# Can you describe what you "hear" when composing without an instrument in front of you?



## Hywel (Jun 12, 2021)

Hi All

Just gone away (on holiday) for the first time in about 18 months and this afternoon while enjoying the sunshine in the (not so quiet but beautiful) countryside my creative brain stirred. I have composed everything I have done so far in my life at some form of keyboard – piano mostly, and writing the music in my shorthand form on paper before then going into DAW record mode.

But this afternoon got me thinking about those of you out there that “hear” music in your heads before you even hit an actual note on an instrument…

It may be difficult for you to describe what you can actually hear but just give me some idea – is it an instrument sound or voice you hear, is it just a melody or can some hear harmonies (and be able to identify the chord), can some hear full and complete arrangements/orchestrations/symphonies in their heads?

I tried this afternoon to do a mind experiment and got nowhere, maybe it was because I have little to no musical ability. Even when at the piano noodling away I might hear what I think is a good start to a melody and I know where it needs to go, but my process then largely involves doing the “higher or lower” note seeking on the piano because I’m too lazy to work out the interval I’m thinking of.

I’d be very interested to hear what folks do “hear” in their heads when they compose without an instrument in front of them.


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## sundrowned (Jun 12, 2021)

I wouldn't be able to write anything without mentally hearing something first. It's usually a small snippet no longer than 8 bars though generally shorter of a melodic outline with basic accompaniment and orchestration and most importantly the feel of it. At that point it's important to either write it down or record singing it otherwise I forget.


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## mussnig (Jun 12, 2021)

Occasionally I get an idea (I don't know for sure actually - might also be something that I already heard somewhere but just don't recognize) and when I like it and don't have my MIDI keyboard nearby, I just record it with the phone (so I hum it in). Sometimes I just hear a melody but sometimes I imagine sort of some orchestration already. Usually when I listen to this humming at some point later I can remember again what I was hearing in my head. To actually make the music come "alive" in the DAW is a completely different "problem" though ...


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## InLight-Tone (Jun 12, 2021)

No. My hands have to be on keys, pads etc., or else I feel I'm in a straight jacket...


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## Trash Panda (Jun 12, 2021)

Usually the final product in its entirety. It’s maddening, but fun trying to figure out all the little pieces and fitting them together like a sonic jigsaw puzzle.


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## muk (Jun 12, 2021)

Hard to describe. Often it is a melody that simply is there. If I can't write it down immediately, I need to consciously memorize it or it is gone when I turn my attention elsewhere. But it can be a harmonic progression, a rhythm, anything really. It's always relatively short though. 8 bars or so. Certainly not a whole symphony, nor a finished piece. Shaping these ideas into finished pieces always takes hard work. (The myth that Mozart imagined finished pieces all in his head and then simply had to write them down is far from the truth by the way. He sketched a lot and worked hard on his pieces, like every composer in western classical music had to).

But how is a musical idea there? I can't really say. Close your eyes and think of a table. Do you see one? How do you imagine it? What do you see? Hard to describe, isn't it? For me it's the same with musical ideas. When a melody comes to mind, I can't say that it sounds like an oboe, or like a voice. It's just there and I can hum or whistle it. 

*****************************
Offtopic: 

Another, maybe somewhat related thing is that I see moving pictures when I close my eyes. Not just the neon blots you can see when looking into a source of light and then closing your eyes. But actual, realistic pictures. It can be a picture from nature, or something that looks like modern painting, or some style of comic book pictures. It's always different. And they are always there as soon as I close my eyes. They constantly evolve and move into different scenes. Quite interesting. I was surprised when I first realized that not all people experience this.


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## CT (Jun 12, 2021)

It's extremely hard to describe. One thing I can say clearly is that I'm not "hearing" in my imagination in sine waves; there's always a completely defined instrumental dimension to it even if the notes themselves might be somewhat uncertain. It's less like mentally recalling music you know well and more like groping around in the dark trying to feel something new. There's something very tactile about it, if that makes any sense at all. Maybe it's some variant of synesthesia but I always experience music almost as a type of physical sensation, as if you could reach out and touch it, and that's usually the first way I can experience a new idea, and as more is "revealed" it's like looking at a material object, a structure. Eventually it starts to feel how any other piece of music you know well feels in the mind.

