How do you see music?

steven70

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stickyfiddle

I don't see melody, I just hear it. I can then visualise it on a fretboard if I want to, but that's not the first thing that pops into my head. 

YMMV as I have synaesthesia, but in my case that's mostly linked with colours, numbers and words.

JezWynd

Tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

Roland

Fascinating question, which needed some thinking about.

When I hear something interesting I feel how I would play it. That’s not visualising the fretboard, but feeling how my fingers would play it. Put a guitar in my hand and my fingers would move as required, hitting the right positions and also providing any slurs, hammers and pull offs. The feeling is how I would play it, not how someone else would. It’s my string and position choice for the sound image in my head.

Teetonetal

To be honest, miming doesn't work that way at all. If I hear something I don't "see" it at all.

That said I found visualisation an amazing way to learn scales and chords, but its never worked the other way around for me.

octatonic

I've been doing it for over 30 years now, on a variety of instruments, so it all sort of melds together.
I see harmony and melody as being essentially interchangeable- on a stave or tab, that is fine too.
I guess I think in intervals, relating to key.
It is just music.

I don't see in colour though.

steven70

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stratman3142

A deceptively deep and thought provoking question with a few facets. I've had to think hard about it and I believe the following is true about how it mainly works for me, but even now I'm still not 100% sure and I keep mulling it over.

Sometimes I have a mental picture of a shape/pattern and sometimes my fingers follow some sort of predefined motion. I'll use the term visualisation to cover both. I know that my visualisation is closely linked to the guitar fretboard, because I currently struggle to pick out melodies on a piano that I can quickly find on guitar.

This is where it's a bit of a grey area. I believe I base things on bunch of musical phrases (melodic lines) in my memory that I can visualise. And I can reuse them and play around with the combinations and permutations to create variety.

My abilities are limited. Sometimes I'll recognise exactly what I hear (e.g. a lot of classic blues and rock stuff), sometimes I have a more general idea of what's going on (e.g. the general scale/arpeggio etc) and sometimes I have almost no idea.

An example of the latter would be when I first heard Robben Ford use the 'half step whole step' scale. Once I'd worked it out I could then recognise that type of sound. My knowledge of that scale and its use is still superficial. I only really know one pattern that I visualise across the top 4 strings. Probably because I don't use it that often.

In your original post you mention that you're "not necessarily talking about the order and speed in which the notes are played - although that is a part - but the tonal quality and the shape of the idea". If you're talking about melodies (musical phrases), I believe I hear and visualise them in some sort of context. So I might class and visualise the idea as being derived from a scale/mode/hybrid scale/arpeggio/triad etc. I have a visualisation framework for things which is essentially based on CAGED and the associated 5 major or minor pentatonic scales.

You also mention expanding your musical vocabulary. The techniques I employ include:
1) Hearing something I like and working out how to play it, classifying it, and forming a visualisation.
2) Experimenting with scales etc to find musical phrases, which are then visualised as patterns and shapes within the bigger picture.
3) If I need to do a solo, I might record a backing and experiment with ideas, which might be a mixture of analysing what might work plus some trial and error to determine musical phrases (patterns) I like. I do a lot of that with my Solo of the Month entries.

Some things get added to my musical memory for instant access/visualisation and some are only temporary and get forgotten.

Visualising things in different ways can open up ideas for me. A very simple example is weaving in the 3rd of the V7 chord in a 12 bar blues. In the key of A, that's a G# on the E7 chord. It isn't an immediately obvious note choice when visualising in terms of the major and minor pentatonics of the home key. It's blindingly obvious when visualising the individual chord arpeggios. But rather than play an obvious arpeggio you can just bend the scale to fit the G# into a more interesting melodic line

steven70

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MagicPigDetective

Colours. I might have some form of synasthesia and sometimes ‘see’ songs or parts of songs or guitar tones in one or multi colours, though it used to be stronger when I was younger. I also might visualise strings, bass, frets, drums and more abstract things like waves, textures. It's a hard thing to describe. 

steven70

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steven70

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gringopig

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Barney

This is great question and really got me thinking ...for me I have a sound or style in my head that I want to achieve..I sort of know what I'm going to play when I am playing it and these are probably ideas that I have done previously but maybe different order or timing ...but I always have a idea of what sort of feel I want to achieve ...

