Coming up with ideas can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. I’ve written about using constraints to kick-start your creativity here.
In this post, I’ll go into more detail about a particular form of restriction that’s very common in music – the ‘limited palette’.
The phrase comes from the world of art. The limited palette refers to a constraint on the range of colours used whilst painting.
In music, the ‘palette’ can refer to different techniques that also limit the ‘colours’ we use in generating ideas and developing our work.
Step 1: Decide on your palette
- Constraints encourage creative solutions. When you limit your palette from the start, you’re forced to be creative with how those forces are combined.
- Limited palettes can include restrictions on the use of instruments, instrument groupings, the type of effects used, the style, geographical or temporal location influences.
- Constraints will curb limitless idea generation and encourage you to move on to developing and building on these ideas more quickly.
Step 2: Use only that palette
- Don’t allow any additions or deviations from the palette, at least until later in the idea’s development. You could put a time limit on how long you’ll restrict yourself. Alternatively, you can expand the palette when you truly feel, for the sake of the music and all that is good and holy, you have to.
- Of course, you may also find that you don’t end up using all of the original palette. That’s ok too.
Examples of limited palettes in music:
- chamber instrument model – limit to, say, between 1 and 8 solo instruments.
- ensemble groups – say, only strings and winds.
- use only a particular technique on a particular instrument – say, pizzicato (plucking the string, instead of using the bow) on a violin, or guitar harmonics (a special technique to create a ringing, bell-like tone).
- sound design elements – only use sounds that you or others have created, rather than straightforward recordings, and that might not sound musical in their original state.
- only use synthesised instrument sounds – no recorded or sampled instruments.
- only use what you can record in your location today.
- limit the effects used on your sounds or instruments – say, only one or a few effects applied to each sound – eg, distortion, reverb (which makes the sound echoey), modulation (a broad term for an effect that changes in some way over time), EQ (making portions of the sound’s frequency louder or quieter)…
- stylistic – for example, only use Trap and Trance styles. Two different musical styles can still be used to limit the palette but a fusion of disparate elements also may result in more original ideas. I would argue that the only original ideas come from the fusion of distant ideas, but I digress…
- geographical/temporal – limit yourself to only use instruments used traditionally in a certain geographical location – a country or a region – or a particular period in history, say, the renaissance.
Here are a few examples of my tunes where I started the compositional process with a limited palette of one kind or another. In some of them I expanded a little out of those limits later in the process.
‘The Key’ from The Department of Distractions
Here I used just me on the violin to make the majority of the music. The vocal sound effects are me saying ‘The Department of Distractions’, recorded, split up into phonemes and put through some effects on the computer. After I’d sketched it all out and recorded it I added a piano. But I think that’s all I added.
‘Look Across The Ocean’ from Flood
A simple arrangement of voice, piano, and string quartet:
(Full version of the track is here)
‘Escape’ from The John Akii-Bua Story
Here I used percussion instruments and rhythms alongside sound effects and strings. I started with the percussion which was sampled from recordings made by the film-makers in Uganda, alongside a palette of sound effects I built before beginning composition (I wish they film makers had taken the names of the performers. It would have been better to be able to credit them).
(Full version of the track is here)
What limits, constraints, and restrictions could you place on your palette to make generating ideas easier?
How could it help reign in all the myriad possibilities when generating ideas, relieve decision fatigue, and make moving onto their development a faster process in your line of work?
Why not take a quick 5 minutes now to sketch out some possible ways you could restrict your starting palette for a new project or a current work-in-progress if it needs an infusion of inspiration or a new perspective.
Image: Credit