Rick Rubin And The Mind-Body Zen Of Your Musical Creativity

Have you ever listened to something so attentively that you start hearing layers that you never heard before, or perhaps that aren’t even there in the first place?

Thank goodness hearing music in your head is a lot more socially acceptable than hearing voices!

When you synchronize your mind with the musical pallet you’re working with, it sparks ideas. It enhances your sensitivity to the dynamics. It gives you a new perspective. It magnifies details. Which leads us to the question…

Can mindfulness enhance musical creativity?

What is Mindfulness?

Have you ever been the passenger in a vehicle and couldn’t remember a single thing about the directions you took to get to your destination? Or forgot someone's name within 5 seconds of learning it? Or read a paragraph without remembering anything you just read? (Hopefully not this one).

That would be the opposite of what we call “mindful”.

As humans, many of us aren’t actually “present” for a large portion of our life. You may not notice some of the great things in your life or what your body is communicating with you.

You probably make your life harder than it should be with poisonous self-criticism. And you might be making decisions based on subconscious fears and the judgment of others.

“There’s a great deal of bullshit that people think about when they make music, things that don’t matter. TM (transcendental meditation) kind of wipes that away, and you focus on the real job at hand, as opposed to thinking about what the management wants, or what the record company’s saying, or what somebody at a radio station might think.” — Rick Rubin

If you go too long unchecked you can be rendered to acting out a life on autopilot from your embedded habits, fear-based emotions, and destructive thinking patterns.

Enter mindfulness.

Awareness Is The First Step

Mindfulness can aid you in becoming more aware of your thoughts, feelings, and sensations in a way to improve your self-talk. Harnessing the ability to pay focused attention and clarify your perceptions won’t eliminate your problems but it will help you respond in a more calm and productive manner.

Practicing mindfulness will help you recognize and separate yourself from your habits, which are often unconscious emotional and physiological reactions to day to day events.

Once you begin to integrate mindfulness into your life you’ll become more aware of your thoughts, emotions and physiology and how they interact with each other. They will all sum together as a map of your overall psychology.

This is where the power of mindfulness comes in. When you can start to choose how you react to the input of your perceptions, it is when you can start to create a new life. It’s when you can start to create anything.

No longer being a victim to external circumstances! Your perception IS THE CIRCUMSTANCE. And the first step in changing your perception is self-awareness.

Being the observer of how you habitually function within the different faculties of your being will greatly enhance your creativity. You’ll unlock the ability to interact with your craft to a much higher level.

Creating Music, Mindfully

Unfortunately, just like me and many others, you might be a victim of “mindlessness”. You know, when you go through the motions of your craft on autopilot. The lack of attentive focus in your approach can lead to stagnant progress, boredom and sub-par results.

If you don’t try to become mindful of yourself in your creative pursuits, you will most likely revert back to repeating unconscious habits. An analytical frame of mind, working on autopilot and a lack of focused attention will not unlock your creativity.

You’re the “who” and the “where”, mindfulness is the “what”, better creativity and overall health is the “why”.

Meditation is the “how”.

I know you might be thinking… I don’t have time to meditate, or even own a toga. This new age mumbo jumbo ain’t gonna level me up!

It’s funny how the mind will talk itself in circles just to continue churning out perpetual thoughts. A constant chatter to propagate its own existence.

Anything to avoid the “oh so frightful” void of..

THE STILLNESS!

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Take a deep breath.

Ahh.

Once you’ve experienced the inner peace and the enhanced mental clarity that follows, you’ll seek to make friends with that stillness within yourself.

I feel you, togas aren’t that comfortable. You can’t do that cool meditation cross-legged thing…

At some point, however, to achieve the hight of your creativity, you're going to have to get your monkey mind on board and sit your monkey ass down for 5 minutes to meditate.

Let me reassure you, it will be worth it!

Modern science has confirmed the immense benefits of meditation, and has only begun to scratch the surface of its effects on creative endeavors such as music!

“Sometimes in the period after meditation I will suddenly catch myself thinking, hey, something’s different, and I realize that it’s simply that I’ve gone a length of time without feeling self-conscious and distracted. I believe these are called ‘flow states’, and are something many people [and] musicians will have experienced anyway when they are really immersed in their work [or] performance and there is clarity and focus.” — Rolf Hind

Mindfulness = Mind Management

Being mindful is an active principle, meaning it takes focused attention. True attention is quieting the mind and remaining in a receptive state. In that state, we expand our perception. We notice more detail in the dynamics of sound, in the quality of our playing, our environment, and our emotions.

It is the opposite of daydreaming and analytical thought, autopilot and mindlessness.

In a mindful state, you can access a deeper level of your creative genius, better translate your authenticity, and increase your productivity.

Here are some mindfulness tips to help spark your musical creativity:

1. Gratitude/Wonder — Every time you play or create music, you have the opportunity to feel the sense of wonder and gratitude form the awesomeness that is music. In gratitude, every vibration resonates with meaning. Or you can take it for granted. Try to re-spark the novelty in music by listening to some nostalgic music, re-visiting an older piece or learning something new!

2. Dynamic Sensitivity — Try to really zero into the dynamics of your craft. Give your full undivided attention to the qualities of the sound. A lighter touch here? More accents on the off-beat? How does this express what I’m feeling?

3. Active Listening — Next time you listen to music try to attentively notice all the details of the song. How many layers does it have? How loud/quiet are they? How does it transition? How does it make you feel? Why?

4. Self-awareness — Root yourself Ito the here and now. Focus on your breath and become aware of your emotions and thoughts. Eventually, you will sink into a state of no thought, this is when you are truly present and in the moment. This will help you in translating your emotional state into your craft.

5. Openness to different approaches — Embrace the infiniteness that is music! Different ideas, constructive criticism, new techniques, collaboration. Maybe you’ll even notice something about your approach that you can change?

Do you practice mindfulness?

Interested in learning more? Click here to download your Mindset Map and discover your next steps in your musical journey.

My name is Alexandre Joyal. I help music creators achieve success with their music by teaching them how to produce themselves and adopt a creative mindset.