posted 06 March 2001 02:03 PM         

The thing that hangs me up about that is that unlike melodies that I come up with myself, with outside melodies I am not intimately connected with the note by note process, from the inside out. When I'm inside the melody as it is developing, I'm there with the instrument and stand a pretty good chance of going from interval to interval. There is an intimate emotional connection, as well.

This obviously is not the case with an alien invention that somebody else plops down on my doorstep. I know that in music schools they sit in a class and take down melodies that the instructor plays for them. I'd like to be able to get at the thing that quick, except play it back on the instrument.

It hit me this morning that if I SING the melody when I first receive it, (maybe from a television commercial or something), that would be a great way to get inside of it and develop a more intimate emotional connection with it. Maybe if I do that enough I'll develop the ability to reproduce outside melodies quickly, beyond the simple blues phrases and such I could do now.

posted 06 March 2001 02:21 PM         

Another use suggests itself, which is probably well known to many of you, but the idea struck me with particular force this morning.

I don't really have much problem playing what is in my own mind, unless I make some unnatural effort to be totally original. The effortful quality usually insures that whatever I come up with will not only NOT be original, but that nobody would be interested in hearing it anyway.

Where I have a problem is when I want to play some alien thing from outside myself, like a T.V. commercial, or something. It seems to me that singing the thing first would bring it inside me, and allow me to become connected with it emotionally, and see it from the inside, where I can understand the intervallic structure and reproduce it. Maybe after doing that long enough I could do away with the voice intermediary.

posted 06 March 2001 02:24 PM         

Another use suggests itself, which is probably well known to many of you, but the idea struck me with particular force this morning.

I don't really have much problem playing what is in my own mind, unless I make some unnatural effort to be totally original. The effortful quality usually insures that whatever I come up with will not only NOT be original, but that nobody would be interested in hearing it anyway.

Where I have a problem is when I want to play some alien thing from outside myself, like a T.V. commercial, or something. It seems to me that singing the thing first would bring it inside me, and allow me to become connected with it emotionally, and see it from the inside, where I can understand the intervallic structure and reproduce it. Maybe after doing that long enough I could do away with the voice intermediary.