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azraelswings
New member
I agree that critical or theoretical analysis (what you call intellectual thought) are best kept away from the writing process. But, always limiting yourself to what comes naturally is a great way to stifle growth. Also, I might be reading this wrong, but that statement about dissonance implies that understanding music theory will somehow limit you from using dissonance, which is simply not true.
I don't really think his question was about what is 'right and wrong,' so much as a request for help proceeding.
Great advice.
Again, misleading. While some theorists might limit themselves to academic work on theory, there are a great many composers that use 'theory' in their compositional methods. And they assuredly felt every note they composed.
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General conversation:
For me, learning music fundamentals has expedited my creative processes; transcribing is easier (both from recordings and ideas I hear mentally), I occasionally begin by writing a riff on paper, forcing me to work outside of the patterns my fingers are used to. These riffs NEVER stay in the same form for long, but it gets me started with ideas I wouldn't have found just playing around.
When you're writing, you need to remember that no one will know, ask, or care how you wrote the song. They'll only care how the final product sounds. If trying particular notes over a chord works for you, and you eventually find something you like the sound of and feel, deep down, then that's the right method. If just strumming and singing over it is the way, then thats the way. But dismissing methods on the basis of "theory killing soul," is just ignorant.
Chase, if you're always following the chord tones and would like to branch out, you might want to try playing the chords while intentionally singing other notes. Sing a note outside the chord, sustain that note, play the chord. Or, slow the progression down and improvise a new melody over the chords. Just force yourself to sing different notes. These ideas might help, might not, but will hopefully get you out of the rut of sticking to chord tones. Not that singing chord tones is bad, but if you'd like to avoid it, thats one way.
I would take TerraMortin's advice and improvise over that progression. If you wanted, you could try singing scale tones from each chord pair's key (akin to improvisational methods). Or, you could stick to notes in both keys. Just remember not to feel limited by these methods, and treat them only as starting points.
Just think about that concept for a little bit...it's a really interesting to approach it that way. I NEVER use music theory when writing a song.. however when it starts to branch into the music writing process..music theory is very helpful in some ways (although hardly nessisary by any stretch of the imagination)
