Writing what's in your head

To sum it up, the music I hear in my head is always much better than the one I managed to write down. What I feel I lack the most is the abiility to accurately write down what I hear, and I'd love some advice on how to improve in that area. I'm sure it's something that also affects other unexperienced composers, since I hear a lot about it from other people I know.

I've already told you: practise dictation.

Write down melodies that you hear. Get a CD or something, and listen through several times, trying to write down one theme.

Work up from easy to difficult. Practise regularly.

just listen to all the music you can get your hands on, play the themes on the piano fooling around with them and depending on what kind of music you're working with it will get easier very quickly. (classical is easy to hear and write once you learn a little about harmony and counterpoint since it's pretty simple to understand and train your ear to, but modern types are a bit more difficult.. it's just going to take more experience and involvement with this type of music before you eventually find it second nature).

By that do you mean that when the music you write down on finale is not what you had in your mind? Because even with GPO, I don't think finale's sound is realistic in any way. It might "sound" realistic, but many things, such as the dynamics (the relative dynamics especially), are not realistic (as in, what you hear from finale is not what you'd hear from a live performance, with the same score).

Stockhausen had spent hours and hours in his studio before he could finally reach a stage when he could just hear a sound and then go to the synthesizer and synthesize a sound similar to that (as similar as computers can, anyway). Dictation is good, but I wouldn't say it's the absolute way to go. Singing is also good. It might seem weird, but singing helps a lot. When you sing in a choir, for example, you get to hear what the other parts are doing while you sing your own, and thus you can distinguish between all the different parts in a piece with more than one line.

All the advice thus far is great, and I'll just add that listening to music with scores is a tremendous help because if you like a passage out of Mahler, you can read the score and help get general ideas of what he was doing to achieve different effects.

But of course, you must also practice with your ear and have music performed. Those help.

I find it really easy if you listen to music right before bed cause then it stays in your head all night.(for me anyway) Then when I wake up I write.

To sum it up, the music I hear in my head is always much better than the one I managed to write down. What I feel I lack the most is the abiility to accurately write down what I hear, and I'd love some advice on how to improve in that area. I'm sure it's something that also affects other unexperienced composers, since I hear a lot about it from other people I know.

I agree that you must get your hands on doing melodic dictation starting from simple melodies up. I guess that should improve your writing skills.

Why don't you try improvising the music inside your head on an instrument of your choice. Who knows, you might come up with something really interesting to write down. I think Chopin made use of this approach as well as some other composers. I myself usually do this and most of the time it gives me good ideas for writing. Once I've got myself a certain improvised theme that I like, I try to either record it or write it down.

It also wouldn't hurt to use either Sibelius or Finale for your notation where you can make adjustments regarding what you actually hear in order to match that melody inside your head. :D

I find it really easy if you listen to music right before bed cause then it stays in your head all night.(for me anyway) Then when I wake up I write.

I do that to, but it doesn't work for everyone. In fact, most composers I know personally have to write down everything as soon as it comes or else they will loose the idea (for the most part). If it does work for you though, then use it for sure. I can come up with something and write it down note for note a few days later, which is REALLY handy at times.:D

I agree that you must get your hands on doing melodic dictation starting from simple melodies up. I guess that should improve your writing skills.

Why don't you try improvising the music inside your head on an instrument of your choice. Who knows, you might come up with something really interesting to write down. I think Chopin made use of this approach as well as some other composers. I myself usually do this and most of the time it gives me good ideas for writing. Once I've got myself a certain improvised theme that I like, I try to either record it or write it down.

It also wouldn't hurt to use either Sibelius or Finale for your notation where you can make adjustments regarding what you actually hear in order to match that melody inside your head. :D

As to dictations: I'm in music classes and we do three voice dictations. I have quite the share of them :P

I think you're assuming I have trouble writing down melodies in my head: no, that's extremely basic. What i can't accurately reproduce is potentially complex orchestration. I hear fully orchestrated pieces in my head but cant split each line in order to know what to write for each instrument section to make it sound as it does in my head.

Still, dictation.

Learn to start writing down two parts, mostly homophonic, then three, four.

Then try two parts, contrapuntal.

Just start basic, and work up, and you'll certainly improve your abilities.

A lot of sketching!

It helps get your head on paper to start. And then you don't have to transfer directly from brain to score - you can run it through the paper.

How do you do your sketching, Christopher?

Also realize that what you think is fully orchestrated or finished piece really isn't (I'm assuming, of course, but I think I'm right). It's one thing to imagine a piece, and imagine it as if we're hearing it, and another to understand the process of writing it. Listen to music and follow scores and study scores....you'll learn how certain things sound when they go from paper to real life and, with a lot of studying and work, you'll then be able to write down on paper what you want heard and know why you choose what you wrote.

