Music theory as a special interest

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Harmony & Voice Leading by Aldwell and Schachter is a fairly thorough introduction to harmony. There's also an ear training program called EarMaster Pro that lets you practice your intervals, chord types, inversions, and other stuff.

Wow, you actually own a synclavier? I can see how you'd have to sell your soul to get one of those. I'd love to hear some of your compositions.

Maybe I should clarify what I meant.

I am also enamored with waveforms, and play around with Reason now and then. It didn't take me long to pick up on what to do with it because I already have some background in wave form theory. I have a bit of understanding of music theory as well.

I'm am not at all not saying that understanding them to an extent (or even in depth) isn't worth the effort. I don't get as deeply into it as others do, simply because I'm focused on "getting the job done" in terms of writing songs and getting them recorded.

The issue of "WHY" certain chords, harmonies, and dissonance etc. causes particular feelings in the listener, to me, involves understanding how they affect the human psyche. That, to me, is a completely different world of study, and is distracting for me. If I got involved in exploring the answers to that question, I would never get any writing done.

As far as WRITTEN music theory goes, I have a different problem, which isn't what I was really addressing with the above comment.

I am INCAPABLE of grasping theory in the manner that pre-digital composers did. I cannot "hear" what I put on paper. I use Sibelius, and it's a godsend for me because I can actually hear what I'm writing as I write it, with my ears. Before I got the program, I could only grasp the most basic of music theory concepts. Major and minor chords, I understand. Basic chord progressions I understand. Anything more complicated goes right over my head unless I can actually HEAR it.

Basically, that's how I'm hardwired. If I can't hear the music, I can't write it. And though I can HEAR new music in my head, I can't take what I hear and write it on paper, but I CAN write it into Sibelius, and very accurately too, because I am able to hear what I'm writing with my EARS.

I remember my mother studied music theory when I was young. She wasn't very fond of much popular music. She never understood why The Beatles were so popular. She never understood why most popular music was, because she perceived it all as very simplistic. One year I got a book of Beatles music. She was looking at it one day, and remarked that she had no idea how complex their music was. She commented on the complex chords, harmonies and structures that appeared in some of the songs. She was impressed. The irony is, as most of us know, none of them, at the time, could read or write music, and knew little, if anything, of music theory. Yet they were still able to construct music that was more complex than most people realized. Granted, the book may have contained some arrangements done by somebody else.

My point is it is possible to write some pretty complex music without understanding the theory behind it.

I hear chords, melodies and harmonies in my head. I have NO idea what any of it is until I sit down to transpose it either on the guitar or into Sibelius. Even after it's written, I don't often think about what the chords were, what key it's in, or ANY of the theory behind it. I just know that "this stuff I hear in my head makes me feel this," and "this stuff in my head makes me feel THAT."

I don't care why. I don't care how. All that matters to me is that "when I hear this, I feel that." That's all that matters to me.

I will never argue that if I had the in depth understanding of theory that many great composers have, I would probably be better equipped to sit down and pound out a good song in less time than it takes me now. I wouldn't argue that my work might be better if I did.

However, we only live so long. Music theory is so hard for me to "put together" with the music my head composes (unencumbered by theory or the need for actual instruments), I don't have the time for it. It's a mental block I can't help. It's always been there. So, I write and play by ear alone.

Theory requires a different set of skills than I have, so I don't give it much importance in my work. No, I can't tell you what key most of my songs are in, or even which chords (other than major/minor) are in them.

But that hasn't affected whether people like them or not, and THAT'S what it's really all about.

As far as being able to accomplish something because I meant to do it, I do that all the time. My music sounds the way it does because that's what I heard in my head, so for the most part, none of it is accidental. The only thing that music theory would give me the capability to do that I can't already do, is the ability to articulate what I did. In other words:

"When I write out a C Major chord, I MEAN play a C Major chord! If I use irregular resolutions of dissonant intervals to consonant harmonies, it's because I MEANT to resolve dissonances that way."

