Can you write music away from your instrument?

[shniggens]

Just curious how many of you can write down your ideas even when you do not have your instrument handy? If you do, do you have perfect pitch, or do you just try to get the intervals and the chord progressions right?

[mjm]

I tend to work out the intervals. Been doing his for years so it's really easy now.

 

The 'First line of songs' method is my favourite for working out the intervals. So for a perfect fifth it would be the last post, for a perfect fourth is would be the Mozart symphony thing (u.du.dududu, where u=you, d=dee and .=short pause), can't remember the name (if any of that made any sence ) Then you just adjust in semitones from there and that's it.

 

I'll shup up now

[Barandine Vondenger]

I get the idea and I can "hear/see" it in my mindes ear/eye ee I, e i, e i oh.

the entire thang. And sometimes the angels sang along. So I hear all the different voicings of all the different permutations of all the nuances in every song I make up. Would that drive someone a leetle aroun' the bend? could be, could be.. ahahaha~! we'll see.

I Hod to stay in the Pokey for a few um months and so Im wrote an entire tune in my head(I wrote the lyrics out of course and chord changes) and when I got out I played it exactly as I heard it except for all the other instruments.

So I just like, color in the lines I see in my head. It's all there. If I go look they're thousands lined up back there. thousands I say.

the lawnmower is a cool instrument for writing stuff.. Cool tones.

I make anything an instrument. except for bathroom sounds. UGH! sometime' the song is difficult to shut out.

The plopping of rain drops and the tinkle of a stream. yeah thats mo' bettah'.. . I hear songs in everything. Even when a happy person talks I can hear the song in their voice.

Look around; the song is everywhere just waiting for us to TAP INTO IT..

[AlChuck]

I can write down rhythms on paper and maybe get a rough idea of pitches but I really need something to double-check the latter. A pianer is as good as a geetar in that case... but those two classes of instruments are about all I can manage on.

[KenElevenShadows]

Yes, I can hum into a tape recorder or even write parts away from my instrument of choice. However, the difficult part is REMEMBERING it!!

[David R]

I write mostly away from my instrument. One composition teacher I had taught us to write exclusively what we heard in our ears, because your instrument can be a box -- you write what you can play. Do as much as you can away from your instrument, and then harmonize it at the piano (which happens to be my instrument).

 

I have nearly perfect pitch (it fails me on occasion and I really need to be focussing on the music), and I hear the intervals in my head.

 

David

[Philip OKeefe]

Sure - it's not a problem. But I have perfect pitch, so I can mentally "hear" what things would sound like on my instruments, and I think that helps me a great deal. However, remembering things can be the issue. As long as I have something to write some notation down with, it's not a issue.

[LiveMusic]

Yes, I often write with no instrument and it gets better all the time. I do not have perfect pitch but lately, I am finding that if I write down a progression in key of C or whatever and go to an instrument, I am on. It doesn't matter, though. Just being able to write the progressions is the important thing. The nuances of the melody, that's another thing. I need to fire up my small recorder. I've screwed up too many melodies that I could not later recall perfectly.

[henryrobinett]

Yes I can. One of the tunes I'm most proud of I wrote away from an instrument, mostly in a bar in Austria. I might get the initial key wrong but the intervals will be right 90% of the time. I can always fix a mistake later. I write on manuscript paper. I need to do this more often. Sometimes if I'm just hanging out with my boys watching TV I'll bring some manuscript paper, just for an exercise, and write anything. I've gotten some keeps this way.

 

I do agree DavidRR's teacher. Writing on an instrument - your instrument, can be a box. Your fingers tend to go to familiar territory and your ears hears what your fingers know, rather than your fingers playing what your ear hears.

[cherri]

I can, if I get the lyrics down, or at least enough lyrics so that I can recall the melody when I get to my guitar. Or I'll sing a bit into my PDA so I can refresh my memory later.

[Sean Eldon]

I have perfect pitch, and pretty much have had it since I started playing. I write a lot of music while hearing it in my head, walking around. Then I throw it all down into MIDI, and learn the parts afterward.

[Phait]

I moderately get good ideas in my head, but since I don't know notation yet, I have no way of writing them down. Oh yeah the pitch thing too.

 

I remember in high school, sitting in study hall and I had my own blank guitar tabulature paper, and would write fret numbers on the lines in ways that I thought might translate well but it was more like guesswork. The girl (a senior, I was a junior or sophomore) ahead of me asked what I was doing, and I told her, and she was kind of impressed... she didn't really play guitar but was kind of learning on an acoustic. We became in-school friends until our study hall supervisor rearranged everyone's seating, and this was really the only time we'd see eachother, maybe in the halls.

 

Then she graduated or something and I haven't seen her since, but I remember her name, and what city she lives in, and that kickboxing was a regular hobby for her

[Chip Curtis]

Play what's in your mind- not what your hands can do.

 

It's one of my favorite sayings, and we have the tools to do it.

