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 LEISURE
STUDIES
IN A
GLOBAL
Creativity in ERA

the Recording
Studio
Alternative Takes

PAUL THOMPSON
Leisure Studies in a Global Era

Series Editors
Karl Spracklen
Leeds Beckett University
Leeds, UK

Karen Fox
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB, Canada
In this book series, we defend leisure as a meaningful, theoretical, fram-
ing concept; and critical studies of leisure as a worthwhile intellectual and
pedagogical activity. This is what makes this book series distinctive: we
want to enhance the discipline of leisure studies and open it up to a richer
range of ideas; and, conversely, we want sociology, cultural geographies
and other social sciences and humanities to open up to engaging with
critical and rigorous arguments from leisure studies. Getting beyond con-
cerns about the grand project of leisure, we will use the series to demon-
strate that leisure theory is central to understanding wider debates about
identity, postmodernity and globalisation in contemporary societies
across the world. The series combines the search for local, qualitatively
rich accounts of everyday leisure with the international reach of debates
in politics, leisure and social and cultural theory. In doing this, we will
show that critical studies of leisure can and should continue to play a cen-
tral role in understanding society. The scope will be global, striving to be
truly international and truly diverse in the range of authors and topics.
Editorial Board: John Connell, Professor of Geography, University of
Sydney, USA; Yoshitaka Mori, Associate Professor, Tokyo University of
the Arts, Japan; Smitha Radhakrishnan, Assistant Professor, Wellesley
College, USA; Diane M. Samdahl, Professor of Recreation and Leisure
Studies, University of Georgia, USA; Chiung-Tzu Lucetta Tsai, Associate
Professor, National Taipei University, Taiwan; Walter van Beek, Professor
of Anthropology and Religion, Tilburg University, The Netherlands;
Sharon D. Welch, Professor of Religion and Society, Meadville
Theological School, Chicago, USA; Leslie Witz, Professor of History,
University of the Western Cape, South Africa.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14823
 Paul Thompson

Creativity in the
Recording Studio
Alternative Takes
Paul Thompson
Leeds Beckett University
Leeds, UK

Leisure Studies in a Global Era

ISBN 978-3-030-01649-4 ISBN 978-3-030-01650-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01650-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018959245

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by
similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein
or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover image: © Vic Pigula/Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 This book is dedicated to the eternal memory of:
Patrick “Uncle Pat” Brennan, Marion Dineen, Kevin Dinan, Mary Dinan,
John Thompson and Mary Valentine Thompson.
 Acknowledgements

The central premise of this book is that individuals (like me) are only
one part of a creative system in action and there have been so many
people who’ve helped me complete this book. Firstly, I’d like to thank
everyone at Palgrave Macmillan who contributed their help and guid-
ance: in particular Sharla and Poppy. Secondly, this book would have
been inconceivable without the support and guidance of Professor
Phillip McIntyre. I was lucky enough to share an office with Phillip
whilst he was writing his book Creativity and Cultural Production: Issues
for Media Practice (2012) and his stewardship, encouragement, exper-
tise, advice and generosity over the years has not only contributed to
this book, but shaped so many of my academic endeavors—I owe a
debt of gratitude that I’ll be unable to repay so I simply say, ‘Phillip,
Thank You!’
I’d like to thank Leeds Beckett University and all my colleagues
(past and present) in the School of Film, Music and Performing Arts.
I’d particularly like to thank Kingsley Ash, Bob Davis, Steve Kilpatrick,
Brett Lashua, Sam Nicholls, Ben Mosley, Steve Parker, Ken Scott, Rob
Shail, Karl Spracklen, Nikos Stavropoulos, Alex Stevenson and Michael
Ward for their encouragement, support and collaboration. A special