The same holds true for my music. The fact that I am not able to articulate it with "proper" terminology, doesn't mean what's there isn't intentional. Musicians understand languages other than music. If I want a part to be played in a very particular way, simple English terms (for an English speaking musician, of course), are sufficient.

If I were to write "Lilting and happy" above the staff, I'm certain any musician would know see that and say, "Oh! Allegro!"

And the real beauty of doing things this way is that is wouldn't matter whether I have a room full of Julliard graduates, or a bunch of self taught, play-by-ear-can't-read-a-note of music musicians. They'll all understand it. If a composer writes ONLY in the specialized language of music theory, only musicians who are trained to read it can play it. If it's done with recordings and plain language, almost any decent musician can play it.

My interests are shifting, which for me is like completely starting over musically. It's fun when you have EXPENSIVE toys to play with. The Synclavier was just luck--right time, right place, and just happening to have the money at the time. What happened was that my wife and I BOTH lost our jobs within a year. That forced us to sell our house, and we lost 2/3 of our equity--part of that was due to medical expenses. We escaped the city along with its high taxes and now eek out a modest living in a trailer on a 1-acre plot, all of which we own outright. We had money to blow, so the smartest thing to do in a down economy was blow it on something substantial. We both agreed that the Synclavier was the way to go! With the economy in as bad a shape as it was, I was able to get a PSMT according to my specs--32-voice DDV sampling, 32-voice FM, 1x4 MIDI option, Sample-to-Memory, 64MB sample RAM, and 8-out multichannel distributor (which unfortunately doesn't really get used very much, but is nice to have)--but locking the price in a lot cheaper at the same price as a system of roughly half those specs. In fact, I asked for 16-voice PSV, 16-voice FM. I'm not going to say how much I spent, but I will say you'll be lucky to find anything like it less than $10,000. It's more with the PowerPC option, which I would have happily sprung for if I'd had just a little more money!

The sound design capability is a HUGE reason to spring for one. I also use an Akai S2000, a Yamaha TX7 (classic FM), and TX802 (cleaner sound, more FM voices), and a Roland aJuno1 (cheap analog). The Synclavier is a wonderful composition and production tool because it will drive all my other synths. My laptop DAW is pretty much only for bouncing audio and inserting effects.

The DOWN side is being limited to a certain number of voices. You can realistically use only about 4 different sounds at once from sampling or synth. I constantly bounce Synclav tracks to Logic to free up voices, after which I just start a new sequence. The payoff is in the sound, though. If I just can't live without the extra voices, I'll sample the Synclav itself and map it to NN-XT. In some cases, you HAVE to. I used the aJuno1 to create a set of analog drum machine sounds. They initially sound great on the Synclav, but they aren't very expressive. So I sampled the Synclav output and used Redrum to create patterns, building my composition from there. That way you still get "the Sound" with the added advantage of dynamic filtering and flexible modulation routings. Other than drum programming, every single sequenced note comes from the Synclavier. Not only am I driving outboard synths from the Synclav, but also Reason!! ! If I have FM sounds that are just too layered or too complex, I'll just sample them and map them to NNXT. That way, I'm not limited by the Synclavier's max 32 voices.

Expensive toys are good when you can get them. Right now I'm invading church space and composing for a $10,000 set of bronze handbells (only 3 octaves). I have to admit I feel a certain sense of empowerment when I think about that! Oh, and it's $10,000 I didn't have to spend. They've just been lying unused in their cases for the last 5 years.

Here's a composition I wrote for handbells with orchestra. All the wind instruments you hear are actual wind instruments. We couldn't hire string players, obviously, so the strings you hear came with the Synclav. I wrote two percussion parts, but we only got one percussionist. So the snare drum and triangle are obviously Synclav. The Redrum instrument was taken from the Synclav and was originally made on the alpha Juno 1. The synth bass is also the aJuno1 sequenced on the Synclav. All synths are Synclavier FM, alpha Juno samples recorded on the Synclav, or combinations of synth and samples played on the Synclav and resampled to NNXT. With the exception of Redrum, every single note being played was sequenced on the Synclavier.

