Why You Shouldn't Use Your Primary Instrument for Writing Music

Now of course this headline is a bit over the top and not completely serious, so don't burn your piano or guitar just yet, but there is some things to be considered in this regard:

Being a composer also means to constantly be self reflecting and self critical. You can read in practically every artist's interview that they are their own worst critic and this is just as true for composers.

Besides constantly questioning one's own work (which in extremes can become an obsession that weighs you down to a point of complete inability to create something), it is similarly important to observe and be aware of one's own limits. Only when you understand your shortcomings you have a chance to work against them.

However, every composer is probably also subject to self-deception and especially people who are relatively new in "this field" very often fail to understand and acknowledge their limiting factors.

One of the most often overlooked but most influential one is how much the composer's instrumental capabilities influence their music. Especially when you come from a purely instrumental background and translate that into your composing career, this can become quite limiting. Very often for such a composer it means "What I can't play, I also can't envision". And even if they are very proficient on their instrument, this often means that they think music exclusively on this instrument. 

It is for instance fascinating to see and hear how different music can sound from composers who have primarily a piano background and composers who have a guitar background. It often is like that the entire concept of musical inception is based on the instrument that they think about and visualize when they think about music. "Piano composers" see the keys or have an imagination of their hand position when they think about music while guitar composers envision the fretboard. 

Neither of the two is ideal when you are a composer as your musical imagination should not be limited by such factors in order to create freely. 

Even with some of the biggest names in the industry, you can clearly see that their music starts out on a specific instrument guided by their obvious technical  limitations on it. More striking are the thousands of singer-songwriter songs that all center around chords and keys that are easy to play on a guitar and that have melodies that match the vocal abilities of the singer. Quite often, these limitations are considered as "style defining" by some artist, and I can definitely see  how the rawness of some musicians' musical approach makes their music into what it is and becoming more proficient at music would change that music drastically.

However with (media) composers, I see this explanation as a lazy excuse to avoid bothering with becoming better at something. Coming from a technical and musical high ground and deciding to consciously limit your approach for a certain project will always produce the better result than limiting an approach because you simply can't go beyond that. But that is a highly philosophical question for another article.

It is essential to practice composition independently from your instrument to overcome this seemingly imperative connection in your brain. The most brutal practice would probably be to grab a piece of paper and write music on it without using any instrument at all just using your imagination. But even then you will most likely imagine your instrument while writing. Without a continuous effort to overcome this limitation it is really tricky to push your compositions further.

The best way to overcome this is to regularly use a way to "input" your music without relying on your playing. Writing physical or digital score sheets, using mouse input in or keycommands in a piano roll  or even step time input etc. This will be considerably slower at first but it will force you to slowly break up this way of thinking one dimensionally about music.

This of course doesn't mean to completely abandon the instrument for writing music. Practically every composer uses an used their instrument to double check ideas or to work out details but rather see it as a contributing tool, not like the source for everything.