What Won’t You Write?
A diagnostic for composers
Most composers have a clear sense of what they’re drawn to.
What’s harder to see is the negative space around those instincts. Not a conscious list — you probably couldn’t write it down. But it’s operating underneath every creative decision you make. The music you’d never start. The territory that feels foreign, or worse, embarrassing. The thing you admire precisely because it doesn’t feel like you.
That pattern of refusal is more diagnostic than any description of what you actually write. Preferences can be aspirational. Self-descriptions can be performed. What never occurs to you is harder to fake.
What follows are ten imaginary pieces of music. For each description, ask a single question:
Could it have occurred to me.
Not: do I like it. Not: do I respect it. Not: could I sit down tomorrow and decide to write it.
Imagine yourself at the piano, guitar, or DAW asking:
Could I actually choose this?
One
A piece built on harmonic ambiguity that never resolves into clarity. Multiple contexts remain simultaneously possible. The listener cannot locate the emotional centre because the piece refuses to admit it has one.
Could it have occurred to me.
Two
A song where the verse carries more weight than the chorus. The resolution arrives, but privately — returned to rather than announced. The chord that finally lands is slightly wrong, borrowed from somewhere else, which makes it more accurate than the right chord would have been. The emotion is real. It just refuses to perform itself.
Could it have occurred to me.
Three
A piece where the harmony doesn’t move. Not because it’s unresolved — because movement would be a concession. The riff occupies its territory like it has already won the argument. Changing chord would feel like backing down.
Could it have occurred to me.
Four
A piece built from material that already existed. Quotation, theft, collage, transformation. Originality lies not in invention but in selection and placement.
Could it have occurred to me.
Five
A piece where the chords arrive exactly where they promised they would. The feeling doesn’t arrive with them. The music keeps almost meaning what it appears to mean.
Could it have occurred to me.
Six
A piece whose most important decisions were delegated elsewhere. Dice rolls. Card draws. An arbitrary procedure followed to its conclusion. The composer’s task is not to express themselves but to notice what the system reveals.
Could it have occurred to me.
Seven
A piece where every sound feels placed with the awareness that one extra note could ruin the whole thing. The silences feel arranged. Whatever is happening here is too fragile to survive being made louder.
Could it have occurred to me.
Eight
A piece composed backwards. Start at the end — everything else exists only to justify it. The destination determines the journey.
Could it have occurred to me.
Nine
A piece that dissolves. No pulse, no structure, no arrival — and no interest in any of those things. Whatever was holding the music together at the start has been slowly released, and by the end there’s only atmosphere where the form used to be.
Could it have occurred to me.
Ten
A song where the verse builds and the chorus lands. The resolution arrives exactly where the tension was pointing. The hook is real — not clever, not ironic, not held at arm’s length. The emotion is present from the first bar and never withdrawn. Nothing is withheld. A stranger could hum it after two listens.
Could it have occurred to me.
The pieces that occur to you are not random.
They arrive from somewhere — a set of assumptions about what music is for, what emotions are permissible, what kinds of attention you trust, what kinds of exposure you can tolerate.
The pieces that never occur to you arrive from the same place.
Most composers already know what they write. The harder question is what keeps not happening.
To continue the experiment, choose one:
Write a piece whose chorus embarrasses you by how sincere it is.
Begin with the chord you would normally reject immediately.
Finish the piece before you know how it starts.
Borrow something beautiful from someone else and discover what becomes yours by accident.
Remove the element you trust most and continue without it.
Let a system make three decisions you would usually protect from chance.
Stay on the same harmony until changing it feels dishonest.
Write the quietest piece you can without mistaking absence for depth.
End the piece exactly where your instincts tell you to keep searching.
Write something a stranger could hum after hearing it twice.
love it! thank you for the ideas. it's amazing how we can grow when we just experiment and have fun.