Even the live instrument parts were initially realized on the Synclavier in the composition process before they were dumped to Logic and notated in Finale. There were no aspects of the final performance that weren't touched by it in some way. Even the click track the conductor used to keep the live musicians together was generated by--you guessed it--the Synclavier click output.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snp5xZSc8vQ[/youtube]

I can't help wondering why though. I guess somebody may have done some brain imaging that shows bits of the brain lighting up when they hear certain chords, and maybe those areas are the same as those that light up when the subject feels happiness, sorrow, notices the sun coming out, etc., but that wouldn't explain much to me. My question is more, how does music manage to fool the brain into an emotional reaction? I presume there's so little known about it that I wouldn't get bogged down in the details. I know it wouldn't make me a better musician, so it wouldn't trap me like audio engineering once did, where I could tell myself that the activity would help me to get the music tools I needed to develop and show off my music skills.

My own experience of Beatles' sheet music is that if anything it's an oversimplification of what they actually used to play. Music publishers in those days would usually arrange everything for piano, presumably as a hangover from the old days when the main way of hearing a song was to play it on a piano. The impressive chord sequences, harmonies and structures are nearly always there in the recordings. Although they couldn't read or write "proper" music, I would think they were quite au fait with written chord sequences, and I expect they cribbed a lot of their more sophisticated ideas from the sheet music of other composers - not from the staves but from the chord names which usually also appear in popular music. Those are the only thing in sheet music that make any immediate sense to me.....I've always wondered why they don't also put the chords in classical music scores, though of course as long as you play all the notes, you'll be playing the chords anyway - just that it would be easier for me to busk up the classics.

@MrXxx

I understand. It's exactly like I don't have to write down every single thing I have to say in order to speak it to someone else. To me, that's the whole of improvisation, just letting the communication flow in spontaneous yet coherent and meaningful way. Just like you can memorize patterns of speech in order to articulate your ideas clearly and quickly, i.e. not struggling for the "right" words, you can also memorize melodic and harmonic patterns to communicate musically exactly your intent.

I call it "the composer's bag of tricks." We recognize that certain combinations of notes have certain effects on people. So if that's what we want, that's what we write.

I think it's cool you use Sibelius to notate your music. Personally, I went with Finale, but they're both great programs. To be honest, I've largely abandoned the way I used to compose. I'm less concerned with "notes" now but all concerned about expressing my ideas as concisely and yet as spontaneously as I can. I've gotten more skilled at instinctively structuring my improvisations in certain ways, especially when there are idiomatic concerns for the instruments I write for. I just let the musical ideas flow and record the input. I happen to need people who can read music, like when writing for orchestral instruments and choirs. The way the notes go into notation is very sloppy, random, and inaccurate. But what's important is that the notes have already been captured by the sequencer. What I do in Finale is create a new staff line below the part I'm writing and very quickly re-transcribe the performance based on what I know it's SUPPOSED to be. It still takes a long time to notate those ideas. I just don't have to worry about forgetting what those ideas were before committing them to paper!

I'm not all that concerned with how "Middle C" affects someone's moods. I think we know enough about the role of music in our culture to predict how they will respond to it. When writing for an audience (as opposed to writing for yourself), you do need to be aware of trends in public perception of music. The art-musical equivalent of going from Guns-N-Roses one day to Nirvana the next being all the rage is, I would think, a composer's nightmare. But you commit career suicide if you ignore it. Me? I LOVE 80s metal and HATED early 90's grunge, with maybe the exceptions of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. I LOVE Evanescence and The Fallen, though, and it's important for composers and songwriters alike to keep their fingers on the pulse of commercial music taste. It is, in our day and age after all, our folk music. If that sounds sellout-ish, be reminded that if Tchaikovsky had ignored Russian folk traditions in his own work what treasures to Romantic instrumental works and ballets would have been lost!

You do have to be at least a "little" concerned with "why." I agree that being overly preoccupied isn't going to allow you to get much work done. It's just that understanding "why" and empathizing, just a little, with your intended audience increases your effectiveness with your expressive output.