Very frustratingly, my brain can do this with the most clarity when I'm on the verge of sleep. Then, I can "hear" stuff completely enough that it'd just be a matter of transcribing it, if I could hang on to any of it after waking myself up. Instead, it's usually a more laborious and prosaic process of figuring out how to let the imagination do its thing in small spurts while being alert and aware enough to somehow capture it.

Don't know if this will make any sense to anyone else....

Oh, another thing I can say with certainty is that these inner musical ideas are almost always better than what eventually gets worked out. It's as if I'm getting a radio signal from... somewhere, and then relaying a much degraded version of that signal. Or like I'm the universe's worst Telephone player.


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## Hadrondrift (Jun 12, 2021)

Hywel said:


> can some hear full and complete arrangements/orchestrations/symphonies in their heads?


At least Ludwig van Beethoven could, he famously composed his monumental 9th Symphony ("Freude schöner Götterfunken...") when he was almost completely deaf. No humming, no whistling, not noodling at a piano. Just sitting in a front of a sheet of paper with a pencil. So "composing in the head" is possible in principle, somehow he must have had an inner idea, an inner "hearing" of how his melodies and harmonies would sound like. For me, this is a small miracle.

Maybe it may take years of intensive practice before one is able to experience music without hearing. Then, apparently, real hearing is no longer necessary for composing itself. It happens in the head, in the inner musical imagination. Very fascinating.


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## Alex Fraser (Jun 12, 2021)

Great topic.
It depends on what style I’m writing in. Sometimes I’ve no idea where I’m going and the track has to be dragged into life, kicking and screaming.

For orchestral stuff, as the instruments are already defined, I can “hear” the basic outline of the arrangement in my head before reaching for the DAW. Broad strokes without the details, though.

Also, I have perfect pitch (albeit less accurate with age) so in my head everything is the correct pitch. Or maybe a semi either way. But that can also be a curse: I have real difficult playing a keyboard that’s been transposed.


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## Wedge (Jun 12, 2021)

It often starts as the voice in my head saying, as if I was describing a melody a line, doo dududu dooooo do doo. And then it evolves and fills in a bit, and I'll wind up with background lines slowly filling it out. The parts that fill things out usually 'sound' like really shitty string synths from the 90's or like the Rickenbacher that was my main guitar for a long time growing up (only kinda muffled.) Unfortunately after a certain point the whole thing just starts looping, it's usually a one to two minute loop. So after that I have a nice start/intro but I often don't know where to take it.


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## Markus Kohlprath (Jun 12, 2021)

muk said:


> The myth that Mozart imagined finished pieces all in his head and then simply had to write them down is far from the truth by the way. He sketched a lot and worked hard on his pieces, like every composer in western classical music had to.


How do you know? Never read that somewhere. I'm interested in a book about Mozart's workflow.


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## Mr Greg G (Jun 12, 2021)

It really depends. I sometime hear the whole arrangement in my head in an ephemeral way. I can have it in mind for a long time as long as I don't listen to other music or hit notes on the keyboard. And this is where it gets difficult: as soon as I try to reproduce the idea or whole arrangement, I have to constantly remind myself of the orchestral snippet every 10s-20s or so or I can lose everything. These ideas generally come when in bed or while taking a shower which is not very convenient. If I don't have access to a keyboard or computer within the next minutes, I will just accept to lose and forget everything. Ideas come and go. 

For me I find it way easier to exactly transcribe what I have in mind if this is only a rhythmical idea, a string motif or a melody with no arrangement. But what makes everything shines is the arrangement. And this is so easy to lose. It happened quite a lot


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## muk (Jun 12, 2021)

Markus Kohlprath said:


> How do you know? Never read that somewhere. I'm interested in a book about Mozart's workflow.



Extensive research on his sketches has been conducted in the past 30 years or so. Notably by Ulrich Konrad: 

Konrad, Ulrich (1992) "Mozarts Schaffensweise", Göttingen: Vandehoeck & Ruprecht.