vii
viii   Acknowledgements

thank you must go to Iani Canalis for making the diagrams and figures
in this book look so good. I’d also like to thank all my Undergraduate
and Postgraduate students over the years who have contributed so much
through their passionate engagement and debate. Thanks must also
go to Professor Sara Cohen and all those from the Institute of Popular
Music at the University of Liverpool (Anahid, Marian, Rob, Haekyung,
Freya and Mike) who have made an indelible contribution to my devel-
opment as a popular music scholar.
As a member of the Association for the Art of Record Production and
the Audio Engineering Society, I’ve made some great friends; some of
whom I’ve had the pleasure to collaborate with and share ideas. I would
like to thank all members, past and present, for their lively debate dur-
ing conferences, their camaraderie and friendship but I’d particularly
like to thank Brendan Anthony, Sam Bennett, Amy Blier-Carruthers,
Richard Burgess, Brecht De Man, Mike Exarchos, Phil Harding, Katia
Isakoff, Nyssim Lefford, Kirk McNally, Ryan Schwabe, Toby Seay, Paul
Théberge, Simon Zagorski-Thomas, Shara Rambarran, Rob Toulson,
Alan Wiliams, Steve Ward, Paula Wolfe and Albin Zak. A big thank you
must also go to all of the musicians I have worked with over the years
who have helped me to celebrate the joy of making music and making
records—in particular Tom Houghton, Marc Joy, Tony Kiley and Ian
Prowse.
Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank my fam-
ily who have nurtured and supported my interest in music my entire
life and who continue to inspire and encourage me. One of my earli-
est memories is listening to Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ (1956) on my
Grandad’s record player and it is here that my fascination for records
began. Without you all, and your encouragement, none of this would
have been possible so Mum, Dad, Claire, Martin, Paul, Hannah, John,
Gemma and little Jake this book is for you.

Merseyside, England Paul Thompson

November 2018 Ellesmere Port
 Praise for Creativity in the Recording
Studio

“Paul Thompson both eloquently challenges Romanticism’s grip on our

understanding of creativity and provides valuable insights into the col-
laborative process of commercial record production.”
—Dr. Paula Wolfe is an artist-producer, scholar and author
of Women in The Studio: Creativity, Control and Gender
in Popular Music Production, www.paulawolfe.co.uk

“Creativity in the Recording Studio: Alternative Takes beautifully and

methodically demonstrates the complex process of making records. Paul
Thompson guides the reader away from Romantic notions of creativity
toward a research based, empirically tested and rationally argued, sense
of studio creation that takes place within a highly scalable creative sys-
tem. Thompson’s book is a must have if you are a music fan, a scholar
of popular music or someone who is desperate to create in the recording
studio - and who wouldn’t be after reading this book?”
—Philip McIntyre is the author of Creativity and Cultural
Production, The Creative System in Action and Educating
for Creativity in Higher Education

ix
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

SIDE A—Creativity as a System

2 Creativity 15

3 The Creative System of Commercial Record Production 45

4 The Domain of Commercial Record Production 69

5 The Field of Commercial Record Production 91

SIDE B—Creative Systems in Action

6 The Creative System of Songwriting 117

7 The Creative System of Studio Performance 149

xi
xii   Contents

8 The Creative System of Engineering 175

9 The Creative System of Producing 201

10 Conclusion 233

Bibliography 247

Index 277
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Systems model of creativity (Csikszentmihalyi 1999,

p. 315) 28
Fig. 2.2 Revised systems model of creativity incorporating
creative practice (Kerrigan 2013, p. 114) 36
Fig. 3.1 The creative systems of commercial record production 46
Fig. 6.1 The development of verse two in Strawberry Fields Forever 129
Fig. 6.2 The first draft of the chorus in Strawberry Fields Forever 129
Fig. 6.3 The development of the chorus in Strawberry Fields Forever 131
Fig. 6.4 The systems model of creativity scaled to the level
of lyric writing 133
Fig. 6.5 The systems model of creativity scaled to the level
of arrangement 139
Fig. 6.6 The systems model of creativity scaled to the collective level 142
Fig. 7.1 The systems model of creativity scaled to the individual level
of studio performance 161
Fig. 7.2 An impression of the spacing of microphones whilst
recording Heroes 162
Fig. 7.3 The systems model of creativity scaled to the level
of engineering 164
Fig. 7.4 An impression of Tupac Shakur using
the multitrack recorder 169
xiii
xiv   List of Figures

