Imagination when composing

The other day I went to a park to sit and write some music. I write most of my music by hand into a spiral-bound manuscript paper notebook. I finished writing a song that’ll be titled, “Home.” It’s part of a larger album that’ll probably come out next year.

I often write music this way. Either just into a notebook without an instrument or at the piano. Sometimes I’ll write straight into a DAW, but not super often, and I don’t particularly enjoy writing that way. It doesn’t feel musical or creative. The other ways of composing do feel creative.

It feels like there is more possibility when looking at a blank page of manuscript paper.

It makes me feel more imaginative. There isn’t an actual audio file that you’re hearing of the song yet. Even if you do play it on piano, unless it’s for piano, you aren’t hearing the actual piece of music yet.

This doesn’t mean that it’ll be more difficult, but it does take some extra practice to do.

Learning to hear the notes you’re writing as if they are played by the correct instruments and imagining the correct sounds takes some practice. But it doesn’t take much extra practice. This skill is called audiation but that’s for a different post.

Audiating the music like this causes me to start from nothing. It causes me to start from just the sound and just from my imagination of what I want that specific piece of music to sound like. It’s all in my head basically. I enjoy that.

Another thing that this means is that it removes any physical playing ability from it. Sometimes if I’m composing a piece of music at the piano I’ll play it. If I can’t physically play all of it, then I have to choose to write something else, imagine and audiate it, or practice to make it playable. Being able to imagine it in your head is my favorite option of those.

So if you write music I recommend you try this at some point. At first it’ll be difficult and it might not sound how you want it to sound. Eventually with some practice you’ll get much better at it and you’ll be able to hear large ensembles in your head.

ISJ