For a quick overview: 









Mozart's compositional method - Wikipedia







en.m.wikipedia.org


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## toomanynotes (Jun 12, 2021)

I do it all in my head. Maybe you can practise it? I used to spend many hours travelling and kept on replaying tracks in my head until they stuck and then rearrange them, as not to waste precious time.
I mean, what’s the difference between playing a track in your head say like your favourite song on replay, which I assume everyone can do and then just taking it apart in your head?
If i want to make sure I remember; I will have to record it with guitar chords with vocal melody. The orchestration will just pop bck in my head on playback. It’s still a pain in the ass to transcribe.
thanks


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## Snarf (Jun 12, 2021)

I think the concept you're looking for/discussing is called 'aural imagery' or 'audiation': "the comprehension and internal realization of music by an individual in the absence of any physical sound."

Here's a wikipedia article:





Auditory imagery - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Wikipedia on 'Audiation':





Gordon music learning theory - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


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## mopsiflopsi (Jun 12, 2021)

Mike T said:


> Very frustratingly, my brain can do this with the most clarity when I'm on the verge of sleep. Then, I can "hear" stuff completely enough that it'd just be a matter of transcribing it, if I could hang on to any of it after waking myself up. Instead, it's usually a more laborious and prosaic process of figuring out how to let the imagination do its thing in small spurts while being alert and aware enough to somehow capture it.
> 
> Don't know if this will make any sense to anyone else....



OMG!!! Yes! So glad to hear it's not just me. When I tell people this they think I'm bragging or something but it's not really doing me any good. It's infuriating especially as a beginner, to know that part of your brain can effortlessly compose spine tingling pieces like nobody's business, while your waking self has to work with baby steps towards something that doesn't sound tenth as good as what the other "you" is capable of. 

The same thing happens to me with art. At the edge of wakefulness I can picture a scene or texture or a face with photographic detail, or a painting where I know how and where each brush stroke should land. When I'm fully awake I can't paint or draw to save my own life. It's cruel is what it is.

In terms of how I hear things as my conscious self, I can hear melodies very clearly in my head, even if instruments are kinda fuzzy. There's usually a color that goes with the music, and I try to hang on to that color when I'm trying to figure out what instruments/registers to use.


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## Living Fossil (Jun 12, 2021)

I'm also one of those, who (through some decades of routine) have come to a point where the imagination of musical ideas in the head is rather comprehensive.
It usually includes melodies, the harmony, relevant other voices (usually the bass; voices that have a distinctive contrapunctical role like countermelodies; but also characteristic figurative voices), and the "basic sound" in general. Usually i steno ideas down on paper with the relevant elements immediately, since – as others have written – ideas not only can come very fast. Usually they also may leave you quite fast.

Answering the question how the sound in the head sounds, is a really tough one.
It's not a hearing as the hearing of real soundwaves, but still it's very sensual. Sometimes when quite a complex bit of music appears, it has quite an adrenalising effect. It's maybe the best feeling i know.
Unfortunately, this doesn't take away the whole work that comes with giving birth to an idea, which usually includes a lot of pondering.

However, when comparing music in the head with listening to real music, there is an optical illusion that i quite like. It gives an "emotional" impression of how sounds sound in the imagination.
So, in this illusion, the imaginary colours bear a similar feeling than the sounds in the head. 
(EDIT: you have to click on the link...)



https://i.gifer.com/TyFb.gif


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## d.healey (Jun 12, 2021)

Tumbleweeds


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## ptram (Jun 12, 2021)

I hear an ensemble, orchestra or electronic device playing the piece I’m composing mentally, already finished and ready to be transcribed. To be true, I also see some of the score, even if far from fully detailed at all times. It's more groups of notes in particular zones of the staves.

No — just joking. What I hear is more similar to an audio cassette tape jamming. But, admittedly, it is not all that different from the music I write.

Paolo


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## Chris Harper (Jun 12, 2021)

I have always had a very good memory for sound. From a young age, I could recall the sound of songs I had heard a few times in great detail.

At some point before I started writing music, I started “imagining” music in the same way I could always remember it. I don’t know that I would say “full arrangements” but I definitely “hear” multiple parts simultaneously. “Hear” is the only way I can describe it, because I really do have the sensation of hearing music. It has a beginning, an end, a tempo, etc. At the very least, I always hear a melody and underlying chords. Often, there are very specific harmony parts my brain has already worked out. Sometimes it will resemble a full orchestra or a pop arrangement, but not necessarily down to the smallest details. I always fill things out a bit more after finishing the main parts.

