Listen as if it’s not your music

One thing I’ve been trying to do in my own music is to listen to it as if it’s not my own music; listen as if I’m just a listener, not the composer/producer.

This is a hard thing to do sometimes, for me at least, because I am the actual composer and producer. I did in fact write all of those melodies and harmonies and create the synths.

But if I can listen as a listener it helps me judge the music more objectively. I end up not caring as much about tiny details, but end up looking at larger structures. Did the feeling or emotion I wanted to convey come across? Was it follow-able? Did I get lost half-way through because the sections sounded too unrelated? Did it sound even or was I left wanting to hear one idea be fully developed?

These might be simple questions and sometimes not necessarily ‘musical’ questions, but they’re important to the construction and structure of a piece of music. Most listeners are not listening for the mixing or mastering or the synth construction. Most listeners are listening for broader ideas. And those broad ideas are just as important as the individual ideas.

The main question it helps me answer is “did I achieve my goal with this piece?” That might seem like a vague question, but it’s an important question to answer.

ISJ