You have to consider that classical music and popular music have different purposes. I'm not going to get into those purposes, exactly, nor the merits one has over the other, but I'll at least try to explain.

Chord charts have been around since at least the Baroque period. Back then, composers were writing for what we'd consider "the rhythm section" now. You had a bass instrument, like the bassoon or cello, and a chordal instrument, like the harpsichord. What happened was that composers wouldn't spend much time writing harpsichord arrangements, but rather focused on melodic instruments such as string orchestras or small groups of woodwinds (flutes and oboes). They recognized the ability of keyboard players to rapidly fill in the gaps according to their own skill, a safe bet being that the keyboard players were better at improvising than the composers were of composing. It wasn't so important that the right note order was preserved as it was the correct voicing was used relative to the bass. As a keyboard player, you'd only have a bass line and, on occasion when the composer wanted to use you as a melody instrument, a melody. You might see a bass clef "C" and the number "6/4" written underneath. That indicated to the keyboard player that the harmony the composer wanted, let's say in the key of C major, a 2nd-inversion F Major chord. Now, anyone who'd been reading continuo long enough wouldn't even really think too hard about what those figures meant--it would be automatic. So as a composer, if you wanted a 1st inversion a-minor chord, you'd write a bass-clef "C" followed by a "6" underneath it. If you wanted a root-position d-minor chord in the key of C, all you had to write was simply the note D. Figured-bass, aka basso continuo, became a kind of standard kind of "chord chart." What was most relevant was the bass note. If you could intuit the chord quality from the figures, it didn't REALLY matter what voicing you used. Figured-bass practices are where we get the modern-day practice of Roman numeral harmonic analysis. A IV6/4 chord, then, is a 2nd-inversion major triad with the 4th scale degree as its root. But technically, any voicing of a IV6/4 chord is valid AS LONG AS it has the 5th of the chord in the bass. Now, as to whether your choice of voicing is "correct" or not for a given chord depends on the voicing for the previous chord and how those notes fall in voice leading--and strict harmonic procedure doesn't allow for much freedom in your writing (though it can sound beautiful if you're really good at it). But a simple melody+accompaniment shouldn't give you too much trouble in your voicing.

What happened in the classical period is really the invention of the piano and the high level of skill composers and performers attained at playing it and testing out their compositions. Composers now had the ability to write exactly what it was they wanted, not to mention the range of piano technique demanded a different way of writing for keyboard instruments. Continuo writing fell out of style at this point. Part of it might have been because keyboard players became good at recognizing chord structures on sight and had little trouble learning new music. When I started learning music theory in 8th grade, I was instantly able to look at SATB scores (church hymns) and improvise an accompaniment without having to write chord charts. A classical keyboardist could likewise look at a piano part and recognize it as a written-out improvisation, particularly in the left hand.

With the development of jazz and popular music in the early 20th Century, a more practical way of working was necessary because those musicians weren't exactly the best-educated or musically literate of the time. For them, just like with Baroque keyboard players, the precise voicing wasn't all that important. So a C6/4 becomes F/C, or C6 becomes Am/C. Oh, and to avoid confusion: a C6/5/3 can either be a C6 or an Am7/C, depending on key and function. These guys don't care what you play because they understand you are probably a better keyboard player than they are and can probably improvise better than they can compose. These composers/arrangers take advantage of that. An even better system than that is the Nashville Number system, which makes charting even more vague but allows the musicians even more freedom. Those session players in Nashville learn music probably faster than a lot of musicians elsewhere because of that system. It reduces charting down to simple scale degree, like 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. They can INSTANTLY change key if you're uncomfortable with the key they're in. So we've really come full circle!

As to classical music: There's nothing wrong with analyzing the chords and writing charts to simplify learning it. The thing about the Beatles is that, yes, it IS an oversimplification. But that's a good thing in that it frees you up for your own interpretation. The beauty of popular music, even Beatles music, is that it SHOULDN'T sound exactly like the original. Learning it note-for-note does have its own value, of course, but ultimately pop/rock/jazz styles are really about how YOU approach it. They never intended for their work to be so static the way classical music was.