Fig. 7.5 The systems model of creativity scaled to the level

of rap performance 170
Fig. 8.1 The systems model of creativity scaled to an individual
level during microphoning 185
Fig. 8.2 The systems model of creativity scaled to a group
level during microphoning 188
Fig. 8.3 The systems model scaled to an individual level
during mixing 193
Fig. 8.4 The creative practice of mixing scaled to the group level 195
Fig. 8.5 The systems model scaled to the level of mixing 196
Fig. 9.1 The creative practice of eliciting a performance 217
Fig. 9.2 The creative practice of A&R scaled to an individual level 222
Fig. 9.3 The systems model of creativity scaled to the level
of arrangement 226
Fig. 10.1 The systems model scaled to an individual level 236
Fig. 10.2 The systems model of creativity scaled to a group level 238
Fig. 10.3 The concurrent scales of the creative system 239
Fig. 10.4 The systems model of creativity at the institutional level 241
Fig. 10.5 The systems model of creativity scaled to the level
of the UK Music scene 242
Fig. 10.6 The systems model of creativity operating
at the sociocultural level 244
 1
Introduction

On a wintery evening in November 1966, The Beatles arrived at EMI’s

Abbey Road to begin work on what would become ‘Strawberry Fields
Forever’ (1967). They recorded their first tentative take of the song that
night and, over the following four weeks, The Beatles created 25 differ-
ent takes. With ongoing deliberation between the lead songwriter John
Lennon and record producer George Martin, each of the various takes
were recorded with a different approach, or an alternate arrangement,
sometimes at different tempos or even in different musical keys. By
late December, John Lennon had finally settled on the opening section
of Take 7, a lighter version of the song, and the later section of Take
26, which had a heavier and more dense arrangement. George Martin
notes:

Completely without regard for practical problems, John said to me, “I

like them both. Why don’t we join them together? You could start with
Take 7 and move to Take [26] halfway through to get the grandstand
finish.” “Brilliant!” I replied. “There are only two things wrong with
that: the takes are in completely different keys, a whole tone apart; and
they have wildly different tempos. Other than that, there should be no
problem!” John smiled at my sarcasm with the tolerance of a grown-up

© The Author(s) 2019 1

P. Thompson, Creativity in the Recording Studio, Leisure Studies in a Global Era,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01650-0_1
2    
P. Thompson

placating a child. “Well, George,” he said laconically, “I’m sure you can fix
it, can’t you?” whereupon he turned on his heel and walked away. (quoted
in Martin & Pearson 1994, p. 22)

So, engineer Geoff Emerick and producer George Martin worked on

finding a technical solution to join the two takes together:

George and Geoff carefully studied the two versions and realized if they
speeded up the remix of the first version (take seven) and then slowed
down the remix of the second (take 26) they might match…All that was
left now was to edit the two pieces together…“We gradually decreased
the pitch of the first version at the join to make them weld together,” says
Geoff Emerick. They did it so well that few people, even today, know
exactly where the edit is. (Lewisohn 1988, p. 91)

The recording of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ marked a critical point

in the Beatles’ musical career and the practice of commercial record
production more generally. The Beatles had played their final concert
at Candlestick Park in August 1966 and this allowed them to pursue
record-making without the added expectation that it would be per-
formed live in front of an audience. This was crucial in creating an
atmosphere of experimentation in the recording studio, dispensing
with: ‘the concept of realism or what could be called “figurative” record-
ing, often constructing instead virtual or imaginary space unconfined by
what is possible in the “real” world of live performance on conventional
instruments’ (Moorefield 2005, p. 29). In creating music that was
meant to be listened to as a recorded work (rather than a representation
of a live performance), The Beatles needed to collaborate more directly
with studio technicians and studio engineers to utilize their expertise
and knowledge of studio technologies. Integrating the tasks of songwrit-
ing, performing and engineering, and all overseen by producer George
Martin, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ provides a prophetic example of
what commercial record-making would come to involve.
Whilst there are innumerable noteworthy examples of recordings
that are the result of creative and collaborative endeavours, ‘Strawberry
Fields Forever’ illustrates the central theme of this book—‘alternative
takes’. Alternative takes uncover a popular myth of art-making, namely
 1 Introduction    
3

