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

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.
 
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! :shocked: Yep, Mid 70's I know
 
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. :laugh:
 
Reminds me of this article I read about sleeping habits of Da Vinci and Tesla:

"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.
 
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:

Wikipedia on 'Audiation':
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... :laugh:
 
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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@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.
 
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
 
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.
 
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 :laugh: 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. :grin:
 
@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
  1. Sleep on it. The half-asleep and half-awake times are the Holy Grail of diffuse thinking and breakthrough ideas. ...
  2. Take a walk. ...
  3. Take a break. ...
  4. Open Monitoring Meditation. ...
  5. Recommended book.
  6. Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey.
 
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...:rofl: guess I’m constrained a bit in my writing by my technique (or lack thereof...)
 
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! :roflmao:
 
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
 
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...

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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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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