Influence, Intuition, and Integration: An Exploration Into My Creative Process

Abstract

This exegesis is an investigation into my creative process. It is an exercise in making more conscious the themes in, and relationships between, the musical materials I employ and the concepts that govern them. This is in order to obtain a clearer idea of the aesthetic I am currently exploring, to develop a stronger and more coherent viewpoint on what it is that I currently wish to hear in my music, and to contribute to the general discourse on the creative process in composition. Being primarily an intuitive composer, I consider the role improvisation plays both in the compositional stage and within the performance of my music. The accompanying portfolio of works gives fruition to a number of improvisatory approaches, and also highlights my fascination with a number of the world’s musical traditions, tackling both how to combine instruments of more than one tradition in fresh and interesting ways, and how to distill and internalize certain qualities of a particular musical tradition into my music by ways other than direct appropriation.