Take all of this with a grain of salt:

It may help to know that music is where my "Aspieness" comes out in full force.

Throughout my entire childhood and formative years, the idea of my becoming a songwriter was discouraged because I hadn't been a child prodigy, and had an aversion to music theory. That aversion came out of a mental block that prevented me from understanding it, in part because of the way it's usually taught. I have an EAR for music, but not the mind for the theory itself. That said, I do understand many of the basics. My brain is extremely mathematical, so I can understand waveforms, and acoustical principles, as well as rhythm and time signatures. I'm damned good at figuring out how to reconfigure tempo and time signatures so that the end result is the same audibly, but terrible at learning the language of keys and harmonies. I can HEAR them, and make them happen as I wish but I can't explain them using the traditional language of written music.

I know when I play "this" (whatever it is), it produces "this emotion." But I can't explain why, and don't care to simply because understanding it requires far too much time and effort. As politically incorrect as the expression is, I'll say it anyway. I'm totally ret*d when it comes to written music theory, so I can't be bothered with it any more than I already have been.

It's not that I think nobody should bother with it though. I admire those who have learned it, and can work with it. I can't. It's that simple. So I don't. But I can still accomplish what I want to without it, so it's not a total loss.

Given my childhood though, and the fact that what I loved, and really wanted to do was discouraged all because I didn't have a thorough background in theory, I tend to experience "knee-jerk" reactions when hearing or reading anything that seems to me to suggest that I should learn theory.

I'll give you this. In the age of the great classical composers ("classical" in the popular sense, not the musically technical sense, if you know what I mean), composers had NO other way to communicate what they were writing than to write it down in a language that trained musicians could read and interpret.

That isn't the case anymore though. There are ways now, with the world of technology, to communicate the same ideas with no classical training at all. If you want an orchestra to play your music, it IS better to use traditional staff music, I admit, but not absolutely necessary. A hundred years ago, it was. Tradition is what causes it to still be the expected form. Not necessity.

My "Aspieness" has also caused me to develop a unique attitude to the music industry in general, so a lot of how I approach music is looked upon with quizzical attitudes, bafflement, and sometimes even outright disdain, even by musicians who don't read music at all.

For example, I don't play live. Never have. I'm not saying I never will or would, but I don't and haven't yet. That alone turns off most musicians, because the mentality is "If you don't play live, you aren't a serious musician. Playing live is how you start. Without playing live, you not only won't get anywhere in the business, you don't exist."

Say what? I don't believe that. While I do get that playing live increases your chances of success exponentially, I don't believe for one second it is absolutely necessary.

How many people have bought a concert ticket for a show featuring a band they've never heard before? It is said that live performances are for promoting albums, but that isn't true at all! RECORDS promote the concerts, not the other way around! People buy tickets because they've heard the music already on the radio, and have already been buying it! The real reason for live shows is MONEY. Live shows create more income than record sales. The profit margin is far higher.

Hardly ANYONE buys tickets to a show featuring a band they've never heard.

Ergo, radio and recorded music is all about promoting LIVE SHOWS! If the records don't sell well, there is no huge concert. Maybe some hole-in-the-wall shows, but that's about it.

Here's another "Aspie" outlook for ya. "You have to be concerned with what people are buying and consuming now."

HOOEY! No you don't. Unless what you want nothing more than to sell records, in which case, yes. Emulating what people are already buying will increase your chances of success as far as sales. But if your goal is to be known as an innovator, the last thing you want to do is what everyone else is doing.

I could go on and on about this, because this DOES happen to be my "special interest," but I won't.

I have quite a few unconventional attitudes toward the craft, AND the business, many of which most would just shake their heads at. And that's fine.

The key, to me, is what one really wants to accomplish. Some of us aren't interested in what sells a lot, or what's popular. For some of us, it really IS all about being true to who we are. The business and popularity be damned!

For those of us that are like that, we'd rather see success on our own terms, or not at all.