I do always hear specific instruments/sounds in my head. If I try to imagine notes detached from some kind instrument, I can’t do it. The specific instruments can be anything, but they are specific. It may be strings, it may be piano, it may be the voice of Weird Al Yankovic for that matter, but it’s always a sound I have heard before.

Songs in my head have a definite key, and I have to transcribe it in that same key. I can’t transpose it in my mind. It’s permanently stuck in the key it is in until it exists outside my brain. And I don’t like transposing it even after it’s in the DAW. Drives me crazy.

And, there is a catch. It very often starts out completely involuntarily. Often, a small piece playing over and over in a loop. An earworm that’s never been heard before. It can be quite aggravating sometimes, to be honest. I have to make a more active effort to compose, but songs often start out as something that my brain concocted involuntary.

I write everything in my head before I touch the keyboard. I don’t necessarily mean I write the entire song. I’m usually write 4 or 8 bars at a time, creating the next bit in my head as I am finishing the previous. I usually finish every main instrument part before moving on. Melodies and harmonies are recorded simultaneously. The keyboard is not inspiration for me when I compose…it’s data entry. I often compose by programming several parts at once in the piano roll with the mouse instead of playing. It’s just faster and I make too many mistakes on the keyboard. I love playing the piano, but not while I’m composing a song.


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## Stephen Limbaugh (Jun 12, 2021)

Resource on “audiation.”





__





Audiation – GIML – The Gordon Institute for Music Learning






giml.org






edit: oops sorry @Snarf didn’t see you had posted about audiation. 🤙🏻😎


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## CATDAD (Jun 12, 2021)

I can describe them separated in to lines (melody, harmony, basslines, percussion, etc) but I'm not great at picking apart large chords that are played together, say on a single piano or guitar. This is a weakness I have listening to actual music as well, so I'm hoping with some practice that comes too, since in my mind the chords are playing, I just can't listen that well. The whole song is there, but just like when critically listening to someone else's music, I can only focus on a few parts at one time.

I would say transcribing what's in my head is about the same as transcribing a song someone else wrote. As I get better at picking out those parts with real-world songs, the same happens with what I hear in my head! The biggest difference being that I am also trying to hold this composition in my mind as well, so if I'm picking at it too long it may start to change partway through. So to that end it can be useful to hum, play, or write it out as I go so I don't forget those lines, and the bigger and more detailed the project becomes, the more likely details are to change if I get distracted.

It's kind of like how writing out your thoughts about a subject can help you work with the information better, because it's not constantly shifting and changing as you go, you have a point of reference to come back to.

I also don't have perfect pitch, so if I haven't been holding specific notes in my head in the last few minutes it can change key by a few semitones, similar to when I imagine a song I've heard before.


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## jazzman7 (Jun 12, 2021)

I also usually get parts of a piece or Motif in that twilight period between wakefulness and sleep. It also often happens while I'm doing things during the day unrelated to music. 

I'd sometimes hum a melody into the phone, or answering machine (back in the day). The problem is that what happens in my head has an inner orchestra or band. The melody outside of that environment is meaningless. I can't tell you how often I listened to a recorded melody, Whistle, hum, or whatever later on, only to find that melody line useless since the orchestra of the mind has faded back into that twilight. Sometimes it comes back quickly, most of the time it doesn't. 

My solution has been to use my phone audio recorder, my voice, and the guitar standing in for the inner band. I know guitar best so it's easiest to somewhat transcribe that inner essence using that. This is my least Left brain intensive method to quickly preserve the essence.

I kind of liken the inner space of music with the Quantum space of possibility. Soaring legatos, effortless transitions, Harmonies. Musical mutterings from Bach to the Beatles flow effortlessly there. The Right brain universe. 

Then when it's time to translate and create it out here in the classical world, the Left brain starts in. The laborious part begins. The easy transitions from the hard streets to Valhalla are suddenly not so easy. Life is suddenly filled with MIDI CC, Bringing up Kontakt instances, and "Oh, that's a Lydian scale and it modulates up with THIS particular progression". 

The reason for theory and musical skill becomes so clear. It makes the translation from endless possibilities to the created object so much easier.

