Technique 2. The fun part.

Here is an exercise. You don’t necessarily need an instrument, you can use your voice.

First, let’s think about summer. Make a sound, any sound with your voice. The summer gets hotter and more humid. Transform the sound you are making to match the description (don’t forget to breathe). If you want you can make a melody.

Ok, let’s keep going. The summer drags on to days of 100 degrees heat with 100% humidity. Even the act of thinking has become a chore. And, of course, you have no air conditioning.

But, one day, a big storm explodes in the sky and brings some relief. You may do some “baboom! Krakaboom!” to illustrate it. Meanwhile, in our story, the thermometer gets to a much more comfortable level. Rains gets everywhere though. Your basement floods and you have to hurry to save some of your precious belongings.

You have to call some of your friends who give you various excuses and refuse to come. Your frustration rises.

And so on and so forth.

Did you make something nice? Did it describe what the story was about? More importantly, wasn’t it fun? Well, my dear blog reading friend, you just did what many musician do to compose something significant: they first use their imagination to create some feelings, then they try to put some notes, dynamics, orchestration that matches those feelings.

And that’s ok if you don’t think you did anything of quality. Because at least you had fun doing it.