Musical distance/wall in your mind?

Alright so I've been experiencing something that I think is sort of weird and was curious if anyone has been having the same problem as me.

I tend to feel like there's a literal wall in my mind that's blocking out the sound of what I'm writing, and I can sort of feel the wall in my chest too. It's almost as if my true personality in my music is behind this wall, but I hear only the trite things. For example if I'm trying to write a melody I'll start with the first note or two and I won't feel this wall. Then slowly the wall comes down and I'm writing two melodies at once, one very cliche and one that's pretty original, but the original one is blocked out by a Mozartian one and I can barley hear it. I still know it's there though because my mind feels extremely preoccupied by two different things, sometimes more. It just feels like the one that I'm really writing fades into the distance, but is still there.

The time that this becomes most apparent is when I'm trying to remember a piece of music. Someone can play me a melody and five minutes later I can barely reproduce it in my head. It starts out as the correct melody, but then it starts changing into a Mozartian melody (it's always Mozartian, I don't know why), BUT the true melody is playing in my head (sometimes very loudly) except I can't focus on it.

In someways this is helpful because it's really easy for me to think up a melody and counter-melody, or multiple counter-melodies, but I can't hear my own music. It's like I can make a well developed baroque fugue for 4 voices or Mozartian symphony in my head instantly, but I can't hear my music that's also playing in the background.

Does anyone else feel this way? What have you done?

I kind of know what you're feeling there. I've experienced it similarly too. Less so when composing, but as you said: When trying to remember music, specifically when I try to play something I heard somewhere on the piano. Some parts come easily (as you said, often the beginning) and then it gets difficult and my memory of the piece gets overwhelmed by certain classical/romantic/pop/whatever patterns that spring in front of it and urge me to complete the melody/harmony with -them-.

I think the reason for this is that whenever we don't remember something very accurately, our mind will try to "extrapolate" from the last thing we clearly remember, using musical phrases and patterns we're used to. This is especially prevalent when the thing we're trying to remember falls unexpectedly outside of those patterns at one point.

For example: The harmonisation of a melody might start out very commonly, in a way that makes our mind immediately reckognize the general principles of the harmonisation. Then our mind loses focus somewhat, because it thinks it has understood how it works. And then, suddenly, there comes a passage with a slightly unexpected turn and our mind has dozed off too much to realize what's going on and that's where we lose track and our mind begins to imagine "how it should have continued", instead of remembering what actually happened. And at the same time, we're -aware- that we're simply imagining that and that the actual harmonisation/melody was different. And we -think- we actually know how it continued, but that it's simply blocked and even have an impression of the original thing playing in our back and us just being unable to focus on it.

But I think this last thing is also an illusion, to some degree. We may think that we actually -do- remember the real thing and it's just being "blocked by a Mozartian melody", but in truth, we probably really don't know how it was anymore, at least not in detail. I don't think that, if that Mozartian melody were suddenly to vanish, you'd remember the actual melody in all clearness again. It would probably be some foggy melodic ruin then.

I think the only way to work against this is to try to remember things -actively-. I.e. not just listen to music and let it flow in (because that's exactly where our automated "completion mechanisms" will kick in, to be "more effective"), but really to memorize the intervals, scale degrees, whatever. Just trying to shut off your Mozartian completion processes won't work very well, I assume.

I don't have this problem usually. But, however we do have something in common with hearing a piece. No, not that 5 mins later I can't replay it, I can, but, it seems, I can usually hardly concentrate on it, and then by next day it could sound sorta alike, but be almost completely changed in rhythm and in harmony.

So what do you do? Uhh....I don't really know more than "Go to your local psychiatrist..."

no, this sounds like the natural process of composing right there!

someone here in the orchestral forum, told me he wouldn't sit on writing his piece until he got all the parts going on in his mind.

you can go about like me, to have a start idea and then go crazy and write something totally different. it doesnt really matter, to me. if you got a good piece, who cares??

1 cliche's in a piece that has an original strong melody is just a standard palette of colours drawn with the hand of art itself. its the overall. don't go digging so much just fight/let go with it instead to get it out.