An Audiation-based Compositional Approach - A Methodology
In my recent endeavours to explore creating bass guitar-centric music as a vehicle for exploring my own artistic development I took on a particular compositional approach which I hoped would help bring a new awareness to the origin and nature of my creative ideas. In short, it has done exactly that (to a degree) which I will only briefly allude to here as the main focus of this article is to articulate the process I took and the conditions set.
Contextualisation
The idea for implementing this process came from reading the book 'Effortless Mastery' by Kenny Werner, a well-renowned and world-class jazz pianist who after writing the book has since dedicated himself to developing and sharing the lessons within it, many of which include and endorse an experientially dictated form of improvisation.
To paraphrase the essence of his book Werner discusses the experiential process of listening to the ideas that arise from the creative space without judgement and "through the grateful acceptance of whatever comes out" (pg 73), and takes the reader through a number of guided meditations designed to achieve a state of blissful detachment and listening to the ideas that arise naturally. As one blessed with an over-active and judgementally critical mind whilst engaged in creative pursuits I was curious to see how far I could take this idea by formalising it into a practice that according to Werner will help in "making the connection [to the creative space]" (pg 77) and to explore the impact it may have on my perception of my ideas.
In this article I'll refer to this process as audiation (Research Studies in Audiation by Edwin E. Gordon 1985) meaning to hear sounds in the mind, in this case, musical notes/phrases/textures/rhythms/etc.
The Method
The Drone. Starting with an arbitrarily selected low-register drone played on the bass guitar, is then stretched using the Paul X Stretch time-stretching software to create an audio waveform of the performed note that lasts in between 10 - 30 minutes. This is reimported into the DAW (in this case Logic Pro X) and forms the main launching-off point for the following stages.
The Sitting. Using headphones (as I personally find using headphones more conductive to encouraging a flow state) and playing the drone, the next stage is to sit patiently and 'listen' for an idea to arise. Usually fairly quickly an idea will occur and an initial question arises whether to choose that this is the idea to follow or not. In the spirit of Werner's book, often I would go with the first idea; although the practice of ignoring and waiting to see what subsequent ideas arise and how they differ from the first impulse is one I incorporated; the audiated idea is then 'transcribed' (after a short process of clarification and formalisation if necessary) by recording it into the DAW.
The Development. The process above is repeated with the now transcribed idea present. Through the process one is now attempting to intuitively audiate the subsequent idea or how the current idea develops. Here I begin to notice quickly when decisions to develop the idea one way or another were motivated by thought or natural inclination. In each case I would do my best to follow the intuitive path rather than what my hands or the instrument wanted to play. The question: "What am I hearing should happen here?" is often asked in these moments to help clarify where the intention of the audiated idea is situated.
The Repetition. As the piece develops with new ideas added or ideas continually develop the inexorable complexity and interconnectivity of musical ideas adds a continual dimensional challenge to keeping the practice true to its original intention.
Zoom-in/out. As the piece becomes more complex and the map of ideas develops the process needs to evolve for risk of becoming swamped in a mass of ideas. A process of zooming-out and listening for how the piece wants to develop from a higher view-point with questions like: What ideas can I hear that affect general shape, phrasing, form, texture, etc. If an idea is heard that requires a particular texture to occur then zooming back in to a more detail-oriented view and asking eliciting questions helps to encourage ideas that are congruent with the higher level decisions.
Conditions
To begin with a set of rather strict conditions are placed upon the practice, these are then relaxed as the piece becomes more complex. Here are some of the conditions I subjected the practice to:
An idea is only transcribed if audiated first. Its easy for the hands and the instrument to dictate the ideas that arise. Instrumental conventions can easily dictate musical content, part of the point of this process is to practice the process of hearing and developing the ideas that naturally arise from my subconscious creativity rather than what my body naturally wants to play (through the technical training it has received) or what your intellect deems a good choice (through theoretical training). During this process therefore it is important to notice when this is the case and that the idea being transcribed has arisen from that naturally creative space that exists from the absence of thought.