Technique

As to dictations: I'm in music classes and we do three voice dictations. I have quite the share of them :P

I think you're assuming I have trouble writing down melodies in my head: no, that's extremely basic. What i can't accurately reproduce is potentially complex orchestration. I hear fully orchestrated pieces in my head but cant split each line in order to know what to write for each instrument section to make it sound as it does in my head.

Oh I see. I'm so sorry to have put it that way. So dictation must be quite easy for you then. I guess it wouldn't really hurt to experiment with the orchestration using a few tools, maybe a synth or your notation software, until it matches what you hear inside. I think that what you have inside your head will then translate in some natural way whether in writing or actually handling an instrument while you compose, so with a little bit of tweaking and some effort you'll be able to translate that.

Anyway, I'd like to share with you that it's nice to know something that Brahms and Kano Jigoro had a similar philosophical approach to action. Brahms was quoted as saying that the most excellent ideas come in with the least effort. Kano Jigoro is remembered for maximum efficiency with minimal effort. I guess, in some way or another, you just let that idea flow and work around with as many sketches as possible, your main idea will just stream from your head to your music. Or you might come up with something far better than what you've imagined.

I hope that helps. :)

Rhythmic dictation, melodic dictation, and interval training will help a lot.

How do you do your sketching, Christopher?

I usually start by notating some improvisation. Then I deconstruct the improvisation into themes, melodic or harmonic relationships or excerpts, and then work on expanding each little piece, before I put it all together again.

Sing! I know this sounds ridiculous, but if you're doing something that's contrapuntal or involves voice-leading, singing is by far the easiest way to realise the silent music in your head.

When I'm composing counterpoint, I first write out the part that's carrying the tune, then compose the bassline by ear; for the middle parts (which are the hardest to write), I sing along with Sibelius! This usually results in my writing a more convincing line that if I'd simply added the notes of the chord that were missing.

Sing! I know this sounds ridiculous, but if you're doing something that's contrapuntal or involves voice-leading, singing is by far the easiest way to realise the silent music in your head.

When I'm composing counterpoint, I first write out the part that's carrying the tune, then compose the bassline by ear; for the middle parts (which are the hardest to write), I sing along with Sibelius! This usually results in my writing a more convincing line that if I'd simply added the notes of the chord that were missing.

Or you could write your music using a piano, pencil and paper

Dictation is a key factor but there is something else i feel. Remembering everything about music theory you've ever learned. A tough task I know but here is why I say that. Prime example ... in your head you come to this chord that just needs to be brutal/vicious/out of place/scaryish. Obviously the chord in your head isn't a "normal" chord. But what kind of chord are you looking for? Boom! Then it hits you (at least you hope it hits you or something jogs your memory)! You need a tritone chord!

I come across this problem from time to time and need a little something to stir my brain up and come up with some ideas i've probably forgotten about or maybe never even knew. I came up with this thread to hopefully help solve some of these problems:

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/dont-forget-about-13521.html

I don't usually like posting other thread links in a reply but I think it goes so hand in hand with this thread that you should take a look at it ... hopefully if enough people reply with their opinions it could be a nice bit of information to be able to fall back to when you're in a tight spot.

I try to avoid musical instruments until I get everything from my head into some kind of symbols on paper. While still avoiding a musical instrument, I'll come back to the paper the next day and see if it still clearly represents my idea. My feeling is that if I too quickly try it out on a musical instrument when not really having a vivid image in my head what I wanted to do, the musical instrument's voice might confuse my original source idea.

Learn to sing. When you can sing what's in your head, then you can actually hear it.

Then buy an electronic tuner.;)

is it so much of an absolute truth that 'writing what's in your head' is the best way of composing? could it be that music may be born not in your head, but in your dialogue with instrument you have at hand, somewhere in between your head and the one outside it? is it so important to write 'what's in your head'? and can there be "ideas" but not melodies in your head that you want to compose from/with/out of? may music come to you out of the blue? without any head-stuck melody preceding it? like - starting from the scratch? why would one be engaged in writing what he has already heard , done in his head? like in all good books - the writer comes to be written by the language ideas, unknown to him before.

so, my point is, it might be so much more fun and creation when you don't know how it will turn out in the end.

I think the only way to really be able to create decent orchestration is to work on it. It's just like notating melodies. You know what the relative notes are and such because you've worked on it, or you know from playing or whatever. I think the same applies with orchestration - you don't know what produces certain sounds until you've created them, or at least observed how they are created. I would suggest score study, as well as writing for different instruments and their combinations. And definitely get your music performed. I think someone on here said they don't need their music to get performed, and that person is an idiot.

I agree. I'd also say that you don't know a sound until you've heard it enough to commit it to long term memory.

We all 'know' what a violin sounds like, but how many of us really know the sound of a violin?