 Welcome to another Art of Composing daily vlog. I'm John Braydenkamp and today we're going to be talking about composing without an instrument or as I like to call them a crutch. So right now I've got a blank staff paper here and I'm going to show you that it is in fact possible to compose without the aid of an instrument here. Now it's not to say that I won't use this in the process of composing without an instrument as a reference point. So maybe I want to know the starting tone or something like this, you know, let's say I let's pick a different key today. So we're gonna pick I'm gonna pick a major or something Okay, so I've got my stuff right here and I've why don't we pay or we do three four So I know do something maybe something waltzy and I I still want to get like an initial tone or somewhere to start so Just getting it in my ear Right, but that gives me a start a reference point. Bah, and if I can always go back to that as tonic It makes a lot easier for me to figure out what I'm doing. So from here though It's it's pretty much the same process of coming up with an idea Except for that you're not noodling around at the piano You're just taking a moment to listen to your imagination your musical imagination and try to figure out what it's what's going on inside your brain And what this calls what's what this is called is the process of? Audiation is being able to understand music in your head without having to actually physically hear it So it could be reading a score or it could be hearing a melody in your mind and then trying to write that down on paper But I'll just come over here, and I'll say you know, ah, so that's our starting up And I'll just sing it along Right, that's not bad so now I'm just singing along and And you can see I'm making pretty quick progress it without having to sit and play and then figure out what you played It's like your your fingers can have their own brain that's separate from your musical Audiation brain and and often they'll move in ways that you're not really aware of what they're they're doing This way can actually be very fast composing because you're not limited by what your technical capabilities are or your ability to remember What you did you're going in the moment Critical to this too is being able to To sing these notes and seeing the intervals seeing the different parts of chords and stuff and do it accurately So I can sing this to you And now let me play it it should be pretty much the same Now I didn't pre write this or anything I'm just coming up with this right now on the spot, but you can see over years and years of Singing along and playing music and in reading scores I've got a pretty good ability to just sing what I'm writing and what I'm thinking about musically And you can see it's kind of shaping up to be Some kind of thematic idea I don't know where this is going Okay, so I think that's good So All I did was write out what kind of was popping in my mind and not not taking too much time to Filter or edit or worry about what's coming out And I think that's a big part of composition is just letting ideas flow, especially in these early stages where you're sketching You're just figuring out maybe a melodic idea now when I sit down to work out the rest of this theme or this piece Harmony from there. I may jump to a piano. I may jump into Sibelius digital performer my daughter or Or I may just try to figure it out. Also, you know, just looking at it theory wise I mean I can see I'm outlining a one chord So that's pretty easy. I don't necessarily have to do that. I can you know No, that's basically the process of composing without a crutch I was just reading about this in an orchestration. It was a dissertation and how Beethoven was very fond of composing away from the piano and How he would teach his students the same thing and how a lot of composers felt that They were under what they call the tyranny of their fingers. Basically, you're limited By what you can do here when you're composing on an instrument and it's not just piano I mean if I'm composing with my trumpet, it's the same same thing if I'm composing with my dodge digital performer it's the same problem. It's what you're comfortable doing over and over again and Probably one of the best ways to break through get rid of your kind of same old same old ideas It's to get away from all your instruments and just to start to write down your music here Now one last tip if you're if you're having trouble doing this do your best and then check against the piano So if you think it's And you come over here and you play it Just that process of trying to figure it out and then actually sitting and playing it and working through it Your ear is going to improve now. This is not an ear training course or anything like that here Developing your ears takes time takes practice. You have to do singing sight singing. You know, you have to read scores Try doing transcriptions things like that One of the best things that I think I've done over the years is I just like to sing along with With recordings orchestral recordings classical recordings jazz stuff I mean everything I sing along with Beatles and the Eagles and everything else that I listen to so I think that's probably it for today and Yeah, if you've got questions go ahead send them in you can leave them as comments under the videos here Make sure you subscribe and then hit the little bell icon right next to the subscribe button That way you get notified of any symposiums that are coming up You