My writing tends to be less analytical and more organic. If it feels right, then I must be doing something right. But this article got me to thinking, so I surfed on over to Soundcloud and had a quick listen to a few of my more traditional tunes to see how closely I was adhering to the four main themes of Alexander's topic. Well, what I found was sort of a mixture of these four themes. A fair amount of call and response, some repetition, and a decent amount of variation. The performance was, of course, on the money. ;->

I wasn't consciously thinking of any of these ways of writing as I wrote the tunes. Like I mentioned above, if it feels right . . . And actually, I think this concept shouldn't be lightly dismissed. We, as musicians, have all developed a "feel" for this craft, and it should be exploited whenever possible. Chances are, we already have an innate sense of how a melody should sound, and it will usually fall within the confines of these points.

For me personally, it is not so easy to just sit down and bang out a piece of music. I have to be in the mood to do it, but sometimes that mood is just nowhere to be found. I think that, at times like this, being able to call up those four points can be a benefit and may be just what is needed to get unstuck and in the mood. Sure can't hurt, I reckon.

One of the things about BiaB that helps, I think, is the way it defaults to a 32 bar piece. This gives sufficient room to be able to assemble an AABA piece of music, breaking things down into 8 bar phrases. Having to work within this structure prevents one from wandering off on tangents from which there may be no easy recovery. So when thinking in terms of melodic phrases it becomes easier to put things together and have them sound like, well, music. Or so it seems to me . . .

Best,
Michael

My Music:
https://soundcloud.com/michaelmcbroom/albums