Learning about people's processes

[emekat]

Apart from the occasional happy accident, everything that I write comes form my head. I hear stuff in my head and draw the notes on the screen until it sounds like what's in my head. Sometimes I have whole orchestrations in my head, other times just parts. When I sequence a part I play it back which makes it easier for me to imagine other parts or sounds that would go with it, or little details like hooks and such.

All of us hear things in our head. The trick is to take them from your head and put them into the world. Once I learned to count and was taught intervals, this became easy. Train your ear to count and to hear intervals and you can write anything that is in your head. Some basic general music theory is all you need. You don't need to read sheet music at all, just learning these things will give you the tools to make it happen. It may take a few months of ear practice to get them down but once you learn them there's no going back. Even after all these years I'm still not great at counting but I can hear intervals like reciting the alphabet. Still, hearing something, anything at all, and drawing it onto the sequence grid is usually a piece of cake because my ear has the tools.