New Discovery...tutorials

[system]

@knuckle47

I get these amazing complete scores in my head. They can be rock, jazz, tv soundtracks, musical type stuff…but I mean complete, full productions, including little fills, rolls, staccato, pizzicato , horns, strings, guitar leads, what ever it is, even timpani’s… I cannot get it out musically so I wish I had a serial port or USB in my neck to download it to the computer.

This happens to me, as well.

I can install a USB port in your neck, if you like. It’s kind of messy, though…

[knuckle47]

I never thought of that. Sounds silly AT FIRST…but in reality, why not…as you said,it may relieve the strain and I can lock my self in the room alone… Can’t be too embarrassed that way

[BriHar]

@Steve Fogal

…I too build song idea’s as full compositions in my head. Often when I’m driving job to job. Many times it’s in my head all dam day like an earwig. But all too often when I get home I’ll pick up an instrument and/or fire up the DAW, then POOF, it’s gone… GAWDAMIT!
For this very reason I’ve learned to hum/scat/mumble/croak out some melodies into my smart phone. But being I drive a 93’ Chevy Silverado truck with a Master Flow, it overpowers my voice … probably causes me to grind my teeth when I hear it back too. A number of times I hear what I sang into my phone, and I just don’t get my inspiration…

It’s the drone!

Seriously I know what you’re experiencing - happens to me as well - I carry a dictaphone for singing, humming, whistling, whatever, down ideas. I find my inspiration is at it’s best when there is some constant drone in the background - a humming of an air filter or even white noise (like the shower or nearby river/waterfall) it’s like it fills out the missing harmonies and orchestration in your head. Later when you play it back in some other environment it sounds so lame, and you wonder what you were thinking before.
Sometimes to get my creative juices flowing in the studio, I’ll just turn on the analog synth and make a quick patch for a low drone and turn it up - works every time for me.

[knuckle47]

So it appears this drone music source in our heads is more common than I might have thought. I guess the common ground we share might attract a larger sampling of people like this to begin with. It is something to note also that everyone so far seems to know that you are not going to recall it later.

I think it is something like this: Once the background track is running through your mind you now start to draw in the small details and nuances that bring the melodies to life and some might be so intricate and highly identified, that the shear magnitude of detail, in most cases is impossible to recall. And the very few of us that can recall it, have million dollar contracts.

[Mr_M]

@knuckle47

So it appears this drone music source in our heads is more common than I might have thought. I guess the common ground we share might attract a larger sampling of people like this to begin with. It is something to note also that everyone so far seems to know that you are not going to recall it later.

I think it is something like this: Once the background track is running through your mind you now start to draw in the small details and nuances that bring the melodies to life and some might be so intricate and highly identified, that the shear magnitude of detail, in most cases is impossible to recall. And the very few of us that can recall it, have million dollar contracts.

If you have a cellphone ,you have a voice recorder; no reason to forget things these days.

[Scab_Pickens]

If it’s worth remembering, you’ll remember it.

I don’t know how many times I thought I had the perfect song idea .

[knuckle47]

Again, I drive a lot for work and have had some good ideas for work while driving. An hour or two later as I am about to layout this great idea on paper to build an outline and plans … sure as shootin’, Gone…no clue and within a week,that idea would have proven to be a very good thing to do but I’d completely lost it.

And as you know, how many times have you driven from one point to another and unable to recall events in between.

[curteye]

@Scab Pickens

If it’s worth remembering, you’ll remember it

I too live by this.
It’s like pro comedians.

Most people cannot remember more than a few jokes
while pros remember hundreds.

As a pro in music, I feel if I do not remember it, it ain’t happenin’
{‘-’}

[knuckle47]

I just remembered something I had heard in a Billy Joel interview back a few years ago. ( see, it took long time to remember it) he was talking about how he writes lyrics and that he sleeps with a pen and paper by the bed so that when he wakes up with a song in his head, he can write it down or he forgets it.

I would think we agree he has some great stuff worth remembering and if he had forgotten it, we may have never had it to hear.

Just an alternative view

[Mr_M]

For me I think great ideas or kernels of ideas can be easily forgotten. Best to have some way to note these. What if you have a great bassline or vocal hook . Maybe I’m he only one ,but these can be forgotten and are the basics if songs that can go somewhere I just don’t buy the " if its great ,you’ll remember it" approach. Hasn’t worked for me anyway

[alexis]

So many times with me, when just starting a song it’s the rhythm that seems the most important. Chords written on a piece of paper don’t cut it until a long time after. So when the song is in that fragile state of just barely existing at all, I’ve gotten into the habit of firing up CB before I leave it.

Funny, because after songs become more “formed” in my mind it’s all about the chords, and ultimately the words and their delivery. But at the very beginning, if I don’t “document” the vibe/groove, whatever it is called, I’ll rarely if ever be able to have the same song waiting for me the next morning when I return to the piano.