Yeah, Steve, unless I imediately let it out in whistling, poof! And here, of course, as Sorcha says, the trouble is that it's someone else playing an instrument I do not play, who I want to have execute the thing I "heard"!

As far as working with that cretivity loop, and capturing the stuff, I can tell you that when I am riding around in a car, I can get a tune started in my head, say it's just a single phrase. I whistle it and let the pitches come as I whistle. I go over it and over it till I have it memorized, then I start to hear variations and harmonies and so forth. I leave off whistling the melody, it now being stuck in my head, and now I am hearing that in my head and whistling what would go with it... just as if I were singing a harmony along with a CD I am listening to. (See an old thread on Karaoke of the Mind.) Often it will be a waltz and the new stuff amounts to ornamentation of the melody, such as quick notes (subdivided time from the melody), weaving around the melody. If I keep this up long enough it sticks.

Then MORE stuff comes, like blue notes here and there and what a harmonica player might add to a blues piece... other instruments.... well if I could just TAPE all that and mix it together... and hear it and play it for the other musicians so they could hear their parts! But I would still need to know what these little thingies are CALLED, if I wanted to write them down, without using notation. I CAN notate but I'm so SLOW.

~Susan