Unfocus your eyes, just a little.
That’s how you can see those 3D “Stereogram” images that were first popular in the ’90s. I first encountered them in Games Magazine, which makes sense because that “unfocus” strategy is often a good one for solving all sorts of puzzles and games. You have to unfocus your sense of a clue in a crossword, or step back from seeing the details to see the whole.
That’s how I feel about music-making, too – both as an interpreter and as a creator. We can get so focused on the minutiae of a piece, and many creators would do well to step back and pay attention to the overall effect. As an interpreter, I’m thinking about disengaging from ultra-specific details to make sure the piece holds together as a whole. As a creator, I’m thinking about the way that young composers, especially, get so focused on following every guideline they’ve learned in theory classes that they can’t find their way to ideas that hold together.
Put another way: getting every detail right doesn’t get to you a beautiful whole unless you also pay attention to the whole. You can recognize every dot of color in a Stereogram and not see the 3D picture.