I am a big big fan of people who find creative ways to express themselves, and I’m going to show off a couple examples that I’ve found on YouTube today.

I talk a lot about writing and creating your own songs, which is what I assume most of you reading this blog are into. But because of YouTube I’ve really started to learn that there are a lot of ways to be musically creative without creating a new piece of music, but rather altering an existing piece.

I’m actually not talking about simple covers, although there are a lot of great and creative covers on YouTube. (and now that I think about it, maybe I’ll post about them in the next week or so… maybe even sooner)

I’m actually talking about taking two pieces of music and combining them into one song.

There are two primary ways of doing this. The first way we’ll talk about is the “mashup”.

I’m actually really impressed with Mash-ups. Maybe I give them too much credit… I don’t know because I’ve never tried to make one… but I think it takes a good ear for music to hear two songs that can fit together well, and I think it takes some musical creativity to pull it off well.

My favorite mashup is a mix of an acoustic version of “Times Like These” by the Foo Fighters (one of my favorite bands), and “Sweet Child o’ Mine” by Guns N Roses. Check out the video:

I love that version of those songs. I listen to it often. Whoever made that video might not have picked up an instrument or written a completely new piece, but he was creative in putting two things together and made a song that is very enjoyable.

The second example is completely different. The guy in the video didn’t write a new song, but he took two separate songs (the theme song to The Simpsons and the theme song to the original Star Trek series) and put them together… by performing the new piece himself.

I love this video for a lot of reasons!

First of all, I love Star Trek, and I love The Simpsons.

Second of all, I love the fact that he was creative enough to blend the two songs in a very clever way.

And thirdly, I love his instrumentation: A keyboard, a theremin, and a funnel (yep, a funnel). I am a big fan of unusual instrumentation, no matter how “unprofessional” it may seem.

Check out the video:

These two songs are great examples of figuring out ways to express musical creativity.  It’s not always about writing or creating something brand new.  Sometimes it’s about looking at existing things in new ways.