pause, I am back on the Google/Coursera UX Design Certificate course! “Build Wireframes and Low-Fidelity Prototypes” is the title of this unit, the third of seven.

Wireframes and Low-Fidelity Prototypes

Wireframes and Low-Fidelity Prototypes are the first step in creation of a solution for your product. That is a bit mealy-mouthed, isn’t it? Wireframes and Low-Fidelity Prototypes are a sketch of what you’re going to build. You take all that user research and start to turn it into something concrete – a design!

Whether you are working alone, in a small team or in a big team, the process of making ideas become realities is complex. Getting mislaid, off track or too granular too early is easy. The ideation stage, in which we created personas, empathised with them, understood their user journey and made problem statements has placed us in a position to now define what it is we are going to build.

Instead of a problem statement, we use a Goal Statement. We are building on the research we have already done by now defining what we are going to do and how we are going to measure the results.

User Flows

After that, we make a first user flow. They asked for a a sketch. I did that. But after submitting my work, I was that other students on the course had gone ahead and made a proper flow chart. It took me a little while to figure out where on Google Drive this can be done. I thought it might be slides, but it turns out to be Drawings. Once I got there, I faffed around a bit with design. But, I managed in the end. Funny, hey, how something relatively low-tech like a flow chart still has its learning curve. About a year ago, I started using Google Drive in earnest. I did a little certificate course (funded by the Valencian Government) and discovered that I quite like Cloud Computing. So, without further ado, here is my User Flow Diagram:

A user flow chart sketch for a service review app. This is a typical Wireframe or Low-Fidelity Prototype for UX Design.
“create a service review app for a fitness trainer”

Where UX gets interesting!

This is where UX gets its hands dirty. Musicians attest that it is much harder to compose a song than to hum a melody. Getting ideas out of your head and into the world is hard, but it is the essence of any creative process. Creation requires patience, dedication, reiteration and plenty of self-doubt. I am happy to be back on the UX course! I took a little rest because I signed up for a dj course at MixPeople DJ School. It was awesome, and I learned a skill I have been wanting to polish for a long time. The Wireframes and Low-Fidelity Prototypes course began with a review of concepts from courses 1 and 2. I felt super chuffed (that is British slang for happy) to discover that the ideas, concepts and methods had stuck and I was able to remember them clearly after a nearly two months rest. Yay for my old brain.

Keep learning!

It is never the wrong time to study. It is always the right time to acquire new skills. Whatever strikes your interest, creates curiosity or stimulates serious reflection is worth learning about. It is tempting, these days, to read a few blog posts, scroll some forums or fast-watch YouTube tutorials, then consider yourself something of an expert. There is a certain humility is actually learning, in studying, trying to make new knowledge stick. I say go for it, get learning. UX does it for me right now. What would you like to learn?

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Alteayoga UX User Survey

A web site redesign needs UX and to define UX, you need a User Survey. So, using the Elements of User Experience, I created a User Survey. I will compile the results once they’re in. Let me fill you in on the background. Read on.

The Elements of User Experience

The Elements of User Experience is a fantastic companion of the UX Certificate course I am doing. This book teaches you how to think about web site design from two distinct but equally necessary perspectives. Web sites can be viewed as depositories for information storage and retrieval, or they can be seen as applications, that allow you to “do” something. To accommodate both points of view, Jesse James Garrett developed his theory, the Elements of User Experience.

The Five Elements of UX are Strategy, Scope, Structure, Skeleton and Surface.

Alteayoga logo - the site being redesigned according to the Elements of User Experience.
Alteayoga

Alteayoga is the name of my yoga project. I currently use alteayoga.es, but have alteayoga.com parked on Google. I will design the site with Webflow, a platform that we looked at in the Part 1 of the course, Fundamentals of UX Design.

The first thing I have to think about is the Strategy. To decide the Strategy of the site we are designing, we have to define two things: the product objectives and user needs. The product objectives are defined by the site owner or stakeholder, while user needs come from the users.

Thinking carefully, I figured out what I want, but how do I know what the user wants? To find out, I created a User Survey based the Elements of User Experience.

