[walod]

I think that people who are creative have to know the history and repertoire in order for their brain to make the new connections to make the new thing, but I think that creative leap when your brain makes those new connections is not something an artist controls directly. It comes from experience and being "into something", and random accident from experimentation.

The artist doesn't necessarily know why something is new though, even if they have a lot of experience, it's just a primal response they get to a new piece of music they are working on for example, and then they can try to analyze it after the fact. Most artists I know aren't as methodical as the way you seem to describe, it's a lot more intuition and experimentation, and then because of their vast listening experience their brains are adjusted so that they aren't satisfied with existing stuff

[gnaritas]

I agree. I'm not saying they're methodical, I'm saying you have to know the rules before you can forget the rules and let your real creativity come out.