That doesn't mean I'm the kind of person who steamrollers over people to do things the way I want them done. It doesn't mean I'm the kind of person who would tell professionals in the business to "go screw themselves" if they wanted me to do something a little differently. What it means is that I'm flexible within certain key limitations. I do have a few core values, beyond which I refuse to stray. But only a few. Beyond those, I'm really quite flexible.

Perhaps my greatest flexibility is in allowing for musican's interpretations of my work. And that is why, in essence, it isn't that important to me that every nuance of my music be communicated. I WANT the players to adjust, add, and interpret what I've written, within certain broad limits. I don't really need a ton of music theory to communicate the basic framework of what I write.

If I write a song that was intended to be a rock song, it wouldn't bother me at all if the suggestion were made to totally rearrange it as a country song, as long as I play a primary role in doing so. It is, after all, MY song.

EDIT: AngelRho, my intention isn't to challenge your views at all. And I don't feel as though you are challenging mine. Feels like a lively exchange is all. Stimulating. Obviously, I think we disagree on some things, and agree on others. I'm not trying to sway you either way, and don't feel as though you are either. Somehow I felt the need to make that clear. Just in case. Good discussion!

MrXxx: No worries! We just have different purposes and different audiences when we write. As to writing for audiences--If you want to make a living at this, you DO have to be sensitive to the audience. There's nothing wrong with writing for yourself, or "art for art's sake" as people in my area of music like to say. I just see nothing wrong, either, with writing music in such a way that you can continue to facilitate your own work.

Just because I'm audience-sensitive doesn't mean that I go out of my way to cater to them. I attend a fairly conservative church. If you check out that handbell composition I posted earlier, you'll notice there are some things in that tune that border on inappropriate. There's no deep secret or meaning behind what I wrote. I was interested in thematic development, and I thought what I did worked well for building tension. I'm lucky that music IS my day job, teaching piano lessons in addition to composing. Someone like me be necessity has to be somewhat a "technologist" when it comes to producing music. If all you are is a songwriter, you don't have QUITE the same technical demands. But you have no less a responsibility to the quality of your work. You use the same analytical, critical thinking, and harmonic principles I do. You just aren't quite as aware of it!

The advantage of written music is that it's a time-saver. I have every single note I want my players to play. When I performed that handbell piece, I only had 30 minutes of rehearsal time with my musicians. 30 MINUTES. There's no way I could have taught each individual wind player their part in 30 minutes, let alone the entire ensemble. In a perfect world, I'd have a recorded demo along with their sheet music. As it happened, I didn't even have the demo, and the conductor didn't send out parts with the rest of the music to be performed that evening. My wife and I, of course, don't use written music when playing handbells due to the physical limitations of the instrument. We learn notes and then choreography. Once we accomplish that, we no longer need sheet music. I just bring my laptop and never bother printing the parts out.

Absolutely. Musical style dictates a lot. What I do is directed toward much smaller groups of musicians, most of whom aren't versed in staff music, and play by ear. That works better in small groups anyway. I have written bigger pieces too, that no four or five piece group could ever perform. But though those are fun to work with, it's not my main "thang." So I don't worry too much about them. If any of them were ever to be picked up by someone wishing to have them performed, they would have to be arranged by a pro, because I wouldn't be able to, but I don't foresee that happening, and it's not that important to me. Those, I do write mainly for myself.

My songs though, are another story. I do want those to get out to an audience. I do care what "the audience" thinks, whoever they are. And I don't know yet exactly who they are. Being "sensitive to them" though, I have concluded, isn't as necessary as it might be for, say, a pop musician.

My songs are very personal. Part of who I am. As such, it's not the music per se that the audience would be there for. It's me. That, I understand. That said, the "audience" that might find my songs appealing would be like a group extension of friends. Friends, friends of friends, etc.

They would tend to be people that somewhat share my outlook and perspective of the things I write about. People in one way or another, LIKE me (but of course, in other ways, UNlike me.)

