How I Write Music: Starting from a Whisper or a Noise

Everyone who makes music has their own ritual. Some sit at a piano with music theory in hand. Others open a DAW and scroll through loops until something sticks. Me? I write music by starting from two very simple, very human places: a phrase or a sound.

Not a chord progression. Not a drum pattern. Not even a melody. Just a fragment of language or a scrap of audio from the real world.

Let me walk you through how it works, and how you can try it yourself.

1. The Phrase: When Words Want to Become Music

Sometimes a line appears in my head. It might be something I overheard on the bus. A line from a book. Or more often, a raw thought I had while staring out a window at 2 AM.

The rule is simple: if the phrase feels like it deserves to exist inside a song, I write it down.

Examples from my notebook:

• “You are a lie with beautiful eyes”
• “Do you ever dreamed another life ?”
• “Cherish your life, don’t you cry, dry your eyes, fell alive”

Not all of these are poetic. But they all carry a weight. They feel true. And to me that truth is what a listener connects to, not always fancy metaphors.

How to use a phrase to start a track:

1. Say it out loud – Notice its natural rhythm. Where do you pause? Which syllable gets stressed?
2. Turn that rhythm into a melody – Hum the phrase. Let the pitch go up and down with your emotion.
3. Record one raw take – No editing. Just your voice and maybe a simple synth pad or guitar chord.
4. Build the world around it – The drums, bass, and arrangement will come later. But the phrase is your north star.

2. The Sound: Making the Ordinary Musical

The other way I start is with a sound. Not a piano or a pre-made synth patch (though those are fine too). I mean a found sound – something from real life, often captured by accident.

My favorite sources:

• Guitar effects pedals – Turning knobs randomly, feeding back into the amp, recording the chaos.
• Synth presets that feel “wrong” – The ones that are too harsh, too digital, too strange. Then I twist them until they feel right.
• Sampling real objects – A fork scraping a glass. Rain on a metal roof. A drawer slamming shut. The hum of my refrigerator.

Then comes the magic trick: reverse and reverb.

Take any mundane sound. Reverse it. Drench it in reverb. Suddenly a door creak becomes a rising orchestral swell. A coin drop becomes a ghostly percussion hit. A sniffle becomes an atmospheric texture that makes you cry and you don’t know why.

How to find your own sounds:

• Go for a walk with your phone’s voice memo app. Record anything: traffic, birds, footsteps, a distant conversation.
• At home, listen to your appliances. My washing machine has a rhythm. Yours does too.
• Spend 10 minutes just playing with a delay pedal or a reverb plugin. No goal. Just exploration.

From a Single Spark to a Full Song

Here is the beautiful part: once you have either a phrase or a sound as your first layer, the rest of the song tends to write itself.

Not magically, but almost.

The key is not to force. If you listen to your first layer, it will tell you what comes next. More reverb? Less drums? A silence? Trust that instinct.

Why This Works for Beginners and Pros Alike

This approach removes two big blocks: blank page syndrome and fear of being wrong.

• You’re not staring at an empty DAW. You have a phrase or a sound. That’s your seed.
• There’s no “wrong” phrase or “wrong” sound. If it moved you, it’s valid.
• The song grows organically, like a plant from soil. Not like a construction project.

Many electronic, ambient, and lounge tracks (including “Disconnected from the world”) were born exactly this way: from a whispered line or a reversed kitchen noise.

If you feel something in your chest – a little ache, a little peace – you’ve just written music.

And that’s how I do it. One phrase, one sound, one breath at a time.