Hearing your music with a fresh pair of ears

I'm almost positive that this must have already been suggested somewhere else, but I could find no evidence of that, so here goes.

A problem I often have when composing is that I get too used to the sounds in my work through hearing them repeatedly, and don't take into account things that a first-time listener would notice. These could include actual mistakes, or just features of the music that could make the ears prick up on first hearing.

To get around this, I make a habit of listening back to my pieces in several different keys while I'm working on them. The easiest, most obvious way to go about this is simply to temporarily transpose the score up or down in your notation editor - a minor second either way works well, as does a major second. You can go even further than that if you like.

Of course, since computerised playback is derived from samples, you may end up unwittingly changing certain other elements of your composition if you use the simple transposition method outlined above. One such element is timbre. Without going into detail, it's very possible that a MIDI sound used in one pitch of an instrument will have a completely different timbre to another sound in another pitch of that same instrument, even if the pitches are just a semitone or tone apart. (Of course, the higher quality your playback samples are, the less of a problem this becomes) My thinking is that if you change the timbre as well as the pitch, it isn't a "fair test", so to speak.

So, what I tend to do is record the playback of what I'm working on into WAVE format, then play that back through Winamp using a pitch alteration plugin. Chronotron is quite good for this (it also supports Windows Media Player). Chronotron surpasses most notation software as it allows you to transpose up or down to the nearest hundredth of a semitone. So you can quite easily do quarter tones, or eighth tones if you're into that sort of thing. It's also good because it allows you to alter the tempo as well - I have this theory that first-time listeners will hear your music "faster" than it really is, because it will engage their attention more than it does yours. Well, that's normally the idea, anyway.

Try these techniques yourself. You may well find that it lends a whole new lease of life to your pieces. :P

Hm, interesting. I'll have to try this. Thanks for the idea.

I'm really delighted to find out I'm not the only person - who employs this technique of changing keys while working on a piece of music. Sometimes I have arrived at a conclusion that a piece I began with one key in mind, sounds much better in its rekeyed state, so I'll continue working on it in the new key. :P

Each key has a general mood. These moods change from musician to musician from person to person. A piece of music is merely a combination of sounds, tones, and silence to create a mood. If you alter the key of the piece the mood you may have built off of one key, can alter it completely, and it can either make you see it in a new light, or completely f*ck it up.

This is what I find interesting about it. Often I end up moving the pitch slider up and down trying to find the "sweet spot" - either a place I haven't really listened at before, or the key I think sounds best.

Nice. I do the same exact thing :huh: Since I use FL Studio changing the pitch is easy and can be done on the fly usign a slide bar.

Even though changing the pitch does change the feel of the music, there's some quirks I wouldn't hear in a lower pitch that become obvious when I alter the pitch. I tend to make many mistakes so the pitch and tempo changes really helps.