EXPERIMENT: Moving Music
How to make music by starting with your body
Midnight Voice Memos ‘EXPERIMENT’ posts are quick, playful, and slightly addictive ways to jump-start your music-making brain.
Moving Music is an experiment in making music by starting with your body.Â
It will help you
Feel your way into a writing session
Write from a playful, pleasurable place
YOU WILL NEED
Danceable music you love, your instrument.
TRY IT
Get moving (~10 mins)
Put on some music you love. Let yourself move freely — be sexy, be weird, be big, be small, be anything. As you move, notice the movements that feel especially natural, or pleasurable, or powerful.Â
Incorporate your instrument (~10 mins)
Keep the music playing. Keep moving in whatever ways but feel good, and move toward your instrument. Keep moving. Put your fingers on the fretboard or keys. When it feels right, start playing along. If improvisation is new and/or scary, aim for matching the feel, rather than playing a competent accompaniment. Mute your strings and strum along to the rhythm, or find the one note that mostly works and groove along on that note.
Start playing on your own (as long as it takes)
Fade the music out, but keep the feel, the rhythm present in your body–a bop of the head will do it. Start playing on your own to this felt groove. See if you can bring the exuberance you felt simply moving with the music to your writing.
OTHER MIDNIGHT VOICE MEMOS GOODIES
7 Ways To Write A Song A Week (free, or PWYW)
Music-making Limitations Bingo (free, or PWYW)