Some time ago, I had the pleasure of meeting a wonderful local composer! Nick Demos, who is a professor of composition at GA State University, sat down with me and let me in on his composition process. Not only was it fascinating, but so inspiring! Here are his ideas for developing your aural imagination through immersion so that you have more to pull from when you begin to compose your own compositions!
- Listen like crazy to everything!! …even music you hate because you never know when inspiration will hit. You may not like the piece, but you may like a passage or technique etc…
- Look at the score while listening to a favorite piece of music to gain insight on how exactly the sound was produced
- Choose a passage that is most important to you and copy it down verbatim in the manner by which you compose (finale, pencil to staff paper, etc…)
- Write an imitation of the piece
- Write a composition
I love his term “aural imagination”. We speak so often about developing a child’s aural abilities, but rarely do we mention a need for a creative pool to draw from. This is yet another argument as to why we need to encourage our kids to explore and experiment with sound and recording those sounds through technologies AND actual notation ~ inventive or otherwise!
Here is a link to his website. I encourage you to check it out! http://nickitasdemos.com/