The other way is I can work a lot of things out visually before picking the guitar up so I sort of know what I'm going to play ...but for me the most important thing is the phrasing more than the notes ..and sometimes I have other players in my head when doing a particular thing....like how would such and such approach this 

But I honestly think when we say it's coming straight from the head to the fingers most of the time it's ideas we have used before ...

I have spoke to a few guitarists that are thinking they are creating and playing with ideas coming from inside first then to the fingers ....a good way to prove the point is get them to play happy birthday or something ...iff they dont know the tune beforehand they will struggle although everybody will know that tune in thier head....so the argument is..iff it's in your head why can't it transfer to guitar

So after all that I think we just recreate ideas using different timings and order ..phrasing ECT to make new ideas 

stratman3142

Barney said:

...But I honestly think when we say it's coming straight from the head to the fingers most of the time it's ideas we have used before ...

...So after all that I think we just recreate ideas using different timings and order ..phrasing ECT to make new ideas...

I believe that's the way it is for me, which aligns with what I wrote in the 3rd and 2nd to last paragraphs in my earlier post.

thecolourbox

I don't normally visualise modern music, but I definitely do with classical. The exception to that would be some of the more expressive stuff I listen to like Jeff Buckley which triggers the same sorts of mental images.

It's quite an unconscious response, albeit enjoyable for the most part. The visualisation is quite abstract but not in the "Windows media player visualisation" sense, so a little hard to explain. I've just listened to a bit of Rachmaninov's piano concerto in C minor in order to try to capture what it is as it's a piece I know well enough to be able to try to work it out.

It kind of feels like traveling through space, kind of a bit like leaning forwards and just letting myself float but it's the shapes of the phrases that is kind of guiding me. On this one it is kind of rolling me from side to side but in a sort of figure of eight pattern to start with but then it's a bit more random once the major key pattern comes in. Well actually not random it seems to be a line graph type shape following two axis, the vertical axis seems to be how the notes would look on the staff on sheet music, the horizontal access seems to be more just alternating in a sort of S shape.

The view is very much first person, the closest comparison I could make would be that it's similar to the view in the game Lylat Wars on the N64. 

I think for now fantastical pieces like Liszt or Ravel where there are huge jumps in the piano parts I recall seeing busts of colour, a bit like a mix of exploding paint bombs and fireworks but without the bangs.

This is fun to consider, good thread!!

Barney

stratman3142 said:

Barney said:

...But I honestly think when we say it's coming straight from the head to the fingers most of the time it's ideas we have used before ...

...So after all that I think we just recreate ideas using different timings and order ..phrasing ECT to make new ideas...

I believe that's the way it is for me, which aligns with what I wrote in the 3rd and 2nd to last paragraphs in my earlier post.

Yeah I think it's like that with most people but at different degrees depending on what's been learned before ...I mean I can pick the gui tar up and play and sing exactly what I'm playing at any time when improvising ...does that mean I am projecting straight from my head /heart to the guitar ...sort of but not really cos iff that was the case I would be able to just play any sing I had in my head without working on it regardless of how difficult it is ..cos it would be in my head .....I don't think anybody can do that without a reasonable amount of work ...

So maybe thinking about music and actually playing it is something that we havnt quite mastered yet ....maybe we only have limited connection between the brain and the fingers ....

So is the most productive music still in out heads still waiting to come out ? ...maybe we are just getting snippets of our intentions

Maybe that's the difference between a composer and improvisation though ...a composer has time to write the the ideas down exactly as intended. .improvisation is just immediate composition so back to the we play what we know and not what we 

menamestom

I see it in pentatonic minor but not a lot of you would understand, it's quite complex.
Throw in my unique vibrato and I see music through the angels who dance upon my fretboard.
Once on 'the other side' my all seeing magic eye converts the earths vibrations back to the minor pentatonic scale.
If the devil speaks to me the minor 5th may show it's grotesque head, but I smash it back with a 3rd, sharpened with  microtonal accuracy.


I've seen music this way since I was 16 and first picked up a guitar.  I'm very lucky, I completely skipped modes and chord tones and went straight to the money notes.

steven70

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