Motivation
The deep motivation behind my research is that I want to be an earning, versatile, professional musician. Through my Masters I want to make myself the best musician I can be. Playing the instrument bandoneon, I specialise in a narrow field of music, namely the Argentine tango. In life as a musician however, a lot of opportunities will turn up that are outside my field of expertise. I wanted to find a way to enable myself to take on all of these opportunities. The way to do this, was to find a process to be able to be creative on demand. Such a process would enable me to take on opportunities in unknown musical territory, allowing me to develop further in my versatility as a musician.
Goals
The most significant goal for me was that I wanted to make for myself a process to be creative on demand - a step by step process to be creative when I need to be creative, regardless of what state of mind I might find myself in. To be creative beyond those special times when “the muses come” or when “inspiration hits.” Having the tools to be creative without feeling inspired also takes away the pressure of being inspired, letting the sought-after state of mind flow more naturally and more productively. So, the personal challenge I set was how could I make such a process for myself?
The first step was to find a way to get past creatives’ worst nightmare - the - the big blank page. In order to do this, I set myself some very narrow limits within which I had to work, in order get the initial spark of creativity started. So, I put myself in a small, difficult box. A box of clear limitations, from which I would have to use my skills, talent, and musicianship to get out of by making my own strong artistic decisions. The box I made, was the task of creating an original piece of music for harp and bandoneon, fusing Argentinian tango - which I knew a lot about, and Irish jig - which I knew little about.
I chose those specific limitations for several reasons. The first is that I have a duo with my sister Julie Rokseth, which is intended to represent a big part of my livelihood as a musician. I was interested to create a fusion of Celtic music and tango because in the duo we have been composing our own music with undetermined or unspecified influences, but that has had both tango and Celtic musical elements in them. I was interested to turn the vague inspiration of Celtic music into a clear inspiration for my music, and would do it through composing a fusion of tango and jig by making informed artistic decisions. Secondly, I reduced the large concept of Irish/Celtic music down to a very specific and limiting type of tune, the jig. This was once again to ensure that I would have very specific parameters for my box. Thirdly, I wanted to expand how I can use the bandoneon to adapt to challenges of new styles and be able to switch between them effortlessly.
Artistic Research Question
“How can I create and perform a piece for harp and bandoneon fusing the styles of Argentinian tango and Celtic/Irish jigs?”