Why O why did I ignore my guitar teacher when he wanted to work on the circle of fifths? Because I wanted him to show me how to play Band on the Run!  Yep, Mid 70's I know


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## CT (Jun 12, 2021)

mopsiflopsi said:


> It's infuriating especially as a beginner, to know that part of your brain can effortlessly compose spine tingling pieces like nobody's business, while your waking self has to work with baby steps towards something that doesn't sound tenth as good as what the other "you" is capable of.


Well, I'm not sure I'd call anything I hear in those liminal moments "spine tingling," heh. It's not necessarily any better than what I can otherwise manage, it's just a lot more _clear _and it flows completely naturally. If I had some sort of brain-integrated MIDI controller maybe I could compose while napping.


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## mopsiflopsi (Jun 12, 2021)

Reminds me of this article I read about sleeping habits of Da Vinci and Tesla:








Leonardo da Vinci and Nikola Tesla Allegedly Followed the Uberman Sleep Cycle


Will six 20-minute naps per day make you more productive?




www.discovery.com







> "One of his secrets, or so it has been claimed, was a unique sleep formula: he would sleep 15 minutes out of every four hours, for a daily total of only 1.5 hours of sleep."


The article talks about short sleep giving you more hours to work within the day as a productivity boost, but I wonder if it was more that constant "edge of sleep/wakefulness" state due to sleep deprivation that gave Leo and Niko their edge. To have constant access to that twilight zone of creativity would be mind blowing. Also very unhealthy.


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## mopsiflopsi (Jun 12, 2021)

Mike T said:


> Well, I'm not sure I'd call anything I hear in those liminal moments "spine tingling," heh.


My spine might be more easily tingled than yours.


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## Hywel (Jun 13, 2021)

Snarf said:


> I think the concept you're looking for/discussing is called 'aural imagery' or 'audiation': "the comprehension and internal realization of music by an individual in the absence of any physical sound."
> 
> Here's a wikipedia article:
> 
> ...


Interesting... I'd not come across that concept before but it does seem to embrace a lot of what we're all talking about.
I find it fascinating that there is such variability in how this manifests itself from the folks that have responded to my question, but there are a few common themes...
1. short fragments of melodies or harmonies
2. easily forgotten, as if the human cache memory is overwritten
3. ideas occurring as if from nowhere and often at inconvenient times or on the edge of sleep

Otherwise some describe "hearing" specific instruments or arrangements while others are more uncertain of what exactly it is they experience.

Several describe having the chore of then transcribing the imagined piece into more transferable form, sometimes ending with a result that was not as good as they originally imagined, and I note there wasn't ONE mention of anyone going through the processes of mastering or exporting stems in their heads...


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## youngpokie (Jun 13, 2021)

I think imagining music while half-asleep is a fundamentally different thing than actively composing in your mind when wide awake. The former is probably akin to vague, endless and _shapeless_ flow of music. In order to pick out the detail, we have to focus on (and admire) this or that aspect in our mind, otherwise it's more of a general sensation and experience. 

The latter, actively composing without an instrument when wide awake, is a very different state because composition is an intellectual and analytical process. It always involves consciously creating, modifying of some structure - aka "the form". 

Therefore, I do not believe we really "compose" when we're half asleep. And even when we're awake, I doubt many people actually go that far beyond what some of the greats (Mozart, Tchaikovsky, others) have documented - i.e. imagining not more than a single melody, with some harmonic outline and some color (e.g. instrument playing it) but then actively and purposefully working, shaping, developing and refining that material. I think that's the most that people can do when composing without an instrument. 

The difference, beside the melodic quality, between the greats and "the rest of us" is that they could commandeer their imagination at will and direct it at each stage of the process. They also had a vastly more sophisticated toolbox to use (harmony, form, etc). And a highly developed inner ear to write it all down precisely.


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## mopsiflopsi (Jun 13, 2021)

@youngpokie I would not describe what I hear in those half awake moments as vague or shapeless. What makes it so jarring for me is the opposite: that it’s often more clear and precise than what my mind’s ear can imagine when fully awake. 

Regarding the intellectual and analytical quality of it: I suspect you are in a way wrong (which I cannot prove). I suspect we may all have a very innate and intuitive grasp of music that is somehow suppressed by our more rational side, and we may be just using all the analytical frameworks as an approximation of the real thing. Kinda like savant vs professor sort of thing maybe. 

