NYTimes.com: If Miles Davis’s midcentury trumpet solos can be described by a single phrase, it might be “doing more with less.” Despite his renown, Davis wasn’t a flashy or highly technical player during the late 1950s and early ’60s. He was melodic and economical, and his approach can teach prose writers a lot about the power of concision, suggestion and space.
4 comments:
Okay, I think that the point of this article is to explain that doing more with less can be attributed to everything you do not just writing or playing music. I agree I think that there are many instances where it is not always the case. If we stick with writing specifically, the author of the article says, 'Many writers fall prey to the quintessential American notion that bigger is better. They overload their sentences, adding more adjectives, more descriptions, more component phrases...' etc. However, (and I am most definitely biased) my favorite author's first book is 736 pages in paperback, and there is not one work there that does not need to be there. Everything creates and expounds and only continues to build a greater world. But I digress, back to things that are not writing, holding meetings, sending emails, making schedules; it is necessary to be concise and to get your point across.
I think that people often fall into the trap of equivocating simple with boring or dumb. That, however, usually isn't the case. As the article states it's about making more out of less. Of course, I do agree with Sonia, there are many examples of ornate and complicated art that are beautiful and justified stylistically. I do think though that using less and not relying on exorbitant language (in the case of writing) can be just as, if not more, beautiful and powerful. In school I was taught by a few teachers that flowery language improves the quality of creative writing, and while this can be true at times, it is by no means a rule of writing. These ideas can be applied to any kind of art as well.
This is great! We learned similar ideas in Scenic Design. Many times, people will add images to a design/set in hopes that their concept will be stronger, but in reality the images will often times take away the power of just one image that could say more. It is true that intricacy is beautiful and can lend itself to making strong statements too, but it is so important to keep in mind that less truly can be more.
Just as surely as it may be true in the field of music, I think it's important as a writer to realize that all styles have their place and time and relevance and utility and... I could go on, but for the sake of brevity and clarity and dis-ambiguity, and while realizing, and admitting openly, that my own writing style tends toward the verbose, and has indeed been criticized more than once, and by my mother for one, an English teacher herself, so as to lend some credence to her honest criticisms, perfectly welcome criticisms, by the way, and more often than not perfectly warranted, I'll not disagree, especially, and most recently, in fact, during the creation of a certain document, a certain "Statement of Purpose" required by a certain Graduate Program some of you may be familiar with, where, in my eagerness to explain myself, and as thoroughly as possible, my reasoning and self-advocacy ran on, I'll admit here, to you, my trusted colleagues, to a nearly unmanageable two whole pages, half of which undoubtedly having gone unread by the intended audience, if for no other reason than the simple daunting mass of the thing, and thereby the whole point lost, which was, in the first place, to communicate as clearly and succinctly as possible the candidate's worthiness of acceptance to the program, and good communication skills being no small part of the skill set required of the candidate, it would seem as common sense that if one must us five hundred words to explain oneself where five would do, it stands to reason that one will have little time left for anything else, say, for instance, the rest of my comments.
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