It’s pretty awesome how far MIDI playback has come. We are able to hear convincing realizations of our pieces, arrangements, and songs in a way that would have been hard to imagine a few decades ago. It can be a wonderful tool for composers, but I also think it can get in the way of creativity.

My Former Process

To demonstrate this, I want to show you my drumline writing process from two or three years ago:

1. First, I would write a small snippet of drumline material (usually one or two bars).
2. Second, I would listen back to that snippet to see how it sounded with the winds and/or front ensemble.
3. Third, I would either keep or edit what I had written.
4. If I edited it, I would go back to the second step. If I was happy with it, I would keep pushing forward.

I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with this method, but I do believe there are more enjoyable, creatively fulfilling, and efficient processes I could have used. This became especially clear after I saw my students doing similar things in their own compositional processes.

Some Reflections

1. I believe I was over-relying on playback and under-developing my ear. I don’t have perfect pitch or anything of the sort, but I should have a general idea of how a part will sound by singing it out loud or audiation (hearing the music in your head).

2. By working in such small snippets, I tended to create music that sounded segmented and chunky rather than flowing smoothly.

3. Due to this segmentation, I was under-developing my ideas in the medium and long term. I believe context is everything. You can make almost anything sound good if it is developed and placed within a larger context.

4. Lastly, the ever-elusive flow state of putting notes on the page was constantly disrupted by repeated playback listening.

My Experiment

This year, I forced myself to change a couple of things in response to these reflections. First, I tried to limit the number of times I hit that dang Dorico playback button.

I did this by forcing myself to write at least a large phrase before listening back. This meant a minimum of four bars, but I really tried to push myself to write nearly a whole section (eight to sixteen bars) before pressing play.

Some Results!

Below are some of the benefits I noticed in my experiment:

• Ideas became much more developed over the short and long term within the piece.
• I edited way less than I did previously, probably because of the added context and development of ideas.
• It took me less time and energy to write. This is hard to quantify, but I definitely noticed a substantial difference.

So now, a challenge for you: the next time you are creating, double whatever usual unit you use before you go back and edit. This could be the number of words you write before reading, the number of bars you write before listening to playback, or the length of time you spend recording improvised choreography before watching the tape.

Good luck and happy creating!

All the best,

-WCN

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