that the completed work arrives fully formed in the mind of the crea-
tor (Csikszentmihalyi 1997). The existence of alternative takes instead
points to a creative process that is often more complex and iterative
than is typically presented. Take 7, available to listen to on ‘Anthology
2’ (1996), and Take 26 were both considered ‘complete’ at one stage of
the creative process but the final recording didn’t come into existence
until the two takes were combined by engineer Geoff Emerick and
record producer George Martin.
Deciding on which takes will make the final recording isn’t specific
to Strawberry Fields Forever or in fact The Beatles; choosing between
alternative takes is a scenario played out in every recording studio
around the world as musicians, engineers and record producers engage
in the record-making process. In doing so, they are balancing numer-
ous musical, technical, sociocultural and economic factors in their
decision-making in which new market conditions, music technologies,
current trends or musical tastes may be a prime factor in making par-
ticular decisions. For example, The Wailers ‘Catch a Fire’ (1973) had
previously been recorded in Jamaica in 1972 but in order to make the
sound of reggae more appealing to Anglo-American rock audiences,
Island Record’s owner Chris Blackwell encouraged Bob Marley to add
more electric guitar parts and guitar solos throughout the record (Rojek
2011, p. 87).
Despite the prevalence of recordings within the sphere of popular
music (Gracyk 1996; Moore 1993) very little has been written critically
about how records are actually made. Even after a century of sound
recording: ‘the process of making records remains at least a partial mys-
tery to the majority of those who listen to them’ (Zak 2001, p. 26).
Researchers have historically given their attention to audiences, their
reception and use of sound recordings, often overlooking the cultural
producers, who wrote, performed, recorded or directed them (Berger
1995, pp. 145–146). Where attention is given to cultural producers in
the field of record production, it is often the contributions of engineers
or record producers that are overlooked instead focusing on the musi-
cal artists. In rock music for example, musicians are typically portrayed
as the sole creative entities during the recording process (Williams
2010), endorsing the romantic ideal of a musical ‘genius’ whose artistic
4    
P. Thompson

expressions are connected to the mystical and seen to be free from any
constraint (Zolberg 1990; Petrie 1991; Watson 2000; Sawyer 2006).
These romantic images form part of the numerous myths that surround
the artist in the recording studio, the record production process and cre-
ativity more generally. Romanticism is so embedded into the culture of
the commercial recording industry that these ideas are considered to be
‘common sense’ (McIntyre 2012b) and continue to be: ‘reflected in the
way artists are sold to audiences, the way audiences think about what
happens when records are made’ (McIntyre 2012a, p. 149).
These romantic images and portrayals of creativity in commercial
record production are problematic; particularly when one considers
that a record is rarely the result of an individual artist’s sole contribu-
tion (Zak 2001). In the opening scenario, The Beatles relied heavily on
engineer Geoff Emerick and record producer George Martin to capture,
manipulate, edit and arrange their performances, which makes the pro-
cess intrinsically collaborative (Zak 2001, p. 63). But Romantic ideas
of the record-making process continue to prevail because of the pri-
vate nature of the recording studio and a process that often takes place
behind closed doors (for a recent exception see PJ Harvey’s ‘Recording
in Progress: A Portrait in Real Time ’ 2015). In the field of ethnomusi-
cology, the recording studio has also been relatively neglected with
only a handful of empirically based studies published in this area
(i.e. Fitzgerald 1996; Meintjes 2003; Hennion 2005; Porcello 2004;
Bates 2008; McIntyre 2008, 2012a; Thompson 2016; Wolfe 2017;
Lefford and Thompson 2018).
The opening scenario challenges these romantic ideas indicating
that: ‘studio technology and the sound engineers’ professional skill are
an integral part of the active production of recorded music’ (Vignolle
1980, p. 87). Secondly, and more importantly, it uncovers the often
hidden process of choosing different takes and selecting some perfor-
mances over others. Questions then arise as to how John Lennon and
George Martin judged whether a take was good or bad and which
points of reference, if any, were employed in making these creative
judgments. Fortuitously, disciplines such as cognitive psychology and
sociology have begun to address these questions by investigating the
work of creative individuals and the area of creativity more broadly.
 1 Introduction    
5

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, for example, argues that creativity isn’t sim-

ply the result of an individual’s efforts. Rather, creativity occurs through
the interaction between the individual, a knowledge system and their
related social context. Creativity is therefore the result of a creative sys-
tem, which contains three central elements: a knowledge and symbol
system termed the ‘domain’; a social group that understands and uses
the domain termed a ‘field’ and finally the individual. The individual is
therefore only one element in a dynamic and interrelated creative sys-
tem of causality (Csikszentmihalyi 1997) and creative products, such as
records, are the result of a creative system in action (McIntyre 2012a).
The creative system posits that the individual must draw from the
domain during creative work in order to select a suitable arrangement
of ingredients from this body of knowledge and symbol system. This
selection of ingredients is then presented to the field for evaluation.
(Csikszentmihalyi 1997). The field is the social organization that rec-
ognizes, uses and alters the domain and functions: ‘to select promising
variations and to incorporate them into the domain’ (Csikszentmihalyi
1988, p. 330). If the field accepts, the individual’s variation then this
variation is considered to be ‘creative’. In the context of commercial
popular music this process occurs when the completed record is released
to the public and the field of commercial record production (TV, radio,
popular music press, audiences, social media, other musicians, engineers
and producers etc.) decide upon the record’s novelty and its incorpora-
tion into the domain through a complex and non-linear process. For an
idea or product to be creative it must therefore use the domain to cre-
ate something with an element of originality, it must be valued by the
social organization that understands and uses the domain, and it must
be included into the domain. In other words, it must be: ‘original, val-
ued and implemented’ (Csikszentmihalyi and Wolfe 2000, p. 81).
This perspective gives us a useful starting point in investigating the
creative process of record-making but, using Csikszentmihalyi’s original
definition of creativity (1988), it appears that creative ideas or products
that do not alter the domain in some way or leave a trace in the cul-
tural matrix are excluded. The creative system therefore appears to dis-
count smaller acts of everyday creativity and creative products that are
not yet accepted into the domain. This creates a misleading distinction
6    
P. Thompson

between the type of creativity that alters the content of a domain and
the type of creativity that does not. Employing a systems approach to
the study of creative ideas or products that are not implemented into
the domain, such as a record that has yet to be released and judged by
the field, therefore appears to be problematic. Further problems arise
when considering the systems model of creativity in a group context
because the production of records is fundamentally a collaborative pro-
cess (Hennion 1990; Wicke 1990; Zak 2001) and the original model
only refers to the ‘individual’. Finally, the apparent grandiose scale of
the model presents the issue that it doesn’t apply to the individual’s gen-
eration of creative ideas and their internal evaluative processes as they
undertake creative work inside the recording studio because the interac-
tion between the system’s main elements is not immediately evident.
Recent revisions to the systems model, however, have begun to show
how the creative system can be applied to both the collaborative context
of the recording studio and from a perspective that includes everyday cre-
ativity (Boden 2004; Kerrigan 2013). Susan Kerrigan’s revised model of
creativity (2013) demonstrates how the creative system’s framework can
be applied to the specific creative context of making a record by recon-
textualizing each of the generic elements of the creative system (Kerrigan
2013). Furthermore, Kerrigan replaced ‘individual’ with ‘agent’, which
allows the systems model to accommodate creative groups as well as
individuals. These revisions still endorse the useful definition that crea-
tivity is: ‘an idea or product that is original, valued and implemented’
(Csikszentmihalyi and Wolfe 2000, p. 81), and further allows the study
of creativity to extend to creative ideas or products that don’t (or may
not yet) alter the content of the domain,1 primarily because they are the
result of the dynamic interaction between the creative system’s elements.
There are however still two pressing issues to address in using a sys-
tems approach to creativity and commercial record production. Firstly,
exactly what the elements of the creative system are that songwrit-
ers, recording musicians, engineers and record producers interact with
during creative work. And secondly, how these elements interact on

