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What John Coltrane can teach you about building your audience

By Patrick Gant

John Coltrane

No, don’t do that. Don’t run away.

Don’t let it scare you that I just name-dropped one of the giants of jazz.

Or that Coltrane’s music seemed complicated.

This post isn’t going to preach jazz to you. And the jazz police aren’t going to show up and arrest me for having the gall to use America’s finest art form as a platform to illustrate an important point about the power of audience building.

There’s valuable insight in here even if jazz isn’t your thing.

As a reader of thinkit creative, you could be here looking for advice on search-engine optimized writing for the web to generate online traffic and convert readers into buyers. Maybe you’re a writer looking to build a base of readers. Or perhaps you’re a professional speaker or you own a design studio and you’re looking to take your business to the next level of profitability.

Odds are good that you’re in the idea business. And that means your success hinges on finding and building an audience.

John Coltrane can help you with that.

Discipline

Even this giant of music started without an audience.

As a young musician, John Coltrane loved how saxophonist Charlie Parker wasn’t afraid to be playful with his music.

He emulated what he heard. Not as a cheap cut-and-paster of style.

Rather, his drive to decode Parker and other influential players became part of young Coltrane’s relentless practicing. Biographies on the man often quote fellow musicians who knew him early on, saying they’d never seen anyone put in the hours the way Coltrane did.

Out of the hours came the admirers. From the admirers came the listeners. And then the big breaks, like when he was invited to tour with the first time. Then the audience took hold and the Coltrane legend grew. It’s hard to imagine any of that happening in Trane’s career without the roots of discipline being as strong as they were.

Intuition

“Jazz…is a social music operating in a commercial context,” says Ben Ratliff of The New York Times in his book Coltrane: The Story of a Sound. “You give the audience what you think it wants. At the same time, you improvise, and try to bring out the part of you that is the least like anyone else.”

Groundbreaking ideas rarely find their audience quickly. It starts with thinking deeply about your audience and having as much of an understanding of what they want as what they might also be open to. Research will help you, but only up to a certain point.

Intuition goes well beyond calculating a market penetration or measuring the size of an audience. There’s a deeper art. And you only get to exercise that by trying and by experimenting based on a mix of what you know is true and on a hunch you have about what might be true.

Taste

Coltrane learned the hard way early on that masterful technique alone doesn’t win many ears. In fact, more than one audience in his career booed him for doing just that. He learned that ideas—especially the big ideas—have to be presented in a way that are pleasing to others. Often that means taking the time to package your ideas attractively.

One of Coltrane’s great achievements in the American songbook is what he did with his interpretation of the Rogers and Hammerstein classic show tune, My Favorite Things. The music says more than I can say in paragraphs about that. So have a listen.

Platform

To find and build an audience, your idea or your message needs a platform. My Favorite Things was a platform for Coltrane that helped him bring big-headed jazz to a wider audience. So what’s your platform? It can be a blog, an ebook, a series of newsletter articles, or a presentation (to name just a few examples). Invest the time to design that platform properly. Hire a good designer who can help you build something that people will enjoy using. That’s the front door. It’s how you’re going to invite your audience in so that they’ll stick around and see what else you have to say.

Mastery of any creative skill only comes from finding good influences and by putting in the hours to hone your skills. Work to emulate. This is how you learn how great ideas are constructed. Only then can your own voice emerge. Take chances and find ways to build entranceways for people to access even your edgy ideas with relative ease.

What Rush’s 2112 album can teach you about creativity

By Patrick Gant

I can already hear the groans from some readers. “Rush? Ahhhh! I can’t bear to listen to them!” And then there’s the other camp: the loyal fans who can recite word-for-word, riff-for-riff every song. There’s no middle ground with this Canadian trio.

Listeners either get it or they don’t.

This article isn’t to convince you to buy their records; it’s to make a point about creativity and about why it’s important to stay true to your vision—no matter what kind of work you do.

The story behind 2112 offers lessons that we all can learn from.

The future is uncertain

With more than three decades behind them and 24 gold records, including 14 that hit platinum in sales, it’s easy today with the benefit hindsight to say that Rush’s uncompromising approach paid off rather handsomely.

But their path to success wasn’t always so doubt-free.

No matter what kind of work you are in, if you care deeply about what do you, you’ll eventually face tough choices on how to make the product you want that is true to your vision. The future is rarely certain. When faced with a fork in the creative road, that is when you need to trust your gut.

Be ready to put it all on the line

Consider the situation Rush faced as they were getting ready to make that fourth record in their career. Things were looking” well” kind of dire. Today, the band acknowledges that they were at a turning point back then and that there was a very real risk that this was the end of the line for them as a band with a record deal. The previous album had not been well received in the market, their record company was pressuring them to produce a commercial product and even went as far as saying they should try sounding more like Bad Company (hard to imagine that, isn’t it?)

“We decided” let’s go out in flames,” recalls Rush frontman Geddy Lee. “They want a three minute hit? Let’s give them a 20-minute song.” So with their backs to the wall, on April Fool’s Day, 1976, they released 2112.

Know what matters and why

“Ignore everybody.” That’s what Hugh MacLeod advises as the first step to being creative. He’s right, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Being true to your creative instincts isn’t just about being stubborn or obstinate. You also need to have a crystal-clear understanding of your craft and a sense of direction to your work. It’s not enough to just want to do things your way on principle. As Malcolm Gladwell reminds us: “Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.”

I’ve held up 2112 as an example because even the band members acknowledge that was the first record where they felt they had carved a sound for themselves. They thought long and hard about what they wanted to say, and then then worked hard to achieve that vision.

Trust in the power of word-of-mouth

Even three decades since its debut, 2112 is still considered a record that many musicians use to measure their own mastery of their craft. By many others, it’s also admired simply as a great hard-rock record.

It didn’t get that way because of generous radio airplay. Remember, this was the 1970s. There was no online social media to help give a great idea some much needed traction. Instead, 2112 was a record that found its audience in that trusted, time-honoured way: people talked about it to others.

I’m not saying that creativity can only thrive by blazing a trail the way that Rush did with 2112. But there are valuable lessons to draw from. Your best ideas are rarely going to be embraced immediately by large groups of people. Some will try and dissuade you, telling you they know better.

Some will even try and get you to sound like Bad Company. And not in a good way either.

Be true to your craft and to the passion that drives you. The more what you have to say is authentic, honest and original, the more potential you have for doing something really outstanding.

The art of taking chances

By Patrick Gant

What does creativity mean to you?

To me, it’s what I call the art of taking chances.

Forget the labels on things, pull together ideas that you might otherwise assume would be an impossible match. The results can sometimes be really surprising.

Case in point: could you ever imagine Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis jamming on the same stage?

Neither could I, until I saw this.