Ignore judgements of ideas at first. If an idea is noticed to be judged this is to be ignored in the early stages as a form of Werner's "grateful acceptance of what comes out". Judgements could be either positive or negative, negative ones were especially ignored. In later stages, positive judgements of ideas could be used to follow what felt like the best direction for ideas to develop into, some ideas were ignored for the favour of stronger or rather what felt like more congruent ones.
Follow the path of least resistance. Following an intuitive process as much as possible this includes utilising technology such as pre-recorded samples (especially for percussion elements) or other technology to expedite the process.
If the idea can't be physically played, or is unclear, recreate it as close as possible or move on to the next. Sometimes ideas are heard that are not note or texture specific, such as a shape of a melody, or a soft pad texture. In these cases ideas or development of ideas are recreated with the best approximation before moving on, in other cases some ideas would arise that are too foggy or unclear, these were ignored for the sake of clarity.
Reflection and Findings
In some cases I was able to take this idea all the way to complete a piece, such as 'At Home, At Home'. In two cases in particular where I pursued this audiation-based approach method as far into the developmental journey as I could, the process became more limiting than liberating and the pieces were left in a place of creative paralysis with either over-saturation (with far too many ideas arising to make sense of), or stagnation (struggling to hear anything that should occur next).
Stagnation occurred in a currently unfinished piece called 'Unexpected Journey'. Through the practice I found I had become so familiar with the piece and that all I could then hear were repetitions and recreations of that which already existed and had occurred through the practice. Even though the piece sounded incomplete I was unable to hear any ideas through the above process and set of conditions that would help complete it. This situation I believe was created through the sheer amount of time spent with the piece, numerous hours over several days, and a lack of fresh insight and much time spent on idea refinement meant the only ideas heard were that which were already associated with it. Interestingly, even though I had shelved the piece due to this, I have since come back to it numerous times and with breaks of weeks and months in-between with the thought that a fresh mind full of other audiative associations would spur ideas to help complete the demo. I found that this wasn't the case, and no matter how much time passed I would still only hear the already associated ideas. This suggests that I inadvertently created strong audiative associations with this piece that this process cannot solve and the way forward to completing it will require a different tack entirely. When this is explored I will detail it in a separate post.
Over-saturation was the other negative result from and experienced in the piece 'Calm of Storms'. Here I found that the piece was initially being mapped out quite fluently however when attempting to audiate a melody I quickly collected too many ideas to manage. Each seemed like a promising idea, and was explored only to just a quickly lose its congruence with the piece. Other ideas would then arise, but the same pattern of exploration and eventual incongruence occurred. This became quite a frustrating process but once again in the spirit of Werner's approach I continued on and eventually left the piece in its current form. Similarly to the previous mention of the piece that developed an associative loop, here a loop experience was created through the audiation of a new idea and a subsequent phrase or two resulting in a melodic fragment that could not be completed, or could not be heard in a complete form. Why the initially promising ideas developed into melodies that eventually felt incongruent and unfinished is unclear, it is driven by an intuitive feeling rather than thought-based judgement. Once again, I seemed to have inadvertently created a pattern-process association which similarly could not be solved with time away from working on it. I felt had reached the limit of what this process could achieve, at least with this particular piece. Like the previous piece mentioned, a subsequent process would be required to tackle this and solve the compositions, again these will be discussed when here when attempted in the near future.
There is more to unpack in reflecting upon the experiences of this practice which I will attempt to do in subsequent posts relating to the individual tracks.
Despite these exceptions, this audiation-based process proved useful in creating numerous new compositional ideas and although the practice itself seemed slow at first it quickly developed to be a fluid process. Later reflection of the ideas would judge whether I felt they had any compositional merit or not and whether they would be further developed with more typical approaches.
Posted In: Reflections on Practice
Tagged: Composition, Audiation, Practice
← Back to Recent Posts