1These ideas are explored in more depth in the following chapter.

 1 Introduction    
7

an individual level (in devising and evaluating creative ideas) and on

a group level as these creative ideas are realized, assessed, selected or
rejected. Both of these issues are addressed in the following pages by
presenting the creative system of commercial record-making and the
contributing, interconnected creative systems of songwriting, perform-
ing, engineering and producing within the context of Anglo-American
popular music.
The revised systems model of creativity (Kerrigan 2013) provides a
crucial framework to investigate the creative and collaborative pro-
cesses involved in undertaking these tasks and so the domain and
field have been contextualized so that they apply to the specific con-
text of commercial record production. For example, the domain of
record production encompasses various aspects of popular music such
as instrumentation, the song, its arrangement and specific terminol-
ogy. The contextualized field includes both those inside and outside
the recording studio as the social groups that understand and use the
domain in assessing the creativity of each agent’s creative contribution.
A creative contribution includes creative ‘actions’ as well as ‘ideas’ that
are: ‘original, valued and implemented’ (Csikszentmihalyi and Wolfe
2000, p. 81) because they require the interaction between the system’s
elements. A closer analysis of the interactions between the system’s ele-
ments within each of the creative tasks shows that the creative system
can be scaled to address some of the previously discussed problems of
using the system to investigate smaller acts of creativity.
This book has been structured like a record with an A-side and a
B-side. Side A presents the theoretical framework, historical background
and the contextualized elements of the creative system as they apply to
Anglo-American commercial record production. The first two chapters
lay the groundwork for the rest of the book by first introducing research
into creativity and then exploring the historical background and tradi-
tion of commercial record production as it relates to Anglo-American
popular music. This chapter presents the systems model of creativity in
more detail, its important revisions (Kerrigan 2013) and how the crea-
tive system is scalable by drawing on the concept of ‘holons’ (Koestler
1975), or systems within systems. The creative system’s framework can
then be used to investigate creative actions and ideas on an individual
8    
P. Thompson

level as well as a group level during the production of a commercial

recording. The second chapter introduces the history and tradition of
the recording-making process and the key tasks of songwriting, per-
forming, engineering and producing. Chapters 3 and 4 begin the con-
textualization of the creative system so that they apply to the specific
context of making a record inside the recording studio. Chapter 3 intro-
duces the domain of commercial record production and the ways in
which creative agents acquire their knowledge of it. The fifth chapter
concludes Side A with an overview of the field of commercial record
production, its institutions and its: ‘complex network of experts with
varying expertise, status, and power’ (Sawyer 2006, p. 124).
Side B then illustrates the creative systems of songwriting, perform-
ing, engineering and producing in action. Each chapter presents the
elements of the creative system that songwriters, recording musicians,
engineers and record producers interact with during their creative work.
The domain and field are recontextualized so that they apply to each
chapter’s specific creative task. Using specific examples within each of
the creative tasks, it is uniquely illustrated how these elements of the
creative system interact on different scales and at different levels as these
creative ideas are realized, enacted, assessed, selected and rejected.

References
Bates, E. (2008). Social Interactions, Musical Arrangement, and the Production of
Digital Audio in İstanbul Recording Studios. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of California, Berkeley.
Berger, A. A. (1995). The Essentials of Mass Communication Theory. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Boden, M. (2004). The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms (2nd ed.).
London: Routledge.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988). Society, Culture and Person: A Systems View of
Creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The Nature of Creativity: Contemporary
Psychological Perspectives (pp. 325–329). New York: Cambridge University
Press.
 1 Introduction    
9

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery

and Invention. New York: HarperCollins.
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 1 Introduction    
11

Recordings Cited
The Beatles. (1967). ‘I Am the Walrus’, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, Magical
Mystery Tour. Parlophone.
The Beatles. (1996). Anthology 2. Apple.
The Wailers. (1973). Catch a Fire. Island.
SIDE A—Creativity as a System
 2
Creativity

Introduction
Sound recordings hold a critical place in the popular music industry
and specifically within the musical styles and cultures of pop, hip-hop,
dance musics and rock1 (Gracyk 1996; Ray 1992; Zak 2001). Although
a wealth of anecdotal literature on recording and studio practice exists,
little has been written critically about the creative and collaborative
processes involved in the production of commercial sound recordings.
Record production has long been acknowledged as a fundamentally col-
laborative, creative process (Hennion 1990; Wicke 1990; Zak 2001),
and although there is now growing empirical evidence of this (e.g.
Davis 2008; McIntyre 2008, 2012b; Moorefield 2005; Howlett 2012;
Thompson 2016), the record-making process still holds an air of mysti-
cism in the popular imagination (Warner 2003; Williams 2011). Added
to this mystique is the ambiguity that surrounds the term ‘creativity’,

1Gracyk (1996) makes the central argument that rock is the first major genre where recordings
are the ‘initial medium’ and the ‘musical work’ in rock is less typically described as a song, rather
it is an arrangement of recorded sound.

© The Author(s) 2019 15

P. Thompson, Creativity in the Recording Studio, Leisure Studies in a Global Era,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01650-0_2
16    
P. Thompson

particularly as it’s used to describe a range of everyday processes,

procedures, approaches as well as notions of new and innovative ideas
(Csikszentmihalyi 1997; Negus and Pickering 2004). The general under-
standing of creativity is often perceived as something ‘inexplicable’ or ‘mys-
terious’ (Boden 2004, p. 11), and this mysteriousness of creativity relates
to the often-unchallenged dictionary definition of creativity: ‘to bring into
being or form out of nothing’ (ibid.). If this definition is taken literally,
then creativity appears to be the result of an impossible process because
musicians and music makers cannot make something from nothing.
The modern Western notion of the term creativity has its etymological
origins in the Judeo-Christian tradition, in which the celestial creation of
the earth is central to both Jewish and Christian faiths (Boorstin 1992).
Expressions of a divine nature of creativity were evident in the philosoph-
ical writings of both Socrates and Plato in which they describe the voice
of God speaking through the poets (Barfield 2011). These religious and
romantic ideas have implicitly influenced popular beliefs about creativity
in which Margaret Boden explains there are two general views: ‘inspira-
tional’ and ‘Romantic’ (2004). These views assume that creativity cannot
be systematically explored or reduced to its constituent parts, and, impor-
tantly, these popular views are: ‘believed by many to be literally true but
they are rarely critically examined’ (ibid., p. 14). Boden argues that these
mythical ideas of creativity typically function to: ‘express the values,
assuage the fears, and endorse the practices of the community that cele-
brates them’ (ibid.). As we shall see, these ideas of creativity influence how
some songwriters, artists, engineers and producers view their own practices.
The unchallenged historic and cultural ideas connected to creativ-
ity typically place the individual at its centre. However, more recent
research has shown that the individual is only one part of the creative
process, and there is growing evidence that creativity occurs though a
convergence of multiple factors within a dynamic system of interac-
tions (Csikszentmihalyi 1988, 1997, 1999). In line with this research,
the definition of creativity has also moved beyond the inexplicable to
acknowledge these broader interactions and influences. The influences
placed on individuals as they undertake creative work include: ‘a vari-
ety of interrelated forces operating at multiple levels’ (Hennessey and
Amabile 2010, p. 569). These interrelated forces include an individual’s
 2 Creativity    
17

