Creative process------ a point of view

Decision-making and its role in improvisation is also a widely discussed topic.

 “A critical component of creative growth is the development of the decision-making process” (Balkin, 1990, p.32). Making decisions is an important part in creative process. During improvising, improvisers should choose musical behavior immediately and will not have second chance to change it. Creative process includes the following circumstances: dealing with problems, overcoming opposite attitudes and feelings, try to be persistence, collaboration (Balkin, 1990).

College students already have their own perspective of the world that they have their own opinions and plenty of ideas. How can they choose ideas and focus on the specific field? Their family, social environment and culture effects their thinking and can help guide their ideas and emotions. Creative process cannot happen in an isolated environment. It is connected with the environment around the students, which not only requires knowledge about specific field, but also requires various knowledge from other related disciplines. Creators need to try again and again to find their passion, and endure it to achieve the aims.

When we participate in creative activities, we may face problems. Problems will appear repeatedly. This process is beneficial but difficult. For non-music major students, although teachers will provide the musical knowledge in the music class, music theory and other related knowledge is still too complicated for some of them. When they cannot deal with the problems after they spent a lot of energy on it, they will feel frustrated. It is significant to apply flow theory to teach students.

When looking at creativity and improvisation is in imperative to take a moment to examine flow theory, first introduced by Csikszentmihalyi (1975). This theory claims the feeling of complete and energized focus in an activity that changes with the challenge and participant’s ability. If the challenge is much over the ability of the participant, the participant will feel anxiety, while if the challenge is much less than one’s ability, the participant will feel bored. Applying to music education, the class should have moderate challenge to motivate students while preventing them from being bored.

Young people are prone to risk, so they often make mistakes during the creative process. If they are afraid to take challenge, teachers should help them to develop self-confidence for it. “Right is right, but wrong may be more provocative and vital” (Balkin, 1990, p.32). Students should be taught to extract valuable experience from the mistakes in learning improvisation. If they are afraid to make mistakes, they will lose many chances to discover the beauty of our world. If they just make mistakes and never acquire knowledge during the process, these mistakes are not valuable. 

Though mistakes are important for creative process, negative emotions still occur and cause anxiety to students.  If they cannot overcome these emotions now, they will have more difficulties in the future, because more and more negative attitude will appear and interrupt their works so that they cannot concentrate on their research and performing anymore. Having more positive energy is important part in creative process.

Refrence

Balkin, A. (1990). What Is Creativity? What Is It Not? Music Educators Journal, 29-29.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Beyond boredom and anxiety. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass