🤯 John Powell Doesn’t Hear Notes

When I was in college, I was taught that the best composers hear their music BEFORE they write it.

The formal term for this skill is audiation—the ability to hear or comprehend music when sound isn’t—or never was—present.

(If you’ve never tried this before, give it a shot. Sit in front of your DAW or instrument, and don’t play a note until you hear it in your head. Don’t allow the keyboard to dictate your ideas—stick to the limits of what your MIND can hear.)

There’s obviously numerous benefits to being able to audiate.

You can draft ideas away from your writing tools, improve your overall musicianship, and develop a vocabulary for your compositions that’s not dictated by what you can or can’t play on your instrument.

But I don’t think audiation makes great composers. ❌

I recently watched an interview with John Powell who said this:

“I never hear notes. I wish I did. It’s like squeezing very old toothpaste for me and getting nothing out. But I do have an aural feeling about what’s happening in the film… and when I come to a scene to score it, I can remember how I felt about that character in that part in the story.”

Hearing musical gestures is what drives Powell’s compositions—NOT notes.

It’s true for me, too. I often spot a picture thinking about tempo, rising/falling motion, and mood. But I rarely hear keys, themes, harmonic shifts, or even instrumentation.

Continue developing your ear, but don’t buy into the idea that you’ve got to “hear it all” to be a good composer. 🙂