I worry sometimes when I try to describe my experience of this thing people might think I’m a nutjob, which might be happening here haha. So l’ll stop now.


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## ProfoundSilence (Jun 13, 2021)

There are exercises to fix this, however it requires a teacher. 

I couldn't write music without it, I hear it in my head before I play it. The piano part is the part I suck at haha


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## mybadmemory (Jun 13, 2021)

I never hear anything in my head before having fingers on a piano or keyboard. And even then I don’t hear first and play afterwards, I play first and simply hear what I play.

If I like it I either record it or try to remember it. I guess I compose with my hands rather than with my head. My head is only acting as a curator for the ideas my hands spit out.


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## Mistro (Jun 13, 2021)

Since I was a kid, I always had some kind of music in my ears either from a song being stuck there after listening to it or I would take a melody I heard and make an extended version of it for the rest of the day. I even gave some characters in my neighborhood their own soundtrack  Sometimes it could be sitting in the bathroom and a melody just starts flowing and I hear all the nuances of harmony etc. I actually find that I play the keyboard better when just free-styling as opposed to getting all "smart" about a structure. Just like in my head, I imagine what direction the sound is going in. The structure forms for me in the key melody parts and just like in painting I leave room for the unintended details I could not do on purpose that makes the magic happen. I'm a firm believer the music and all the things that matter to us lives inside of us. Drawing what we see or hear takes some effort of slowing down and listening. What's going on inside our minds comes before what the rest of the body actually does so I think composing without an instrument is actually good practice. Wow, i just had a conversation with myself while writing this.


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## jazzman7 (Jun 13, 2021)

mopsiflopsi said:


> @youngpokie I would not describe what I hear in those half awake moments as vague or shapeless. What makes it so jarring for me is the opposite: that it’s often more clear and precise than what my mind’s ear can imagine when fully awake.
> 
> Regarding the intellectual and analytical quality of it: I suspect you are in a way wrong (which I cannot prove). I suspect we may all have a very innate and intuitive grasp of music that is somehow suppressed by our more rational side, and we may be just using all the analytical frameworks as an approximation of the real thing. Kinda like savant vs professor sort of thing maybe.
> 
> I worry sometimes when I try to describe my experience of this thing people might think I’m a nutjob, which might be happening here haha. So l’ll stop now.


I agree with this view, so maybe the nutjob count has gone up! 

I just had an example of this occur a cpl nights ago. 

I was pounding away on a new tune in the Pop/Rock idiom and had what sounded like a verse and bridge. This first part had come after waking a couple of months earlier. I had recorded the raw guitar and vocal to my phone then. I listened to it and opened the DAW and begin some serious work. 

I pounded away for several hours but reached a dead end. I had what seemed like a verse and bridge. I could not come up with anything like a suitable Chorus. I went to bed at 3 am. 

Just as I was drifting off to sleep, the Chorus I had thought was not going to happen just hit me. As usual, I did not want to get up, but there was no doubt about this one. I went back to full DAW mode to lay this part down and soon I had what was the most vital part of the song. I can't say that every single detail was just handed to me, but the gist of it was. All that was left was to work out the transitions. It did take a lot of work, but every musical idea I've ever had, waking or sleeping, did as well. 

There would have been nothing had this not happened. When I told my son this, he called it diffused thinking. He was spot on. I looked it up:

*Ways to Activate Your Diffuse-Thinking Superpower*

Sleep on it. The half-asleep and half-awake times are the Holy Grail of *diffuse thinking* and breakthrough ideas. ...
Take a walk. ...
Take a break. ...
Open Monitoring Meditation. ...
Recommended book.
Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey.


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## giwro (Jun 13, 2021)

It’s different for me each time.... but sometimes I can hear the themes/melodies with quite comprehensive orchestration.... sometimes just the theme and I have to flesh out the orchestration later.

What is odd, is that I do improvise on the organ, and there have been times I will get a pretty comprehensive “plan” of what I want to do, and I can pretty much sit down and play it as I’m hearing it in my head (assuming my technique is up to it....)

There have only been a few times I’ve composed away from an instrument, and it generally a lot harder to play... guess I’m constrained a bit in my writing by my technique (or lack thereof...)


