For several days as part of my IDS project, I’ve been listening to music.

So what?

Everyone listens to music. In fact, I bet you can’t name a single person whod doesn’t have songs they like to listen to whether they’re studying, exercizing, etc.

However, I was listening with a purpose; to gain inspiration for my own compositions. And, as I realized, there’s a difference between listening to music passively, as most people do, and listening to music actively.

I mainly listened to the genres which I intended to emulate for my final product, namely, trap, latin jazz, and military marches. And as I listened, I made sure to look out, firstly, for things like melodies, chords, and drum patterns, and later, key signatures, modal shifts, and other musical concepts, that I could try and emulate. Additionally, I spent at least 30 minutes in front of my piano after a listening session to experiment with some of those ideas, and to, as usual, write down any melody, chord progression, or just interesting phrase I came up with.

(This post is part of a series of entries into my Learning Journey for my IDS project in Music Composition.)

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