Product Objectives

Taking pen to paper, I defined my objectives – or, my strategy – for the redesign of Alteayoga.com. From my side, I want Alteayoga.com to

  • Open me to a more international/English speaking market.
  • Allow me to book and manage requests for online classes. (I often get such requests from students/patients who meet me on their visits to Altea).
  • Let me sell the yoga videos, meditation music and guided meditations that I create.

User Needs

To define the user needs, I need to do some research. Accordingly, I used Google Forms to create a short survey. My aim was to keep it short, neutral and simple.

To define my strategy, I need to know if my users use online wellness classes and if so, via what platform. Do they read wellness blogs and subscribe to them? Do they subscribe to wellness email lists? Knowing this will allow me to decide how I present the material and the project.

User Survey

If you’ve read this far, maybe you can give me five minutes of you time? The forms are hosted on Google Drive, but you don’t have to log into to access them.

Here is the UX User Survey in English: Alteayoga UX User Survey

Aquí tienes la encuesta en español: Alteayoga UX Encuesta Usuario

Conclusion

I hope to get a few responses, so that I have some material to work with. Even though I am taking longer than suggested to do the course, I truly feel that applying the methods contained in the course gives me the best chance of success. The course is very practical, and we will create a UX portfolio, but behind that, I need my web sites to be solid. So, here’s to defining my strategy!

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IP: Intellectual Property Course (Part 1). Power to the Creators!

IP: Intellectual Property course

Intellectual Property, or IP, is a subject that affects all creative people. As a singer-songwriter, I compose songs (melody and lyrics). Using my Ableton DAW, I do enough production to be something of an arranger. A number of self-penned and self-published works is available in formats like Soundcloud, Youtube and Instagram. So, I wonder:

If I have published something online, is it mine or do I lose the right to it once it is in the public domain?

-rachelrose

The answer may lie in the course I am currently following: “Curso de propiedad intelectual en el sector musical (nivel básico)” [Intellectual Property Course in the Music Sector (Basic Level)]. This four-module course is offered by Ainara LeGardon via her web site https://legardon.net/

Ainara LeGardon

LeGardon is a Spanish musician from the “Basque Country”, a mountainous coastal region of Northern Spain. She became specialised in IP out of necessity. Like many independent artists, LeGardon became increasingly wary of publishing and record deals, and so began self-publishing her art in 2003. Here she is in action:

LeGardon announced the course on her Twitter account. So, I immediately emailed to reserve a place and was fortunate to secure one as places were initially reserved for members of the musical collective Musika Bulegoa whose aim is to support artists working in the Basque language, Euskadi.

Module 1

I jumped right into the first module today. The content is interesting, and simple enough.

First and foremost: the UX is excellent. A layout that is simple and clean, with legible black text on a white background is always a treat for tired eyes. Infographics are provided for each section of the module. A well-recorded and equalised spoken soundtrack in which LeGardon expands on the subjects covered accompanies the written text. Finally, the entire course is available to download as a PDF. Well done – kudos!

The takeaway from today’s material:

Artist’s Rights vs Copyright

Artists’ Rights (Derechos de Autor), as they are known in Europe, are fundamentally different from Copyright, the format used in most Anglo-Saxon countries, including my native Canada. Artists’ Rights include “Moral Rights” to a work, something that copyright does not.

The copyright © sign

LeGardon says that using the copyright sign “seals” a creator’s enactment of their rights. But, also, not using it DOES NOT imply that they are relinquishing their rights. So, basically, if you created it, it’s yours.

Ideas vs. works

IP is not about ideas. Rather, it is about realised works. Having said that, a playwright does not have to stage a play. A manuscript and guide suffice. A musician does not have to score a work, a simple demo recording is enough.

A number of useful links were provided. One of the most interesting is “WIPO-PROOF” which defines itself as “an online service that rapidly produces tamper-proof evidence which you can use to prove that your digital file existed at a specific point in time.” As I delve into UX, I think that it is useful for me to keep IP front and centre. All creatives are eventually faced with the same sad truth. That is, our work requires investment, time and original ideas, but it is far too easy to mis-appropriate. I will never forget the time I shared an advertisement for a Yoga Festival in Alicante only to have my friend Suki Zöe, who lives in Bali, exclaim “that’s my photo“!

As the course lasts a maximum of four weeks, I will get through it at a sprightly pace and keep you posted. Meanwhile, ask yourself if you would register your IP, or perhaps better to ask “should I”?