Arguments in favor of handwritten music

missing candles and quills

A little over a year ago, I had a friendly clash with one of my professors about whether it was worth it to write music solely by hand and avoid using any kind of playback. Long story short, she won, and I wrote my most ‘mature’ works during my undergraduate degree with nothing but pencil and paper. Writing music by hand was definitely a revelatory experience, and here are my reflections.

Habits and appropriate comfort zone

As someone who exclusively made music with software, or at the piano with GoodNotes on my iPad, something as extremely analog as scribbling notes onto paper was challenging. But this challenge was worth it, because it forced me to examine my own habits and try to break out of them. The key aspect which provoked me to think differently about my music was to engage with it in a different medium altogether.

At the time it seemed like a completely new experience. Indeed, writing music without any ‘sound sources’ can be so disorienting. It is like walking blindfolded. But it really wasn't “a completely new experience”- I had been through countless exercises in harmony, counterpoint, arranging, etc., without sound and solely with writing anyway, and the writing experience I accumulated through those activities helped me to proceed quickly with my written compositions.

I mention this because being an absolute beginner in a new medium can hinder your rate of progress and expectations- imagine a tech unsavvy student who exclusively writes by hand who makes a drastic shift to music technology. Due to the person's complete unfamiliarity with technology, the shift in process is bound to be challenging and sluggish. In our original situation though, a student who transitions from software to handwritten scores, the shift in process is not as drastic, because the student has already spent a lot of time writing and completing music exercises with pencil and paper.

This puts writing music in a special position, because it may be a novel enough experience to force one out of their comfort zone, but at the same time, the familiarity with the basic mechanics of the medium (i.e. grabbing a pencil and scribbling) does not make the process unnecessarily demanding. The barriers to entry in any kind of new experience differ, but writing seems to be forgiving- we have been doing it forever anyway! Correct me if I'm wrong, but drawing a crescendo hairpin on pencil and paper is much easier than doing so in Finale.

Pitch-centricity

When you write music by hand, you may feel lost pitch-wise, and I certainly was. Although I could discern whether I wanted to hear, say, major ninths as opposed to major 7ths, and predict the general quality of my content, the specifics of it went over my head, especially since I was not writing in a tonal language. But I kept pushing and forgave myself for any weirdness in the pitch content of my pieces, and simultaneously encouraged myself to become a keen observer of other happenings in my music.

How long were the phrases? How did the instruments interact with each other? How much reservation/indulgence did I want to show in my music colors? What was the dynamic trajectory of each phrase, the overall ‘sections’, and the whole piece? What was each moment’s timbral profile? Thinking about all of these things, instead of banal chord progressions and safe melodic choices, as one tends to do within the sterile safety of playback/piano, was refreshing.

For many musicians, pitch reigns supreme. It is all about melody, harmony, and tension, and things like that. That’s totally fair. Pitch is definitely an important characteristic in music. But there is so much more to be thought about! I think there should come a time in people’s musical journey where they abandon those things they hold dearly. Pitch is definitely of importance to me- I always wanted to write and play “singable” melodies. But it was worth it for me to let go of that desire for once, so that I could address my other technical deficiencies, and maybe even avoid unnecessary emphasis on pitch altogether.

Shh… can you hear the music?

When you are left alone with your inner ear, you are also left with your mind. Instead of having your fingers reach out for the next set of notes on a keyboard/piano, or leaning on your ear to guide you, what if you only relied on your eyes to see what you have in front of you on your page of music, and then relied on your mind to take you forward? In my experience, I could often imagine a few different possibilities in my music, but it often seemed like no possibility was better or worse than the other. I think that’s actually somewhat healthy in its own way- it means I reached a more neutral space, one which did not coerce me into singular solutions (ti moves to do!).

Imagination is pretty cool. I imagine a lot of things man. In music, I think the best kind of imagination takes place without sound, without any instruments- it takes place strictly within the quiet confines of your mind. Silence can actually be extremely conducive to producing interesting sounds, because once you are handed an instrument, or any tool that you are used to, you will no doubt resort to your habits. But forcing yourself to think more abstractly can get you results you would not have found otherwise.

                   

When not to write by hand

Although telling people you can write by hand will make you seem important and helplessly talented to your peers, there are definitely times when it is better to use technology. Writing by hand, and subsequently engraving the score with software, can be an extremely time-consuming process. I often felt exhausted even just thinking of having to engrave everything because in effect I was writing my music twice. Writing music twice is not the least productive task ever, but it is time-consuming. I also wonder if I asked myself to write fewer notes by hand so that I would have to spend fewer hours in Finale! Of course, if you are an established composer able and/or willing to hire an engraver, then you need not worry about this issue, but as an undergraduate student, I definitely didn’t have the motivation to go that far.

Needless to say, if you are a professional musician who is not concerned too much with indulgent egocentric art-making but churning cool commercial instead, then writing music by hand altogether may be a bit of a waste of time. Although they could still discover a new workflow by incorporating some analog methods, most media professionals’ work may revolve more so on the production end, and specifying all of this on paper is probably unnecessary.

My experiences with writing music also remained strictly within my own personal brand of contemporary classical music. The focus on more abstract elements, weirder musical choices, much more care and thought put into things besides pitch, all of these things lend themselves well to the practice of writing music by hand. I actually haven’t tried to write completely tonal music by hand, and I bet the experience would be much more different. That’s because my inner ear is going to refer to a musical language that is much more well known to me, i.e. tonal music, rather than a musical language I am trying to create on the spot, i.e. my attempts at contemporary music.

Nevertheless, writing music by hand has developed my vocabulary, not just my musical vocabulary, but also my music-making vocabulary. It is always fun and adventurous to try and express yourself in a new medium, and all of these processes end up feeding into each other at some point. I remember when I was coding generative music in Csound helped think of different metrical ideas, which I eventually imitated in my handwritten works. Months later, my ability to scribble multiple instructions for my performers on paper strengthened my ability to imagine multiple timbral, dynamic, and pitch modulations taking place at once, and I naturally gravitated towards replicating this in my Max work. A-m-a-z-i-n-g.