 

Taken literally I suppose it doesn't make much sense. Of course you can't play without your hands. You can come up with a kill song though. The point I am trying to make is that an idea can come at any time and place. I can tell you where I was when I came up with any song I've written. Hospital stairways, shower, mowing the lawn- usually somewhere there is ambient noise or rhythmic machinery. Anyway, if you loose that idea, it could be gone forever- and I hate to have to do that lie down meditation thing to remember. Sure there are times when I get to my boards and go through the motions and I get good practice out of it. I don't usually come up with a good song that way though. I used to carry a mini cassette recorder or even phone home and whistle my idea into my answering machine. I have a bazillion cassettes littered with ten second of embarrassing humming- "Oh- that's just me" in the middle of a Rush tape or something. Yeah I have what people call perfect pitch, though I don't think you need it to write away from your boards. All you need is that radio in your head thing. Most people have that right? I know I have used a sound or a fumbling around riff as the basis of a song. That's cool and it works sometimes. The best songs for me are life inspired. They come like a lightnig bolt hitting the antenna in my head and I have to get it on tape now or I could loose it. It's like a gift that I better take advantage of.

 

The whole not what you hands can do thing is just to get out of the box. Hear the song as you envision , not nesc. how you would normally sit down and play live.

[Alndln]

I can write notation,but it can be a long ordeal so I don't do it anymore,plus sometimes I'm now inspired by synth textures which can be hard to notate.By the time I start working on something I'll change things anyway.I don't think about it anymore,I just use what's in my head at the moment.

[Bill Heins]

I hear it in my head...bitch is trying to get it out

 

Darkon

[skipclone 1]

Yes, and some of my more interesting pieces have been put together that way. I can write things out if it`s a single melody but if I hear something in my head I`ll remember the pitch when I go to an instrument so I usually don`t need to. I don`t believe that`s perfect pitch though, at least not absolute pitch. I may need to adjust the key to suit my voice better if there`s lyrics. But for the `more interesting` thing, I like finding ways to voice melodic ideas I already have better than noodling around on an instrument until something cool happens. Some of my songs aren`t guitar driven at all, I`ve had to come up with other ways to voice the ideas, those are some of my niftiest bits.

[Kendrix]

I totally agree that writing away from your instrument can free you from any limitations that you have on that instument.

 

While I can read music and have good pitch I am not adept enough at notating things I hear in my head to make this an efficient way to work.

So, I'll leave myself a voice mail with a melody line- -or make some sort of hand written note in an attempt to allow me to recall an idea later on.

 

Actually writing out the notation is something I've thought about working on - but it never rises to the top of my to-do list.

 

The other thing I sometimes do is write on an instrument that's not my main instrument. This can lead you in directions you might not have otherwise stumbled across.

[offramp]

What Darkon said.

 

It's almost as if my head is a radio, and there's some mischievous, ethereal being hanging out and switching the station just before I get to the paper or the studio.

One day, I'm gonna catch that bastard, bitch slap him, THEN kill him.

[DC]

I mostly write with a guitar (occationally piano) in one hand and pen and paper in the other but yeah, I've sat with just the pen and paper and written a song entirely in my head on many occations too. Also use the micro cassette for remembering melodies.

 

I don't have perfect pitch, but I've got relative pitch. Also like Duke, sometimes I'll get things in my head, go to my instrument and be in the right key right off the bat.

[Steve LeBlanc]

all of my best compositions were written straight from mind to paper...I wish I carried staff paper around as often as I used to...maybe I should start.

 

As far as the perfect pitch thing goes...no I don't have perfect pitch. I just pick a key, which ends up being close or the same as what I had in my head, sometimes by coincidence, others I think there is some pitch memory in my brain. more often than not I hear almost the whole arrangement when writing this way.

 

My ears are well-trained...never cared about perfect pitch, never needed it.

[Jeff Klopmeyer]

I almost always write on paper, either full staff paper or just charts. Occasionally I'll have an instrument around but usually not... it just hampers me, because I'll then limit my composition to what I can play at the moment (or feel like playing, which is often different than what I want to write).

 

Yes, I have perfect pitch, but that has little to do with being able to write away from an instrument IMO.

 

- Jeff

[doug osborne]

When I was at Berklee, many moons ago, studying composition, I developed good ability to write away from an instrument. I wrote big band and orchestral pieces this way, and I was working on writing transposed scores as I composed (really tough). These days, I would do this on the computer, but it's been a while since I did this kind of work.

 

I don't have perfect pitch, but a relatively well-developed sense of absolute pitch. As the perfect pitch campers will tell you, perfect pitch is often a curse.

 

Many songwriters say that if you are writing a song and it doesn't stick with you, it's not worth keeping - I don't agree with this at all. If I don't write it down or record it, trust me, it will be gone the next day.

[Jeff Klopmeyer]

Originally posted by Doug Osborne:

When I was at Berklee, many moons ago, studying composition, I developed good ability to write away from an instrument. I wrote big band and orchestral pieces this way, and I was working on writing transposed scores as I composed (really tough).

Me too (all of the above). My hardest assigned compositional work was not at Berklee but during my senior-level classes at Cal State Dominguez, where I got my bachelor's in music. You had no choice other than to write away from an instrument. In fact, often you wrote for instruments you couldn't play to save your life. I've written plenty of oboe parts for example, and it frightens me to even think about playing that thing.

 

As the perfect pitch campers will tell you, perfect pitch is often a curse.

Amen.

 

- Jeff

[doug osborne]

Mostly at Berklee I wrote away from a piano because Berklee was too cheap to buy enough pianos to go around, and piano majors always got first crack at them before us lowly composition majors.