Do you sometimes get inspired to write, and then get stuck after the first few measures? Do you feel like your ideas are boring or weak.

Most of the time, when I sit down to compose, I come up with new ideas. It may be something that I can hear in my head, and I am inspired to write. It may also come randomly through improvising.

But constantly coming up with something unique can be tiring and unreliable. Instead, you can use something you’ve already written and take it through a series of musical tests.

I call this testing a musical idea.

Testing a Musical Idea

By testing a musical idea, I mean that we will start with something short, like a two measure basic idea, and then change it through deliberate and restricted techniques. This way, we can start to see the possibilities latent in an idea. This often leads to hearing something in our idea, that we didn’t hear before.

I got this idea after reading the book, Bach and The Patterns of Invention by Lawrence Dreyfus. In the book he claims when Bach invented an idea, he was testing to see where and how the idea would work, what kinds of techniques it would uphold and how he could piece these tests together into a finished work.

A simple point suggests that a hierarchy of logical process existed. […] Thus, while there is no reason to suppose that Bach necessarily composed a piece in the order in which it finally proceeds, there is every reason to suppose that he composed some of it out of order.

Bach and the Patterns of Invention, p. 13

You can compose out of order.

By testing an idea, you are deliberately choosing your process of composing, the steps that you actually take to finish a piece. Instead of just starting on bar 1, and writing forward, you are taking a break from forward progress to make lateral discoveries.

The Big List of Ways to Test Your Musical Ideas

This list is a work in progress and I plan on refining it as I get more ideas. The goal here is to prevent you from getting stuck. I’ve categorized the tests, but some of them fit in multiple categories.

1. Melodic Tools
   1. Transpose it
   2. Change the starting note
   3. Super-impose it over common patterns
   4. Serialize it Make it 12 tone
   5. Turn it into points and reconnect them
   6. Invert it
   7. Retrograde it
   8. Augment it
   9. Modulate it through scale mutation
2. Structural
   1. Fragment it – Pull out individual ideas from it
   2. Repeat it
   3. Loop it
   4. Extend it
   5. Expand it
   6. Compress it
   7. Apply it to a different theme type (sentence, period, hybrid, compound, etc).
   8. Reimagine it with a different formal function (Presentation, Continuation, Pre-Core, Core, Coda, etc.)
3. Contrapuntal Changes
   1. Write a countermelody to it
   2. Find a pattern within it
4. Change the limitations
   1. Change the tempo of it
   2. Change the meter of it
   3. Change tonality and mode
5. Apply it to models
   1. Sequences
   2. Cadences
   3. Phrases, pieces, etc.
6. Apply words to change the concept
   1. Like imagine it as “frantic” or “cold”.
7. Physically testing your ideas
   1. Sing it
   2. Play it
   3. Play it on a different instrument
   4. Conduct it
   5. Use your body to gesture ideas
8. Harmonic Tools
   1. Change the style of melodic harmonization
      1. 3rds
      2. 4ths
      3. 2nds
      4. 5ths
   2. Apply the idea to a different chord progression
   3. Use planing motion under the melody
   4. Use any of the systems of harmony from Twentieth Century Harmony by Persichetti.
9. Orchestration Tests
   1. Write it for a different instrument
   2. Change the range or tessitura
   3. Change the orchestral texture
   4. Apply Orchestration schemes patterns
      1. Monophonic Polyphonic onomatopoeic etc.
10. General
    1. Simplify it
    2. Complicate it
    3. Write a complementary idea to it
    4. Imagine it in the hands of another composer

If this article is popular enough, I’ll probably sit down and start to compose out examples of all these techniques. Until then, let your imagination run with how you can apply these.