neurological processes, their social environment, their position within

a social group, the group’s culture and the broader influence of society.
The following chapter presents these interrelated forces that influence
creative individuals by introducing research into creativity from a range
of disciplines including psychology (in several of its variants), philos-
ophy, sociology, and literary and cultural theory. Each section of the
chapter explores the research into creativity according to its discipline
and, where possible, in chronological order to show both the histori-
cal trends of creativity research. The first section reviews research that
broadly relates to creativity and the individual, which includes the cre-
ative personality, cognitive psychology and creativity, and finally crea-
tivity from a sociological perspective. The subsequent section reviews
studies into group creativity introducing approaches to studying groups,
group behaviour and group processes. The chapter concludes by iden-
tifying a more encompassing approach to study creativity and, specifi-
cally, the creative process of commercial record production.

The Creative Personality

Early studies into creativity focused primarily on the individual and their
biological makeup. Sir Francis Galton (1869) undertook the earliest
known study into creativity concentrating on the notion of ‘hereditary
genius’ by investigating its systems and consequences through historical
analysis. Although in later editions of his work Galton expressed the wish
to substitute the word ‘genius’ with ‘ability’, his introductory statement
outlined his central argument that: ‘a man’s [sic] natural abilities are
derived by inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form
and physical features of the whole organic world’ (1869, p. 1). Galton’s
investigation focused on a number of different categories of historically
prominent individuals such as judges, statesmen, kings, commanders,
writers, scientists, poets, painters, musicians, scholars, oarsmen and wres-
tlers and attempted to illustrate their inherited ability simply through
the depiction of their family lineage. However, Galton was unable to
prove his hypothesis and found numerous anomalies and irregularities in
his findings. So, creativity research progressed beyond a focus on basic
18    
P. Thompson

genetic legacy instead concentrating more on the ‘creative’ individual

with an emphasis on the creative personality.
Investigations into the creative ‘personality’ explore a creative individ-
ual’s personality traits and their personality type. Personality traits are
defined as: ‘the smallest units of individual variation that are consistent,
reliable and valid’ (Sawyer 2012, p. 63). Personality types are a finite set
of personality characteristics that can be used to classify creative individ-
uals. The study of creative personality traits began with the foundation
of the Institute for Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR) at the
University of California in the USA in 1949. Studies involved the invita-
tion of a peer-reviewed selection of creative people from a particular field
who were subjected to a series of tests to determine their personality traits.
After 20 years of research at the institute, and profiling a number of crea-
tive personality traits, it was found that the initial model of an ‘egghead…
longhair…withdrawn’ (MacKinnon 1978 as cited in Sawyer 2012) per-
sonality was almost entirely inaccurate. Rather, the personality traits iden-
tified by the researchers (independence, high energy, willingness to take
risks, attraction to complexity, independence of judgement and flexible
decision-making) were traits of content and productive individuals.
Creative personality research continued into the 1970s studying per-
sonality types as well as traits, in which numerous personality theorists
developed their own personality type models. The most widely used
personality type model is the ‘five factor model’ (Furnham 2008), com-
monly termed the OCEAN model, an acronym derived from the five
factors of Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion,
Agreeableness and Neuroticism (Costa and McCrae 1992). Of all of the
five traits, openness to experience has been shown to be the most closely
connected to creativity, which includes:

Openness to fantasy (a good imagination); aesthetics (being artistic); feel-

ings (experiencing and valuing feelings); actions (trying new things and
having many interests); ideas (being curious and smart, and welcoming
challenges); and values (unconventional and liberal). (Sawyer 2012, p. 66)

Research into creative personalities (Barron and Harrington 1981; Feist

1998; Tardif and Sternberg 1988) found that one of the most prominent
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