The Flow Awards: Honoring Technology That Supports Flow

Recently I wrote an article complaining about how so much high tech music gear almost seems designed to disrupt flow. I used flow in the sense defined by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi ("Mee-high Chik-sent-mee-high"): the blissful experience of egoless, timeless absorption in your work. Csikszentmihalyi says it may well represent the pinnacle of human happiness, and I think many would agree. I pointed out many instances where flow succumbed to confusing interfaces, unpredictable behavior and the like.

But after griping about failures so much in that article, I've been thinking that there really is a need to recognize successes. So I propose the establishment of:

The Flow Awards. These will be given by an Academy Of Users in honor of technology (musical or otherwise) that supports flow. So far, the Flow Awards Academy is me. And in the spirit of flow, I'd like to get things rolling by handing out the first one.

And the first ever Flow goes to...

Masterwriter songwriting software, a great tool that has quickly become standard issue among songwriters, including Jimmy Webb, Jeffrey Steele, Rob Thomas and Trent Reznor.

Songwriting software? When I first heard about Masterwriter, I was very skeptical. After all, beyond some talent and a lot of work, good songwriting only requires a pencil and paper, and maybe a rhyming dictionary. I assumed that software was likely to be just technological frippery, especially given that paper is really hard to beat in terms of speed and usability, and given that Mastwriter's list price is $289, though you can get it for quite a lot less through some songwriters' organizations, such as ASCAP, The Muse's Muse or Nashville Songwriters Association International.

But the Masterwriter people wisely promote a free trial. And to try is to be sold.

Masterwriter was created by composer ("Nadia's Theme", "Theme From S.W.A.T."), producer and publisher (The Association, Tamerlane Music) Barry DeVorzon. It includes a lot of useful features, including a MIDI loop player and an audio recorder for capturing ideas quickly as you work, plus the optional ability to upload your work to an online vault for storage and (unofficial) copyright protection. But the instant clincher for me was simply this: the ability to search for rhymes much faster than you can using any paper-based rhyming dictionary. For example, let's say you need a rhyme for "flow". Highlight "flow" in your lyric and click the Rhymes button:

Instantly you go to a screen of possible rhymes:

It's such a simple feature, but it gets to the essence of flow: It's so responsive that it makes almost no demands on your conscious mind. In the few seconds you save, you avoid what can often be a fatal interruption, since while you're paging for rhymes in a paper rhyming dictionary, you're likely to start thinking about the fact that you're writing a song. And as soon as you do that, your non-creative self-consciousness has a chance to take over and start its usual thing of splashing around in your flow, anxiously asking How am I doing? How am I doing?

You can also filter the rhymes in a few different ways, as you'll see by looking under "Rhyme Categories" to the left in the image above. "Primary" will display the most likely rhymes, omitting choices like faux, throe and chapeau. But if you're the cussed type, "Secondary" will display only the less likely choices. "Pop Culture" is an innovative feature that displays rhyming pop culture phrases such as HBO, The Late Show and Lake Ontario. (I'm a little unclear about the pop culture role of Lake Ontario - did I miss something?) "Sound-Alikes" gives you near rhymes, as in right and like.

Now some might say that using any rhyming dictionary is a cheat, though I don't know of any pro songwriters who feel that way. It's true that a lot of dull songs do get written by people who use a rhyming dictionary unimaginatively, along such lines as When I saw you tonight/You know you made me feel right/blah-blah-blah sight/blah-blah-blah light/etc. But when used with an open mind, a rhyming dictionary is an I Ching-like source of inspiration, often leading you to discover ideas you'd never arrive at logically. If I were to continue my Flow song using Masterwriter, I might quickly come up with an obvious rhyme for I'm gonna let it flow such as I'm gonna follow this river wherever it goes...

But I might also be led down more imaginative routes by words like dobro:

Like a bottleneck sliding on an old dobro...

or row: The motor just quit, but I ain't gonna row...

or scarecrow: I'm gonna let it flow/I've been taking life lessons from an old scarecrow/Let the wind in the wheat go wherever it goes/I'm gonna let it flow...

Hmmm... I think I can work with that...

Simply by making it easier and faster to make such little discoveries, I think Masterwriter is worth every bit of the $200 or so I paid for it. And it's more than worthy, assuming we agree such a thing now exists, of a Flow Award.

What technology would you nominate for a Flow?