Piano melody thingy, driving nuuuuuts

[elnn]

Hi, nice seeing ya! Now getting all agitated and somewhat sliding down the dumps, feeling a nutcracker clicking my ear, don't know, you call it - but this thing's driving me crazy.

I'm usually somewhat plastered with musical ideas. Especially when laying down for the sleepy sleepy. Or driving. Or doing a something something not musical, reading a magazine on a toilet, insert something else here, should you want to. I feel the tension (not the toilet, mind you), the melodic movement, the progression of a melody, a little story here and there, a little phrasal repetition here and there, little gnarly thingies you wouldn't expect but sound like they should be there (at least for me!).

Until I sit down at the keyboard. A vastness of empty and Ugh. Just noticed that I'm used to 'improvising' in a very wrong way - instead of the forward movement of the melody, I start thinking in progressions and scales, which INSTANTLY removes me from that free-flowing zone of fluffy and nice (you know the feeling, when you know where you want to go inside your head) and makes me somewhat a cogwheel pressing buttons, mechanical and cold.

I'm so LOST at how to approach this. How do I say 'screw the keys, let's play'? How do I not become a tool as soon as I turn the keyboard on?


Pretty please.....?


oh, forgot to add - I find it easy to change and permutate and rip apart ideas from various artists, until - you guessed it - I'm at the keyboard. A rut's my place then.

[CableChannel]

Good thing I never learned nothing much about scales and progressions, so there is no danger I start to think

Now seriously: I sing ideas into my smartphone which I have with me everywhere. Good ideas really come at the most peculiar times.

Second thing is, I let myself get inspired by sounds. Usually I browse around in some synths/samplers sounds and suddenly I have a good match of what I play with the sound. This I quickly record before it's gone. Then I can build things up around this original idea which came more or less randomly.

[elnn]

I sometimes do that, but that's a more, umm, soundful approach. I mean, it's looking for inspiration in a specific sound or a scrambled accidental idea. I love it, many unexpected (and glööööööries) things come out of it.

But it's very static. Generally goes like this: (1) get idea (2) put icing on top (3) juggle other ideas (4) stop

Aaaaaand it's another mode of doing things. You search and you find. What I'm experiencing most of the day is not really looking for anything, it's just there, just need to grab it. And when I'm not at the table I find it remarkably easy to conjure something up, like I grab a mindly butterfly net and start catching things. This way I can predict where the idea going and direct it where I want to with ease - make an entire tune in my head, with melodies, basses, zipzaps and trash bin shakes and just listen to it for a while, see where it goes.

I know for this entire thing to be transported to the screen, you just gotta sit and melt things up in a DAW, look for similar sounds you hear inside the head or synthesize them (like scribble some things on how to approach such sound, you know, the oscifiltronvelope stuffs and these SOUNDS somehow remain when I'm at the computer - I don't get such huge blocks when just cracking sounds in a DAW either, things seem to connect somewhat. Now when I have to make a melody on a keyboard, I'm just an empty pot, when compared to how things go when I'm not on a keyboard. As soon as I approach the keys, things shut off for a while (as long as I'm in the house, mostly).

So it's a different problem I'm having to what you've suggested, but I appreciate the answer! : ))

[HaganeSteel]

Experience and exposure, I'm afraid.

It's not improvising in the "wrong" way - a lot of very successful musicians write their music by starting with the chord progressions.

Others start with drums and bass, or a musical phrase or arpeggio to establish the rhythm and general feeling, or imply a chord progression in the latter.

Playing piano really helps in fleshing out ideas because you can play your melody while combining it naturally with counterpoint and chords, and therefore write almost everything simultaneously.

Live life, is my answer. It'll all fall into place in time.

We all have a certain style, a certain patterned way of doing things, and eventually you'll come to fully understand and master that.

Maybe you already have, though, and this could also be a matter of not feeling challenged.

Might also need to pick up another instrument and use it to sketch out ideas. It could be a lot of things.

Ultimately, I think it stems from worrying too much about sounding good.

If you can work on a song starting with your chord progression, then you're almost definitely at a level where pretty much anything you do is going to sound good. It then comes down to how interesting it sounds. The most interesting music tends to be the most natural. So go nuts and don't worry about it.

[jancivil]

Just noticed that I'm used to 'improvising' in a very wrong way - instead of the forward movement of the melody, I start thinking in progressions and scales, which INSTANTLY removes me from that free-flowing zone of fluffy and nice (you know the feeling, when you know where you want to go inside your head) and makes me somewhat a cogwheel pressing buttons, mechanical and cold.

I'm so LOST at how to approach this. How do I say 'screw the keys, let's play'? How do I not become a tool as soon as I turn the keyboard on?

Well, the first step to recovery is knowing the problem. Which is very astute, here. I don't know. I recognize totally this problem but I don't approach things from 'chord progression', as I find chord progressions boring as a modus operandi and as you're noticing, stifling. It can get to where it isn't musical thought, it's paint-by-numbers.

I approach things from three positions: melody, rhythm, and sound. For me, the sound is the first thing. I make a sound-world and then I populate it.
I think what I have on my side is a fair amount of time improvising with other people, trying to make a composition in real time with one or two other people especially. Where you respond to ideas right now that someone else is inflicting on you; and you have to make some kind of sense or it's boring and no one wants to do it anymore.

I'm not a keyboardist, so when I write from it - which is the majority of the time - I don't have cliches or patterns to fall back on. But, what I did in 'free associations' was move over TO the keyboard and be the bass player, or act like a free jazz pianist or make noise from it as a pitched percussion thing; finally I would end up getting called to fill in on keys with my primitive and clueless ways and bad fingerings. At one point when I first got a DAW and a sizable keyboard, I intended to get some normal skill together like it would make things go more smoothy, but it never happened. At this point I believe I'm free in a way that I wouldn't like to lose, knowing shit about it.

One thing I can suggest is to get away from the thing and see about singing tunes in the shower or wherever, singing as a modus operandi for some time. And if you are deficient at this, you feel, I would say to find a way to train this aspect. Sing over a drone. I used to sing all the time over what I perceived as the F# drone of the shower, modal, eastern kinds of lines. I don't know, I don't know what you're about musically but you've hit on something very astute about musical creativity that a whole lot of people wouldn't get. I like the notion of a drone in place of all this cut-and-drie.d, set-a-progression-up and color inside the lines kind of thing. I have suspected western music from a certain vantage point from way back when I was in school, that the tunes a lot of the time are not that happening and so we have all of these chords and this architecture to pay attention to in its stead.

[jancivil]

One thing I saw above was 'record before it's gone'. Absolutely, be willing to hit record all the time and unashamed of recording garbage.

[Styles]

Always have your phone with you to record yourself humming or babbling any melodic idea that might be in your head. That's what I do. Makes it way easier when going to the keyboard to put things down