Confessions of a Wannabe Songwriter

This post is primarily for my benefit, so skip it unless you're truly interested in how my brain works.

Much much soul searching and many years later, I've figured out why I am not a performer, can't learn to play an instrument, and haven't figured out how to write good music yet (I can give you adolescent crap lol) but can analyze the HELL out of the music that's out there (the more complex, the better!) But I really want to write music. I have a unique combination of talents, gifts, and personality traits that make me a rather unique individual indeed:

1. I hear all the lines of music separately in my head - at one time - and can "see" them as individual units. This is in large part thanks to my Dad and all the jazz and blues I grew up listening to! I was singing harmony to the vacuum cleaner at age 3.
2. I'm a Myers-Briggs IXTP. More of an N than an E, but I vacillate between the 2. You know what all those stupid personality type indicators tell me? That I should be an inventor, a physicist, or a crazy artist! Go figure.
   
3. And those "how you analyze information" tests? They always classify me with Edison and Einstein. Great. And here I am, not a patentable object to my name. Never got past algebra trig. Although, I can do my own taxes!!!
   
4. So per above, I'm an intensely analytical and visual thinker. But I've never been into visual art -I've always felt that music is easier to understand and analyze than art. But there's a catch: once I've visualized the outcome or end of something, I'm done with it. Done, caput! No patience for it any more!
   
5. I always "see" the whole of anything in great detail. I'm a master analyzer - but because I "see" so much at once, I thought for most ofmy life that I was a big picture thinker. Boy, was it a shock when one of my professors told me I was analytical! But the evidence was irrefutable. And once I "see" all of something, I'm done, caput! This is how I can write 10 page papers in 2 hours. This is how I wrote my 90 page Master's thesis in less than 2 days (most of it at one go). And I aced it.
   

In learning any instrument: after a certain point, my mind totally gets it, it just becomes practice in muscle memory and hand-eye coordination. Don't ask me why, but to progress beyond this point and has always been literally torturous for me. And if my muscles can't keep up with my mind - it's even worse. So at this point, I don't even want to learn an instrument, because frankly, it's too hard and life's too short for that much consternation. It's a kooky personality flaw but at least I get it now, and knowing that I don't have to beat myself up anymore about it - I can work around it any move on.

But I have MIDI for writing - you don't have to play an instrument to write. But you DO have to be able to come up with unique melodies in your head. But dammit - there are so many damn variables when it comes to music. I have to see the whole to write. But how do I "see" the whole of an original song when I have SO MUCH to choose from? I mean, the data is massive. I always had a hard time picking an original image to draw or paint growing up too - I preferred to draw from life (and still do) because the options of WHAT to draw are infinite. In music - I not only have to "see" a melody, there's instrumentation... voice... genre... style within genre... emotional response elicited... & lyrics (and that's a whole other sea of variables!) I look out into my head and I see an ocean of swirling, pulsing colors to choose from in front of a beach of blank, black palate, where I usually process new information. Where the hell do I begin?

So now that I know this is happening and can see the problem, I'm looking for creative ways around it. I even googled too see if other heavily visual thinkers are music writers - most discussions were around lyrics, not the process itself. I found this short discussion, and this intriguing blog post by a poet, which helped me realize that it's OK to compose music with music in the background. I can't explain it, but I focus better with music in the background - even on music! I've resisted composing with music in the background, thinking it would too strongly influence whatever I write -- but I think that it could become a part of my personal creative process, part of what makes me an artist who is different from other artists.

I am also going to experiment with "seeing" colors in my head, and interpreting them musically. What I "see" now when I listen to music is just like a tool - it's a way my brain interprets what I hear, and than I take that info and run with it. But I haven't tried to use it to create - just to experience. Maybe I can use my visual palate to help narrow down the variables, at it were. However I do it, I do know that writing music will have to be a very logical process for me - not the free-form activity I've always tried (and failed!) to foster. I can spew bad lyrics off the top of my head all I want (language is suitably finite), but the notes just aren't gonna flow that way.