The need of limitations and the lack of rehearsals

Someone said, I think it might have been Laurie Anderson, that in creativity you need limitations. And if you don’t have that, you need to establish those limits on your own. In my day-to-day work, which is rather creative, I have learned that this is true. The limits a creative brief puts up kick-starts my creativity.
It becomes a riddle, a quest, that must be solved.

As it comes to albums for Nerved there are no limits (other than budget) so I created one: “the songs should be composed and arranged using the ears, not hands.”

With those words I meant, that I will write the song in my head first, get the melody and the beat out on my computer, using only keyboards (which I can’t play), samples or loops. You see, as a guitarist you can fall in love in a riff or a sequence just because it is so fun to play it. The hands will bias your ears, if you get what I mean. Ears are better than hands as it comes to composing, at least in my point of view. And since I found myself being the one in charge for this album, I decided that these would be the limitations I would use.

As a direct result of this first rule, rule no. 2 became “no rehearsals.” A song or a part of a song that is fun to play, is so much harder to throw in the trash can.
So…Nerved as of today has never played together.

We haven’t even met, all of us at the same time. So how did the line-up become the one that is on this coming album? I start telling that story next time.