Good points, Charlie, and right in line with what I was about to mention. That being that it's been many a year since anyone has come up with anything truly new in music. It's pretty much all recycled from the same seven notes, ya know? The fact that so much has been and can be done with so little is one of the truly extraordinary things about music.

Wendy, you have me curious now -- which chord progression are you referring to that your brother was "blown away" over? Not that little snippet I wrote above, was it? Because that's only the first eight bars.

You wrote, "My personal mindset says if it doesnt come out of my brain, its not mine and i can hardly ge proud of it." Here's the thing about music -- even if it's something that did come exclusively from your brain, chances are, somebody at some time or another wrote the same thing, or very close to it. You may be able to put a spin on it to make it quintessentially yours even though it may have been done before, which is plenty good enough in my book. And this conversation is hardly a fire. Heck it's barely even warm yet.

Originally Posted By: Noel96
I've found the Melodist and the Reharmonist are excellent resources for opening the doors to creativity. The Demo Songs that come with Stylepicker have also been extremely useful over the years.


Thanks for the info, Noel. I've never tried the Reharmonist until just now. I selected the "Auto Generate Chord Reharmonization" option after discovering that the Chord Reharmonist Dialog will apparently do the substitutions only two measures at a time. So it ended up redoing the entire piece -- with a progression that I feel is inferior to the original. So I tried using the Undo command. Well, I clicked on Undo, but it didn't undo anything. Oops. Glad I'd saved that song first. So a word to the wise. Save your song before you try this "feature." Still, it's good to know what it and the other menu selections can do -- especially in situations where I'm truly unhappy with the way a chord progression is working out.

Best,
Michael

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