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- (LAST IN SERIES)...Years later, watching the movie "Amadeus," I recognized the truth (and my own limitations) that composers can and do hear the music in their head, that the idea can spring fully-formed in orchestral arrangement and that even in advancing deafness (Beethoven) one can intuit a musical idea of great breadth and originality.
There are those of us that have music running through our heads, subconsciously, triggered by nothing more than recent experience and memory and sometimes intended to develop something altogether new. Yes, those of us who do this would be fascinated to know the science behind it.
In all my years as a composer I can absolutely say that some musical ideas are born of conscious trial and error and others just spring forth unintentionally. I am not one to think of this as something spiritually gifted to me, but from my constant experience I can say that most of the creative idea comes from a non-conscious source inside my head - whether a melody heard in my head or an accidental shift of tones absently played across the keyboard.
From my own experiences, I hope we can hear more about the science of imagining music from Radiolab in the future.
- The trick was to be able to imagine them repeated with the same sound, isolate the varied instrumental ideas and get them sketched on the paper before me - before they were gone. This was some serious trial and error, but in the course of several sessions I did sketch the entire score orchestration. (These were not very elaborate scores - for piano, guitar/banjo, 2 reeds, 2 trumpets, trombone, drum kit and mallet player - what the budget could afford.)
I feared that they may be dull. In fact, they looked rather pedestrian on paper. I took them to the piano and tried to play them so as to ascertain their quality. They seemed reasonable enough for the project.
I did not and do not to this day, have the ability to read a score and hear it play fully as written in my head. I can intuit a decent sense of the structure and rhythmic flow of the orchestration, however.
It wasn't until I was recording this new orchestration with the musicians that I was astounded at the quality of the orchestral ideas. I do not mean exceptional, original ideas, but simply that I could fairly mimic contemporary arrangements stretching the use of players, their musical kit (instruments they play) mutes and more - to develop a wide variety of fairly complex ideas.
I don't know if the end recordings sounded exactly as I heard them in that bedroom, I did not try to keep them in my head once sketched on the manuscript paper. But I can and do attest that by trusting my subconscious ear, without aid or reference to a musical instrument, I was able to imagine, hear, recognize and write down what was for me fairly complex orchestration ideas. (MORE)......
- Like with Arlen, I think it's safe to conclude that some songwriters and composers do intuit their melodies away from any musical instrument, having a sketch idea or fully-realized melody spring from their unconscious without any external musical reference (guitar, piano, etc.) We can and do hear and develop melodies exclusively in our head.
And this ability extends beyond mere melodic or the subsequent harmonic cadence which naturally follows the contours of the melody.
In my experience, it was a UCLA music teacher, in an orchestration class, that first proposed to me (and the class) that I could develop an ability to orchestrate my compositions by trusting my subconscious ear. (I cannot say that was his word for it, but this is my explanation these days.)
I was an extreme novice in orchestration among some very practiced and talented class composers and my immediate thought was to dismiss this idea as purely romantic. However, I had a deadline looming to create orchestrations for a one-act holiday musical play and was desperate to use this training to improve my new work.
One sunny Saturday afternoon, I took pencil, blank manuscript (4 stave system) paper and isolated myself in the bedroom - there to stare blankly at the walls and force my mind to play the orchestrations of the songs in my head. I remember having some fear that it was a wasted exercise and even worse, a stunted experiment. Nevertheless, once my mind was clear of external matters and I was focused on the melodies of each song, I very quickly started hearing fully formed orchestrations in my head.
What a shock!
- As for composing strictly by imaginative reasoning, that is: using the subconscious mind to intuit some melody - I find the practice for me creates mostly unsatisfying results. It is okay to subconsciously correct musical ideas sketched from experiment on the piano, but wildly unsatisfying to trust my inner ear to originate a complete melodic idea. What I find that occurs in the latter, is that my subconscious creates melodies that cleave close to maudlin, predictable, cliche harmonic cadences.
Such melodies will have some imagination or ease and familiarity about them, but they inevitably recall very juvenile use of harmony in their production. As my musical taste desires poly-tonal cadences, harmonic substitutions and secondary intervallic cadences moving within the shifting harmonies - the simplistic harmonic palette of my subconscious is a disappointment to my conscious ear.
Subsequently, I recall reading a biographical piece on Harold Arlen where he talked about writing "Somewhere over the Rainbow." Whether true or studio PR, he claims that he was under pressure to get the score written for the looming film production and was driving Hollywood Blvd one evening (either to or from home) when he heard (mentally developed) the chorus melody.
This was the A sections of the chorus that begin with the octave jump. I do not now recall how he developed the bridge (B section) - since it falls prey to the old joke about hearing a French police siren - but, generally the construction of a bridge melody is a melodic line that contrasts what is written in the A sections - so it often comes quickly - a result of being contrary to the first created A sections. (A popular song of that period has an AABA chorus.) (MORE).......