Once I realized that, I knew what I was really selling was me, more so than my music. My music is so much "me" the only people that would like IT, would like me and vice-versa. That being the case, I don't really need to be as concerned about "what the audience wants," because people either like me or they don't. If not enough do like me, nothing will come of it financially, and that's fine with me, because I want to do it as who I am, and not who I'm not anyway. If the only way I can succeed is by being something or someone that isn't me, I'd rather just do it for me and the few who appreciate it, and fail. I've no interest in adjusting who I am to succeed by anyone else's standards than my own.

My "stuff" isn't so far out there it would be a tough sell either. I don't ever expect it to be massively popular, but I do believe there are enough people out there who would like it to support it, even if I have to work part time to keep the bills paid.

Call it "Cult of Personality," if you like. Though I hate that expression. I prefer to think of it as "a bunch of friends* who like my music enough to buy it." In this day and age, if you market yourself well enough, you don't even have to be on the Billboard charts to make something of a living.

* ...and friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends... ...viral marketing can spread exponentially fast if you can figure out how to get it started and keep the snowball rolling...

In other words, like minded people will like it, so there isn't a lot of need to "rethink" any of it. If there aren't enough like minded people out there, then I'll be disappointed, but given my mentality, I'd rather NOT market to anyone else. I'm pretty proud of what I've done, and how it has progressed over the years. I'm frankly surprised at even many of my earliest songs. Not that I wouldn't adjust any of them to be better written. I've already done that with quite a few of them. And, they're getting better and better as I go. As long as it continues to be fun, I'll keep doing it. The moment it stops being fun, I'll quit. Certain "adjustments" that could be made to my songs, would not feel right, and would therefore cause the process to stop being fun, and I won't have that.

Ooh - what to do?

Torn between answering the original question (forgotten what it was actually - think the answer was "yes" anyway!) or joining in with the fascinating debate with Angel, Mr X et al.

Unfortunately, I also have the slight feeling that my wife may be feeling conversationally neglected next door, so both may have to wait. I can feel a long rant coming on though (a friendly one)...

Please jump in anywhere. I LOVE music theory. I downplay my love for music theory around my students. Everything I've had to say defending the study of functional harmony is important for what I do. But I don't think it has a place in practical application for a classical musician, i.e. someone who just wants to play Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninov, etc. for the rest of their lives.

I always tell my students, "look, at some point, you need to learn to play by ear, along with scales and arpeggios." Depending on the student, I might add "you need to learn how to improvise and compose." Before getting into some of the more esoteric angles of music, a good knowledge of theory has to become part of the conversation, because chord theory/triadic harmony is important, even if all you want to learn is the piano part to "Sweet Home Alabama." What you do beyond that is up to you, but just an elementary knowledge of chord construction is enough to open all sorts of doors. I've noticed the way most guitar players learn is by memorizing all the first-position chords. If guitar players can do it, why shouldn't piano players?

I see the point, though the lack of authentic sheet music (arrangements for drums, guitar and bass) was once a big problem for me. When I first started playing, I felt the need for at least one authentic score of a good pop song, as my rigid thinking had led me to believe that my only way of becoming good at the game was to find out exactly what the band was playing, and to try to create a perfect duplicate of it, as a starting point. Of course that's not art in itself, it's just copying, but I felt I had to go that way, to get some kind of a feel for arranging for a band....naturally, with no experience, my own attempts at original arrangements left a lot to be desired, so I wanted to approach it rather like a budding painter who might copy the Mona Lisa just for the experience. Try as I would, I was quite unable to hear the different parts in any detail just by listening to the records where everything is mixed together. So I was hopping mad that they weren't publishing scores for bands.

I guess it was my autism that balked at the idea of doing music less logically. To this day I still find myself leaning towards the "copycat" side of music. It's fine as long as I remember it's educational rather than a direct artistic expression....though if I ever join a tribute band, it might be different. One song I recorded gave me a big dilemma because I'd sussed out the original arrangement almost perfectly, but was concerned that it would be criticised for being only a carbon copy........rather than throwing away all my groundwork, I compromised, and recorded the first half of the song as per the original, and the second half using my own arrangement. Luckily by that time I'd got enough experience under my belt to make my own section reasonably impressive.