Having spent his whole professional career performing and recording symphonic music, my father, Nigel Broadbent, is a font of knowledge about composers’ creative methods. For engineers (and other humans), there’s a lot we can learn from these strategies for ‘music design’.
This week, I am running a workshop on how we can harness sleep and the subconscious in the design process.
Sleep is a powerful part of the creative process, and many composers know—or have known—this.
Nigel says he composes his best music early in the morning, before he has spoken a word to anyone.
Benjamin Britten had a strict cycle of composing that integrated time at his desk, exercise, play, and sleep.
Apparently, he would take a walk in the afternoon, and ideas would come to mind. In the evening, he would socialise and improvise tunes at the piano for his friends based on the afternoon’s ideas. He would then sleep and, after waking in the morning, turn the sleep-processed material into output.
Sleep does wonderful things. Think about how you could make the most of the power of sleep. In fact, don’t—sleep on it instead.