Originally Posted By: David Snyder
These are questions that have plagued me for years and I was wondering if you had any insights, sir.

Hahahaha. I'll pretend you aren't trolling me. laugh

You're classically trained, so you know music theory is a set of generally accepted practices that you can use when you're trying to figure out why something doesn't work, usually only codifed after a given style is extinct. In plenty of cases - fugues come to mind - the theory doesn't even follow the "rules" that the composer allegedly used.

There's only one real rule of music: If it sounds good, it is good.

If you can be like Sir Paul and "just hear it", more power to you. That's the way you should be writing music.

Quote:
"Dude, that song was frickin' amazing, where did you come up with that chord progression????"

Yeah, you typically won't find that in music theory, will you?

While the Beatles made use of things like deceptive cadences, I can guarantee you that "What this song needs is a deceptive cadence" was said by none of the Beatles, ever. wink

More likely, they were fooling around with chords - or listened to someone else - and said "Dude, that progression is frickin' amazing, let's use it."

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?