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## Karl Feuerstake (Jun 13, 2021)

If I'm highly inspired, I can clearly hear in my head instrument parts and distinguish between what each of them is doing. I might hear a complete orchestral texture with many instrumental voices simultaneously, such as brass/strings/drums, or I might only hear only the brass/strings and work out the percussion after. I might hear a couple phrases, but seldom more.

It's translating that into MIDI that either loses some information because of the time that takes, or that I ultimately fail because my 'self-notating' skills just aren't refined enough yet.

Then if I'm not inspired I just hear nothing. Or other music. And that's annoying!


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## Thundercat (Jun 14, 2021)

When I was a teenager I woke up in the middle of the night, startled, hearing "actual" trumpets playing. It shocked me as I realized it was actually entirely in my head. I realized if I focus I can "hear" any instrument very clearly. If I don't concentrate then it's just a general fluff of "sound" like a melody or something.

Anyway I need to consciously focus on it or it remains a generic "fluff" audio sound, but I really should develop this further. And stop wasting time posting on forums lol.

I'm sure many of you have something similar.

Mike


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## youngpokie (Jun 14, 2021)

mopsiflopsi said:


> I worry sometimes when I try to describe my experience of this thing people might think I’m a nutjob, which might be happening here haha. So l’ll stop now.


@mopsiflopsi I don't think you're a nutjob at all and the experiences you've had are just as valid as anyone else's experiences. In my own case, the most vivid music I've imagined when half asleep happened when some kind of performance was part of the plot. I was watching a concert, performing at a concert, etc.

I should mention, too, that I had "classical" music in mind when I wrote earlier that I didn't think we truly _compose_ when half asleep and that what we hear is a shapeless blur unless we focus and zoom in to pick out the details, such as melody.

The reason I think this is true is also because we've had _several thousand_ talented and highly trained composers, including more than a handful of sheer geniuses who lived before us, and none of them, to my knowledge, claimed to have written more than a melody and a chord progression while asleep or half-asleep. And these were people who never had a problem instantly and correctly writing down everything they were hearing...



mopsiflopsi said:


> Regarding the intellectual and analytical quality of it: I suspect you are in a way wrong (which I cannot prove). I suspect we may all have a very innate and intuitive grasp of music that is somehow suppressed by our more rational side, and we may be just using all the analytical frameworks as an approximation of the real thing. Kinda like savant vs professor sort of thing maybe.


I agree that humans have an innate musical ability that we either develop, ignore or even suppress as we grow up. But as far as I know, this alone has never resulted in a sophisticated musical composition, especially orchestral.

That's partly because the only innate music we know to naturally exist is the pentatonic based folk scale or the like. Everything else is artificially created on top of it, in search of more and more expressive power. The pop, rock and classical-era harmonic language we claim to have _innate_ ability for are in fact artificially constructed musical systems that are neither innate nor natural. The entire and highly complex concept of "musical form" that gives energy to any music is likewise an artificial creation derived from the innate "beginning-end" states. We take all this for granted because we're exposed to it since birth.

Just like any other art form, this artificial construction/expansion of musical systems has been going on for hundreds of years now and that's why it takes so long to study and master these conventions, and also why the musical works that we admire as masterpieces are, without exception, highly constructed, calculated and "composed" intellectual creations.

EDIT: Maybe this is too nerdy and obscure, but perhaps a simpler way to articulate the point I'm trying to make is this. We love music because it creates a kind of a "high", an intense emotional experience. That's what those "constructed" and composed systems were designed to do, make us feel ever more intensely. A non-professional person almost always listens to music emotionally, while a trained person listens analytically as well as emotionally. And so I think we imagine music when we're half asleep in an attempt to re-create this emotional "high" and to re-live that experience, and when we wake up we marvel at the emotional quality of what we had experienced rather than any compositional aspect of it, such as the melodic contour, the harmonic pattern, the fluid voice leading, etc.


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## nolotrippen (Jun 14, 2021)

I hear the instruments.


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## Soundbed (Jun 14, 2021)

Hywel said:


> just a melody or can some hear harmonies (and be able to identify the chord), can some hear full and complete arrangements/orchestrations/symphonies in their heads?


This is an interesting thread.

I didn't realize there were so many variations across our experiences.

My experience is that I'm rarely at a loss for musical "ideas".

They tend to arrive in my imagination with all instruments and "orchestration" as a finished snippet. An excerpt. A needledrop.

I can easily morph them or push them around into other ideas, or imagine them with different instruments. Slower, faster, folkier, more "classical" or more "modernist" or more baroque / renaissance. I can throw in a hip hop beat or a breakbeat or a four on the floor dance beat and mash them up. It's all very easy to move around, in my head. I've practiced this with directors when working on sound design for live theater or when working with choreographers or on my own musical theater productions.

But these glimpses of what could be are usually only short snippets.

And they are only ideas; possibilities.

Sometimes they appear as a result of some suggestion; a brief I am reading from a publisher, or a memory or conversation or overheard phrase I can turn into a lyric.

When I'm close to sleeping, or walking and something "pops in" without planning, I usually want to simply experience for a little while ... and these can be a bit longer.... I tend to "listen" to them for a while to see if I want to grab a phone and TRY to pin them down with my voice.

If I try to make them manifest in the physical world, they are extraordinarily mercurial.

Trying to "catch" them feels like trying to look directly at something that's always on the periphery of your vision. As soon as you look at it, it's already moved. Almost like a cat in a box, it's state seems to change as a result of being observed.

As soon as I play or sing a REAL note, one that vibrates physical air at a given frequency, the "playing" part begins.

*I get to PLAY with the idea, and it continues to morph and change whether I like it or not.*

Sometimes I "capture" it but whether I do or not; sooner or later I question whether or not what I've produced in the physical world is something I prefer to let remain or keep trying to "hone in" on what it could be....

For this reason I usually prefer to start with capturing rhythms. I've found that rhythm frees me a bit, to explore possible melodic or harmonic directions to take the idea. But they suggest the idea and help me remember it vaguely as a sort of inspiration.

To be more concrete and specific I don't always get the intervals and notes correct when playing on the piano or guitar, and I certainly don't always know what inner voices should or could be. I usually focus on the rhythms, melody and bassline and by that time I've already continued exploring variations of the original idea anyway.

I try not to get too tied to the initial idea or inspiration. Not only because it seems to move or change when I try to make it manifest — but also because I have so many [ideas], and I need to "find" the best ones for the current project.

In conclusion, I no longer get obsessed with bringing "the music in my head" into the real world. It really doesn't matter what musical "ideas" are in my head.

Similarly, *pictures I've never drawn, words I've never spoken, houses I've never built *and* gardens I've never planted don't really matter.*

What matters (to me) is the music we can share with each other. Not what's "in our head".

o/t — I've thought a lot in my life about what it would be like to "connect" to another person (by means of some sort of sci-fi neural networking cable?) and share thoughts instantly. But the reality is all communication (words, images, sounds) is a gross, stylized abstraction, barely able to capture even a tiny fragment of our thoughts — much less communicate them to another person. The other person will always immediately envelop whatever futile scribbles we put forth (no matter how "developed") with all THIER thoughts and their reactions and their experiences, of which we may never have conceived. So the best we can do as good communicators is to listen. Try to listen to what other people might have been trying to put forth, without polluting it with our own observations and reactions too quickly. It's a near instantaneous act but something we can practice.


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## CT (Jun 14, 2021)

Soundbed said:


> Trying to "catch" them feels like trying to look directly at something that's always on the periphery of your vision.


I've used this exact analogy. Interesting!


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## Rodney Money (Jun 14, 2021)

I can hear everything in my head with the complete orchestration no matter the instrumentation or complexity. I can also hear the combination of instruments in my head also, for example, euphonium+trombone+bassoon.

Often I will compose the entire piece in my head and just use the computer as an engraver of sheet music. When I do a mock-up it’s normally “just for fun” or to inspire a client and get them to commission a new work. I spend more time making the sheet music look good than actually “doing the math” aka writing the piece.

Hearing the sound before you play is what a lot of musicians do also before they play a note. For example, when I practice trumpet I have the perfect sound in my head then try to emulate it through my horn. And sometimes I hear a sound in my head that cannot be reproduced so I have to invent the instrument to do it:
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/BGqsw6Md4Tif55b7A


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